Tragic. Read this story of an un-necessary death of a boy who belonged to a faith healing Christian sect called the Followers of Christ.
Second death in the same family. The first death was a toddler whose parents didn’t pursue medical treatment for a condition easily cured. Now the toddler’s uncle–a sixteen year old boy has not just died, but died a long and painful death due to urethra infection that could have been treated simply with a catheter.
The Followers of Christ are a charismatic, fundamentalist sect. You can read about them at this Wikkipedia link.
Here’s an excerpt: It appears the un-necessary deaths of children is quite a commonplace thing for these folks.
During the latter part of the twentieth century, the church began to attract attention from authorities in the state of Oregon due to an unusally-high mortality rate among its children. Larry Lewman, a former medical examiner in the state, alleges that during a ten-year period twenty-five children perished due to the lack of medical intervention — a death rate 26 times higher than among the general population. An investigation by The Oregonian claimed that 21 out of 78 minors found to be buried in the church cemetery died of preventable causes, including simple infections which would be easily treated with routine antibiotics.
But don’t the parents have the right to exercise their right to choose whether or not to let their child live? Oh, I forgot…that’s only for unborn children!
This is one of things I find about Charistmatic Catholicism; some of the ‘teaching’ seems so detached from the idea of reasonable faith. I’ve no doubt miracles can and do happen, but I find an ever growing attitude that we’ll heal overselves and not seek Christs healing in Him and the Doctors he calls to help us.
Most charismatic Catholics I know would be horrified by this story. God works through doctors too.
This is a case of what Pope Benedict described as “pathologies of religion” (paraphrase) that arise when faith is divorced from reason.
This is very tragic. I pray these families come to see the light and realize that God works his miracles also through our care for one another.
Get back to work. The blogosphere’s boring without you.
Jesus can work healing miracles through prayer and faith; I have had this happen to me praying for another, but I told her to go to her doctor. I don’t claim to have a healing ministry and go on the charismatic conference circuit and sell books and tapes. LOLWhen I got dx’d with breast cancer last year, I sought out not a charismatic or pentecostal prayer group or church, but the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, done after Mass with a small group of us in need of it. Despite having had cancers before, this was the first time I sought out the Sacrament. It was really moving to gather around the altar as a group in need of healing. While we were waiting for Father to get things ready, I spoke briefly. Ask for a miracle! Jesus is the Healer. But many times he works his miracles in secret, under the appearance of regular medical treatment. Trust in Jesus, and trust that he’ll work through your doctors and nurses and technicians. In the Bible, in the Book of Tobit, the healing archangel St. Raphael doesn’t directly perform a healing miracle, but guides Tobias in “useful medicines.” So ask St. Raphael the Archangel to guide and inspire your health care team in useful medicines. And trust in God, no matter what the outcome…because even if we’re sick or old or scarred, we’re getting back a perfect resurrected, glorified body on the Last Day! So let’s believe in healing and hold on to our Easter hope and profession of faith. We all exchanged hugs (we’re a very close parish) and then Father administered the Sacrament and it was SO MOVING!