What is your response to the following reports in the light of this chapter? (You might like to search this topic on the internet.) In 2001 Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a 40-year-old French nun, was...

What is your response to the following reports in the light of this chapter? (You might like to search this topic on the internet.)

In 2001 Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a 40-year-old French nun, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Her symptoms gradually worsened until she could barely drive, walk or even write and she had great diffi culty in watching Pope John Paul II on TV because he too had Parkinson’s – which was even more advanced than hers. Her condition deteriorated after the death of Pope John Paul in April 2005 and she asked to be relieved of her duties. However, her mother superior asked her to carry on and to write the words ‘John Paul II’ on a piece of paper; Sister Marie did this, though the words were illegible. Later that evening, in her room she said she ‘felt compelled to write, as if someone were telling me “pick up your pen and write” ’. To her amazement her handwriting was clear – and the following morning she woke feeling ‘completely transformed. It was something very strong, an interior feeling that words cannot describe . . . I was convinced I was completely cured.’ She said after visiting her neurologist, ‘He concluded there was no more sign of the illness. Words failed him.’ Asked whether she believed her recovery was a miracle, she replied, ‘I was ill and now I am cured. The rest is for the Church to decide.’ The Catholic Church spent a year investigating the nun’s experience to decide whether it was a miracle; for Catholics to recognise what happened as a miracle, Sister Marie’s recovery must be judged to have been sudden, complete, permanent and inexplicable by doctors. (Summarised from a story in the Daily Telegraph, 31 March 2007) ‘. . . A Polish newspaper has claimed that a doctor who scrutinised the 49-year-old nun’s case concluded that she may have been suffering not from Parkinson’s but from a nervous disorder from which temporary recovery is medically possible. . . . [the newspaper] Rzeczpospolita also reported that Sister Marie . . . has now lapsed back into ill health.’ (Daily Telegraph, 6 March 2010)