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Online sermons
Topic Started: Thursday, 28. September 2006, 10:11 (1,253 Views)
Eve
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Each Friday the Order of Preachers otherwise known as The Dominicans kindly send the forum their Online sermon based on the following Sunday's Mass readings.

We are placing them on the forum in the hope of stimulating discussion.

If you wish to copy the sermons elsewhere please email the Fathers for permission, as they are copywrite.
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Eve
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Sermon for the Twenty Sixth Sunday of the Year
 


Seeds of Faith
Jonathan Fleetwood O.P.


1 October 2006
Twenty-Sixth Sunday of the Year B

fr Jonathan Fleetwood preaches on the Church as sacrament of the Kingdom.


Today's first reading from the Book of Numbers echoes in pattern the first section of the Gospel. Moses, in the first reading, has appointed seventy elders to help him in his mission. The Spirit comes down upon the seventy, but also upon two others not in the group. The seventy complain and want the two stopped, but they are rebuked by Moses. Moses recognises the two outsiders as a sign of the potentiality of the whole 'people of the Lord'.

Similarly in the Gospel, Jesus has appointed twelve apostles to work in his mission. The apostles come upon someone else doing a work which is part of their own mission from Jesus and try to stop him. They want confirmation from Jesus in this, but he rebukes them and says that if the work is done in his name then it is not at odds with his mission.

The mission of both Moses and Jesus presupposes that God is already at work with his Spirit in the world. The group of seventy or twelve (symbolic numbers) are sign and witness to this. They refer to God's activity in the world. They do not encapsulate it.

This pattern of the two examples, Old Testament and New Testament, is the same pattern that we see in the relationship of the Church to the World. As Vatican II says, the Church is sign, sacrament and instrument of intimate union with God and of the unity of mankind. Both the seventy and the twelve stood as signs of this same relationship to the world of their time.

We recognise this pattern when adults come to be received into union with the Church. They are not empty vessels waiting to be filled. They already have the seeds of faith working in them. God is working in them. Jesus himself often turns to 'outsiders', those who recognise him. He recognises the faith at work in them: 'Your faith has saved you'. This is mutual recognition, Jesus of the person and the person of Jesus. The words 'your faith has saved you', are said to the Centurion , the Canaanite woman, the Syrophoenician woman, aliens to the Jewish faith, and also to the marginalised, the blind man, the one of ten lepers, the woman sinner, and so on.

Both Old and New Testament attest that a single God is working at all times and everywhere in the whole of creation and in the whole of the history of the world. All mankind is enveloped in this. God's life and Spirit is given to men. This gives rise to the ancient view that in all times and places the 'seeds of the Word' are to be found. This theme has been especially developed since Vatican II.

The world and history are filled with seeds of the Word. The 'inchoate reality of the kingdom' is outside the Church among peoples everywhere, amongst those who are open to the Spirit who breathes when and where he wills. The function of the Church is to raise up and perfect and bring into the Church-sign the reality of unity of whatever is found sown in the minds and hearts of men.

All evangelisation depends upon this model. The Word which is sown in the minds and hearts of man may be found both in individuals and in the rites and customs of different peoples. It is brought by the Spirit into unity of faith in Baptism.It does not stop there. Those drawn into the fold of the seventy elders or twelve apostles still need constant drawing into the continuous daily sign of unity. All evangelise and all are evangelised.

Evangelisation takes place in many places. Paul VI saw it taking place within the family: 'All members evangelise and are evangelised. The parents not only communicate the Gospel to their children, but from their children they can themselves receive the same Gospel as deeply lived by them'. At the offertory of children's Masses the community often receive insights from the children's coloured drawings. The Church in preaching the Gospel message of Jesus recognises the seeds of faith and the seeds of the Word which the living Creator God has sown in man. She is the sign of that, the Church in the World.


Jonathan Fleetwood is chaplain to the Dominican Sisters at Stone in Staffordshire, and has been both Prior Provincial and Provincial Bursar of the English Dominicans.

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Eve
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Sermon for the Twenty Sixth Sunday of the Year
 


Today's first reading from the Book of Numbers echoes in pattern the first section of the Gospel. Moses, in the first reading, has appointed seventy elders to help him in his mission. The Spirit comes down upon the seventy, but also upon two others not in the group. The seventy complain and want the two stopped, but they are rebuked by Moses. Moses recognises the two outsiders as a sign of the potentiality of the whole 'people of the Lord'.



"The seventy" could include you and me, and the two could be Eastern Europeans, appointed to "breathe new life".
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Eve
Sep 28 2006, 10:35 AM
Sermon for the Twenty Sixth Sunday of the Year
 


Today's first reading from the Book of Numbers echoes in pattern the first section of the Gospel. Moses, in the first reading, has appointed seventy elders to help him in his mission. The Spirit comes down upon the seventy, but also upon two others not in the group. The seventy complain and want the two stopped, but they are rebuked by Moses. Moses recognises the two outsiders as a sign of the potentiality of the whole 'people of the Lord'.



"The seventy" could include you and me, and the two could be Eastern Europeans, appointed to "breathe new life".

The "seventy" could be any well established group in any community, Catholic or otherwise, who have "always done a lot for The Constituency, The Party, the Village Hall, the Sports Club or The Parish". The "two" could be the couple who have just moved house, have lots to offer and "the seventy" are not prepared to even get to know them (other than handing them a subscription form, or Planned Giving card).

Active parishioners, please note. Our new Polish friends, and the new couple from Birmingham, London, Little Upper Trumpinton, wherever, must be welcomed and included.

That is MY sermon. :bl:
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Rose of York
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A member asked in General Chatter, what happened to the thread with the Dominican Sermons.

This is it.
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Father Terry Tastard
in Independent Catholic News


Fr Terry writes:


Sometimes there is a violence in the words of Jesus that can take us aback. The gospel today (Mark 9.38-48) contains some of those words of violence. Jesus speaks of cutting off hands and feet, and tearing out of eyes. Strong stuff. It is difficult to read it without being disturbed, which is surely the point of it.

However, in these days of religiously-inspired violence, we have to be careful. We need to note that the violence is inward, not outward. It refers to our attitude to ourselves, not our attitude to others. Jesus is reminding us, as he so often does, of the necessity of choice. Our culture today likes to believe that we 'can have it all'. The strong words of Jesus remind us that there can be no true spiritual life without commitment. Commitment means making choices. We commit ourselves to families, to careers, to vocations. And running through these things, is our commitment to the Christian faith, the sense we have of God as our loving creator, who calls us into life, nourishes us through prayer and the sacraments, builds us up into a community and sends us out into the world. Our faith means that sometimes we have to make hard choices. When we get it wrong, the mercy of God is there, and his forgiveness. But none the less, to be a person of faith is to have to make choices. You cannot have it all. As Jesus says, what does it profit a person to win the whole world, only to lose their soul? (Mk 8.36)

The very strength of Jesus' words emphasises what he is saying. Yet we may still wonder uneasily about the language. Self-harm is never a good thing, and the images used by Jesus do refer, metaphorically, to self-inflicted wounds. Well, perhaps the strength of his language should alert us to how strongly he feels about the importance of choosing. Perhaps, though, we also need to bear in mind the gentleness of his opening words. Here Jesus says that 'Anyone who is not against us is for us', This tells us that there are many people who do the work of God, without realising it. Just as we, in our own lives, may do the right and good thing in God's eyes, sometimes unaware that what we do is in keeping with the will of God. God, who is generous, works with us, works even with our faults and frailties. Indeed, the whole meaning of the incarnation, of God among us, is that God is a generous God.

Fr Terry Tastard is parish priest of Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, Brook Green, London W6.

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Eve
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Readings:
Genesis 2:18-24
Hebrews 2:9-11
Mark 10:2-16

The Spirit of the Law

David M. McLean O.P.

8 October 2006
Twenty-Seventh Sunday of the Year B

fr David McLean preaches on the purpose of the Law of Moses.

Most people are turned off by legalism. Laws, rules, and regulations can bog us down. They can curtail our freedom. There are times when we want to do something, and can't see any wrong in doing it, but we are told that it is against a regulation, a rule, or a law. It is attractive to think that we can do away with a lot of laws and legalism.

If we use our imagination, however, it is difficult to see how a society or organisation could work without any rules. People would drive along whatever side of the motorway took their fancy. There would be no such thing as property, and so there would be no such thing as theft -- you could simply take what you liked. You may have a personal moral code to live by, but you would have no recourse against someone who lived by a different code.

A balance has to be found. We need some rules in order to build some kind of society. The right amount of law should make our life free and easier. A good balance of law should free us to exercise our rights, and to fulfil our obligations. A good system of law should enable us to live the good life.

Too much law, however, is stifling. We are then often not allowed our rights, and we can even be stopped from fulfilling our obligations. The spirit of the law should encourage us to claim our rights and fulfil our duties, but too many rules, or the wrong rules, can have the opposite effect.

Remembering the spirit behind a law system should discourage its misapplication or its over-application. A good legal system is one that can realise when a particular law or particular case contradicts the spirit behind the law, and repeals the law or throws out the particular case.

Jesus didn't always get on very well with the Pharisees. The Pharisees were great legalists. They not only obeyed every law handed down by Moses and the Torah; they also added lots of new ones. They laid down what you had to do in your religious life and your ordinary day to day life in great detail. Some may say that the Pharisees enforced the law at the expense of the spirit of the law.

In today's Gospel reading, the Pharisees say divorce is acceptable, because Moses allowed it. According to the Pharisees, because Moses said you can draw up a writ of dismissal and so divorce someone, divorce must be acceptable.

The Pharisees give no analysis as to why Moses said divorce by writ was permissible. The Pharisees base their view on a dry legal interpretation of Moses's statement. They do not consider the spirit behind what Moses said.

Moses was actually making divorce more difficult, by requiring a writ, than it was before when only a verbal statement was required. Before Moses, you could divorce by simply saying 'I divorce you' three times.

A great concern of the Torah was to protect the vulnerable: the widow, the orphan, and the traveller. The prophets criticised those who claimed to follow the letter of the Law, but in the end actually managed to avoid looking after the vulnerable, the very people much of the Torah is about protecting.

Moses wanted to make divorce more difficult to avoid leaving individuals without a means of support. The most likely victims were women who would have more difficulty making a living as single people. The spirit behind what Moses said was a concern to protect the vulnerable. The spirit behind Moses's permission is that divorce is a bad thing, that it would be better not to divorce at all.

Jesus reminds his audience that it is the spirit of the law that matters. Law should be about protecting the vulnerable and not making their situation worse. Laws, rules, and regulations should be about freeing us to be good people and not curtailing us. If laws enable us and encourage to be good people, then they fulfil God's law.


fr. David M. McLean O.P. is a chaplain to the Royal Navy.http://torch.op.org/picture/168.jpghttp://torch.op.org/preaching/sermon/1122


© Text 2006 David M. McLean O.P.
© Web Presentation 2006 The English Province of the Order of Preachers
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This week's sermon
 
Jesus reminds his audience that it is the spirit of the law that matters. Law should be about protecting the vulnerable and not making their situation worse. Laws, rules, and regulations should be about freeing us to be good people and not curtailing us. If laws enable us and encourage to be good people, then they fulfil God's law.


I invite members to read this week's sermon and debate whether "laws, rules and regulations" concerning the celebration of The Mass free us to be good people, or curtail us.

Come on you lot, we keep giving you two sermons a week. Lets all have an good argument. ;)
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People say: "Great minds think alike!". Believe it or not, I was thinking along the same lines. There are critics who complain about the Celebrant saying "Sisters and Brothers" (or vv) instead of "Bretheren", also: "Christ died for all" not "Christ died for many" and so on. I have yet to see or hear comments on "Armen or "Amen" though I am sure some will have strong feelings. Somehow Armen seemed to come in when The New Rite was introduced although I have heard Amen used. In some languages it is prounced Armeen (Remember President Amin of Uganda? His name was the local version of Amen).

I attend Holy Mass because it is The Holy Sacrifice and The Last Supper not to audit pedantically every movement and word of the Celebration. Providing there is nothing really outrageous I prefer the spirit of the rules and regulations. Too much concentration on rules and regulations would I think distract from the True Spirit of Worship which should prevail.
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Father Terry Tastard
 
ICN WEEKEND UPDATE 7-8 October 2006

Sunday Reflection 8  October 2006


Fr Terry writes:


If somebody asked you how Catholic teaching differs from that of Protestants, what would you say? I suppose that many of us might say something about authority, and the essential role of the Pope in the life of the Church. And of course this is right. But this overlooks another aspect of Catholic belief, one where we differed from Protestants in the past and to some extent still do. I refer to our different teachings about Creation.

Catholics believe that we can learn something about God by looking at his works. Creation 'nature' 'the world around us' call it what you like. The Catholic Church believes that the world tells us something about God.

In this we are completely faithful to the spirit of the Bible, as we see from this Sunday's readings at Mass. Here we discover that the male-female relationship tells us something about human nature, and something about God. In Genesis (2.18-20) we learn that gender is not something that emerged accidentally from nature, but something planned by God and blessed by God. The first man wakes as from a sleep and finds in woman his companion and fulfilment. More than that, he finds that through their union each comes to see through the eyes of the other, feel through the feelings of the other. Hence those lovely words with which the man greets the woman, 'Bone from my bones, flesh from my flesh', This is really a meditation on marriage. Two have become one, and human nature deepened and enriched. We learn that God made us to be in relationship, and this points, surely, to God as a personal God, not an impersonal force. God who made us people to reach out to one another, is also a God who reaches out to us.

In the gospel Jesus picks up the Genesis reference and (in what is sometimes called a hard saying) speaks of marriage as indissoluble. We ought, though, to notice that he also speaks of the two becoming one. Some marriages do not succeed in moving into a deeper unity, where the two become one. Where this does not and perhaps cannot take place, perhaps the conditions for a true marriage were not present. We ought to place the hard saying of Jesus in this context. Only in marriage can two become one, and where it does, there is a little miracle of healing in our world.

Overall, however, today's readings leave us once again with the understanding that God made us as we are. To be human is to be designed to live and flourish in relationship. This is supremely true in marriage, but is found also in friendship, companionship and sociability. God does not want us to be isolated atoms, but people who learn through one another, grow through one another, and find fulfilment through one another.

Fr Terry Tastard is parish priest of Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, Brook Green, London W6.

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Eve
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This coming Sunday's sermon is from a newly ordained priest. It would be nice to have some discussion. Let us see how our young new priest fares.
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The Gift of Wisdom

Dominic White O.P.

15 October 2006
Twenty-Eighth Sunday of the Year (cool.gif

fr Dominic White encourages us to find time and space in our lives for the Wisdom of God.

We all need to know wise people. Someone to turn to for advice at an important or difficult time in our lives. Someone who will soothe our worries, and will speak their mind, but in gentleness. Folk tales are full of Wise Men and Fairy Godmothers, and they remain favourite characters, and modern stories too: Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, or Dumbledore in Harry Potter. Many cultures still have their Elders, or the Wise Woman who knows the healing herbs.

The Bible has its own Wisdom tradition, including the Book of Wisdom, from which today's first reading is taken. It's not known to all Christians: the first protestant reformers took it out because it was a late work in Greek and not part of the Hebrew Bible, but today many Christians are rediscovering Wisdom.

One theme the book particularly takes up is knowing God through contemplating the natural world around us: 'For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator' (Wisdom 13:5).

We can only see this, though, if we sit still. As the poet T.S. Eliot wrote,

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Wise people are still and calm when everyone else is rushing around in a flap. Because wisdom is not something we just get for ourselves: it is a gift. 'The spirit of Wisdom came to me.'

If you watched the TV series The Monastery or The Convent, you will have noticed how the busy people who shared the monks' and nuns' lives for forty days gained wisdom through this time of quiet and inactivity. Some who had been atheists came to believe in God.

The word of God's wisdom is not always comfortable, though: 'it cuts like any double-edged sword but more finely � it can judge the secret emotions and thoughts of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12). Sometimes God's wisdom brings us uncomfortable realisations about ourselves. We may find that all our activity and buying and selling were ways of avoiding things.

Jesus's wise advice, 'Go, sell everything you own and give the money to the poor', was not popular with the young man who heard it. The often tragic personal lives of wealthy celebrities shows that riches alone do not bring wisdom or happiness. That is not to say it is wrong to own nice things, provided we are willing to share them, nor is it wrong to be busy if it's good work. Only that because it is so easy to loose a sense of where we're going in our activity-focused and retail-driven culture, we should take a quiet moment every day to sit still with God.

And when we start to let go -- 'not without persecution', indeed, because we will have to go against the tide sometimes -- we will be repaid 'a hundred times over � in this present time' as well as in eternal life. We will be wise people, with Our Lord Jesus, who is the Wisdom of God.


fr. Dominic White has just been ordained to the priesthood, and is working in St. Dominic's Parish, London, where he was formerly the organist. He preaches the Gospel through writing music and promoting the arts as well as in word.
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Fr Terry Tastard
 
29 October 2006

Father Terry writes:

Most parishes have a few parishioners who are blind or deaf to some degree. I sometimes wonder how they feel about biblical references to such handicaps. Blindness is often used in scripture as an image for those who refuse to believe. Similarly, those who will not listen to the message of God are said to be deaf.

Campaigners for the disabled have made us rightly aware of how our attitudes towards the disabled can be unjust. So today we may feel uncomfortable about the way scripture uses disability. And yet, we need to move beyond notions of political correctness to grasp the deeper meaning of scripture. If we do then we will find that it challenges the able-bodied.

Often, in the Bible, we learn that it is people who are inwardly closed off who cannot see God's will or hear God's message. These people can 'see' and 'hear' in the normal way, but are impervious to God. By contrast, the disabled, despite their difficulties, often prove to be the most open to Christ. It is the blind beggar Bartimaeus who becomes a follower of Jesus (Mark 10.46-52). He might have been blind, but it was only he who recognised Jesus as the Messiah, calling on him as Son of David (a messianic title).

Disability is treated in different ways in scripture: sometimes it is even seen as a punishment for the person concerned. By the time of Jesus this was beginning to change, and in the gospel today we see that the disabled, too, can hear and respond to God's message to us in Christ. In fact, part of the message of the story of blind Bartimaeus is that the disabled, despite their disabilities, often prove to be the more open to Christ than others.

The 'able-bodied' by contrast are often closed to God. What is it that makes them reluctant to be open to God? Pride, perhaps. A belief that we do not need others, ie a dangerous self-sufficiency. Hardness of heart. Coldness. Aloofness. Those who are disabled know their need of God and of others, and often have a great openness. Ironically, it is often those who believe that they have no handicap who turn out to be the most disabled of all.

Father Terry Tastard is Parish Priest (Pastor) of Holy Trinity, Brook Green, London W6
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Believing is Seeing
Duncan Campbell O.P.

29 October 2006
Thirtieth Sunday of the Year (B)

fr Duncan Campbell wonders whether we can only be cured of our spiritual blindness by following Jesus, like Bartimaeus, on the Way.

The Gospel is about a beggar who was blind being instantly healed. It was enough to lift him out of such total destitution as we can hardly imagine today. We can be thankful that we live in such a different world. Society's natural response today is to provide medical care for the sick and invalids, and support for the destitute. Stories of healing like this may have introduced such concern. It is simply wonderful that there is the goodwill to do it all, and the power to do it. The Gospel story, as always, is well worth examining in detail:

The poor man hears a crowd passing by. He is told they were following the Rabbi Jesus. The man is named -- a sign that this is all quite real. Was he known to the writer, and his readers, at the time? Had he become a member of the 'company' around Christ? The whole happening seems well remembered. It was there; it could be checked.

The man's desperation made him bold, unreasonable, demanding, imaginative. He shouts aloud, so rudely that people try to hush him. He is also saying something -- 'Son of David!' It is suggested that this might have been dangerous. It was almost like saying, 'Your Majesty!' Jesus was to die at the hands of the Romans for even allowing thinking and talking like this. 'King of the Jews' was hung accusingly and contemptuously as his title when he was executed.

But Jesus stops and has the man brought to him. The man's need was so great and his trust so appealing that the risk had to be taken. The conversation was strange; it followed almost a ceremonious pattern. He is asked what he wants, as if the thing he needed wasn't obvious. He makes the brave, preposterous request -- to be able to see again. This is instantly granted. He is then told that his own 'faith' had cured -- more than cured, had 'saved' him. Because more seemed to be expected of this man; and 'he followed him on the way'.

Jesus's people called themselves 'followers of the Way' from the very start -- perhaps a better name than 'the Christians' that others called them; more meaningful and not so divisive. Following this 'way' isn't so simple today, if it ever was. Many now, it seems, just don't. There are memories and survivals of a once widespread following; of old 'ages of faith'. We inherit services -- christenings, weddings and funerals; but many don't inhabit them, or follow them, or see them, really. Day to day life seems to be seen by many in quite a different light.

For instance, it can seem as if we today ('of little faith'?) aren't able to cure anyone now. Miracles of healing are expected at Lourdes; but carefully monitored, and very infrequent. Someone said the miracle at Lourdes is just -- Lourdes; where the sick are 'guests of honour'. St Bernadette, in her own later pain and disability, mysteriously said of the healing water there -- which she herself had opened up for the world -- 'That spring is not for me.' Can we see this? That dramatic cures aren't the way now? They aren't needed? In the way?

Pope John Paul II said: 'Human suffering evokes compassion. It also evokes respect' and 'It can be said that each person, in a special fashion, becomes the way for the Church, when suffering enters their life.'

Is this the way? For all of us? To see another, better way? To see as something momentous, mysterious, that all the wrongs in the world are to-be-put-right? Not be blind to such insight?

Are we honoured if we are involved, ourselves, in sorrow -- as an important way to follow?

It was far, far more important that the man in the story followed Jesus than that he just saw other people and things. Following Jesus' way, he saw far more.

We must think of these things all our lives. We should want to, try to -- and find we too have to ask to -- see them. That is what all our lives are for.



fr. Duncan Campbell is a member of Holy Cross Priory, Leicester. He is the director of St Martin's Mission Centre, working to raise funds for the training of Dominican priests in the Caribbean.
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To get the ball rolling:

Quote:
 
That dramatic cures aren't the way now? They aren't needed? In the way?


That snippet could prove controversial.

Quote:
 
Pope John Paul II said: 'Human suffering evokes compassion. It also evokes respect' and 'It can be said that each person, in a special fashion, becomes the way for the Church, when suffering enters their life.'


My experience of life indicates that people who have suffered are the ones most likely to have learnt compassion and empathy. Examples are, the person who has ever wondered where next week's rent money is coming is likely to understand why, in a welfare state, another may have become homeless. The one who has known severe illness is the least likely to say to another "You are not the only person who is ill. We all have to get on with life."

When it comes to exagerated claims of miraculous healings, I feel they cheapen suffering and, worse, they cheapen the power of God. Lourdes miracles are authenticated by independent qualified doctors, and there are strict criteria. There are an awful lot of unregulted churches that claim healings without medical evidence.

That unemployed blind man had the nerve to shout, push through a crowd and disrupt the proceedings. Would he be labelled a disabled rights activist?


;)
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