In recent days, much has been written about Alfred Bessette, a man
known more commonly as Brother André and, since his canonization by the
Roman Catholic Church on the weekend, as Saint André Bessette.
To
be eligible for sainthood, you need to have performed only two miracles.
Brother André, who died in 1937 at the age of 91, compiled Gretzky-like
statistics.
The faithful have attributed more than 125,000 miracles to
him, before and after his death.
While he was a modest doorman, pilgrims would
visit St. Joseph’s Oratory on Montreal’s Mont-Royal to benefit from
Brother André’s purported healing powers.
He would pray and dispatch
them with sacred oil that had been burned in a lamp lighting the statue
of St. Joseph and is said to have miraculous powers.
The Vatican,
in granting sainthood, said it confirmed two miracles: In 1958, Giuseppe
Carlo Audino, a New York man who had been diagnosed with terminal
cancer, is said to have been cured after he prayed to Brother André.
In
1998, a nine-year-old Quebec boy was hit by a car while cycling and
suffered serious head injuries; doctors apparently told the family that
the boy had no hope of recovery, but, after being rubbed with “St.
Joseph’s oil,” he emerged from a coma.
(That boy, now a man, is still
alive, but his identity remains secret.)
Gods, angels, spirits and
so on can give us succor; prayer, ritual and congregation can also
provide comfort and a sense of belonging that is healthy.
What is
troubling, however, is when the media – presumably secular institutions –
report these “miracles” as credible, factual events, and when they buy
into pseudo-scientific twaddle, consciously or otherwise.
The
Vatican, we were told in news stories, uses a rigorous scientific
process to determine if a miracle has occurred; it even consults leading
medical experts.
In fact, what the Catholic Church does is use a
cleverly vague definition of a miracle, an “act of healing inexplicable
in the light of present medical science.”
All kinds of things are
inexplicable. Science is a process of continuous learning. But, in the
search for explanations, it is quite a leap to go from “we don’t know”
to “divine intervention.”
There is a lot of untrodden territory between
the two.
Occam’s razor is a rule of science that holds that when
you have two competing hypotheses that appear equal, you should opt for
the one that requires the fewest assumptions. Stated more succinctly,
the explanation that requires the fewest leaps of logic is usually the
correct
one.
Miracles – unexplained events – occur every single
day in the health setting. But there is no evidence of a
cause-and-effect relationship between prayer and these “miracles.” And
evidence, ultimately, is what matters.
The vast majority of
miracles involve three conditions – cancer, paralysis and coma – and
that is no coincidence because these are conditions where there is
unpredictability.
In cancer, remission – the spontaneous regression of cancer – is known to occur, although it is not fully understood.
The
stories of people who are paralyzed and, after the intervention of
faith healers, walk away “cured” are legend. Most have a glaring lack of
documentation. Not to mention that our knowledge of the workings of the
spinal cord is in its infancy.
Similarly, there are many
miraculous stories of the comatose reawakening, with and without being
massaged with miracle oil. There are more neurons in the brain than
there are stars in the sky, and science has barely begun to comprehend
how the brain works.
Patients, whether they have a cold or cancer,
can get better or worse for any number of reasons. Immune systems vary
markedly. Doctors’ diagnoses and prognoses are sometimes wrong, or
partly wrong. Defying one doctor’s expectations and going into remission
from cancer, rising from a chair despite a forever-aching back, or even
reawakening from a coma is hardly a miracle.
Not that this
matters. There is really no harm in believing that praying to a long-ago
deceased Brother André is a way of getting priority attention from a
higher power. No harm in believing that he somehow had a hand in curing
others in the past.
Prayer is an excellent complementary therapy –
especially since, unlike many complementary therapies promoted by
Internet hucksters, it has no known harmful side effects.
What is
harmful is when people allow superstition to substitute for science and
the media go along gleefully for the ride.
The canonization of
Saint André Bessette has drawn unprecedented attention to St. Joseph’s
Oratory, an architectural gem on the slopes of beautiful Mont-Royal. If
it inspires people to walk up the 283 steps to visit and then stroll
through the nearby urban forest, that will be, well, a blessing.
But
the oratory gift shop still sells more than 100,000 vials annually of
sacramental “St. Joseph’s oil” and Brother André’s sainthood is expected
to set sales soaring.
In terms of sales, this is petty cash compared
with other popular bogus treatments touted online such as oil of
oregano, but it is troubling that the church plays this game.
The last
thing we need is to have sick people rub lamp oil, however holy, on
their chest in lieu of proven cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and
radiation.
Science is not infallible – far from it.
But
science-based medicine is a far better bet than hoping for a miracle,
even for the most pious.
There is plenty enough false hope being hawked
in modern society already; we don’t need to cloak pseudo-science in
saintly seductiveness.
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