From: "J. Colaco < jc>" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Using a selectively mutilated quote of what I (jc) had written i.e.
***Sorry, Dr.Jose Colaço, for keeping your quote shortened. This happened
by mistake (not "selectively mutilated")--the first words were deleted by
mistake and I added "check if:". Nothing was distorted. The logical meaning
is the same. I understand it well. I gave you the answer not hastily, but
according to the understanding that I have of the problem. For us who know
so many languages, English is the easiest language... (Let me add here that
Dr.JC cannot reply without insulting...)
You want me to have all these requirements, namely to know medicine in all
its branches, to review all the details of all the cases and to say that
there is no other explanation for the cures? Dr.Santosh asked for a
double-blind "control" (read below), admitting himself that this is
difficult for such rare cases. The proposed method itself excludes all
miracles. I think that these cases are rare and cannot have such a control,
because they are too evident for the medical community. My answer is the
same: The medical Bureau has verified all these criteria. I leaned on the
expertise of the Medical Bureau and International Medical Panel, and our
common sense and my own knowledge of medicine and data available. Even if an
authority in medical field asserts it, Dr.Santosh will never accept that the
incurable diseases were cured in those particular cases (which theologically
means "miracles"). There will not be an authority in the world on all the
branches of medicine, nor, as a consequence, such a person as to comprehend
and judge all these cases. Dr.Santosh himself will not be able to do that.
Nobody is bound to accept miracles--they are not magical feats, but signs of
God's love--, nor am I bound to accept the "scientific explanations" given
by Dr.Santosh. For me, these are miracles according to our prudential
judgement. We can speak of them privately and in "public domain". We call
them miracles, precisely because they do not have a scientific explanation,
and satisfy the required criteria. The Church accepts them officially as
"miracles". Dr.Santosh does not accept God, therefore he cannot accept
miracles, nor can he explain reasonably these 'miraculous' phenomena...
Regards.
Fr.Ivo
(*This is what Dr.JC had written:)
( In conclusion, I'd say this: The avenue open to anyone who wishes to
counteract Santosh's position is the following:
Advise us that he/she)(*this was deleted by mistake)
(Chech if: (*This was added by me) a: has the requisite knowledge of the
field of medicine in which the
miracle is said to have occured
b: has personally reviwed all the original details of the case.
c: is able to say with confidence that there is NO other explanation
for the 'cure'.
About the method Dr.Santosh wrote on August 10:
"Simply put, any scientific procedure requires that properly blinded and
objective researchers obtain quantitative data about the probability of
occurrence of the phenomenon under observation in the special condition
under study, and then compare this probability with that of its occurrence
in a control (properly matched) group of people under appropriately
controlled conditions.*(These are his words):Since the so-called miracles
are by definition rare events, this is a monumental task.
...It should be obvious to those of you who have followed the logic here
that if it turns out that two or more individuals from this latter
group had also recovered spontaneously from the disease, then no
particular benefit from the pilgrimage would be deemed to have occurred.
Well, the actual situation is even more complicated than what I have just
described, as those with some statistics background would realize. However,
the impossibility of performing the above simplified, yet massive, project
to scientifically demonstrate that anything extraordinary has occurred,
should be fairly plain to most people".
