All aboard the fastrack to sainthood

Now that the vatican has decided to put the late Pope J.P. on a fastrack to sainthood it got me wondering just how easy they are going to make becoming a Saint. Even buying a gun has a waiting period but Sainthood? No problem! We can do that right away. All it needs is someone who is sick to claim they prayed to JP and then recover in a way scientists didn't expect. That doesn't seem to high a bar to raise does it, I can assure you that every day people survive medical emergencies and recover from illness in ways not expected or explained by current medical knowledge.

Is that really where sainthood lies now - some gap in scientific knowledge creating a loophole leading to a stairway to heaven, and with a wave of the current Pope's hand old JP gets a fastrack to the head of the line ahead of all the other saint wannabees. I guess they are expecting that with all those 1 billion Catholics getting sick and praying and all it will be no time at all before unexplained miracles are being worked.

There lies the rub for me - is that all miracles are these days, is that where beatification, sainthood, acts of god are founded - as mere loopholes created by lack of scientific knowledge. No burning bushes, no walking on water, no water to wine - just some "incurable disease" that gets better for no explained reason. Because science has explained away all that other stuff... no wonder the Catholics made such an effort to persecute scientists, they didn't want all their Saintly appointments to be called into question, or to loose all sources of future appointments. But face facts, with progress of scientific knowledge its going to become harder and harder to find miracles to attribute to saint wannabees.

Yes, if I was terminally ill I'd try everything, even a bit of that good old fashioned blackmail praying, you know the sort - "I don't actually believe you exist, but if you really do now is the time to reach down and do some miracle work... please... I'll give you a second chance if you do". So anyone who gets better who actually remembers the "deal" they offered the deity upstairs might be tempted to attribute it to a miracle.

So I have an idea... why doesn't the Pope start focusing on other types of unexplained miracles, like George Bush getting elected - I'm sure a whole bunch of Catholics were praying for that and most everyone expected the old shrub to miss it by a squeak but low and behold he gets elected in declares a veritable "mandate". Surely that's some kind of miracle. Surely some saint dude was up there commanding a host of angelic minnions moving votes around and putting Xs where they neede to be to make that happen. If a huge stash of WOMD turned up in Iraq wouldn't a whole bunch of Evangelists instantly proclaim a miracle (even if they weren't put there by angelic workers but actually by CIA operatives).

Yes folks, every day all kinds of crazy s**t is going on that's completely unexplainable by science or rational logic and this is stuff that affects everyone, not just some sick person with a vested interested in getting well. Why does it have to be someone getting well after illness? Why not the car that doesn't start on the very day you needed an excuse not to come into work. Or the boss that drops dead the day he was going to fire you. Or the mega lottery ticket win - millions to one against, less likely than a lightning strike - that has to be a miracle. There has to be thousands of such events each daya - lets call these people's miracles.

With all these people's miracles happening all the time almost anyone could become a saint, a people's saint. Pray to your favourite dead person - from Einstein, Ghandi to Marilyn Monroe or even Ronald Reagan and sit back and wait for crazy unexplained miracles to happen. One fastrack to sainthood is on its way... "I got out of a parking ticket by passive non-violent resistance, now I pray to Saint Mahatma", or "I flew to Hawaii on vacation and came back feeling ten years younger now I pray to Saint Albert". Why the heck not? Why should the vatican have the monopoly on such things and like I said, with the increasing difficulty in finding "real" miracles (salt stained freeways notwithstanding) why not open up the field to every day miracles we can all relate to instead of having to pray to some crusty old white guy whose main distinguishing attribute is that he rose to the top of the papal pyramid by longevity.