Mackillop's choice

So for the 25% of Australians who look up to a former member of the Hitler youth, today is a big day. They may get a saint. What is a saint? According to www.catholiceducation.org, a saint is:

- "the standard operating model for human beings."
Operating model sounds like operating thetan. Smells of L. Ron here.

- "Christ’s bride, totally attached, faithful, dependent."
And we thought they were against same sex marriage.

According to www.catholic-pages.com, saints are

- "persons in heaven (officially canonized or not), who lived lives of great charity and heroic virtues." So why bother with the whole canonizing circus? This page then goes on about how JP II proclaimed at least 278 saints.

It also states that "In official Church procedures there are three steps to sainthood: one becomes Venerable, Blessed and then a Saint. Venerable is the title given to a deceased person recognized as having lived heroic virtues. To be recognized as a blessed, and therefore beatified, in addition to personal attributes of charity and heroic virtue, one miracle, acquired through the individual's intercession, is required. Canonization requires two, though a Pope may waive these requirements. Martyrdom does not usually require a miracle." No need for miracles, just get yourself killed in action.

For those 25%, the miracles are probably going to be believed as such without rigorous questioning. For the other 75%, surely we should be getting good journalism asking the question, are these events really miracles? i.e. can't be explained unless evoking a god. I've only seen two articles ask this question, here and here. All other media has been unquestioning and pandering.

I also question the claim that they have been using science to prove these are miracles. They obviously have no idea what science is. Science doesn't prove anything. It can only measure how probable an explanation is. It's a way to find out the most probable explanation using the evidence available. It tries not to bring in unjustified assumptions such as unfalsifiable supernatural beings. So if they were really using science, they would come to the conclusion that the most probable reason for the so called cancer miracles are chance remissions. These do occur.

So to paraphrase a cook who some thought wore a brown shirt, "No miracle for you!!!".