Do Catholic Miracles Vindicate Rome's Claims? No and Here's Why.

Here I am only exploring if a particular argument works and/or is a good argument in a certain context and nothing more. I certainly have thoughts, opinions, and what I think are good arguments about the many closely related

subjects, but I’m just not getting into that here. So I ask you to also bracket out all those other things for this article. If you are unable to do that you probably shouldn’t be reading articles on the internet.

Suppose I want to convince you to accept position X. Among other things position X necessarily entails A, and B. It might also entail C, but if so, not necessarily. You have very good reasons to reject A and B, so you conclude X must be false because A and B are false or at least almost certainly false. So you give me your arguments and reasons for objecting to A and B and thus why you cannot accept X.

I respond, “But C! C is absolutely true! There's overwhelming evidence for it and therefore X must be true, so you have to be wrong about A and B.”

Now this would probably be confusing. Because you weren't objecting to C. You were objecting to A and B, and I didn't even respond to that . . . at least not directly. And so it would seem like I attempted to sidestep or ignore your objections. This is akin to when I punish my children for misbehavior and they object that their siblings are not also being punished. Despite my children’s protestations, the guilt or innocence of their siblings is completely irrelevant to their own guilt or innocence. Conversely, suppose, one of my children said, “But Dad, I didn't do the thing you're punishing me for and here's the evidence.” Now we are dealing with the actual issue.

When you have problems with A and B and I respond with, “But C! C is great can’t you see?!” That seems like it is at best a confusion of categories as I’m just not responding to your actual objections.

There is still a possible route to make this argument. If the existence of C necessarily entails the existence of X (the causal relation goes both ways), and there genuinely is absolutely overwhelming evidence of C, then maybe that can have enough force that you should disregard your objections to A and B. If there is such a logical relationship, and C really is that great, then C can function as a defeater for your objections to A and B. But that's much more difficult to do.

You could easily just accept the existence of C and claim that it doesn't necessitate the whole big mess that is X. You argue that maybe C can exist independently of X. You can conceive of several ways to do that. To make C a successful defeater of A and B, I need to demonstrate that your claims that C can exist without X are false and establish not just that X entails C, but that C necessarily entails X. But again this is more difficult and complicated to do 

And further this is just completely ignoring the actual objections, (A and B are false), so at best you’ll probably be really skeptical. It will seem like I’m just ignoring your objections so this way of arguing will be uncompelling. If my objection to eating at a seafood restaurant is that I just don’t like fish, I won’t buy my wife’s counter argument that it’s a highly rated and often recommended restaurant. Her counter argument doesn’t address my objection and in no way overcomes it.[1]

Now I submit that this or something close to this is what is happening when Catholic apologists attempt to appeal to miracles to claim that the Catholic Church is the one true Church and other Christians just need to submit to Rome. There are probably some better and more precise ways to spell out the reasoning and how to weigh the issues, but this is my good faith attempt.

The most common objections from non-Catholic Christians to Catholicism are not directly addressed by appeals to specifically ‘Catholic’ miracles (CM) and it’s difficult to see how you can make an argument that the actual existence of Marian apparitions (or other ‘Catholic’ miracles) equals or reasonably infers the supremacy of Rome, the Papacy, and so on.

The most common objections to Catholicism are that some of the Catholic Church’s dogmas are not true and that this is demonstrated historically, philosophically, and/or theologically. While there are other dogmas that I could point to, I will use the Papacy and the Marian dogmas here. I assert that these dogmas are false, and it seems to me that I have some good reasons, evidence, and arguments for that claim. The Catholic Church has declared that these dogmas are nonnegotiable, therefore I cannot be a Catholic as it requires me to believe things that I think are untrue (the A and B above). There are Catholics of good faith who have engaged with me on those and similar issues and there also are experts in these matters who will say I’m wrong. My point here is not to run those objections. It’s just that those are my objections and the existence of CMs doesn’t address them. It seems quite clear to me that Marian apparitions could co-exist with the falsity of things like the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. And the same logic follows for any other specifically ‘Catholic’ miracles (CMs).

Thus a universal or deductive version of this argument is obviously unsound. It would be something like;

1.       God vindicates teaching/theological claims through miraculous signs.

2.       The Catholic Church has miraculous signs.

3.       These are specifically ‘Catholic’ miracles that affirm specifically Catholic theology.

4.       Therefore, Catholicism is true.

This is a very bad argument as we see many times in the Scriptures where God performs miracles for unbelievers and other times where miracles seem to have no connection to any teaching at all. Further to make a deductive argument like this work it would have to be impossible for both CMs to exist and the Papacy to also be false. But there is no such contrary or contradiction between those two things and it is painfully obvious that God can do and does do miracles in places that teach false doctrines, so this argument is unsound.

But I strongly suspect this is not the type of argument that most Catholic apologist are trying to make. I think they are trying to do something that is more inductive like the following;

1.       CMs are not what we would expect if the Catholic dogmas are wrong.

2.       CMs exist and some are well evidenced.

3.       Therefore, CMs are evidence that the Catholic dogmas are right.

4.       So enough, well evidenced, CMs show that the Catholic Church is right.

And then they give a list of well evidenced CMs that meet a criteria for what counts as a credible miracle claim and argue that God has used miracles to vindicate the claims of the Catholic Church. Thus my objections to the Papacy, the Marian dogmas, etc. must be wrong.

This inductive version is clearly much better, but it’s still an attempt to sidestep the actual objections. To make CMs a defeater for my objections a Catholic apologist would need to demonstrate that the conjunction of Catholic dogmas being false and CMs is impossible (which we saw above is not the case) or they would need to show that such a conjunction is highly unlikely. This is just how defeaters work. We saw above that the former option is just impossible, so the latter is the direction they need to go. And while I’m happy to concede that this latter option is broadly possible, I don’t see how it can be done. Here’s why;

Let’s flip things around. I grew up in the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal church. I saw many things there that seem to be best explained as God's miraculous intervention. ‘Supernatural’ events broadly and somethings that to all appearances were actual miracles. Nearly everyone there took that as a confirmation that God’s hand was on our church. It's quite easy to see how some of them could take that even further and claim, “Well, this means we are the true church, or at least we have it better than those other Christians over there, because God gives us miracles.”

So let’s suppose that at some point a Pentecostal church is live streaming its worship service. A large group of people pray in Tongues for the healing of a person and that person is healed. Then a member of the church gives an interpretation of the Tongues that claims things like God has declared that we are His Church and He has built us on the Rock of Christ. Also there is good medical documentation of the healing. It’s a credible, well evidenced miracle that seems to have a message from God vindicating that particular church. If members of the church attempted to use this miracle to argue that theirs is the one true Church and God has shown this with signs and wonders should you buy into such an argument?

No.

It’s perfectly obvious that the miracle occurred (there is good evidence of it), that it was from God (the context makes other explanations highly unlikely), but also that claiming this ‘proves’ this particular Pentecostal Church is “The Church” is a vast overstep. It’s perfectly reasonable to think that the church members have overinterpreted a real Divine miracle and are now claiming more than is warranted. Why wouldn’t God do miracles within the context of the people He is doing the miracle for? We also see many examples in the Scriptures where people with bad and incorrect theology experience and even perform miracles that the text says come from God.

So I really hope if you are a Catholic such an argument wouldn’t push you out of Catholicism as that would be a very poor reason to reject it. Catholic theology/philosophy is big, robust, and nuanced enough to accept that God does miracles in non-Catholic contexts and even non-Christian contexts. But so is the theology/philosophy of non-Catholic Christian denominations.

I'm quite happy with accepting that God performs miracles in the context of the Catholic Church and in ways that may seem to those people to be at least somewhat confirmatory of Catholicism. Some of these might strike me as weird or unexpected, but the Scriptures frequently record God doing things that people think are weird and unexpected.

It's a simple reality of life that we have to interpret what we see and experience. It doesn't follow from this that there is no objective reality, that all perspectives are equal, that we can never get to truth, that only perspectives exist, or other such nonsense. But this does mean that it's perfectly reasonable to think that if God does a miracle for a group of Catholic people, they will interpret it in the context of Catholicism and then retell the story from that perspective. It can well be the case that there was a genuine miracle. Nobody was lying or misrepresenting anything, and there was nothing evil or demonic about it at all. God really did a miracle and the people simply reported and claimed it within their context.

Growing up in a Pentecostal church might have put me in a good position to see this point. I saw that people routinely interpreted supernatural events through their own lenses and frameworks. They weren't lying or misrepresenting things, they were just seeing things with their own perspectives. There were people who had a fresh ‘word from God’ nearly every week and others who were much more cautious and careful. Undoubtably some people simply got caught up in the emotion of the moment. But in many other cases it’s difficult to explain some of what I saw unless God was really doing things. But still people always, or at least frequently, interpreted what they saw through their own contexts. And this can easily account for many of these such things.

So when a Catholic appeals to miracles that at least seem somewhat Catholic specific, such as Marian apparitions, that doesn't challenge my worldview at all, and it also doesn't challenge my reasons for being skeptical of the Catholic Church's claims about itself.

Now it’s still fair to say that CMs can be evidence for Catholicism, at least to some degree. After all, if there were no credible reports of miracles within the Catholic Church, that would count as evidence against the legitimacy of the Catholic Church. So to some degree the reverse counts as evidence for it. But I and most other Protestant Christians already view the Catholic Church as a legitimate denomination or sect of Christianity, so it's very unsurprising to us that God does miracles there. In the event that a Catholic apologist is talking to one of the very few Protestants who thinks the Catholic Church is actually the Whore of Babylon, perhaps this would be a good argument for them. But it's not for me and it’s not for most other non-Catholic Christians.

And likewise, if you're arguing with a naturalist, physicalist, or an atheist, an argument from CMs might hold some merit. Since such views dictate that miracles simply do not happen then appealing to miracles and providing evidence for them is directly challenging that.

But since every or nearly every non-Catholic Christian already believes in miracles and the supernatural, this just doesn’t do anything for them. Of course God does miracles in the Catholic Church just like He does in every other church.

So my minimal claims here are that;

(1)    The argument from CMs just doesn't address the objections that I and most non-Catholic Christians have,

(2)    CMs just don’t necessitate the truth of Catholicism, and

(3)    It’s a best highly unlikely that CMs can function as a defeater for other objections to Catholicism.

While we should expect to see CMs if Catholicism is true, the existence of CMs doesn’t necessarily mean Catholicism is true. To clarify this last point a bit more, my theory is that there are many different denominations, movements, and sects within Christianity all of which are a legitimate part of God's Church. This explains the existence of CMs quite well. The counter theory is that, loosely speaking, Catholicism says, “No. Those other denominations, movements, and sects are, at the least less legitimate, as we, and we alone, are God's true Church.” This also well explains the existence of CMs.

Since CMs fit very well with both theories, that evidence is under-determinative. It doesn't show us which theory is true or more likely to be true. We have to bring in other things to figure out which theory is better, and thus an argument for Catholicism from CMs fails to make its case. So I argue that even if we uncritically grant a Catholic Apologist the reality of CMs, this doesn’t demonstrate Catholicism is true. At best, it might be an argument that God actually is at work in the Catholic Church, but this is a far cry from the Catholic Church being the one and only true Church.

Of course this doesn't show that Catholicism is false either, just that this is a poor argument. People frequently make bad arguments for things that are true and if you are a Catholic, that’s just what you should conclude here. Otherwise you are going to have a real problem as non-Catholic Christians can run the same style of argument against you (see the above counter example from a Pentecostal Church).So while I get the rhetorical and emotional appeal of such arguments, they just don’t logically work and no one should be moved from another denomination into Catholicism by the argument from CMs.

[1] Conversely if she argues that they serve steak as well as fish that would probably work.