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Catholic Answers Apologist Jimmy Akin has argued that the Church has declared the 73 books cannon, but that it has not closed the cannon, meaning that other books could still enter cannon if they picked up a following.
But also I think this is one area that no one really found too important to get 100% correct until the proliferation of Bibles with the printing press.
I personally think 1 Clement should’ve been kept. It’s doctrinally very cohesive with dogma, and orthodox theology. Most Catholics accept though that divine inspiration and miracles came to a close at the end of the Apostolic Age, which is why we don’t see them as much anymore, though you’ve still got Marian apparitions and everything else.
The apostles had a very specific charisim of miracles happening all the time, but there are plenty of miracles that have happened since then and are still happening today. St. Padre Pio's life is a more modern example of someone who had "apostolic" things happen all the time around him. There's the guy who's leg grew back, the Life of Christina the Astonishing, St. Joan of Arc, that one guy who could fly, etc. Does dying after consuming the Eucharist for the first time count as a miracle? I don't know.
It seems to me that there has been no end of miracles and miracle claims in the Catholic Church, though of course the sum total might be large but each individual person might not see one in their lifetime.
Actually if you are willing to wait in line and have upper middle class American level resources, you can see a miracle in person if it’s important enough for you. There are pilgrimages specifically to go look at miracles- most famously the tilma of Juan Diego, or the incorrupt saints. The blood of st januarius liquification is also open to the public. Unlike the Easter fire, many of these miracles have been examined scientifically and found not to have another explanation.
Yeah, I think a lot of atheists just don't really look into it, or assume religious people don't actually experience scientifically evaluated miracles in the modern age, because it would be really challenging to their worldview.
Scott Alexander did a review of Fatima recently where he almost started to get worried, but then decided that there are other less clear claims of similar "Sun-dancing" miracles, which makes the first, most widely-attested and most inexplicable natural somehow? Whatever he needs to do to stay sane I guess.
I am not an atheist, but my main problem with those "miracles" are that they are... weird. I mean let's say God, the Lord and Creator of the Universe, wants to communicate with people. How does He establish His creds? Look in the Bible - he appears in a huge column of fire with a booming voice. Clear enough? Want more proof? How about turning your whole river into blood? How about producing water from stone and food from nothing? Those are miracles that make sense. Here's God's power, here's something comprehensible to people - not in how but in what happened and why. Bible's miracles may be not believable to a skeptic as an empirical fact, but they usually make a lot of sense as a narrative, if you understand what I mean. They aren't just random weird unexplained things occurring, they make sense.
Now, producing two vials of blood that change aggregate state, who is supposed to have belonged to a random third century bishop and that now randomly changes its aggregate state at certain times (or maybe other times, or maybe not)? What's that supposed to mean? Why this bishop? Why blood? Why only two vials? Why liquefaction? I know Lord's ways are unfathomable and all that stuff, but we can't just say it every time something doesn't make sense. Catholicism is largely a rational religion, as far as I know, and avoids "shit happens, move along, it's not for you to understand" kind of things. And that's my main problem. Natural phenomena don't have to make any sense. They are just random - the nature has no goals, no intent, no message for us. We're not always supposed to understand them, they are not there for us to understand some message, at least most of them, they're just there.
But the Supernatural is not random. It's supposed to have His Intent behind it. And if you look in the Scripture, you find it all over it, everywhere. But these "miracles" just feel so random for any comprehensible intent... It just does not compute.
Also, Wikipedia (I know, I know, but allow me) has a curious paragraph about this:
I mean, if it's a genuine miracle, why not come out and say so? Why keep neutrality? Looks like the Church's position is much closer to mine: if you folks want to have your fun, go full steam ahead, no harm in that, but when it goes to claiming it's the Lord's hand in action, let's not be so hasty.
Yeah, I don't really get the blood thing and I'm not the one who brought it up. When it comes to Catholic miracles, there are a few different types:
Miracles of healing or protection, which are generally something we believe God bestows on many of His children regardless of their religious affiliation. Just done for the sake of benevolence, or because there was something else that person was supposed to do, to live their lives as a witness to others of God's goodness.
That said there are some particularly Catholic contexts for certain healings, like Lordes. Lordes is really the biggest healing miracle site in the world with the best before/after documentation by doctors.
Miracles related to states of spiritual ecstasy - levitation, visions, trances, etc. A component of very deep prayer that is good for its own sake, the visible signs of which likely are to spur on others to greater commitments to meditation and contemplation.
Stigmata - Wounds of Jesus signifying a closeness to Jesus, which is also joined to His suffering in a special way for the salvation of souls.
Bilocation/Apparitions - Saints on Earth and in Heaven appear in locations far removed from their physical body. Just seems nifty I guess, helpful to send a message you couldn't otherwise and receive a prayer request or provide counsel.
Often apparitions of Saints in Heaven are tied to a specific message ("increase devotion to X," "A great calamaty will befall if people don't pray," "I am going to clarify a contentious part of doctrine.") Then the apparition works a sign in the Heavens or on Earth to back up the message.
Incorruptibility - Saintly bodies don't decompose in the same conditions other bodies do. This points forward in joyful hope to the world to come. St. Januarius's blood might be something like this.
Eucharistic Miracles - Someone doubts the presence of Jesus, suddenly a visible change occurs that demonstrates the truth.
Miracles where the visible sign persists long after the initial reason for it disappears to history. St. Januarius's blood might be a sign of this.
Or it might not be a sign of anything. The Catholic Church uses miracles as a sign that it is ok to canonize saints. It doesn't actually like taking a strong position on any specific miracle lest someone's faith be built entirely on that miracle. People who convert to Catholicism on the force of having an experience at Medjugorje are weird and have difficulty becoming spiritually mature. Instead, the only miracle that the Church professes as necessary to defend as reason to believe is the Resurrection of Jesus.
I can kind of get the whole incorruptibility thing, it has a sensible narrative behind it - like, if you live in a particularly good way, your body improves too and does not become filthy after you die. That's a very understandable line of thought. But it never included any blood at all or weird aggregate state changes of it. And with the Resurrection too - that's the narrative that has internal reason which you can appreciate, whether you believe in its factual accuracy or not.
Yeah, that's I think where my problem is. If people go "oh, here's weird stuff happening and those guys are saying that's because of their religion, so I must join", that's a very spiritually weak conversion IMHO. I mean, business-wise you take whom you get, but that's what is called a low quality lead. It turns religious matters into some kind of magicians' contest. And it's not unnatural - that's exactly how the scene between Moses and the Paraoh went in the Bible - but Egyptians were pagans, so it looks like some kind of pretty primitive paganism. Not much removed from worshipping trees and thunder. It's very common I guess - given how widespread paganism has been over history - and could be a first stepping stone, but it's not something that one would really want to brag about if one talks about a modern religion.
I think we agree on a lot. I didn't become Catholic because of miracle claims, but as a Catholic I am able to accept miracle claims into my worldview. It doesn't hurt me if a miracle claim turns out to have been natural causes, a deception, or something in between - both of those explanations make sense in my world view. But I also am able to accept situations where it really does look like the laws of physics were violated somehow. And once I allow for that, there do seem to be a lot of credible miracles tied to Catholic saints or what is called "Vindicatory" miracles surrounding Catholic claims.
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