The 70th miracle: Lourdes healing officially declared supernatural

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Lourdes, France, Feb 12, 2018 / 02:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News)

A miracle was officially recognized at the Marian shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France, the 70th Lourdes miracle recognized by the Catholic Church.

The miracle was officially declared by Bishop Jacques Benoit-Gonin of Beauvais, France on Feb. 11, the World Day of the Sick and the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes. During Mass at the shrine’s basilica, Bishop Nicolas Brouwet of Lourdes announced the miracle.

The miraculous event involved a French nun, Sister Bernadette Moriau, who went on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in 2008. She had been suffering from spinal complications which had rendered her wheelchair-bound and fully disabled since 1980. She also said she had been taking morphine to control the pain.

When Sister Moriau visited the Lourdes Shrine almost a decade ago, she said she “never asked for a miracle,” according to the Associated Press.

However, after attending a blessing for the sick at the shrine, something began to change.

“I felt a [surge of] well-being throughout my body, a relaxation, warmth…I returned to my room and there, a voice told me to ‘take off your braces,’” recalled the now 79-year old nun.

“Surprise. I could move,” Moriau said, noting that she instantaneously walked away from her wheelchair, braces, and pain medications.

Moriau’s case was brought to the attention of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes, who extensively researched the nun’s recovery. They eventually found that Moriau’s healing could not be scientifically explained.

After a healing is recognized by the Lourdes committee, the paperwork is then sent to the diocese of origin, where the local bishop has the final say. After the bishop’s blessing, a healing can then be officially recognized by the Church as a miracle.

The shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in southern France is a popular pilgrimage destination for individuals with special devotions to Mary and for those seeking miraculous healings. It is the site where young Bernadette Soubirous witnessed Marian apparitions, beginning on Feb. 11, 1858. The shrine also holds a spring of water which is said to have miraculous healing properties.

While there have been more than 7,000 miraculous recoveries attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes at the French shrine, only 70 cases have been officially recognized by the Catholic Church. A miraculous recovery must generally be a complete, spontaneous, and immediate healing from a documented medical condition.

The last official miracle attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes was declared in 2013.

Organ donation euthanasia is gaining traction

h/t to Bioedge

You should be able to read both Kantian and Utilitarian ideas being articulated. Whilst you need to refer to Natural Moral Law and Situation Ethics in your exam this could be a useful read.

by Xavier Symons | 2 Feb 2019 |

The idea of organ donation euthanasia (ODE) is slowly garnering support in academic bioethics. In 2012, Oxford bioethicists Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu argued that chronic organ shortages provided good utilitarian justification for permitting ODE. More recently, Harvard bioethicist Robert Truog and two doctors from Western University argued in the New England Journal of Medicine that Canadian euthanasia legislation should be amended to allow for ODE.

Now a group of transplant surgeons have written an article defending ODE in one of the world’s leading transplantation journals, The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation.

The authors -- several doctors and ethicists from universities and hospitals in the Benelux region -- discuss both the ethics and legality of ODE. They focus in particular on Belgium and the Netherlands, where euthanasia has been legal for several years.

Currently ODE is not explicitly legal in either of these countries, though the authors suggest that there may be potential loopholes in the law.

While ODE may violate the dead donor rule, the authors argue that it is still compatible with respect for persons:

"...it is our belief that a physician should always inform a patient who is medically suitable about the possibility of organ donation, even if this could disrupt the trust relationship, as many patients may choose not to ask about donation because they assume it is not possible in this context”. 

They authors claim that organ donation euthanasia does not amount to an instrumentalisation of patients:

“[One] ethical objection to living donation and euthanasia is that people are instrumentalized to obtain organs; people could be pressured to undergo euthanasia in order to donate, whereas the public may believe euthanasia was only granted to make organ donation possible. The topic of organ donation is therefore only to be discussed after a positive decision on euthanasia has been made". 

The authors also suggest that the benefits of ODE -- in terms of lives saved -- may potentially outweigh any negative impacts that the procedure may have on public trust.

Bioethicist Wesley Smith said the article was a confirmation of his concerns about a ‘euthanasia slippery slope’. In a blog post, he warned against accepting ODE:

"May the public never be ready to accept doctors’ taking a living patient — who may not even be physically ill — into a surgical suite, anesthetizing him, and then harvesting his beating heart".