¶1Joe Schmid converted to Catholicism and he largely did that based on Catholic miracles. Are you rattled right now? Hey, I want to be honest. I admit I was a little bit rattled and I was like, "Wait a minute." I mean, I thought there's something to the case, but wow, I've watched the interviews Joe's done with Trent Horn, Matt Fred, and I'm like, wow, he is really convinced by Catholic miracles, and this really did move the needle for him. So, as Protestant philosophers, apologists, you know, believers, what what do we do with this?
¶2Do we become Catholic? And then I read this post from a friend of mine on Facebook, AJ Stringfellow. He said, "Protestants seem way more shaken by Joe Schumid's conversion than atheists are. Most atheists I've talked to weren't at all that shocked, seeing as Joe was an agnostic and openly acknowledged the force of certain theistic arguments that they did not find remotely good. So it was like whatever to them.
¶3But Protestants are acting like they're facing a crisis of faith and have to convert to Catholicism or face judgment. And I saw this actually with a Protestant philosopher I know. He was like, "Hold the phone. Let me talk to my wife. This is crazy that Joe converted.
¶4I need to really rethink this." And then Joe's going to be putting out a giant case for Catholicism, which is going to have all sorts of the details about the force of these Catholic miracles and how they're vindicatory of Catholicism. So, this is not going to be the in-depth counter or addressing of these miracles at all. So, I'm not trying to argue against them in any sort of knockdown way, but what I'm doing is just addressing my fellow Protestants. Do you need to freak out right now? Let me give you a few reasons why you don't need to freak out, and let me give you a few things not to do as well.
¶5Now, let me start by just conceding probably more than you would expect. And I'm not saying this is my final position. I'm not saying this you can't contest the details of the miracles at all. I think you can. But I just want to out loud take a lot of the pressure off you as a Protestant and just say here's what you can grant.
¶6You can grant let's just start with what Joe forth finally got him over the line which is the Padre Peio stigmata miracles. So the the standard Protestant line is that the Vatican physician named Big Nami proved that the wounds came from carbolic acid. So Padre Peio was applying acid and that produced the stigmata. But here's what actually happened. Big Nami suspected an iodine tincture was keeping the lesions open.
¶7So he ordered the wounds bandaged and sealed for 8 days with the irritants removed. And guess what happened? The wounds kept bleeding. Okay. Now, I'd add something Catholics also typically don't mention.
¶8Big Nami left before the test concluded. And that matters because the outcome comes from three friars of the same friy. And that does matter. And I'll come back to it. But if you go on the internet and say the acid was proven or you know something to that effect that this is a knockdown case against the Padre Peio miracle then someone who's read the sources is going to just pick you apart.
¶9So concede a lot of the data and don't try to say that the carbalic acids proves the whole thing was a hoax. Okay? Because it's it's mixed there. Now, Fatima's documentary record also is way better than I thought, and I'm still working through a lot of it. I mean, I've read the gist of it, and I've gone into some of the details.
¶10Uh, Ethan Muse's post goes into way more details. It gets really technical on, you know, the sun and things, photo, photo, geometric data, and all sorts of stuff. So, it gets really technical. So again, this isn't my final analysis, but the the truth is is that Lucia reported half of the July 13th conversation matches what two witnesses said they heard her say aloud at the time. And Father Forgamano wrote down before October 13th that the day would either confirm the claim or destroy it.
¶11So that is a falsification condition set out in advance by an investigator who didn't know the outcome. Okay. And Jose Maria Garrett stared at the light for minutes with no after images. Then days later looked at the real sun for seconds and got the classic moving spots. Right?
¶12That's kind of a controlled experiment in 1917 and it hurts the optical illusion account. So if you go in guns blazing saying it was an optical illusion, there's certain things and many more that will come up that counter counteract that. And you can say this like you're free to admit some of this data. It cost you nothing and ultimately it's going to buy you credibility later. So, number one, let me just Protestant friends, apologists, you don't have to rush in to explain any of it.
¶13I know that's going to be a little surprising, right? Because they're so forceful and like you think, oh my gosh, I part of the freak out is, oh my gosh, I got to explain all these datas and these anomalies. I got to make it make all make sense. And well, your position doesn't require Fatima to be weather or Pio's wounds to be fake. One way of approaching this is just to grant it.
¶14Right? I'm not saying this is the ultimate destination, but just to take the pressure off. The the question is not ultimately whether something odd happened, right? It's what an odd event establishes. A sign is a bare event, right?
¶15It carries no propositional content until somebody says what it meant. Now, this is also why the volume of all these miracles doesn't threaten you. The standard you'll be held to is that every skeptical explanation must be excluded by multiple lines of evidence. Right? So if you start going in with skeptical guns blazing and you're like boo carbolic acid boo optical illusion, right?
¶16Then you're going to get all the piling of evidence which Ethan Muse is great at doing. I got to admit he's just going to start piling evidence on you. No, that can't and pretty soon you'll be buried under a pile of skeptical burden that you just can't you just can't come out from under because there's just too many. It's moving target, right? It's whack-a-ole.
¶17Soon as you whack one, two or three more appear. So, at least initially, you don't have to go in guns blazing and try to explain every little detail. Okay? So, I hope that's already a little bit of the weight off your shoulder. Now, I'm not saying you can't contest them.
¶18I think you can, but at least initially, you don't need to go in guns blazing trying to knock down every little detail. The key is regarding the sign and the content. And this is number two. Watch where the doctrine enters these miracles. So in Zetun in Egypt in 1968, we have Marian apparitions over a Coptic Orthodox church and they do reoccur over 2 to three years.
¶19We had photographed by ordinary press hundreds of thousand witnesses including Muslims which matters because Islamic expectation doesn't predict a luminous woman over a church. It was investigated by the Egyptian government and the Coptic hierarchy. Right? So it is it is just from pure uh event richness. It is the strongest marrying case by ordinary standards.
¶20is the most wellattested and with the most sort of evidentiary documented occurrence of the sign and wonder. And we don't even have to argue that. Even Catholics do. Cameron Bratusi in one of his videos has said that it's better evidence than the resurrection. Now, he also probably thinks Fatima is as well.
¶21But here's the key. What's the doctrinal sort of like what all this is about? Zero. Nobody spoke. The apparition didn't speak.
¶22We have no content to associate in any sort of entailed way with the actual occurrence of all these events. We have the events. Sure, we have a a big record. We have the photographs. We have all that.
¶23But what is it proving? What is it vindicating? We don't know. So when you have the highest mon, you know, amount of evidence for the event, you get no doctrinal payload. Keep that in mind.
¶24Now, Fatima has the rosary, the immaculate heart, the consecration of Russia all through Lucia. And so we get the most like confessionally specific material. Andy, we find this even footnoted in her fourth memoir, but it was written in late 1941, 24 years after the event. And here's a here's one detail that should stay with you. Father Dalier, whose paper is the best technical case anyone has made for Fatima, sees that the apparition never named the sun.
¶25It pointed and you know L Lucia said look at the sun. Okay. So even the instruction that sort of fixed what the 50,000ish people some say 100,000 stared at for 10 minutes came through the seer. It came through Lucia herself. And Ethan Muse's answer to Zetun is that Mary talks to Catholics and then just sort of stayed silent for the cops.
¶26But the silence is why this is a clean case. Nothing routed through a human mind in the Zetun case. So nothing could enter there, right? And then when you look at Ethan's definition of what makes a miracle vindicatory, it requires an attached private revelation and which makes the vindicatory class identical to the class of cases with a seer. So that which can do the vindicatory work needs a seer or a channel through which you get the propositional payload.
¶27You get the content of what it's about such that it can vindicate. Okay. Okay. So that that's one thing. Now number three is there's a sort of like a gradient in the record if you look at the miracle record.
¶28And I I I want you to just notice this cuz this is even in Catholic sources. So this isn't just like being skeptical about the miracles. Like even Muse in his writings about Padre Peio's side wound calls it quote an inverse correlation between the impressiveness of the lesions and the expectation of critical scrutiny. End quote. So that's that's his phrase.
¶29The wound is superficial when examined by physicians and deep when described by friars. And the the fevers are the clearest case. Right? So we have like he gets Dr. Festa brought a real precise thermometer and measured PO methodically for several days.
¶30Normal 36.2 36.5. Then he left the instrument with the covenant superior. And it was in the superior's hands that the 48 and the 48.5 reading appeared. The crazy readings that are inexplicable. the the and then the famous 52 came from a bath thermometer a frier fetch from his own room.
¶31Now I'm not saying this is knockdown. Again, they might have responses to this, but this is just the pattern, right? Go back to Big Nami's sealed bandages that was that test was administered and attested by friars unsupervised after the physicians left. So again, this is just starting your thinking, huh, maybe there's a pattern to this and it's not quite as knocked down or something to freak out over as I initially think. And let me just mention four ways that if you take them rashly or you just rush into them or or take them at all, you will sort of lose the battle of attrition regarding Catholic miracles.
¶32Number one, you can make a case from the demonic. I've even tinkered with it and tried working on it, so it's possible. But don't rush in for the demon explanation. Why? Well, at least initially, if any inconvenient sign can be Satan, you've started to build something that no evidence can actually touch, and you may inadvertently disqualify your own appeal to the signs and acts.
¶33Okay? So, not saying don't go the Fatima is demonic route at all, but don't rush in there rashly without making a strong case. Having a strong demonology place and recognize knock-on effects that may occur for your reading of the signs and acts. Number two is don't go cessationist. It's a big theological commit to say all signs and wonders sort of have ceased.
¶34And it looks like you're just doing a ad hoc post hawk way of solving this bundle of evidence. And if you look at it, I have the two volume set. Craig Kenir has created and documented thousands of healing reports from mostly non-atholic settings. Okay, here's another one. Don't overreach with Deuteronomy 13.
¶35The chapter does establish that a fulfilled sign can be rejected, right? Which is real and it's underused, right? So, a fulfilled sign can be rejected, but the trigger is a call to follow other gods. And that's repeated three times. So, if you're using it against the rosary, then you first need to prove idolatry.
¶36You can't just start throwing around Deuteronomy 13 and not first prove that it's a case of idolatry. And if you're just going to assert it, then you're going to spend the conversation arguing about devotional psychology, what's worship, what's not, and you're going to quickly fall into that what I'll call trap initially. Again, you can make these cases, but don't rush into them. And then don't ask where the Protestant Fatima is. Don't go rumaging around the closet looking for the Protestant Fatima.
¶37Why? Because that concedes the criterion. You have one tradition that ran medical bureaus, right? Not just kept nice reports and kept them in a file desk somewhere. No, they have a bureau, a whole organization dedicated to cataloging doing this.
¶38Right? Protestant traditions don't have that. even if they can keep good records, right? They don't have a bureau of miracles and like a whole canonical process that's been doing this for four centuries to sort of make sense of them and tease them along and flesh them out. So the the other has like the Catholics have built a theology, you know, explaining why it wouldn't need to, right?
¶39And a tradition that documents is going to have better documentation and have a whole system for doing that excellent documentation. And notice there's no miracle validating other Catholic things like the canon list, pap people infallibility or the assumption. So the the category in and of itself doesn't exist on anyone's account, right? So be careful and don't rush in trying to find your Protestant Fatima because chances are you're not going to find it of that sort uh in in the same way though there are excellent Protestant miracles. So do pursue them.
¶40Don't just go looking and saying ah I have one on par with Fatima because quickly that will get rearranged and shot down. So let me just close. I hope this has been helpful. Again, I'm humbled by the need to address this. So, this is just like a first pass and it's just to hopefully relieve some of the tension.
¶41Say, don't freak out. Uh just say what your argument doesn't do, right? It doesn't shows these events were natural, right? So, you're not trying to say it's all naturalistic. Some of them do resist that explanation.
¶42And I just I'd just rather admit it upfront. Uh it doesn't refute Catholicism, right? That that needs to be settled on the basis of scripture and history and theology and that's the way it's always been settled. So it's not like you can use miracles as a knockdown case against Catholicism just as you can't use miracles as a knockdown case for Catholicism. Right?
¶43And what it does show though is that the miracle evidence doesn't necessarily or automatically discriminate between Christian confessions. So if anyone is telling you like Fatima settles, then I I think it's asking the evidence to bear weight it can't bear. that is you need to make that inferential leap from events to doctrine to vindication of Catholic doctrine. And if you look at that, the jump is usually sort of quick and handwavy. Not saying people haven't tried to make it, but it's not as well supported as you think.
¶44The leap from sign to vindication. So it's often taken as just common sense. Well, talking about the rosary, that's Catholic doctrine. Or or you know the uh the transubstantiation miracles. That's super Catholic.
¶45So that's got to be a vindication of Catholicism. Whoa, whoa, whoa. No, not necessarily. I mean, as you may know, just on that last case, there's whole Protestant traditions that embrace the real presence of uh the Eucharist. So, it's not as automatic as you may think.
¶46And if you want to actually engage us, I think a good place to start where I'm starting because I'm again I'm humbled by the amount of data to sift through and the amount of technicality but uh is Dier's paper in scient's own articles are good. He's got the footnotes in there. You can chase that down. Duffins medical miracles. That's by an atheist hermatologist who worked through the Vatican archives.
¶47Respects the process and he still declines the step from unexplained to miraculous. Okay. Now, let me end by saying there's no deadline. Go look for yourself. These things have been documented and occurring for centuries.
¶48So, there's no need for you to rush in to solve it all. your Protestant tradition and faith can stand and can wait for you. So, go look for yourself. I hope this has been encouraging. Again, it's not an knockdown argument.
¶49I haven't made my case against Catholic miracles. This is just addressed to you, my Protestant friend. No need to freak out. Joe is a smart dude. He's really been convinced by Catholic miracles.
¶50Hey, okay. see it for what it is and let it propel you to learn more and to hopefully see the pattern that it looks like you can see from a from a big perspective. Be well and God bless.