Miracles; A Catholic View -Ralph McInerny

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- About the Author.

-  Author article; "The Eucharist and Culture" (Catholicity.com)

- Authors obituary: Ralph McInerny (1929-2010) by Thomas S. Hibbs
 

"What is a miracle? ....the one feature of the miracle that I have insisted upon is that it is a wonderful occurrence essentially linked to the truths of faith. The purpose of miracle is  to direct the mind to the good news of Jesus: in that it differs from all kinds of other marvels and wonders, real and natural, as well as from the performance of magicians."   (22)


    "there is a certain kind of mind that cannot bear the thought that the supernatural exists and that it can get mixed up in the ordinary things of daily life. Such a mentality has to ignore quite a number of things."   (81)



    "It is mainstream official Catholic doctrine that Mary is at the very center of the plan of salvation. Devotion to her, acknowledgment of her preeminence among all the saints, is not some Mediterranean aberration, nor the excess of the uninstructed; rather, it is the solid teaching of the magisterium of the Church. That Vatican II, animated as it was by ecumenical hopes, should have insisted upon the role of Mary, makes it clear that Mary is the means, not the obstacle, to Christian unity.
    The Second Extraordinary Synod, which John Paul II called at the end of 1985 to assess the twenty years since the close of Vatican II and to revitalize the doctrine and goals of the Council, was equally insistent on Mary as "Mother of the Church."    (88)


    "Pierre Kunstmann has recently published a collection of medieval French narratives of Marian miracles, Verge et  Merveille, Les miracles de Notre-Dame, narratifs du Moyen Age (Paris, 1981). This work includes thirteen accounts, beginning with that of a pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela to whom the devil appears in the form of St. James and induces him to kill himself. As the devils are carrying away his soul, they run into St. James who is indignant that he has been impersonated. The Blessed Mother is invoked and through her intercession the soul is allowed to return to the body and work out its salvation. The details of the story are earthier than I have indicated.
    There are some two thousand such stories in Latin; in old French there are nearly five hundred in verse and six hundred in prose; and they are found as well in Anglo-Norman, English,  German, and Norse. The best known Spanish collection is that of Gonzalo de Berceo, Milagros de Nustra Senpora, of which there is a good recent addition by Daniel Devoto, published in Madrid in 1985."