The Insights We Can Gain From Atheists

Author and Rolling Stone journalist Randall Sullivan's personal experiences of the supposed apparition site at Medjugorje. The best writing I've encountered on spiritual themes. Hugely entertaining. Occasionally infuriating. Impossible to pin down. Honest. Brave. Sullivan has that rare quality in a writer, the quality of the genuine. If only Christian writers could write like this. But that's the thing. When God uses an atheist, sometimes the atheist, after a genuine conversion, will reveal a light in our faith that the rest of us have never seen.

I've seen several people mention The Heelers Diaries lately, from whence comes the above insightful comment and recommendation of The Miracle Detective. Check out the complete list at the link.

It is horrifying to think that an image that had received so many prayers over the centuries could be so blithely destroyed. Then again, the Church could reply that works of religious art are intended to be not receptacles for prayer, but windows to a higher reality; that one prays through, not to, an image. A statue of Mary is not Mary, and maybe it's better to melt down the images from time to time before they turn into idols.

I am reminded that I reviewed The Miracle Detective long ago, as well as Virgin Trails which is about an atheist who nevertheless becomes interested in going on Marian pilgrimages. Heeler Diaries' observation applies to both books, as you might surmise from the above excerpt from Virgin Trails.

Both are books that earned a permanent place on my groaning bookshelves and which I need to reread. And, of course, both are recommended.