A Superior’s Opinion

Father DiOrio’s failure to respond is supported by the Reverend George Lange, the bishop’s representative to the charismatic movement in Worcester, Massachusetts. Commenting on the matter of faith-healing to a newspaper reporter, he said:Everyone wants to know whether [Father DiOrio’s] cures are real or not. I say that they are. Sure, some are psychosomatic, and some hysterical, and some can be explained through natural reason. I don’t have any problem with that, because they’re still real. There’s no great reason to prove them because when a doctor provides the means of healing, you feel God is working through him. God is working throughout a person’s life. It’s not that important to prove that it’s extraordinary or divine intervention.

I can understand the Reverend Lange’s insistence that it is “not important” to examine DiOrio’s claims of being able to heal. If it were allowed to become important, all of the church’s many supernatural claims might become subject to close examination, and the very survival of the church depends upon a continuing, persistent faith that allows no skepticism at all. Blind belief is an absolutely necessary foundation for magical thinking.

More Incredible Claims, But No Evidence

DiOrio of course admits that some of the seeming cures that pour from his fingertips can be of a psychosomatic nature. But, he says, he believes that in such cases the “spirit” needs to be cured before such a cure becomes permanent. He adds:But when we have a case of one leg shorter than another or curvature of the spine, or deafness, and that is healed, that is a real miracle.

That is exactly what this book has been trying to establish. And Father Ralph DiOrio has been of no help in the investigation. Cases for which we have been able to examine the evidence without DiOrio’s help do not support his claims. For example, Cecile Boscardin of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, a victim of cancer, visited DiOrio in 1976 and was thoroughly convinced that she had been cured. Her doctor had told her that hers was a terminal case, and she testified that she had been healed by Father DiOrio during a “slaying in the spirit” experience. Less than a year later, Cecile was dead of cancer. Questioned by the press, DiOrio replied:Why are some healed when some others, even with the same affliction, are not? I don’t know the answer; only God knows.

Perhaps the answer is—as it appears to be—that no one is cured. The Catholic church has no problem with the claims of such Catholic healers as DiOrio. Its foggy reasoning on the subject, was expressed in the April 1985 issue of U.S. Catholic magazine:God’s healing power is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of mystery, as inexplicable as the omnipotent force to which it is credited. And it will remain so. It operates beyond the will of those who purport to be its vehicles, the clergy and laypeople who say they have shrunken tumors, relieved arthritis, or restored hearing.

With the attitude so far shown by the Catholic church with regard to providing any evidence of actual healings brought about through its “vehicles,” this power is certain to remain forever “a matter of mystery.”