Читать книгу Medicine and the Church. Being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick онлайн

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‘When such cures take place in the presence of vast masses of people, although it may be possible to explain all the steps through which the emotion has produced the “cure,” how can we be surprised that the people fall on their knees before God and bless His holy name for the miracle which He has wrought?

‘I defy anyone to read Zola’s story of the cure of Marie le Guersaint, written by a sceptic (Zola’s “Lourdes”), without being moved by it and without feeling convinced that all true Catholics who were present, priests and people, with the unhappy exception of the Abbé Pierre Froment, truly believed that Almighty God had been moved by the intercession of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception to display His divine power by instantaneously restoring the health of the poor girl who had lain paralysed upon a couch for seven years. In the eyes of all who witnessed it, it was a miracle, for every medical man who had seen her had, with one exception, believed her to be suffering from a damaged spinal cord. There is therefore no excuse, in such a case as this or in ninety-nine out of one hundred cases which are cured by faith, to impute dishonesty and deliberate deception to the priests and the people who proclaim such cures to be the work of God. From the little I have seen of the priests actively engaged in the grotto at Lourdes, I can feel no doubt that the most of them honestly believe that the cures which they have seen are genuine. I would no more think of accusing them of deliberate deception than I would accuse my own relative of it.’8