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The Times – Did John Paul II perform a miracle? Am I Mother Teresa? by Matthew Parris

Ecclesiastical authorities in the Roman Catholic Church have been investigating the alleged miracle, interviewing neurologists, graphologists, psychiatrists and medical experts.

Whom he shall debunk with a triumphant claim to “intelligence”.

The diocese of Aix-en-Provence is now satisfied that it has a putative supernatural intervention on its hands, and this week submitted its dossier to Pope Benedict XVI, who may declare an official miracle and begin procedures for making the late Pope a saint.

Gosh, all this Catholicism is so inconvenient to “intelligent” Catholics.

Meanwhile, Gerard Baker (“‘Israel right or wrong’ is not a grown-up debate”, March 30) writes that one determinant of US foreign policy towards Israel is the belief, widely held on the Religious Right, that before the prophecy of the Second Coming and the end of the world can be fulfilled, the Israelites must be given their Biblical lands of Judaea and Samaria.

A lot of Religious Nutters (I say with very little affection) have called the Hugh Hewitt show over the years, and I’ve heard exactly one (1) say he was pro-Israel because of Biblical Prophesy. And Hugh had to drag it out of him. But 94% of Republicans believe in God and they’re all the “Christian Right”!

Where are you, intelligent Christians? Where is your voice, your righteous anger? Where is your honest contempt for this nonsense? Take that claimed recent miracle, for instance. I know lots of nice, clever Catholics — friends, thoughtful men and women, people of depth and subtlety, people of some delicacy, people who would surely cringe at the excesses of Lourdes. Do they believe that John Paul II may have cured this nun from beyond the grave?

Do we care?

Where are the shouts of self-respecting bishops and cardinal-archbishops, raised against the woeful confusion of faith with superstition?

Yeah, miracles. Superstitious nonsense. Puh-shaw.

I have a theory about their reticence. I think they know this stuff is the petrol on which the motor of a great Church runs; that without these delusions to feed on, the unthinking masses would falter.

Ah, you see how he did that, there? It was subtle, but it’s a good thing I caught it. He and his friends are “intelligent” and “clever” while all the other Catholics, including, presumably, the Pope, are “unthinking”. Intelligent/clever vs. unthinking. That’s called a “juxtaposition”.

There is, of course, an alternative: that they too believe the nonsense; that the Prime Minister’s wife (and maybe the Prime Minister), and the Communities Secretary, and the Chancellor of Oxford University and former Governor of Hong Kong — not to mention several of my colleagues on these pages in The Times — honestly entertain the possibility that from beyond the grave the late Pope John Paul II interceded with God to cause a woman to be cured of Parkinson’s disease.

Dolts. Good thing our heroic columnist is here to demonstrate his superior intellectual powers and save us all from this nonsense.

You are living, dear reader, at a watershed in human history. This is the century during which, after 2,000 years of what has been a pretty bloody marriage, faith and reason must agree to part, citing irreconcilable differences.

You know, honestly, that’s a good point? I’m glad he pointed that out, that Christian Europe was a dark place, ignorant and bereft of reason until Matthew Parris was born and brought Enlightenment to Western Civilisation.