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Action Movies, Ascension, Assumption, Fatima, Joan of Arc, Jurassic Park, Lourdes, Luc Besson, Miracles, Relics, Resurrection, Science-Fiction, Special Effects, Spiderman, The Apostle Thomas
In science-fiction and “action” movies, one has to suspend disbelief. No one can hop hundreds of feet between multi-storied buildings, let alone loop over city streets like Spiderman, hobnob with dinosaurs in Jurassic Park or survive those devastating computer-generated explosions or spectacular crashes of planes and automobiles. To enjoy such movies we are ready to put our reason on hold and to suspend disbelief. To accept miracles we must likewise suspend disbelief. The difference is that we know movies’ special effects are illusions. People who believe in miracles think they really happened.
France’s favorite teenage saint firmly believed in the miraculous voices and visions she experienced. She incarnated credulity, like so many others in the 15th century and in the centuries before and after the brief saga that was her life. “Miracles” were commonplace and a vital element in Christian faith as well as the economy in medieval Europe : a brisk trade in Saints’ relics brought pilgrims flocking to cities’ cathedrals (bringing business to their market-places), hoping for the miraculous cures so many other believers had supposedly experienced.
Joan of Arc was special, as was the message of the voices she heard. The illiterate peasant girl led the Dauphin’s army to victory over the English and assured his coronation as King of France. In Luc Besson’s 1999 movie she is portrayed as a bipolar mystic caught up in a whirlwind drama that would end with her being burned at the stake and, five hundred years later, though it was the Church which had condemned her to death, with her canonization. Whatever about the historical liberties Besson took in telling her story, the tragic figure of Joan comes across as a mentally deranged charismatic whose faith and conviction captivated the oppressed French and inspired them to resistance and to victory. She has become the symbol of French nationalism.
Throughout the diabolically engineered fiasco of her “trial” by Bishops, nobody questioned the possibility of her miraculously hearing voices from God. None of her accusers doubted that such voices were possible; they questioned only the fact of her having really heard them. Today Catholics do not doubt that miracles happen. Confronted with the claim of a divine intervention, Church authorities systematically examine the “facts” and are wary of both fraud and illusion. But they are quite prepared to suspend their disbelief and decree that at Lourdes a pilgrim has been miraculously cured of cancer or that at Fatima the Sun stood still (or course it did; it always does), or that after His Resurrection from the dead (!), Jesus ascended physically into Heaven, to be followed later by His Mother who, lacking His power, needed to be hoisted into Heaven in what is called her Assumption. People know that things like that simply cannot happen. But many are quite prepared to suspend their disbelief.
The Gospels tell us that Thomas, the sceptical Apostle, dared to doubt. Jesus famously “proved” to him that He had truly risen from the dead. If you are prepared to accept that story and that “proof”, you have suspended your rational disbelief.
RIDENDA RELIGIO
Blind Faith: Blind Folly 
I recall listening to a radio program several decades ago which dealt with the medical condition of famous figures in history. Of necessity it was largely speculative but interesting nonetheless. Henry VIII and Van Gogh were amongst those mentioned. It was a serious program put together by a medical team and presented by Dr Norman Swan whose credits are numerous and deserved. Joan of Arc was also featured. It was speculated that Joan may indeed have been biologically male – a teenage lad with a condition known as testicular feminization. The hormonal imbalance involved in this condition renders the flesh of the body less susceptible to burning – which could have accounted for the observed phenomenon during Joan’s execution by burning at the stake.
Some would have regarded this phenomenon at the time as evidence of Joan’s saintliness – tantamount to a miracle.
As with all claims of miracles, as Frank has said , it requires the wilful suspension of the critical faculty of disbelief for the fantastic ciaims of the credulous to be accepted. Amongst the more outrageous claims of miracles by the millions is the belief of Catholics that the consecration mantra during the Mass results in the wafer of bread changing into the flesh of Jesus Christ. Fatima et al are small beer by comparison with this. Yet it happens, so it is believed by millions, every day in every Catholic church throughout the world before millions of congregants. And nobody bats an eyelid.
Now that really requires the suspension of disbelief.
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Spot-on, Thom. Many of your readers will however be left wondering about the “phenomenon” you mention. You will no doubt enlighten your fans.
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Frank is no doubt referring to my mention of testicular feminization and not the more extraordinary phenomenon of millions of credulous Catholics believing that they are eating the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Testicular feminization is now known as androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) and is an X-linked recessive condition resulting in a failure of normal masculinisation of the external genitalia in chromosomally male individuals.
A Google search will tell you more. I recall that it was suggested on the radio program that I referred to in my earlier comment that the failure of Joan’s heart and lungs to burn properly could have been caused by this condition. Other aspects of Joan’s personality were also speculatively attributed to the condition.
One does not need to suspend disbelief to accept the possibility that the Saint could indeed have been a boy.
But the sequence of ongoing “miracles” involved in the transubstantiation, ingestion, digestion and elimination of the bread and wine, that is believed to be no longer bread and wine, beggars belief and indeed requires much more that the suspension of disbelief.
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There you have it, folks ! It was news to me too. Our thanks to irreplaceable Thom.
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