We specialize in achieving the near-impossible. Miracles take a little longer.

That’s the old joke, isn’t it. We smile because, by definition, miracles are simply not admissable by a rational mind, however long they take.

Except, that is, in Italy, where “miracles” happen all the time. Daniel Williams has got an interesting piece in the Washington Post about this continuing phenomenon. “Weeping Madonnas, sacred blood that goes from solid to liquid and back again, lottery numbers divined by gazing at a photo of a deceased pope, sudden cures after contact with a holy relic: Miracles are old phenomena in Italy, the land where St. Francis tamed a wolf and wild doves.”

His story, though, is about a scientist, Luigi Garlaschelli, who assiduously investigates emerging miracles from his lab at Pavia University. “He belongs to a group called the Italian Committee to Investigate Claims of the Paranormal, made up of Italian scientists who use science to try to explain the inexplicable.”

“Miracles are just paranormal events in religious clothing,” Garlaschelli says. “I’m a chemist. I look for the substance behind things. We’re just trying to study phenomena. If there’s a non-miraculous answer, we say so.”

Nowadays, he believes, it’s often about defending scientific methods against attacks from fundamentalists. He cites the growing tussle in the U.S. between the Evolutionists, who champion variations on the work of Charles Darwin, and the supporters of Intelligent Design. Add the Creationists to the mix and, “Science should not be lethargic.”

As for Rome and its attitude to strange events, the Reverend Peter Gumpel, an official at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, which investigates reports of miracles by candidates for sainthood, is suitably sceptical. “Some of these things are medieval in origin,” he says. “I stay away from them. Our belief, however, is that there is a personal God who intervenes in history.”

The Washington Post concludes:

Garlaschelli is a bearded man in a white lab coat who smokes a pipe. He studies not only religious phenomena, but also plain trickery. He has written a book about sorcerers and levitation and one about an ancient Italian sword stuck in a stone that may be the precursor of the King Arthur legend. It’s a far cry from his usual research, which produces academic papers with titles such as “Recent Progress in the Field of N-acylalanines as Systemic Fungicides.”

As for the “Italian” sword in the stone, a major pinch of salt is required. That tale is a British legend.

[Source: azCentral]