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It is with a weary heart that I read headlines proclaiming the upcoming beatification and canonization of our last pope-in-chief John Paul II.   It is quite the process becoming a saint, with rigorous standards and such.  It requires not one…but two MIRACLES plus the second MIRACLE you need to be dead, but still responsible for said MIRACLE (damn shift key is sticking).  Anyhow, it 2011 now, well into the 21st century and we have people studiously documenting MIracles (whew fixed the damn key) so they can ‘properly’ call someone a saint.  Perhaps January 2011 is the month rationality takes a break in Trinidad and Tobago and Magic and Superstition take over for awhile.

“Pope Benedict XVI on Friday attributed a miracle to the late Pope John Paul II, which moves the former pontiff one step closer to sainthood.   Benedict declared that the cure of a French nun who suffered from Parkinson’s disease was a miracle.”

Citation needed. The sainthood process for JPII was apparently high on the new popes to-do list.

“Just weeks after taking over, Benedict waived the normal five-year waiting period, which essentially put John Paul on a fast track to sainthood.

However, Benedict insisted on a thorough review process.”

The fast track indeed, but we need the thorough review process because we would not want to make a mistake we need the right type ensure that the magic and wishful thinking miracles were of the appropriate sort. (?)

“A Vatican-appointed group of doctors and theologians, cardinals and bishops agreed that the cure of a French nun, Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, was a miracle because of the intercession of John Paul.  Two months after John Paul’s death, the nun claimed she woke up feeling cured of her disease. The nun and the others in her order had prayed to John Paul, who also suffered from Parkinson’s.

In a statement issued Friday, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints said Vatican-appointed doctors “scrupulously” studied the case and found that the nun’s cure had no scientific explanation.”

I hope, for the sake of mankind, that if we are being studied by an advanced civilization they were away from their instruments during this sad instalment of mass delusional religious behaviour.  I can imagine alien coffee being spewed over screens if they actually caught wind of this malignantly farcical episode.