Strange Article

I've followed Politico for some time now, and I know more or less what to expect regarding the kind of stories that usually appear there. As the name suggests, Politico is a forum for discussing and reporting political news. That said, I have never come across an article like the one appearing here, written by Michael Kinsley. He uses the recent news of Pope John Paul II's beatification in May as a springboard to launch into an attack on the Church's position on embryonic stem-cell research and to undercut the miracle attributed to JP II's intercession. It's just bizarre for Politico to feature an entire piece on this. (Elsewhere in the article, Kinsley employs a weak analogy fallacy to try to make his case for the legitimacy of pushing ahead with testing on embryonic stem-cells.)

Of course there is another possibility besides a miracle: Maybe she [Sister Marie Simon-Pierre] never had Parkinson’s in the first place. There is no way to diagnose Parkinson’s for sure. You just eliminate other possibilities — generally far worse, such as a brain tumor — until Parkinson’s is the last malady standing, and often a welcome one considering the alternatives. But, according to the AP, “Vatican-appointed doctors” determined that “her cure had no scientific explanation.” That sounds bad, but actually it’s good. If there’s no scientific explanation, the explanation must be unscientific. In other words, a miracle. There’s nothing like a scientific explanation to spoil everything. Fortunately, none ever materialized. Therefore, the Vatican doctors concluded, it was a miracle. One down, one to go.