Thursday, August 8, 2013

Mystery Priest

Odd story. The victim of a head-on car crash, nineteen year old Katie Lentz, was rescued from the wreckage after a mysterious Catholic priest seemingly appeared out of nowhere, armed with a bottle of anointing oil, and said a prayer for the victim. Now what is interesting is that rescuers had apparently been struggling for an hour trying to extricate Lentz when this happened. After the prayer - and after another fire department showed up - the rescue was finally successful.

The story is here in this Yahoo news item, and a fire chief involved explained it this way:

He came up and approached the patient, and offered a prayer, New London Fire Chief Raymond Reed told KHQA-TV. It was a Catholic priest who had anointing oil with him. A sense of calmness came over her, and it did us as well...I can't be for certain how it was said, but myself and another firefighter, we very plainly heard that we should remain calm, that our tools would now work and that we would get her out of that vehicle.

The strangeness continued when rescuers turned to thank the priest and found he had apparently returned to the nowhere from which he came. As happens with people of a religious turn of mind, soon speculation began that this mystery priest might have been an angel instead of a priest.

USA Today also reported the story and also quotes Reed:

I think it's a miracle...I would say whether it was an angel that was sent to us in the form of a priest or a priest that became our angel, I don't know. Either way, I'm good with it.

Additional details were given, such as that the Lentz, the crash victim, asked for someone to pray with her. That was when the mysterious priest appeared. No one recognized the priest as being one of the locals. And then there is this, Chief Reed added: "I have 69 photographs that were taken from minutes after that accident happened — bystanders, the extrication, our final cleanup — and he's not in them."
  
The good news is that Katie Lentz is well on the road to recovery. Everyone involved in her rescue are reporting that she never screamed or cried, but just asked that she be prayed for and out loud.

Time was - and rather recently at that - that I would have picked this account apart and poked a little fun at it. But even if prayer is no more than a placebo, I think that isn't a small thing.

I suspect there is a more "natural" explanation than that the priest was really an angel. But to those involved in the rescue, and I'm sure to Katie's family, this was a brush with the divine. Had I been in Katie's shoes, I would have prayed, too.

18 comments:

  1. You would indeed have "...picked it..." in past. I read many of your posts this way. Do you think as you grow older that you are groping and finding many teachings of your youth more possible and meaningful? Do you feel that they have a purpose for you, in YOUR life now that was not so clear before?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. What I think is that I am coming to terms, the older I get, with the real reasons for my leaving the faith of my childhood. As some of my last posts on my old blog indicated, disappointment was the thing - the collapse of my parents' marriage (and therefore the family), the later collapse of my own marriage. Even the intellectual difficulties I had chiefly centered on my disappointment with reconciling belief in the Bible God with evil in the world around me. (Of course I can't help noticing that some of the most noted theistic apologists throughout history have grappled with that problem, yet without abandoning their faith.)

      Now as for this mystery priest story, I think it would have made a good episode of Unsolved Mysteries. But in younger days I would have been a debunker because the strand of Christianity I was a part of considered Catholicism a false religion; thus an angel would hardly have impersonated a Catholic priest. (Sheesh!)

      Presently, I just think it is a fun story which people will consider in light of their own biases..

      Delete
    2. Maybe it wasn't a Catholic priest. Maybe it was a clergy person wearing a collar and was mistaken for a priest?

      I was someone's angel once. She was crumpled on the floor in her hospital room. There she was still entangled in her restraints. She yelled and yelled and yelled this mournful moan. I was also a patient in the hospital and I was doing my night-time shuffle around the ward when I couldn't take her predicament another minute. So I went into her room. She asked me to help her up and I told her I was a patient with back and neck problems, showed her my neck brace and explained that I could not help her into her chair. I then told her I could though wait with her and her room-mate until the nurses arrived.

      That's when I found out I was her angel sent from God. :-)

      Delete
    3. I think, Zoe, it is easier to be that type of angel than most people think, and the world would be a much better place if more of us tried.

      Delete
    4. You should have seen me when she told me I was her angel sent from God. I smiled. Told her I wasn't an angel. Just a patient who heard her cries and thought I'd keep her company until help arrived. I later found out she was a deeply religious woman. If I'd known I would have stayed an angel. :-)

      Delete
    5. I know. But to that woman, both were true: you were an angel sent from God and a patient who showed compassion.

      Delete
  2. I don't think we have begun to explain these types of things. I feel that they should just be accepted for the results and know that we have a long way to go in our understanding of all things.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know I can't explain them. :-)

      Delete
    2. Don, when I started reading and thinking about the Bible (the "Holy Book: of my youth) that way rather than as a strict rationalist, things really started to click for me. Meaning can be very individual.

      Delete
  3. I must add to Zoe---I too believe we have the potential to be an 'angel' a 'messenger' and 'savior' for others. In fact I think it is what we are MEANT to BE. Opportunities are all around us, every day. I know I have been helped by angels in my life. One disappeared just like in the accident story. If I had been in that man's position, I would have disappeared too---it also behooves us to spread hope and faith.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I can't disagree with you at all. Before I came back to respond to my comments I checked the internet to see if the mystery of the priest had been solved, but so far it hasn't, even though the story has gone viral.

      Delete
  4. ‘“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary.
    To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
    (St. Thomas Aquinas)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, I think the philosopher certainly hit the nail on the head there. Check out my latest post.

      Delete
    2. I tend to see the quote as derogatory. That those "without faith" according to St. Thomas Aquinas and the philosopher are "less than" those who have it. That there is something wrong with those who don't have faith. That those who do pass and those who don't fail.

      I tend to see the quote as closed. Rather black and white. Dogmatic. But, that's me.

      Delete
  5. Chesterton pointedly noted: "Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all." I agree with that, too. Who among us is totally unbiased or so emotionally detached from life that we can be completely objective?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There was a time when I was afraid to bring my bias to the table. I'm still working on it. :-)

      Delete