175 / Miracles - give me a break!
Australia's religious are rejoicing in the pending sainthood of Sister Mary MacKillop. She's performed two miracles, you know. Give me a break.
Two terminally ill women were cured of cancer - or rather had their cancer disappear - by praying to Mary MacKillop for help. Their recovery is deemed miraculous and thus the Sister will become a Saint. If anything, this story makes me really cranky. What rubbish. The Catholic Church truly are are a bunch of loonies, and their adherents a gullible lot.
So what makes me so cranky? If praying to Mary MacKillop can heal people, then why aren't our hospitals empty? People are dying, for chrissake. Why on earth is the woman not put to work and sort out this mess? Do something … if she can, and she doesn't, she's negligent; if she can't, this miracle business is fake. The problem is, there are dozens if not hundreds coming to her tomb, desperately ill, praying for help to be cured. Alas, to no avail; just imagine the disappointment and devastation of these misguided people. What balderdash!
However, there's another side to the Mary MacKillop story. At Wikipedia you can read up on her life:
MacKillop started work at the age of 14 as a clerk in Melbourne and later as a teacher. To provide for her family,
she took a job as governess at her aunt and uncle's place. She was to look after their children and teach them. Already set on helping the poor whenever possible, she included the other farm children. Very concerned about the lack of education, she would teach more than fifty children.
In 1867 MacKillop became the first Sister and Mother Superior of the newly formed order of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. Dedicated to the education of the children of the poor, the rules written up for the Sisters to live by were: emphasis on poverty, no ownership of personal belongings and they would go wherever they were needed. By the end of 1867, ten other Sisters had joined the Josephites.
To provide education to the poor - particularly in country areas - more than 70 Sisters were educating children at 21 schools by the end of 1869. MacKillop and her Josephites were also involved with an orphanage; neglected children; girls in danger; the aged poor; a reformatory; a home for the aged and incurably ill.
The Sisters were prepared to follow farmers, railway workers and miners into the isolated outback and live as they lived. They shared the same hardships whilst educating their children. The Josephite Congregation expanded rapidly and - by 1871 - 130 Sisters were working in more than 40 schools and charitable institutions.
Wow!
Update:
Chris Del Mar, professor of primary care research at Bond University, says on the subject of miracles (SMH):
"The celebration of Mary MacKillop's miracle cancer cures is a worrying example of the lack of scientific literacy.
The question is not whether one patient recovered from her cancer after praying to MacKillop, but how many others prayed and did not go into remission."