Achieving Sainthood
I read the other day that Pope John Paul II could become St John Paul any time now - because the Catholic Church has accepted that the second of the two miracles required for someone to be canonised a Saint - has already occurred.
Apparently the second miraculous event occurred on 1 May 2011 - coincidentally on the night of John Paul's beatification – which is the final hurdle to be overcome before a Catholic can be declared a saint.
The Polish Pope was beatified when his immediate successor - the recently retired Pope Benedict XVI (aka Joseph Ratzinger) - officially recognised a French nun’s alleged recovery from Parkinson’s Disease - as the first of the two miracles required.
The Vatican case is that in 2005 Sister Marie Simon-Pierre's (48) Parkinson's vanished after prayers were offered to the deceased Pope John Paul II - Sister Marie said that she scribbled the Pope’s name on a piece of paper and woke up the next day to find that she was cured.
Now I haven't seen any medical evidence in support of the Vatican's claim that Sister Marie's experience constitutes a miracle - but in any event I find the whole business quite offensive and distasteful.
Because my mother suffered from Parkinson's Disease for years - and she was as good and as true a person that you could ever meet - and a good Catholic into the bargain who went to mass regularly all her life and said prayers for all kinds of people - Pope John Paul II included.
But the notion that a benevolent God decided to spare some French nun in response to her prayers for a dead Pope while allowing my Mum's suffering to continue - is a terrible thought, obscene even - and helps to explain why I rejected organised religion as I grew up.
Put simply, I could never believe that a creator could act in such a cruel, capricious way - so all this business of turning Pope John Paul II into a modern day saint is really just religious mumbo jumbo - which would be laughable if it did not play with people's feelings and emotions .
Details of the second miracle required to turn Blessed John Paul into Saint John Paul are now awaited from the Vatican - but sources in the Holy See say that these cannot be explained by either doctors or theologians.
Which is as daft as it sounds - because what the Holy See is saying is that the spirit of the late John Paul II had a friendly word with God on behalf of one random individual - while leaving the rest of the faithful to their fate.
