Dear Editor, I find it very uplifting that the 70th formally recognised miraculous cure in Lourdes has been announced (IC 15/02/18). It highlights the sacred nature of the place, and how God works mysteriously in the world.
I think it’s a real shame that in our modern age people often reduce the supernatural down to the superstitious. The piece pointed out that the Lourdes International Medical Committee ruled in 2016 that the cure had been “unexplained according to current scientific knowledge”. If medical experts are finding this kind of phenomenon difficult to explain for the 70th time, how much more evidence is needed to prove its veracity?
Often atheists accuse religious believers of being biased, claiming that just because science can’t explain something yet, believers resolve that it must be God’s activity. This is often called the ‘God of the Gaps’ argument.
However, atheists also do the same thing. They claim that although science hasn’t explained something, it will eventually. They’re filling in the gaps in their argument with science that doesn’t yet exist! This is the height of hypocrisy, and reveals a hidden bias. No matter how much evidence is shown to non-believers, they will always dismiss it as an unknown scientific or psychological phenomenon.
A question often asked to atheists is what would it take for you to believe in God. The answer is usually something like “if God rearranged the stars in a formation that read ‘I exist’”, or “if Jesus appeared to me visually”.
However, I suspect that if this happened many of the sceptics would reduce these revelations to a constellational coincidence or a deceiving hallucination!
Yours etc.,
Cathal Rafferty,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.
We should think in terms of the ‘eternal now’
Dear Editor, David Quinn, writes that ‘Suffering is the flipside of love’ (IC 8/02/18) and then says this doesn’t explain the suffering caused by something like cancer.
The universe began with the Big Bang, 14 billion years ago, with all matter-energy blemished by original sin. Matter-energy at its lowest level had only potential for animation.
From ‘the Big Bang’, the universe expands at near the speed of light. All animate life is subject to pain and death – and inanimate energy/matter to disorder and decay.
In 1985, Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XV1, wrote: “The inability to understand original sin and to make it understandable is really one of the most difficult problems of present day theology and pastoral ministry.”
The key to understanding is that original sin is/was a transcendental catastrophe, not an historic event on earth! Such fusion (short circuit) between good and evil, in the transcendental realm of Paradise, caused the Big Bang and the evolutionary process. After billions of years, this produced human life on Earth, eventually Mary: ‘Our tainted nature’s solitary boast’, the mother of Our Saviour. All else is blemished by original sin, as are human souls emerging at conception. All that existed at the Big Bang was matter-energy at its lowest level, with only potential for animation
Thus, God uses the evolutionary process, also the life, death and resurrection of His Son – and the ongoing sacramental life of His Church, as the means of our redemption. Immaculate matter rightfully belongs in heaven. Hence the ‘living bread down from heaven’, the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, and the Assumption of Mary.
The difficulty with this logical new synthesis is that we think in distorted finite terms of time and space – particularly in terms of time. Whereas, everything remains in the ‘eternal now of God’.
Yours etc.,
Brian Rooney,
Downpatrick, Co. Down.
Oh for the Penny Cathechism…
Dear Editor, Religious instruction declined in our national schools nearly 60 years ago and that is the reason for the lack of Faith in Ireland and few vocations to the priesthood and religious life. When will the high-up people, who are responsible for the Faith in Ireland, come out of their bunkers (apart from collecting their money) and reintroduce the Baltimore Catechism or the Penny Catechism in our schools and so protect the next generation from this deprivation? May I suggest no money in the envelopes until this is done.
Your etc.,
Anna Brady,
Farragh, Co. Cavan.
Constitution is right place to recognise human rights
Dear Editor, I noticed that in a recent speech our Taoiseach, in promoting wider access to abortion, said: “I do not believe that the Constitution is the place for making absolute statements about medical, moral and legal issues.”
Excuse my ignorance, but if the Constitution is not the place for recognising basic Human Rights and making statements relating to moral, legal and medical issues, then what is the Constitution for?
I always believed the Constitution was the place for certain laws, and the appropriate place to acknowledge UN-drafted Human Rights. I am nineteen years old and I support constitutional recognition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I campaign to keep the Eighth Amendment.
Yours etc.,
Sean Blackwell,
Co. Limerick.
Don’t label people with disabilities
Dear Editor, It has been widely debated as to why a human being needs to be recognised as a human person to possess ‘a right to life’. One argument is based on the belief that foetuses and new-born babies cannot be considered human persons with ‘a right to life’ because they do not possess the properties (capacities) that endow them as such (Tooley 1975).
If the prerequisite to be a human person with a right to life is the possession of certain capacities, what then are the implications for a foetus diagnosed with Down syndrome? Should their predicted disorder decide their fate without giving them the opportunity to live – the equivalent of a death sentence? Sadly, this is a eugenic reality!
It is impossible to know before birth, and often not until a considerable time after birth, as to what degree these capacities will develop. Each child with Down syndrome is unique and they should all be given the opportunity to reach their full potential. A young man with Down syndrome says: “Give a baby with a disability a chance to grow a full life. To experience a half-full glass instead of the half-empty glass.”
Disability and illness are extrinsic factors and should never be used to ‘label’ a person with a disability. The way in which language is used is very important; a child with Down syndrome is more than a label, they are a ‘person’ first. Using ‘person’ language takes the focus off the disability and to the person. A person who has dignity, feelings and rights but who just happens to have been diagnosed with an extra chromosome.
Yours etc.,
Christina Coakley,
Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo.
Status quo should remain
Dear Editor, The recent assertion by a spokesperson for GPs that decisions be left to politicians was presumably a case of blowing in the wind.
In its preamble, the UN asserts that the child needs special safeguards both before and after birth. This need is recognized in the Declaration of Human Rights, and the General Assembly calls upon National Governments to recognize these rights. The rights include the “inherent right to life”.
Despite, therefore, Ireland’s signature to this declaration, politicians when asked, fail to explain themselves. So how can we make an informed judgment? Regardless of other arguments, are we not better off leaving the Constitution as it is?
Yours etc.,
Gerald Murphy,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.
Impressive Pope Paul VI
Dear Editor, A new book Heartbreaker about the first heart transplant in 1967 describes how after the transplant the surgeon, Prof. Chris Barnard, met hundreds of eminent, famous and gifted people from many different countries. Later in life he was to say that the most impressive person he ever encountered was Pope Paul VI.
Yours etc.,
Mrs Judith Leonard,
Raheny, Dublin 5.
