Newman's Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint Read Online Free PDF Page A

that Sullivan’s recovery after the operation was ‘unbelievable, 100 per cent, totally remarkable! … I have never seen a healing process occur so quickly and completely.’
Dr Banco put in writing the following statement to Sullivan: ‘Your recovery was extremely rapid and is clearly very much a rare exception rather than the rule for recovery after this type of surgery. I have been in practice for 15 years and have seen many cases similar to your case. I have treated probably over 1,500 patients with spinal stenosis. Your lack of pain preoperatively for that time period as well as your post operative recovery were truly miraculous, in my opinion.’ 12
What is one to make of this series of events? What is clear from the various accounts is that Jack Sullivan’s underlying physical condition was neither altered nor cured by his prayers. In fact, it seems likely that his ability to continue walking on being relieved of the pain in June 2000 did further damage to his spine. The inexplicable nature of his condition relates to the relief of his pain on both occasions, and his consequent confidence to walk in June, and again, after his operation in August of the following year. According to the rules of the Congregation for Causes of the Saints the ‘miracle’ should be long-lasting; but the first relief was only temporary; the pain and debilitation returned the following summer. The rules further stipulate that improvement should not be the result of intervention, such as an operation; yet it is clear that the long-term healing of Sullivan’s condition has been a result of his operation in 2001. The remarkable factor, therefore, relates to pain and swifter healing than was normal for
such a condition. As Dr Banco wrote: Sullivan’s recovery ‘was extremely rapid and is clearly very much a rare exception rather than the rule for recovery after this type of surgery’. This seems to leave the door open to natural explanation: rare exception is hardly an admission of inexplicability as to the laws of nature. Is it possible that Sullivan’s ‘miracle’ was purely a matter of relief of pain and therefore explicable by placebo effect? The conclusions of the scientific board of five lay medical experts in the Vatican was that Sullivan’s condition, on both occasions, would have made it impossible for him to walk normally, and that it was not simply a matter of relief of pain, but of an inexplicable underlying ‘mechanical’ physiology. In consequence the chair of the board, Professor Massimo Gandolfini, could state that the events were ‘not completely explicable in scientific terms’. 1 3 By any criterion the events are unusual. It might be argued, however, that the relief of pain was a placebo effect and that the underlying problem was cured by surgery. Even so, the relief of pain fits at least with New-man’s view of ‘an event which is possible in the way of nature …’ performed by
‘Divine Power without the sequence of natural cause and effect at all’.
     
Acknowledgements ‌
     
For hospitality I thank Fathers Paul Chavasse and Gregory Winterton, former Provosts of the Birmingham Oratory, Dr Mark Harris of Oriel College, Oxford, and Sir Ivor Roberts, President of Trinity College, Oxford. For conversation and advice I thank Father Robert Byrne (Provost of the Oxford Oratory), Father Philip Cleeveley (of the Birmingham Oratory), Dr Padraig Conway (of Newman House, Dublin) and Dr David McLoughlin (of Newman University College, Birmingham); also Dr Tim Jenkins, Dr Ian Ker, Dr Kate Kirkpatrick, Dr Michael McGhee, Dr Rod Mengham, Professor Véronique Mottier, Professor John Milbank, Ashley Peatfield, Professor Stephen Prickett, Dr Roderick Strange. My friend and fellow ‘Academician’ Patrick O’Connor, who died suddenly in February 2010, presented me with a rare early recording of Elgar’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’. I benefited from the services of the Cambridge University Library, the British Library,