Saint John Paul?

[HITMAN]

VATICAN CITY - Catholic Church officials reach a key milestone in the drive to make Pope Jaohn Paul II a saint Monday, closing an investigation into his life and handing over a dossier detailing the purported miraculous cure of a nun who prayed to him.

Full article (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070401/ap_on_re/john_paul_sainthood)
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Will the Christians pray to John Paul once he is a saint?

[wudjab]

We might or we might not.

[HITMAN]

"'Look, my hand is no longer shaking. John Paul II has cured me." (http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/03/29/john.paul.sainthood.ap/index.html)

John Paul cured her but surprisingly could not cure himself

[wudjab]

Thats the beauty of a saint.

Much like the Christian concept of a martyr.

A Christian martyr is one who is willing to lay down his life to save others.

Unlike the other kind of martyr or shaheed.

[HITMAN]

Beautiful theory but weighs nothing at all unless it is proven that she really got cured of Parkinson's

So till then it is similar to the magical cure of the Gambian president

[wudjab]

You are 100% correct on that for once.

The cure has to be proven 100%.

Unlike that of the Gambian president, which doesn't need any verification.

[amo_l_oman]

Is a long procedure to prove the miracles he's done to become saint
There's a sort of commission and a tribunal which will study the medical cases
But people want to be done this for him faster
That's why it's often in the news lately

[Jeff]

We pray to John Paul now! I pray to him frequently. We just don't pray publicly and officially at Mass til he is declared blessed. Then he will have a locally approved cult.

And after a while, he will be decared a saint and he will have a day in the calendar that the whole Church celebrates.

If no one prayed to John Paul already, then this nun who got cured wouldn't have prayed to him, would she? Lots and lots of Catholics pray to John Paul. That's because we are convinced that he is a saint and THEREFORE, we want the Church to hurry up and declare him one.

I'm not following your logic, HITMAN. Are you saying that God cannot work miracles? Or that He cannot work miracles through the prayer of a holy person? Or that if a holy person does not live forever, then it's proof that his prayers cannot cure someone else?

[HITMAN]

Are you saying that God cannot work miracles? Or that He cannot work miracles through the prayer of a holy person?

God can cure anyone but John Paul can't, the nun prayed to him & claims that he cured her thus Christianity drifted away from the basics of monotheism

[amo_l_oman]

Don't we have the same in Islam
When we need to pray for something difficult we can go to a person we know to be very religious [source Huda TV]
Christians simply give more importance to the intermediary

[HITMAN]

The nun said that it was John who cured her

She didn't mention that John asked God to cure her

There is a difference

[amo_l_oman]

Yes that's why saints are venerated, cause they're considered special
But their power comes from God
Just people get very emotional on this and tend to forget they're just God messengers
That's why they save [of those who lived recently] pieces of clothes or other personal items and pray on them
But is wrong to do so if I remember correctly

[Jeff]

God can cure anyone but John Paul can't, the nun prayed to him & claims that he cured her thus Christianity drifted away from the basics of monotheism

The nun doesn't claim that John Paul "cured" her apart from God. The nun claims that she was cured through the prayers of John Paul. This is called "intercession".

If you ask your friend to pray for you so that your cancer is cured, and your friend prays for you and your cancer is cured, you don't say it's done apart from God. But God works through the prayers of others...just as God chooses to work through doctors and medicines.

Nothing in this world or any other world is done by anyone or anything apart from God. God is behind it all. Even things which are against His Will are done by His permission and He created the persons and things which act against His Will, He instituted the physical laws by which they act, and they continue to exist from moment to moment only because He allows it. If God "forgot" us, we would disappear into nothingness in an instant...

If I say the doctors "cured" me, I mean that God cured me through doctors. If I say John Paul cured me and I am a Catholic, I mean that I asked John Paul to help me with his prayers and what I asked was achieved by God's action through John Paul's prayers.