Miracles

• Why Catholics believe miracles prove God exists

  • If a miracle has happened, God must have performed it and to perform it he must exist
  • Only God can perform miracles, so if they happen, God must exist
  • The miracles authenticated by the Church have been examined scientifically and proven to be true
  • If someone witnesses a miracle and they cannot find a natural explanation, they will be forced to believe it was caused by God
• Arguments against miracles by non-religious people

  • Miracles are supposed to break the laws of nature, which are based on our whole experience of life, so to believe in a miracle, the evidence for it would have to be stronger than our whole experience of life, but it never is
  • The evidence for miracles is always based on the evidence of witnesses, but we know that witnesses can be mistaken or even tell lies
  • Many miracles from the past can now be explained
  • If God really performed miracles, he would surely use them to help remove hunger and poverty rather than just helping the odd sick person
• Catholics disagree with these arguments because they believe:

  ● they can rely on the truth of biblical miracles because the Bible comes

  from God

  ● miracles have been authenticated by the Church

  ● if God used miracles to stop hunger and war, he would be changing

  the nature of life.
• Miracles are a major part of Catholic belief. The Bible shows

  miracles are bringing about faith and helping faith to grow. The Church’s process of canonisation depends on being able to establish two miracles connected with the proposed saint.
• The Bible is full of miracles, such as the Feeding of the Five

  Thousand and the Raising of Lazarus. In St John’s Gospel there is an

  account of Jesus healing a royal official’s son. The son is close to death, so the official asks Jesus to come and save his son. Jesus tells him his son will live; the official goes home and discovers his son recovered, which leads him and his household to believe.
• Catholics believe that God still performs miracles. One of the most

  famous Catholic miracles is that of St Bernadette of Lourdes, who saw

  an apparition of a young woman clothed in brilliant white with a blue

  girdle. This was followed by 18 apparitions. In one, a miraculous spring

  arose in a grotto; in another, the woman said she was the immaculate

  conception. Since these miraculous appearances of the Virgin Mary,

  Lourdes has become a place of pilgrimage for Catholics and many healing miracles are claimed to have taken place there.
• St John's Gospel records the

  healing of a royal official's

  son by Jesus.