“A deliberately ill Theresa would not have been in St. Joe’s yesterday.”
“Makes sense to me,” Tully said.
“Me too,” Weber said.
“How about that quick escape from the church after she was ‘cured’?” Tully asked. “I’d a thought she’d stick around. Maybe say thanks to whoever she was praying to. Maybe talk to people. Hell, maybe go a little crazy.
“Instead, she gets out of the church and the neighborhood as fast as she can.”
“That was Wally’s idea entirely,” Weber said. “At first, he was shocked out of his wits when she got out of that wheelchair and started crawling toward the altar. Then, in a flash, he realized what had happened. He didn’t give a thought to a miracle of any kind. He still doesn’t think this was a miracle-in the sense of a cure. The miracle was that now Theresa could … had to … take care of herself. He would be rid of the burden of her.
“And he wanted to get Theresa out of there before the crowd had a chance to love her to death and hurt her. And then she’d be right back in his house, this time as a genuine cripple. So he got her out of there before even Theresa could grasp what was happening.”
“Something like The Man Who Came to Dinner,” Koesler said.
The three men laughed heartily.
“Well, that settles that,” Koesler said. “No Church authority will ever certify this as a miracle.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Are you sure?” Tully asked Koesler.
“Of what?”
“This … cure of the Waleski girl … that it isn’t a miracle?”
“No,” Koesler said. “Not that it isn’t a miracle. Rather that the Church will claim very strongly that it isn’t a miracle. Sometimes medical science can’t tell where treatment ends and the miraculous begins. I don’t know … I don’t think we’ll ever know whether God intervened here. But I do know that what happened to Theresa is not within the boundaries the Church set up to differentiate between genuine miracles and the seeming miraculous.”
“Been doing some research, Bob?” Weber was wearing a mischievous grin.
Koesler nodded. “After all, this is going on in my backyard. Sooner or later some reporter is going to pin me down no matter how many times I plead no comment or try to refer him or her to the panel that’s supposed to do a Church investigation of these events.
“Anyway, what I learned-although I knew some of this before I began looking up the process-well, what I learned is that there is a Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the Vatican that handles a lot of the miracle verification. And I take it they set the standards for accepting or rejecting claims of miracles.
“This Congregation goes all the way back to the early eighteenth century and Pope Benedict XIV. There are four criteria. The first is that the problem-the injury, the illness-is serious. Life-threatening or crippling would be in the ballpark.
“Second, that there is objective proof of the existence of the problem. X-rays, CAT scans, documented diagnoses of doctors, that sort of thing.
“Third, that other treatment has failed. I guess a miracle has to be the final attempt at healing or a cure after trying everything medical science can throw at an illness.
“Finally, the cure has to be rapid and lasting. Everybody will agree that we may never know all the body can do to heal itself. A working immune system is a force to be reckoned with.
“As much as our bodies can accomplish in a self-help effort, we know there are things that the body can’t do by itself-not even with all that medical science can do to help. A body assaulted with massive cancers one day and completely healed the next. That’s the sort of thing we’re looking for in a miracle. And a cure that is lasting is the best proof that it wasn’t an hysterical wonder moment.
“Some of the sleazier faith healers can work sick people into a frenzy. The cripple may throw aside a brace or crutches and appear cured. But after the hysterical moment is over and the adrenaline slows down, it’s back to the wheelchair.”
Tully nodded. Clearly he was again and more deeply impressed by the care and caution exercised by the Church when it came to claims of miracles.
“So,” Koesler continued, “if any one of these criteria is missing or flawed, it’s no miracle as far as the Church is concerned. And that’s the possible difference between Dr. Green and Theresa Waleski.
“You could argue that the paralysis was a very serious illness. You could argue that just about everything medical science can supply was tried. Certainly, with all the consulting doctors, it was not a case of not having tried other treatment.
“But there is no objective proof that it is a physical problem. The best diagnosis revealed no physical cause, but concluded that it was more probably psychosomatic-that it was all in her head.
“On top of that, while the ‘cure’ was rapid enough, it hasn’t yet met the test of time.
“And even if it is a lasting ‘cure,’ there never was objective proof. So, with the complete loss of one of the criteria, Theresa’s healing will never be pronounced a miracle by the Church.”
“And Green?” Tully asked.
“Dr. Green is something else again, no matter how you look at him,” Koesler said. “If he was dead-really dead-then he transcends all the criteria.
“What did he have? Mostly chronic back pain. Terribly, agonizingly painful. Again, it could have been psychosomatic. He had lots of treatment and medications.
“But the big thing is that we don’t know right now whether he was cured of his illness or not. The important claim is that he was ‘cured of death.’ If he really died and now he lives, for whatever reason he was given this favor, he is a walking miracle.”
In the silence that followed this statement, Tully pondered the unfamiliar ground he now occupied.
Dead people were his job when death was due to homicide. Dead people who came back to life were beyond him in every direction.
But he was relieved that Theresa Waleski would not have her “miracle” ratified. Had hers qualified as a genuine miracle, since she was inspired by Green’s success and since she sought it at the very spot where Green had “returned to life,” her “miracle” could constitute added authentication that the Green “miracle” was genuine.
Tully had vibes, perhaps intuition that had been honed by years of police work, that Green had not really died. Nor had he become comatose by accident. Tully’s hunch was that someone had tried to kill the doctor. That would make it attempted murder. Familiar ground for Tully.
His reverie crumbled as the news conference swung into gear.
Under the bright lights and ensuing shadows of the sun guns, reporters balanced notepads and juggled breakfast rolls and coffee as the principals mounted the dais.
Koesler looked around at the media personnel scrambling for a good vantage not only for seeing and hearing everything but also for launching a question or several.
He knew few of these people personally. The TV reporters were familiar enough. Endless times he had watched as they reported from various local and out-state locales. Radio reporters were voices-magnificent voices-with no familiar face to identify. As for the print journalists, those he did know he had met by accident.
Some overhead lights were turned off as the TV lights became fully operative and exactly positioned. From where they were seated, Weber, Koesler, and Tully found it difficult to make out anyone except those on the dais.
Ned Bradley, head of the Department of Communications for the archdiocese, approached the microphone and tested it. It was working, not very effectively, but working. The radio and TV technicians and reporters checked to gauge their voice levels.