SAINT-MEDARD - the white crow of miracle claims?
 
From 1727 to 1732 there were reports of miracles happening in the graveyard of Saint-Medard in Paris. These reports were recorded and checked by doctors and seem very convincing.
 
Deacon Francois de Paris was buried there in 1727. He believed that God did healings through him to defend his Jansenist faith.  Jansenism was a Catholic heresy that was similar to Calvinism and it said nobody was good enough to receive communion except occasionally. The miracles of the graveyard were thought to be down to him.
 
David Hume and the Catholic Church through a Benedictine monk investigated the cures and were baffled (page 18, Cults and Fanatics). Hume, the great opponent of all miracles, said it was the best miracle case ever as regards verification and the huge number of cures that took place but he was still able to find reasons to put it down to fraud (page 65, Miracles in Dispute). Many of the cures required stripping and being beaten and bizarre and unnatural forms of twisting and bending and stretching. Some women reportedly bent back so far that their necks touched their heels. A magistrate went to jail and suffered for revealing this and he never retracted it. The miracles had some eating excrement and sucking septic sores. These revolting miracles did nobody any harm that can be provably traced back to these acts. They are not really any worse than Jesus miraculously arranging to be crucified or giving people the hideous stigmata. The Roman Catholic Church boasts that no miracles take place outside the Catholic Church in such a way that they imply that another religion is true. They say that a Protestant could receive a miracle that shows him that Jesus really is God. But that verifies a Catholic doctrine and not the Catholic Church. But why not say then that when Mary appeared at Lourdes she was not verifying the Catholic Church but only the rightness of praying to Mary and seeing her as sinless? But then one would need to investigate every miracle claim in the world to make a statement like that. You could ask the Catholic leaders who have authenticated a miracle to prove that Joseph Smith never supernaturally translated the Book of Mormon. They cannot help you, showing that they do not treat miracles as evidence but as excuses for faith and baits for the unwary. Heaven knows what they are up to behind closed doors.
 
BOOKS CONSULTED
 
Ballinspittle, Moving Statues and Faith, Tim Ryan and Jurek Kirakowski, Mercier Press, Dublin, 1985
Beauraing and Other Apparitions, Fr Herbert Thurston, Burns, Oates & Washbourne, London, 1934
Believing in God, PJ McGrath, Millington Books in Association with Wolfhound, Dublin, 1995
Bernadette of Lourdes, Rev CC Martindale, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1970
Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1985
Catholic Prophecy, The Coming Chastisement Yves Dupont, TAN, Illinois, 1973
Comparative Miracles, Fr Robert D Smith, B. Herder Book Co, St Louis, Mo, 1965
Counterfeit Miracles, BB Warfield, The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1995
Cults and Fanatics, Colin & Damon Wilson, Siena, London, 1996
Divine Mercy in My Soul, Sr M Faustina Kowalska, Marian Press, Massachusetts, 1987
Eleven Lourdes Miracles, Dr D J West, Duckworth, London, 1957
Evidence of Satan in the Modern World, Leon Cristiani, TAN, Illinois, 1974
From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls, Walter Vandereycken and Ron van Deth, Athlone Press, London, 1996
Fatima in Lucia’s own Words, Sr Lucia, Postulation Centre, Fatima, 1976
Fatima Revealed…And Discarded, Brother Michael of the Holy Trinity, Augustine, Devon, 1988
From the Visions of the Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, Topic Newspapers, Mullingar, undated
Garabandal, a Message for the World, Ave Maria Publications, Middleton, Co Armagh
Introduction to the Devout Life, St Francis de Sales, Burns Oates and Washbourne Limited, London, 1952
Looking for a Miracle, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books, New York, 1993
Miracles in Dispute, Ernst and Marie-Luise Keller, SCM, London, 1969
Miracles, Ronald A Knox, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1937
Mother of Nations, Joan Ashton, Veritas, Dublin, 1988
New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
Objections to Roman Catholicism, Edited by Michael de la Bedoyere, Constable, London, 1964
Our Lady of Beauraing, Rev J.A. Shields, M.A., D.C.L., M.H. Gill and Son, Ltd., Dublin, 1958
Padre Pio, Patrick O Donovan, Catholic Truth Society, London
Please Come Back to Me and My Son R Vincnet, Ireland’s Eye, Mullingar, 1992
Powers of Darkness, Powers of Light, John Cornwell, London, 1992
Rosa Mystica, Franz Speckbacher, Divine Mercy Publications, Dublin, 1986
San Damiano, S di Maria, The Marian Centre, Hungerford, 1983
Spiritual Healing, Martin Daulby and Caroline Mathison, Geddes & Grosset, New Lanark, Scotland, 1998
St Catherine Laboure of the Miraculous Medal, Fr Joseph I Dirvin C.M., Tan, Illinois, 1984
The Apparition at Knock, A Survey of Facts and Evidence, Fr Michael Walsh, St Jarlath’s College, Tuam, Co Galway, 1959
The Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary Today, Rene Laurentin, Veritas, Dublin 1990
The Appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Grotto of Lourdes, JB Estrade, Art & Book Company Ltd, Westminster, 1912
The Autobiography of St Margaret Mary, TAN, Illinois, 1986
The Book of Miracles, Stuart Gordon, Headline, London, 1996
The Cult of the Virgin Mary, Michael P Carroll, Princeton University Press, 1986
The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary, Kevin McClure Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, 1985
The Exaltation of the Virgin Mary, by Rev S.G. Poyntz, M.A., B.D., Association for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Dublin, 1955
The Holy Shroud and Four Visions, Rev Patrick O Connell and Rev Charles Carty, TAN, Illinois, 1974
The Holy Shroud and the Visions of Maria Valtorta, Msgr Vincenzo Celli, Kolbe Publications Inc., Sheerbrooke, California, 1994
The Incorruptibles, Joan Carroll Cruz, Tan, Illinois, 1977
The Jesus Relics, From the Holy Grail to the Turin Shroud, Joe Nickell, The History Press, Gloucestershire, 2008
The Medjugorje Deception, E Michael Jones, Fidelity Press, Indiana, 1998
The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, Fr Herbert Thurston, Burns, Oates & Washbourne, London, 1952
The Sceptical Occultist, Terry White, Century, London, 1994
The Supernatural A-Z, James Randi, Headline Books, London, 1995
The Thunder of Justice, Ted and Maureen Flynn, MAXCOL, Vancouver, 1993
The Turin Shroud is Genuine, Rodney Hoare, Souvenir Press, London, 1998 Twenty Questions about Medjugorje Kevin Orlin Johnson Ph.D, Pangaeus, Dallas, 1999
The Two Divine Promises, Fr Roman Hoppe, TAN, Illinois, 1987
The Virgin of the Poor, Damian Walne and Joan Flory, CTS, London, 1983
The Way of Divine Love, Sr Josefa Mendenez, TAN, Illinois, 1980
The Wonder of Guadalupe, Francis Johnson, Augustine, Devon, 1981
To the Priests, Our Lady’s Beloved Sons, Fr Gobbi, The Marian Movement of Priests, St Paul’s Press, Athlone, 1991 
 
THE WEB

The Most Dangerous False Apparition in the World
www.unitypublishing.com/Apparitions/Garabandal2.html

False Visions Which Followed Knock
www.theotokos.org.uk

Critique: “Poem of the Man-God” Medugorje’s Gospel by Brother James,
http://members.lycos.co.uk/jloughnan/critique.htm

Saints Preserve Us!
www.forteantimes.com/articles/159_saintspreserved.shtml
 
PRIVATE REVELATION: UNRAVELLING MEDJUGORJE by Carey Winters
www.geocities.com/militantis/medjugorje.html
This excellent site outlines the errors of famous Catholic visionaries such as Anne Catherine Emmerich and Marie de Agreda which they said their visions told them. But it puts these errors down to the visionaries misunderstanding. This excuse itself accuses God of being slack! It points out that when Satan speaks, in the experience of the Church, he states 99% of the truth that God has revealed and 1 % untruth because every little error helps his cause. In the Church’s experience, that is the way it seems to be which means Carey and the Church should not be accepting the visions of Emmerich and Agreda. The former stated that there was a terrestrial paradise near Tibet and the pseudo-Dionysus writings are authentic though they are universally recognised as heretical forgeries advocating a Hindu piety. Thus she fell into heresy. Her miracles defended those errors. Agreda insisted that all must believe her writings which in Church doctrine can only be said of sacred scripture and the infallible dogmas of the Church. Nostradamus claimed that his revelations were given to him by the creator God. Like Agreda he claimed to be the producer of new scripture and was a heretic. The site examines the proof that the apparitions of the Queen of Peace in Medjugorje are not from God at all.

BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible