Can anyone recommend reading skeptical of the Padre Pio miracle claims? I need detailed arguments to combat ignorance in my home country (IRL)
Well, look, he’s just another Catholic saint. All Catholic saints have “miracle claims”. Why are you so interested in debunking this particular Catholic saint?
You could say this about practically any Catholic saint, and ultimately it all boils down to whether you “believe” or not. And bear in mind that when combatting what you perceive as “ignorance”, when it’s on the subject of religion, you are bound to step on people’s toes in a way that doesn’t happen when you’re trying to educate them on other kinds of Urban Legends.
AFAIK there aren’t any studies debunking the specific “miracles” of various saints.
FWIW, here’s the Skeptic’s Dictionary entry for “saint”.
http://skepdic.com/saint.html
I don’t think he’s a saint yet. They just want to make him one.
Captain Amazing, he was canonized June 16, 2002 as Saint Pio of Pietrelcina. The main page of http://www.padrepio.com/ gave me the exact date, otherwise I would have just said it was sometime this summer.
Saying ‘Padre Pio performed miracle x’ is just an assertion, like ‘I’ve invented a perpetual motion machine’ or ‘I know a man who can run a mile in 1 minute’.
We all know from experience that some assertions turn out to be true (e.g. ‘It is possible to run a mile in under 4 minutes’) and some don’t (e.g. ‘I did not have sex with that woman’). Sorting out which is which is a matter of assessing evidence, finding good reasons to believe something is true or not true.
The onus is not on you to prove anything about Padre Pio. The onus is one those who make the hard-to-believe assertion, which contradicts many well-observed facts about life (e.g. it’s impossible to be in two places at once, or to defy gravity through willpower alone), to prove that what they are saying has any more validity than early claims about cold fusion.
Believers claim that the evidence has already been well assessed, as part of the canonisation process. Rubbish. The people deciding the canonisation (the Catholic Church) are also the ones who set the rules about what constitutes good evidence in this and similar cases. This is about as reliable as letting a gambler tell you the outcome of a race he’s just bet on, or trusting Enron to vet their own accounts. It only becomes something more tangible when someone outside, with no vested interest, can find the evidence or the proof to support the assertion.
If the Catholic Church honestly believe they have good evidence that a man can levitate, I’m sure the world’s physicists would love to see that evidence!
Sadly, the so-called ‘evidence’ just comes down to eyewitness accounts filtered through who knows how many interpretations, translations, revisions and copies. Take a nice photograph, fax it somewhere, have them photocopy the result and fax it back. Photocopy the result and fax it back to them. Repeat this 5 times, and see what relationship the final result bears to the original. Well, it’s the same with contemporary accounts of ‘miracles’.
At which point the believers, as always, simply retreat to their safe and invulnerable point of saying it all comes down to faith. Yep, it does. And as G B Shaw said, ‘You can’t rationally argue out what wasn’t rationally argued in’.
So… you want a sceptical account of the Padre Pio fables? Well, you start by asking to see the evidence. Oops, there isn’t any. All gone. ‘It’s a matter of faith’. Case closed.
FLEEING SEX SCANDAL COVERAGE, POPE CANONIZES HUCKSTER FRIAR from the American Atheists website.
“Over the years, investigations even by church officials led to charges that Pio faked miracles…”
"A report by journalist Paul Vallely of the New Zealand Herald newspaper says that Pope John XXIII, suspicious of Pio’s cult-like popularity, authorized the bugging of his confessional. And the founder of Rome’s Catholic University Hospital concluded that Friar Pio was ‘an ignorant and self-mutilating psychopath who exploited people’s credulity.’ "
and more…
Thanks everyone for your replies so far.
Ianzin,
I must say that your posting was a very simple, logical, persuasive and coolly delivered argument. I take my hat off to you. I have learnt a very important rhetorical lesson through reading it. An excellent point and very well made.
The trouble is that I fear this time the burden of proof is indeed on me (though not by the normal rules of rational argument).
Let me explain:
A programme on Padre Pio was broadcast by the Irish public service broadcaster, RTE, on the day of the canonisation (16th June last). It was called “Padre Pio: The Path to Perfection” and was an grotesquely uncritical programme on the life and “miracles” of the man.
I made a complaint to the Irish Broadcasting Complaints Commission on the basis that it was not an objective and impartial presentation of a matter of current public controversy.
There are therefore basically two different things that I have to prove:
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That the broadcast uncritically reported claims of fact without considering other points of view (otherwise the programme couldn’t be said to be less than objective or impartial). I therefore have to give in detail that other point (or points) of view.
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That there is another view held by a substantial number of people (otherwise it wouldn’t be a matter of current public controversy).
Articles in various newspapers should handle some of these requirements, but basically I need a good critical book dealing with the subject of how the Vatican processes canonisation processes. It’s entirely possible that I’ll have to do without it. But I don’t want to reinvent the wheel if I don’t have to.
I truly understand why there are no “scientific studies” debunking Pio. I am disappointed not to find (yet) any popular book aimed at refuting claims that miracles have been proven. I haven’t even seen an article in any popular science journals (take the New Scientist, Science, Nature and Scientific American for example) complaining about unfounded claims to “scientific” evidence.
I hope the following answers Duck Duck Goose’s question as to why I’m particularly interested in this saint: I’ve sent a letter to the Irish Broadcasting Complaints Commission against the claims of this saint and now have to defend myself.
As a by the way, I’m well aware of the fact that my language in relation to religion can step on toes. I’ve just one of the most abusive message boards because I used the word “hokum” in relation to Pio. But if I could have my way my language would be far stronger.
You should always check with the master first.
What’s the deal with stigmata?
You can also Google on “psychogenic purpuras” and “Gardner-Diamond Syndrome”.
Oh, and welcome to the SDMB!
well, you will have some problem refuting the 3 canonization miracles, only because the Church looks into miracles pretty extensively, and only accepts the ones that have no scientific explanation.
i don’t know how clear i said that, but basically, they accept the claim of a miracle if there’s no good explanation for it. so a spontaneous remission will be called a miracle.
and at that point, it’s really a matter of opinion whether something is a miracle or not.
however, if you are not talking about his three (or is it two now?) canonization miracles, then you are in somewhat better circumstances. i mean, levitation? the eerie power of bilocation? puhleeze.
jb
My computer is schizzing out (divine interference?) so this message may not come through, but I am, I’m guessing, the only person on the board who ever saw Padre Pio in person. (Hey! I saw a saint!) I was eight years old and my family was touring Europe. My father wangled the chance to serve as altar boy (man? He was approx 50) and slipped me in to see Pio praying before mass. I was about a yard away. He looked like an old man with bandaged hands. During mass he limped a lot.
I saw no miracles and am no longer a Catholic. My father was more impressed. Personally, I would rather have met Dorothy Day (who I think is a more suitable candidate for canonization, but don’t hold your breath). Your mileage may vary.
Fifteen Iguana
Well, Jaime, you got guts, but no brains. 
So in Ireland, a heavily Catholic country, they ran a television show glorifying the Catholic Church’s newest saint on the day he was officially canonized–and you complained that it wasn’t balanced and factual enough? Since when has any television show glorifying a saint been balanced and factual?
The TV network has no obligation to run rebuttals to its religious programming, like a “Point/Counterpoint” program.
Look at the way TV networks in both the U.S. and the UK run shows like the “moon landing hoax” show, which purports to prove that we didn’t really land on the moon, that it was all a gigantic hoax on the part of NASA. NASA is never given equal time for rebuttal.
Similarly, the skeptics and atheists and agnostics are never given equal time to rebut the religious programming.
And as far as the official Catholic party line goes, there is no “controversy”.
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/news0099.htm
So it sounds to me like the subject’s closed as far as the Vatican is concerned, and I doubt RTE is going to be interested in running some kind of “debunking” show, no matter how controversial you may think the canonization is.
But hey, good luck in your quest.
Let us make distinctions here. There is a Web site devoted to Padre Pio, which claims that besides the miracle of stigmata, his “other gifts were perfume, bilocation, prophecy, conversion, reading of souls, and miraculous cures.”
That Web site is not an official Web site of the Catholic Church, and does not necessarily represent the church’s position on the type or veracity of Padre Pio’s miracles.
So far, no one answering this post has provided documentation of what specific miracles formed part of the official church endorsement of Pio (I don’t have it either).
One miracle required for beatification (the first step), and a second miracle required for subsequent canonization. Bolding mine.
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20020616_padre-pio_en.html
Except that this isn’t for the Vatican or RTE to decide, but rather for the Irish Broadcasting Complaints Commission. You mustn’t assume that the rules about broadcasting in Ireland are the same as in the USA. I can’t comment on the Commission’s precise powers nor on how it is likely to find in this case, but I do suspect that RTE would regard an adverse ruling as a major embarassment.
The American Atheists, as a source, are about as reliable as the Chrisian Coalition. I don’t trust either the hand stabbers or the Bible thumpers.
jaimeh, I’m not going to comment on the Padre Pio bit, but RTE has a habit of making totally uncritical programs about religious beliefs.
Did you see the one about Trancendental Meditation and levitating yogis? They reported verbatim ‘data’ given them about falling crime rates when people meditate in a specific area. They also reported that the levitation happens, with no skeptical enquiry at all. In fact, there wasn’t a single questioning or dissenting voice in the whole program. It was a free commercial for the group.
I wouldn’t get too worked up about it. RTE just blow.
P.S. Welcome!
Isn’t there an official in the canonisation process whose job it is to assemble the case against the candidate? I don’t know whether he does this by attacking the evidence brought forward in favour of canonisation, or by launching a more general attack on the character of the candidate but, either way, the case assembled by him might be helpful to you.
Problem is, I don’t know whether this kind of preparatory material is published. I somehow doubt it. And, even if it is, it is almost certain to be in Latin or Italian, not English, so unless you read those languages it won’t be much use to you.
Devil’s Advocate (I believe this is the origin of the term).
The part that reads (bolding mine)
pretty much discredits it straight away. I would think that the Pope bugging a confessional, and then discussing the confession with anyone else would be a bigger story than anything to do with Padre Pio.