News that the Vatican has given the late pontiff John Paul II credit for a miracle related to Parkinson's leads Michael Kinsley—who has Parkinson's himself—to one conclusion: "The Roman Catholic Church has either a very good or a very bad sense of humor." After all, if the church dropped its opposition to stem cell research, maybe miracles for other sufferers wouldn't be necessary, he writes in Politico. In John Paul's feat, a nun says she prayed to him after he died, and, poof, her Parkinson's vanished. Vatican doctors say divine intervention is the only logical explanation.
Er, fine, writes Kinsley. "But I could use a miraculous cure for Parkinson’s, too, as could millions of others around the world who have the disease or will develop it. And the main force preventing such a miracle is the Roman Catholic Church." Stem cell research offers the best hope for a cure, but the church opposes it because it uses human embryos. "They are not fetuses; they are clumps of a few dozen cells," Kinsley writes, but the Vatican won't budge. Kinsley can only hope that, for his next miracle, John Paul "will do something to rectify this situation." Read the full column here.
(More Pope John Paul II stories.)
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