What happens when an atheist doctor and historian is given access to the Vatican’s Secret Archives to investigate miracle claims? Just such a thing happened in the early 2000s, and both the story behind it, and the doctor’s conclusions, are worth recounting.
Dr. Jacalyn Duffin, a hematologist (M.D.) and historian (Ph.D.), was the Hannah Chair of the History of Medicine at Queen’s University from 1988 until 2017, and she’s served as both the President of the American Association for the History of Medicine and Canadian Society for the History of Medicine. It was in her role as a hematologist (a blood doctor) that she got involved with miracles in the first place, as she would later recount:
About twenty years ago, in my capacity as a hematologist, I was invited to read a set of bone-marrow aspirates “blind,” without being given any clinical details or the reason why. The fourteen specimens had been taken from one patent over an eighteen-month period. Using the microscope, I found this to be a case of severe acute leukemia with a remission, a relapse, and another remission. I assumed that the patient must be dead, and the review was for a lawsuit. Only much later did I learn, to my great surprise, that the patient was (and is) still alive. Although she had accepted aggressive chemotherapy in a university hospital, she attributed her recovery to the intercession of Marie-Marguerite d’Youville, a Montreal woman who had died two hundred years earlier. This case became the capstone in the cause for Youville’s canonization as the first Canadian-born saint. Again, I was surprised.
This experience, and the Vatican’s invitation to come to the canonization of St. Marie-Marguerite d’Youville, piqued Dr. Duffin’s interest. She asked for, and received, access to the Vatican’s Secret Archives, containing “the documentation on more than 600 miracles pertaining to 333 different canonization or beatifications from 1600 to 2000,” including at least one miracle for almost every canonization since the early seventeenth century. As a non-believer who was new to this, she wanted to know what the process was like: how medically serious were (and are) the Vatican investigations? And how unusual was it that Youville’s canonization involved the testimony of a non-believing physician?
Many people assume that belief in miracles is anti-scientific. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins mocked the idea of miracles, and declared them (by definition!) to be against science:
I suspect that alleged miracles provide the strongest reason many believers have for their faith; and miracles, by definition, violate the principles of science. […] The last King of the Belgians is a candidate for sainthood, because of his stand on abortion. Earnest investigations are now going on to discover whether any miraculous cures can be attributed to prayers offered up to him since his death. I am not joking. That is the case, and it is typical of saint stories. I imagine the whole business is an embarrassment to more sophisticated circles within the Church.
This is characteristic of Dawkins’ approach: he laughs at an idea he’s incapable of actually refuting. He simply asserts that miracles “violate the principles of science” without specifying which principles or why, and then holds the whole thing up to laugh at with a sort of “can-you-believe-it” mockery… even though his own account suggests an approach resembling that of science. Dawkins’ argument amounts to saying that if a doctor says “let’s try Drug X and see if it has any effect on the patient’s disease,” that’s respectable science, but if someone says, “let’s pray to Baudouin for his intercession, and see if it has any effect on the patient’s disease,” that’s silly! The only problem is that, amidst his sneering, he forgets to actually give us any reason why. We’re just left with the blanket assertion that the sacred Principles of Science have been somehow violated.
Contrast this with what Dr. Duffin found when she actually examined the centuries’ worth of medical records related to miracle cases. Her findings were originally presented in a Presidential Address that she delivered to the seventy-ninth annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A revised version of these remarks were published in the Winter 2007 issue of the Bulletin of the History of Medicine under the name The Doctor was Surprised; or, How to Diagnose a Miracle. The whole report is worth a read, and includes several interesting details:
- The way that “new technologies appear in the Vatican records soon after their invention” (in other words, that miracle investigations were relying on the best medicine available at the time);
- The crucial role that medical experts play throughout the whole history of these miracle investigations;
- The use of non-practicing and non-Catholic medical experts, dating back at least to the Middle Ages;
- The high standard to which medical testimony was required to comport (for instance, an apparent miracle in 1906 involving the healing of a 49 year-old nun was treated as inconclusive because the treating physician failed to order a bacteriological examination on the pleural effusion to confirm his clinical diagnosis of tuberculosis).
Dr. Duffin concluded:
With codification of the Consulta Medica of the Vatican in 1949, the gold standard of a miracle cure entrenched three specific characteristics: that the healing be complete, durable, and instantaneous. [….]
Gradually, I began to understand that the process cannot proceed without the testimony of a physician. The doctor need not believe in miracles, the doctor need not be Roman Catholic, nor even a Christian – but the doctor must fill two absolutely essential roles.
The first role is to declare the prognosis hopeless even with the best of the art. This rigorous duty is built into the drama of every final illness. Many of the miracle healings occurred in people who had already received the last rites. No doctor – be she religious or atheist – takes that decision lightly; nor can it be taken in private. As a result, it becomes a public admission of medical failure, available for corroboration in a distant future. Its credibility resides on trust in the physician’s acumen: the diagnosis and prognosis must have been corrected; the learning and experience, solid. Treating physicians who happened to be academics held great sway over the proceedings. A doctor is a good witness, not for being a good Catholic, or a believer in miracles, but for being demonstrably skilled in medical science.
The second role, which is equally, if not more, important to the recognition of a miracle, is to express surprise at the outcome. And here’s the rub – although the doctors must have used the best scientific medicine available, they can take no credit for the cure. A religious miracle defies explanation by science. Traditionally arrogant, medicine must confess its ignorance. [….] For the Vatican, miracles occur when the patient recovers from certain death or permanent disability, following excellent, up-to-date medical care which the doctor claims had nothing to do with the cure. To turn a familiar phrase on its head: the doctor must say “the operation was a failure, but the patient lived.” And only the doctor can say it.
Unless one arbitrarily defines science as denying miracles, the entire investigation into whether a particular healing is or isn’t a miracle is a scientific question, just as much as the question of whether or not a particular healing is a full recovery or only a temporary remission. The same techniques, the same methodology, is used in both.
Duffin noticed what Dawkins was too bigoted to see: that both medicine and science are looking at the same problems, along parallel and complementary lines. When the Church declares that a particular event was miraculous, it’s not just on the basis of faith. It’s after carefully reviewing the relevant medical information, and in light of the latest and best medical technology. Rather than contradicting the principles of science, this is a healthy integration of science and faith, and her research into the process led Dr. Duffin to say, “though still an atheist, I believe in miracles—wondrous things that happen for which we can find no scientific explanation.”
People like Dawkins are so stunted by bias that they cannot even comprehend the miracle of life by which they are daily surrounded. It requires a truly profound obtuseness to deny the possibility of a Creator – a leap of faith into unbelief – a conclusion utterly without a logical foundation – a massive arrogance of ignorance. There is no such thing as an atheist. One must choose. Does the miracle of Being point me to the Almighty or do I reject Him? There is only Theism or anti-Theism.
I read her book on Medical Miracles. Really a great read looking at the causes through the last few centuries. I have a friend at the Congregation for Causes of Saints. Last time I saw him he was flying to South America to investigate Mother Teresa’s 2nd miracle that raised her to the altars. I had volunteered, on several occasions, to be on the medical investigatory panel for the Congregation. Sorry, no go….too much of a ‘home team fan’ was the reply. They want non-Catholics, even non-Christians who can be more objective in the search for a scientific reason for the cure.
That’s fascinating!! For those who don’t know him, Dr. Camarata is a Catholic neurosurgeon. It’s not rocket science.
Dawkins is a paltry nobody, who says science twice in every sentence but has NO science. Indeed, there is no science disproving God.
He HAS to mock, because its all he has.
Its all atheists have.
We all know, the First Cause Is God. With an entire universe as testimony.
Atheists laugh and call us gullible, but what do they have?
It just happened, Dude!
Yeah. Science.
It never ceases to amaze me that people don’t recognize the underlying fundamental unity in nature. Countless identical particles can only imply a common template. Even more interactions between all the particles comprising the visible universe that operate per ‘laws’ can only imply a unified substructure that is both powerful and intelligent, so much so that only a being fitting the definition of God could reasonably fit the bill as the cause. The fact that we can posit infinite multiverses and other theories implies a common basis of relationship that fall within the description of God as a single cause. Even randomness has its rules and assumptions. Otherwise, why wouldn’t every particle be its own completely random and independent thing such that it would effectively be unknown and nothing? Ponder our own minds that have a very limited ability to investigate, interact with and perceive itself and the universe in which it finds itself. They are things that have some infinitesimal capacity that could be described as being in the image and likeness of God.
I would like to read the complete article but I do not have an account, nor does it appear that I can qualify for an account to access it.
Can it be made available for religious?
Deacon…. click on the blue READ for FREE box next to the article’s title and you can read up to 6 articles FREE.
You can create a JSTOR account just by signing up with your email. You don’t need institutional affiliation (it’s good for six free articles per month).
Long time no see, fellas! I really hope you all the best in the coming year. Just some slight remarks below.
“A religious miracle defies explanation by science.” (Duffin)
“miracles, by definition, violate the principles of science” (Dawkins)
There’s a very thin line between those. I think there are miracles defined by being *against* common scientific knowledge of the time and those defined as *not explained* by the state of the art theories and empirical data.
“her research into the process led Dr. Duffin to say, “though still an atheist, I believe in miracles—wondrous things that happen for which we can find no scientific explanation.” (Duffin)
All this says is that there are thing that science cannot currently explain, which by their rarity are deemed as “wondrous”. If someday in the future there arrives a plausible scientific explanation, it therefore ceases to be a miracle, on the spot. Miracles are, therefore, contingent on ignorance and attribution of the cause of that ignored fact to a non-human entity.
So you have two explanations:
1) Miracles are something (usually a cure, nowadays) that science in its current state cannot explain **and** that is attributed to a non-human entity (e.g., Mister Shandra cured from cancer because of the Lord Shiva, Romans cured by Æsculapius after a fatidic dream);
2) Miracles that are “supernatural” in the sense that the facts as presented contradict current scientific knowledge, either theoretically or empirically (Moses opening up the Red Sea, Jesus flying to the sky after appearing as a ghost after coming back to life after being born of a sacred dove etc., Saint George killing the Dragon on the Moon). This way miracles are defined as intrinsecally a divine intervention in what would otherwise seem a pretty ordinary outcome.
Number 2 naturally depends on number 1, though not vice versa. Yet when you look closely at it, as time goes by, type-2 miracles are increasingly rare (Adam and Eve are either fake myths or a metaphor; Moses is a fake myth or a metaphor; the resurrected Galilean preacher may just be a concoction of collective hysterical delusion; Mahomed might as well be hallucinating or having a seizure when felt he saw Gabriel talking to him).
Therefore miracle are scientific for two inseparable reasons: 1) only up to the point where one cannot arguably put forward a credible, testable scientific explanation 2) because one attributes that unknown or “unnatural” event to a non-provable supernatural, non-human entity.
ko, I can see you are not only a perfect example of what delusion the article was talking about, but also the “supercilious theosophist” Chesterton described as a “degraded animal who destroys only himself.”
Of course, dawkins did just that already, so why are you here.
firstly, pagan “gods” are demons. on top of being mere created, contingent beings who have no power (and who are dead and have been for a LONG time and will be so Eternally), they can create nothing.
As the Church Fathers would say, Grace PERFECTS nature. the pagan “gods” can only destroy, much like yourself.
secondly you seem to have hidden yourself behind a bulwark of blasphemies and rhetoric, but your favorite seems to be the delusion that empiricism is the only valid thought. Of course, that claim itself is philosophical and therefore totally self-refuting.
fundamentally, you base yourself solely in the delusion of control. you ignore reality and try to replace it with whatever you think can get you “control.”
As Chesterton also said: “the fury with which you search after pleasure proves you have NONE.”
Repent while you still can.
There is no need to make this difficult; evidences are all around us, no one needs to go rummaging through the Vatican Archives. There are dozens of accounts of miracles and miraculous visitations on Youtube. Anyone who cares to can look, listen and ponder. A number of prominent and courageous “scientists” have now published books on their conclusions that the universe, the natural world, and indeed we humans display a complexity and an order that nothing but “intelligent design” can explain, and of course implicit in that is the fact that this creative force is an intelligence so vast, so penetrating, so far beyond our capacities that we are literally incapable of understanding it. But in the works themselves: “Ecce Deus” as one might say.
As for Dawkins and his ilk, it’s all about pride, a feeling of power, of supremacy, and for the males often a crutch for their masculinity by boosting their self-confidence. These creatures have invested their individual and collective “face” in Darwinism, and like some other groups we could name, they are now incapable of admitting their errors and distortions without they think, an intolerable loss of face. In regards to evolutionism quite a few have frankly admitted the inherent weakness, illogicality and lack of physical evidence, but frankly state that it is “necessay” to adhere to evolutionism no matter how weak and tenuous the arguments as the alternative is simply intolerable to them. And we know what that alternative is: admitting the supremacy of the Creator!
No wonder that so many of these people are found worshipping, usually in deceit and denial, the father of lies himself.
james, stop confusing demons for Angels and vis versa just because demons tickle your fancy. dawkins is just the year 1800 version of your year 1500 heresy.
“intelligent design” is freemason idiocy claiming that you can’t know anything becaus complexity.
Nonsense. The Church created the sciences under the principles of Natural Law (with both protestants and their “enlightenment” children wholesale deny):
1) Nature is moral (Because man is intelligent, man is free).
2) Nature is intelligible (Because man is free, nature is intelligible).
3) Nature is teleological (Because nature is intelligible, man can see the ultimate purpose of it).
Using these Axioms:
0) Man is Lovingly Created In The Image of God.
1) All is Intelligible.
2) All is Knowable.
you reject all three in both cases, so does dawkins, who is just the more modern version of you.
Dear Nigel, I am sorry if I have stirred a tempest in your teapot. I’m not quite sure what it’s about, but it seems to be all about laws and dogmas etc. as per usual? Demons tickle my fancy? No, I can say that they do. However, if what we call the demonic does exist to the degree it seems to, and interacts with us in this physical realm to the degree that it seems it may – well, that is quite a significant matter; at least to me.
I am beginning to see the patterns of language and expression among your confreres, and no doubt the patterns of psychology they spring from. It’s a pity your kind can’t be a little more Christlike in your manner of expression, seeing after all that you claim exclusive ownership over Him. .
I ‘m not sure what dogma you are trying to express, but FM is nothing to do with it. I know very well what that is all about, and where it sprang from, and how it has spread its tentacles through your church among others, every since you got that Hermetic edifice in Rome in the 1500s.
I have no idea where you get the idea that I reject your three axioms (of unknown origin). I certainly don’t reject the first one, though as to the nature of the Almighty, Christ told us that He is Spirit. And to be frank with you, He who created all can probably take whatever form He might wish, don’t you think? Though I really fail to see what importance such things can have to people who should instead be about the work of Christ. Nor do I see any scriptural command or commission for miserable little mortals to speculate upon the nature of the Divinity. Though of course I recognize your claim to modify what Christ said, add other stuff, interpret as may suit the corporation etc. etc.
“All is Intelligible.” Is there a profundity in there somewhere? Do you mean all is intelligible to God. If so, I agree of course.
“All is knowable” Ditto, and ditto.
Dear friend in Christ, what are you trying to say other than that you think I am a damnable heretick unless I kiss the toe etc.?
Yes, consistency is certainly not a bad thing, even in error, though persisted in long enough, the ditch becomes unavoidable.
Actually I just dropped in to see what you all had to say about Francis’ little trip to the Middle East and his kiss and make up session with the mufti of whatever? They signed a lovely long document that might have been written by a UN committee which covered everything except that one stumbling block: and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you who that is(?)