Bluecat

Thank you - a Roman Catholic upbringing has much to do with it! The RCC is very chary of officially attributing miracles (though popular Catholicism attributes lots). One of the criteria is that at least 2 doctors (if I remember rightly) certifies that medicine to the best of their knowledge can do no more. Well, to be fair, that would be asking them to step outside their area of expertise. It might be more reasonable for a doctor to certify "to the best of my knowledge science has done everything it can for this poor person," and doctors in Europe will (occasionally) do that. I think though that might go against the grain in the US though... well You are looking for medical or scientific documentation that can be reviewed and disputed as a way of determining whether there is fraud or if an actual healing has taken place. Other than the obvious signs and whatever doctors notes may exist that is all that I am aware of. Actually I wasn't thinking of fraud at all! It seems perfectly innocent and even rather good, to me. Most chronic illnesses have periods of remission. There's also the statistical phenomenon known as "regression to the mean." There's also the placebo and the nocebo effects, which are absolutely wild! (did you know that 2 sugar pills have more of an effect than one, and certain colours of sugar pills have more of an effect than others?) These effects have nothing to do with fraud or deceit, but they can be hard to tell apart from the genuine results of some intervention, whether medical or otherwise. Conventional medical science concerns itself a lot with this, as it messes up clinical trials. In some ways that's a pity! There have been some studies done which were fascinating: did you know that a study in which some students learned to mimic faith healers (without having any faith in the healers' particular religion) found that the students were as effective as the faith healers (and that was actually fairly effective for certain conditions). Well, good! Primum, non nuocere is a fine principle. [When I lived in Thailand a healer made a certain splash claiming to cure HIV/AIDs - but a condition of the cure was to not be tested for the virus... Umm, yeah.] Yes... up to a point. Even amongst the faithful, the deathrate is 100%. In the long run, of course, and the long run may be the best we have. Still it sounds sane and positive, and even like it might improve people's lives. I wish you all the best with that.

In the case of physical healing, how are such healings certified? What tests do you have to ensure that the healing ascribed to your religious practices has not been caused by some physical factor (such as medication the sick person is under, or expected remissions, or the placebo effect)? Are sick people ever encouraged to abandon medication prescribed for the conditions they are seeking healing for, or to cease consulting medical practitioners? After physical healing has taken place, how are relapses regarded?

I believe opium is a pretty effective pain killer - "poppy tea" was used in the damp parts of England where my home is to treat crippling rhumatic pains and other troubles until the 1930s. The main side effects are constipation and the consequences of it being illegal. On the question of life, every time a good thing happens to me it reminds me that, if I'd killed myself when I wanted to, I'd never have enjoyed it. I don't know if that would help you, but it does help me! On the other hand, I'm not living with what you're living with. I don't really have any good advice, but you do have my very best wishes, thoughts and prayers.

Is the healing spiritual or also physical?

Well, that is kind of you Murph. Different people take a different amount of time to develop, and I was/am certainly a slow developer in many ways. The requirement of celibacy allowed me to go at my own pace and accept myself before I put anything into practice... which hasn't turned out so bad, so far! The worst wine of my youth!

I think in the older generation there were a lot of people who didn't know, or didn't want to confront, the issue of their sexuality. After all, if you were a believing RC attracted to your own sex there was no legitimate expression for it - there still isn't officially in the RCC, though the rest of society has relaxed rather. A life of celibacy (and an oath of celibacy) may have seemed like a solution to some. For me, growing up as a believing Catholic and discovering I was bisexual, celibacy seemed like rather a good idea - marriage was an utterly alien idea, and therefore I thought I should equally abstain from men and from women ... so I didn't need to deal with it and with the complications of being attracted to this or that individual. But I also knew enough to know I had no vocation (at least no vocation to the nunhood as I knew it).

Since I posted this I've been in touch with my youngest bro, Joe, who has been following the story with interest. He says he knew all about David Pearce, the monk who has been sentenced, and (like everyone I've ever talked to) didn't believe a word of the accusation against the other monk, who was acquitted. He also told me that a male teacher (not a priest or monk) at the school kissed him when he was ten - and then rang my father up half an hour later with a question about the crossword puzzle, presumably to check Joe hadn't spilled the beans. This teacher, it turns out, was found guilty in the late 1990s of assaulting a pupil and removed from the school - whereas Joe was 10 in 1972... that's an awful lot of time for molesting! Joe says he didn't tell anyone about the kiss, but that he did tell my mother a few years later when another monk (who later became abbot!) told him he could choose between having 6 strokes of the cane over the desk or one stroke over the monk's knee! It's quite alarming.

Haven't read this one yet but it sounds great - and seasonal. The science of santa, the facts on Father Christmas, the knacks of St Nick http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=how-santa-does-it-clones-wormholes-2009-12-18

I was brought up Roman Catholic in a parish attached to a Benedictine Abbey. The abbey runs a school for boys, with both monks and lay teachers. My father worked there from 1948 - 1974 teaching History, Classics and advising on careers, and all 3 of my brothers went there during and after my father's lifetime. The school premises are separate from the Abbey itself. In recent years a couple of the monks that I recall from my childhood have been accused of commiting child abuse (sometimes years previously) and suspended from their duties while an investigation went on. Last time I was back there, for a family christening, the monk who had baptised, confirmed and married my brother, and conducted my mother's funeral, was not able to christen my bro's son due to being suspended. (This monk has since been cleared and reinstated, I'm glad to say - and I hope justly so). Today I read that another monk - a former head of the junior school - has pleaded guilty and been jailed for 8 years. He's a monk I well recall, as my brothers and their friends disliked him thoroughly. Well, now I may possibly have some idea why! I find it incredible that even after he was suspended from duties and under criminal investigation by the police, he abused yet another boy - who he met at the Abbey, though he abused him elsewhere. Incredible he was still not supervised and incredible that he went on doing abusing knowing he was under suspicion. What was he thinking? Did he not care? Did he believe (even when under investigation) that he was immune? Was he addicted? Was he mad? I also feel in an odd way complicit. You see, this monk was himself a pupil at the abbey's school. He left intending to study dentistry, but in my father's notes on him as career advisor he wrote "priest?" After my father's death, my mother often cited this note as an example of my Dad's wonderful insight. How could they (we) have been so ignorant?

No. Sounds like they are going for the cheap laughs there... possibly want to get some scandal going too.

A lot of people get miserable at Christmas time because they have no family to spend it with, whether from death, distance or estrangement. A lot of people get miserable at Christmas because they have to spend it with their family. The birth of Christ was initially commemorated in spring. As a midwinter festival (whether Christian or otherwise) in northern climes Yule or Christmas was a festival of survival, of hunkering down against the bitter cold and rejoicing if you had a shelter and enough to eat, plus a prayer that your stored food would last you until the growing season started again. Our worries, in the developed world are different - but there are still people sleeping rough in our cities, people struggling with their demons in comfortable homes, people beating themselves up over the dinner table.

Terrific post Fawzo. This bit... ...reminded me of a memoir by one of the few attempted suicides off the Golden Gate who survived to tell the tale. On his way to the bridge he decided that if nobody made eye contact and smiled at him, he would jump. Nobody did. Just after he jumped he realised that everything in his life could be fixed - apart from one thing, the fact that he had jumped.

Every year the Royal Mail in the UK issues Christmas stamps (nice for collectors, and they make Christmas Card envelopes pretty). When they started doing it, there was a fuss about using religious imagery: the main reason was that people felt it would be blasphemous to put an image of Christ on a stamp, which would then have a frank stamped on top of it, be licked, possibly dropped, and eventually torn up and thrown away - ie that it would be disresepctful to put a sacred image on a mundane object. At the same time, some of the more extreme Protestant groups were (and still are) against using any form of religious imagery at all, in case it lead to idolatry. Anyway, the imagery used on Christmas stamps in Britain has always been secular and seasonal - snow scenes, Father Christmas, jolly sleigh rides, robins, holly and so on. In the last couple of years some militant Christian groups have been complaining that it's disrespectful, a sign of dreadful secularisation, etc, etc that the annual Christmas stamps issue does NOT use religious imagery... So you can't win - but one wonders why the protests have changed in such a way. It seems to me that the two earlier points of view both took the imagery seriously. I'm not sure the current militant Christian complaints do...

We have no debts, no credit cards and no mortgages - We're very, very lucky! (We also have not much money, and no jobs after June, but hey, it could be massively worse! And I do have the little freehold hovel in England...). My main concern is not to get a block put on my visa. If you break your contract here, or leave in bad odour, they can put the evil eye on you which blocks you from working here for 6 months - mainly to stop the different academic institutes from poaching staff from each other. As it happens, I was approached in November by a wouldbe poacher - someone in management at a neighbouring academic institution, asking me to apply for the jobs which were coming up in Jan 2010 - but I had to act like a lady and turn it down, much as I was tempted (same pay and benefits, but better conditions of work and prospects... and other desiderata). I'm hoping to leave here in good odour and with a decent set of references, and that t'other place will still have vacancies to start in August... Or something better. Inshallah

I've decided not to renew my contract when it falls due in June. So I'm job hunting again, targetting other institutes in the same region. The Beloved is also looking for work: his current post ends in January. So please, your prayers and good wishes for us both!

Have a happy holiday!

Absolutely: and well said! Thank you for taking the initiative with your letter.

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091210/NATIONAL/712099849

In 1962, Sheikh Zayed, who was governor of the town where I now live, granted land for a church to serve the Roman Catholic community there - which was then no more than 20 families from India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. [Later, when he became uniter of the country and first president, he built other churches - and in one case I know of, defended a church from encroachment. A civilised man.] Last night the enormous NEW church (still on the original compound), St Mary's, was consecrated at a mass conducted by the bishop of Arabia.

Yes, that is lovely. Nothing to change there.

That's nice - I might borrow that! I like the catch phrase of a radio character who was on before I was born - but my parents, and most people of their generation, used it so much I seem to have grown up with it. "It's being so cheerful wot keeps me goin'." This was a great hit during the war, and often used by the plucky Brits in the blitz...

I've now started on A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich. We're going to be in Crete for the Eid hols, and I don't know very much about the Eastern Church. JJ Norwich describes how the Eastern and Western Churches fell out... In 484 there was a synod in Constantinople where Pope Felix III (head of the western Church, and still nominally head of the whole shebang) got so enraged over the Monophysite debate that he decided to excommunicate the Patriarch of Constantinople (head of the Eastern Church). As they were in Constantinople at the time, nobody dared tell the Patriarch to his face. SO... the anathama was written on a bit of parchment and it was pinned on the back of the Patriarch's cope during a service at Santa Sophia. This has been making me laugh all morning. I've just patented a new game called Schism! or, Pin the Anathama on the Patriarch.

Of course it MAY have something to do with my recent career decision and my current manager's dress sense...

Torture Team by Phillippe Sands. Interesting and at many levels depressing, but with an ultimate hope of some justice being done.

I very seldom write anything like verse nowadays, but the other weekend I wrote two. One of them turned out as a blues... Sharpsuited devilman blues I met with a devil Who said he was a gentleman sharp suited devil blackberry mobile in his hand I said Devil what you doing here? Who let you on my land? He laughed and said, Until the lease falls due I walk by night I walk by day Just as I like to do Go check your papers, sister Aint nothing you can do. He cast a net Over the land and sea He cast a net Around my man and me He said fair shares, one third for you, one third for me. I said devil, you are no gentleman I said devil, I’m not gonna shake your hand Sharp suited devil Can’t drive me off my land.