Christine M. Flowers: Pope John Paul II is a saint for our times

WHEN Rep. Gabrielle Giffords showed signs of an amazing recovery after being shot in Tucson, Ariz., people started talking about miracles.

When actor Michael Douglas was declared cancer-free after some reports had him on his deathbed, miracles were also invoked.

Lately, whenever anything remotely surprising happens, we have no problem attributing it to the miraculous.

But of course, we're just using a term of speech. Few truly believe that miracles, the bona fide and highly visible evidence of God in our midst, really happen.

Doctors, scientists and academics downplay the idea of the divine by speaking in words with 10 syllables. Atheists become their usual patronizing selves, ridiculing the mere prospect that the world doesn't end at our own navels.

And spiritual author Marianne Williamson gets rich by teaching a course in miracles, although you could save yourself some dough by watching a few episodes of "Touched by an Angel" and get the same smarmy, feel-good result.

Recently, though, we've all had an opportunity to experience a true miracle. This one comes with the Vatican's seal of approval and moves a very special person that much closer to a halo.

Earlier this month, the church confirmed the authenticity of a miracle attributed to Pope John Paul II, enough to lead to his beatification. Investigators found that a French nun had been miraculously cured of Parkinson's disease after praying to the former pope shortly after his death in 2005.

This means that, probably in our own lifetime, the man who defined the papacy for a generation will become St. John Paul.

Of course, the former pope was used to working miracles. Most people believe that he, along with President Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (and with the grudging assistance of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev), shredded the Iron Curtain. Of that group, John Paul is widely credited as the moral force that fueled the drive to destroy what Reagan called the "Evil Empire."

For people born after 1980, it's difficult to remember communism's ugly face. Yes, China is still in its death grip, but we in the West have learned to shut our ears to the cries of the persecuted while holding our hands wide open for their currency and cut-rate commodities.

That's our shame, and we've accommodated ourselves to living with it. We even throw cozy state dinners (hosted by a gushing Nobel Peace Prize winner for the tyrants who've imprisoned the latest winner of that prize) and try not to embarrass their leaders in public.

John Paul would've faced the evil head on, without flinching.

Shortly after being elevated to the papacy in 1979, this Polish priest journeyed back to his home country, which was still under the yoke of a Soviet pawn named Jaruzelski, and with the force of his personality and the strength he derived from his faith, taught the Poles how to save their souls.

That's because faith, at least the kind typified by a man like John Paul II, is the only antidote to evil. In a recent essay about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, another man of faith who was martyred by the Nazis, Alan Wolfe makes this observation:

Bonhoeffer believed "that confrontation with evil demands that beliefs be anchored in the laws of nature or the laws of God. Only when convictions are absolutely secure . . . can we know what to do, and have the courage to do it. But nothing in liberal secularism is secure, and this is by design. For this reason liberalism - and secularism - have no solution to the problem of evil. Confronted by monsters, a liberal instinctively wishes to reason with them."

John Paul II worked a miracle simply by being able to call communism evil, and urge people of all convictions to stand up against it. He put himself on the line for his beliefs, a true Christian soldier who ended up winning one of the most important battles of the 20th century.

So while curing a French nun is admirable, it's hardly the most miraculous thing he ever did. But it's a start.

Of course, the secular liberals needed to undermine this glorious moment. Not willing to let a feel-good story about Catholicism go by without reminding us - yet again - about their differences with the church, a story posted on Philly.com added this to the mix:

"There are critics, too, who note his strong opposition to female priests, abortion and gay rights, and the fact that many of the cases of sexual molestation or physical abuse of minors by priests occurred during his 27-year papacy."

It's an inaccurate attempt to minimize the moment by demonizing the man. (Most cases of sexual abuse occurred well before John Paul was elected, during 1940s through the 1960s.) Petty and wrong. It's a miracle these people can live with themselves.

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer. E-mail

cflowers1961@yahoo.com. She blogs at philly.com/philly/blogs/flowersshow.