Can there be miracles in other religions?

Mk 9:38-40: a decisive Gospel precedent

The Gospel itself raises the question, and answers it. John sees « a man who cast out demons in thy name, and we forbade him, because he followed not us ». Jesus answers:

« Do not forbid him, for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is on our part. » — Jesus, in Mark 9:39-40^[4]

This episode is doctrinally decisive. It establishes that God's power is not held captive by the visible community of disciples: a « stranger » can, in certain cases, act by grace. But the condition is stated immediately: « in my name », that is, in a real orientation towards Christ. The boundary is not geographical or denominational; it is interior and theological.

Nostra aetate (1965): what the Church does not reject

Four and a half centuries after the Reformation (1517–1965), and after the trials of the colonial era, the Second Vatican Council promulgated on 28 October 1965 the declaration Nostra aetate on the relations of the Church with non-Christian religions. Its central formula has become a landmark of the contemporary magisterium:

« The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence these ways of conduct and of life, these precepts and doctrines which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. » — Second Vatican Council, Nostra aetate § 2, 28 October 1965^[5]

The Church thus recognises, to varying degrees, elements of truth, goodness and holiness outside her visible boundaries. This recognition applies as much to doctrine as to practice: prayer, asceticism, charity, the quest for the divine. It does not mean that all religions are equally right, nor that all their spectacular phenomena are of divine origin. Nostra aetate adds at once:

« The Church proclaims, and is in duty bound to proclaim without fail, Christ who is « the way, the truth and the life » (Jn 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself. » — Second Vatican Council, Nostra aetate § 2^[6]

Dominus Iesus (2000): the doctrinal safeguard

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, over the signature of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, published on 6 August 2000 the declaration Dominus Iesus precisely to prevent a syncretist reading of Nostra aetate. The text recalls that Jesus Christ is « the one mediator between God and men » (1 Tim 2:5), and that the Church possesses « the fullness of the means of salvation »^[7]. The other traditions, insofar as they contain authentic elements, owe them not to their autonomy as religions competing with Christianity, but to « the mysterious action of the Spirit »^[8], which is never separated from Christ.

The Catechism formulates this in two dense paragraphs:

« Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is regarded by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel, and given by Him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life. » — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 843^[9]

And further on:

« The Catholic Church recognizes that many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside her visible structure: the written Word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, and visible elements. » — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 819^[10]

Practical consequence for our question

The question can there be a miracle outside the visible Church? thus receives, doctrinally, a positive answer in principle. God can answer any sincere prayer, wherever it is found. If a Muslim pleads with heaven for their child in danger, nothing prevents God from granting this prayer — and many Catholics even hold that He grants it often, because the Father in heaven "makes his sun rise on the wicked and on the good" (Mt 5:45). Saint Thomas Aquinas goes further: he states that virtuous pagans can receive a preparatory grace leading to faith, without which no one is saved^[11]. It is at this level, and no other, that the authentic prodigies reported outside Christianity belong: not as proofs of a competing doctrinal system, but as traces of a divine action that prepares, attracts, welcomes.

To understand why a prodigy outside Christianity never validates by itself a competing religion, one must recall what the Catholic tradition means by "miracle". The word does not carry the vague meaning given to it in everyday conversation ("it's a miracle he came through") nor the performative meaning sometimes given to it by global Pentecostal culture.

The Thomistic definition: three conditions

Saint Thomas Aquinas takes up and refines the Augustinian definition. A miracle in the strict sense is an event that meets three cumulative conditions^[12]:

1. A fact that is sensorily observable — not an inner intuition nor a private spiritual feeling.
2. Which surpasses the power of all created nature — not merely that of present-day medical art, not merely that of today's science; one that no created natural cause can account for, even in principle.
3. Wrought by God directly or instrumentally, as a sign — bearing a religious meaning, an attestation of the mission or doctrine of the one who invokes it.

This third condition is decisive. The Catholic miracle is never an isolated spectacle: it is a sign. It signifies a mission (Christ sent by the Father), a doctrine (the Real Presence), a holy life (the canonization of a saint), an intercession (a Marian shrine).

Dei Filius (1870): miracles as motives of credibility

The First Vatican Council, in its dogmatic constitution Dei Filius (24 April 1870), gives this definition a precise theological function. Miracles, together with fulfilled prophecies and the spread of the Church, are motives of credibility (motiva credibilitatis) that make the act of faith reasonable:

"So that the homage of our faith might be in accordance with reason, God willed that to the interior helps of the Holy Spirit there be joined external proofs of His revelation: divine facts, and above all miracles and prophecies, which, manifesting with splendor the omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God, are most certain signs of divine revelation, suited to the intelligence of all." — First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, ch. 3, DS 3009 (1870)^[13]

The council adds, in the same chapter, that the Church herself — through her spread, her holiness, her fruitfulness, her unity and her stability — constitutes a great and perpetual motive of credibility; and it specifies that this reasonable assent "is by no means a blind movement of the mind" ("nequaquam sit motus animi caecus").

It is this function of motive of credibility that distinguishes the Catholic miracle from ambivalent prodigies. A Eucharistic miracle confirms the Real Presence; a recognized Marian apparition confirms the divine motherhood of Mary; the stigmata of Saint Francis confirm the saving value of the Passion. Doctrine precedes the miracle, and the miracle attests the doctrine already received. The relationship is asymmetric.

The three possible origins of a prodigy

Saint Thomas, following the Fathers, identifies three possible origins for an apparently extraordinary fact:

Thomas grants demons, in the Summa Ia, q. 114, a real power to act upon matter within the limits of their angelic nature^[14]. They cannot perform a true miracle (which surpasses all created nature, and therefore angelic nature as well), but they can produce deceptive prodigies spectacular enough to lead astray a poorly prepared crowd. Saint Paul explicitly announces this regarding the Antichrist:

"His coming, the work of Satan, will be accompanied by all kinds of powerful deeds, signs, and lying prodigies, as well as all the deceptions of evil for those who are perishing." — Saint Paul, 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10^[15]

And Christ Himself warns:

"False christs and false prophets will arise; they will perform great signs and prodigies, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect." — Jesus, Matthew 24:24^[16]

This is why the Catholic tradition has never considered an extraordinary fact as proving in itself a doctrinal truth. The criterion of content is required: what does the prodigy mean? Where does it lead?

The five criteria of classical discernment

Joachim Bouflet, consultant to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome and author of Une histoire des miracles (Seuil, 2008), summarizes the five practical criteria that the Catholic magisterium has applied to extraordinary phenomena since the seventeenth century, codified by Prospero Lambertini (the future Benedict XIV) in his great treatise De servorum Dei beatificatione^[17]:

1. Reality of the fact: did the event really take place, attested by multiple independent witnesses, under verifiable conditions of observation?
2. Doctrinal content: is any message conveyed in accordance with the Catholic faith, or does it contain errors concerning God, Christ, the Church, morality?
3. Spiritual fruits: does the event produce true conversions, a return to the sacraments, increased charity, deeper humility — or rather pride, division, morbid devotion, emotional dependence on the phenomenon?
4. Moral life of the subject: does the person at the heart of the prodigy lead a life of prayer, penance, obedience, poverty — or rather seek glory, indulge in sensuality, show doctrinal instability?
5. Coherence with the Revelation already given: does the prodigy illuminate and confirm the deposit of faith (Scripture, Tradition, Magisterium) — or does it supplement it with "new revelations" that displace it?

The Norms for the discernment of presumed supernatural phenomena published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on 17 May 2024 take up this grid in six levels of graduated judgment, from the Nihil obstat to explicit condemnation, through intermediate positions^[18].

Consequence: why a prodigy outside Christianity is not enough

Applied to our question, this framework yields the precise theological answer. A genuine prodigy occurring in another tradition may satisfy criterion 1 (reality of the event) and even criteria 3 and 4 (fruits, moral life of the subject). But it almost always fails criteria 2 and 5: any message attached to it is embedded in a doctrine that contradicts Catholic Revelation (denial of the Trinity, denial of the divinity of Christ, denial of the redeeming Cross, polytheism, pantheism, transmigration of souls). The prodigy does not validate the system; it manifests, at best, a particular grace of God in spite of the system.

Intellectual honesty requires a serious presentation of what is genuinely attested outside Christianity, without caricaturing or inflating it. Several major traditions have produced, over the long term, detailed accounts of prodigies.

Buddhism: levitations, sokushinbutsu, preserved bodies

Milarépa and the Tibetan tradition

Milarépa (1052–1135 according to Tsangnyön Heruka; a variant pushes these dates to 1040–1123), the great yogi of Tibet and central figure of the Kagyü school, is the subject of a hagiographic biography written in the late fifteenth century by Tsangnyön Heruka, The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarépa (Mila grubum) and The Life of Milarépa (Mila Namthar)^[19]. These texts attribute to him a long list of prodigies: levitation and flight, clairvoyance, mind-to-mind transmission, the ability to « hold a lake back », to shrink small enough to enter a yak's horn, to split a rock with a glance, to become invisible^[20].

The critical datum, acknowledged by contemporary Indologists, is that these accounts are late: three to four centuries separate the alleged events from their first written record, and the earliest version attributed to the disciple Gampopa differs substantially from the canonical version (for example, it is the mother, not the father, who dies first; the murders by black magic do not appear)^[21]. The dossier of Milarépa therefore belongs more to constructed pious hagiography than to documentary testimony. Unlike the dossier of Saint Joseph of Cupertino, there is no contemporary witness who gave sworn testimony in an investigative proceeding.

Sokushinbutsu: the self-mummified monks of Yamagata

Sokushinbutsu (即身仏, « Buddha in this body ») is the practice of ritual self-mummification observed mainly in Yamagata Prefecture, in northern Japan, between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries, among the monks of the ascetic Shingon school of Mount Yudono^[22]. Some twenty sokushinbutsu bodies are today displayed in Japanese temples (Dainichi-Bō, Kaikō-ji, Nangaku-ji).

The process, documented by historians of Japanese Buddhism, is strictly chemical and ascetic:

1. Three years of a regimen eliminating body fat: nuts, berries, seeds, intense exercise.
2. Three years of extreme caloric reduction: bark, roots, sometimes pebbles.
3. Absorption of urushi tea (Toxicodendron vernicifluum), the toxic sap used for Japanese lacquer, which saturates the body's tissues with tannins and compounds that repel insects and bacteria.
4. Live burial in a stone tomb, with a ventilation tube and a bell rung daily by the meditating monk, until he expired.
5. Exhumation several years later to verify the preservation and ratify the status of « living Buddha »^[23].

This procedure is in reality a successful artificial mummification through dehydration and chemical impregnation of the body. It is not incorruptibility in the Catholic sense of the term. Sokushinbutsu are dry, parchment-like, mummified bodies, never bodies whose « skin remains supple as if they were asleep ». The practice was in fact banned by the Japanese state in the late nineteenth century as a form of ritualised suicide.

Hambo Lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov (1852–1927)

The most debated twentieth-century case in the Buddhist world is that of Hambo Lama Itigilov, twelfth head of the Russian Buddhists (Buryatia), who died in seated meditation on 15 June 1927 at Khukhe-Zurkhen^[24]. According to his testamentary instructions, his disciples buried him in a pine coffin with his body in the lotus position, and exhumed him first in 1955, then in 1973, then in 2002 — each time, according to monastic testimonies, without visible signs of decomposition.

The public exhumation of 11 September 2002 was the subject of scientific analyses by the Russian Centre for Forensic Medical Expertise and by researchers from Moscow State University. The reports note that the body has « the consistency of a living body » and displays soft tissues, without embalming^[25]. Enthusiasts of the dossier conclude that it is a Buddhist miracle. Cautious researchers note that no independent analysis could be conducted (the Ivolginsk monastery refuses tissue sampling), that the prolonged seated position and the particular moisture of the Buryat soil may contribute to partial preservation, and that the degree of preservation described (parchment-like skin, partially supple joints) remains far below the great Catholic cases.

Open comparison with Saint Bernadette Soubirous (died 16 April 1879, exhumed three times in 1909, 1919, and 1925): Bernadette's body is today visible in the chapel of Saint-Gildard in Nevers, in such a state of preservation that her hands retain their suppleness, her face that of a woman dead only a few hours, while the rosary in her hands « had rusted to pieces » and her clothes were partially damaged by the dampness of the tomb^[26]. No chemical process, no prior ascetic mummification, no exposure to the tannins of urushi: a body simply buried in the damp earth of the Nivernais, found intact thirty years later. At the third exhumation (18 April 1925), a thin wax mask was placed over the face and hands before the body was exposed in the shrine at Nevers: what the visitor sees today are those wax-covered features, resting on a body that remained intact without any embalming.

Hinduism: Ramanujan, yogis, Sai Baba

The Ramanujan case: « the dreams of Namagiri »

Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920), one of the greatest mathematical geniuses of the twentieth century, attributed his discoveries — infinite series, partitions of integers, formulas for calculating π with unheard-of precision — to the Hindu goddess Namagiri Thayar of the temple of Namakkal in Tamil Nadu, to whom his family was especially devoted. Ramanujan claimed to receive the formulas in dreams, and he testified to this openly to his colleagues at Cambridge (G. H. Hardy, J. E. Littlewood)^[27].

« An equation has no meaning for me unless it expresses a thought of God. » — Srinivasa Ramanujan, reported by G. H. Hardy^[28]

The datum is historically real. No serious person denies Ramanujan's inexplicable genius, nor the origin experienced by him as religious. But what does it show?

First level: Ramanujan was a deeply religious mind, and the grace of God is never refused to a man of good will. The Catholic can recognise here an exceptional intellectual gift received from the one God, independent of the Hindu mythology in which Ramanujan interpreted it.

Second level: an intellectual gift is not a miracle in the canonical sense. It is not a public, verifiable sign that attests to a doctrine by transcending the laws of all created nature. It is an individual case of elevated natural grace, whose subsequent religious interpretation ("Namagiri gave it to me") stems from the subject's interiority rather than from demonstration. No theorem of Ramanujan, in itself, confirms the existence of the goddess Namagiri; it merely bears witness that Ramanujan experienced it that way. This is an essential difference from a Eucharistic miracle verified under a microscope or a healing at Lourdes ratified by the International Medical Bureau after six decades of investigation.

The levitating yogis and their critics

The Hindu tradition has long reported cases of levitation among advanced yogis (the vibhuti or siddhis of Patañjali's Yoga Sutra). These accounts are ancient, hagiographic, and lack any modern documentary record comparable to that of Joseph of Cupertino. When modern cases were presented to the public — such as those of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement in the 1980s, which claimed to teach "yogic levitation" — video investigations consistently showed hops in the lotus position, never a sustained elevation^[29].

The public exposure of Sathya Sai Baba

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011), a massively venerated Indian guru, claimed to materialize sacred ash (vibhuti), rings, and medals, and to perform healings. The methodical exposés by the magician and rationalist Basava Premanand, founder of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, publicly reproduced each of these "miracles" as classic conjuring tricks (sleeving, palming, staged complicity). The documentary Guru Busters (1995, BBC / Robert Eagle) shows Premanand performing the same tricks on stage in a matter of seconds^[30].

The contrast with a serious Catholic case file (Lourdes, Padre Pio, Carlo Acutis) is here a radical one: the phenomenal content collapses under examination, with no independent investigation and no verifiable life of holiness to support the hypothesis of divine intervention. St. Thomas already stated as much: a true miracle confirms the mission of the one who receives or performs it; it cannot be recognized without a corresponding record of holiness.

Islam: Sufi karāmāt

Muʿjizāt and karāmāt: the technical distinction

Classical Sunni Islam clearly distinguishes two categories of prodigies, inherited from al-Ghazālī (Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, late 11th century) and systematized by al-Qushayrī in his Risāla^[31]:

• The mu'jizāt (مُعْجِزَات), prophetic miracles in the strict sense, reserved to prophets and wrought to "silence" unbelief — reserved to Muhammad, who is said to have had few of them (the Qur'an itself insisting that no spectacular sign is demanded: "Those who disbelieve say: 'Why has a sign not been sent down upon him from his Lord?'", Qur'an 13:7), and to the earlier prophets recognized in the Qur'an.
• The karāmāt (كَرَامَات), literally "acts of generosity" on God's part, prodigies granted to saints (awliyā Allāh) apart from any prophetic claim: clairvoyance, instantly answered prayer, walking on water, teleportation, passing through fire, the multiplication of food.

The Sufi tradition (Junayd of Baghdad, al-Qushayrī, Ibn ʿArabī) compiled these karāmāt in collections known as manāqib, to the point that the manāqib of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī or of Rūmī entered the great classical Islamic hagiographies.

The contemporary Salafi rejection

Contemporary Salafi and Wahhabi currents, following Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), reject these accounts as either popular superstition, or bidʿa (blameworthy innovation), or possible manifestations of shayāṭīn (demons)^[32]. The internal rift within Islam here is sharp: what the Sufis hold to be a sign of holiness, the contemporary puritans hold to be error.

A Catholic view: positive prudence and the doctrinal lock

From a Catholic standpoint, several things can be said at once without contradicting one another:

1. It is possible that some karāmāt attributed to sincere Sufis are divine graces, received outside the visible communion of the Church but in response to a life of prayer and elevated moral conduct — in accordance with the principle set forth in Nostra aetate and Lumen gentium § 16.
2. It is also possible that many are simply accounts embellished by devotion (the Sufi chain of oral transmission, the isnād, does not carry the evidentiary demands of the Roman canonical investigation), or psychic effects (suggestion, intuition sharpened by asceticism), or even ambiguous preternatural manifestations — exactly as the Catholic framework of discernment envisages.
3. In every case, the karāmāt do not confirm Islamic doctrine in the way the Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano confirms the Real Presence. They do not carry the doctrinal weight that their place in Sufi apologetics would like to give them: no karāma has ever authenticated, for example, the uncreated nature of the Qur'an, the prophetic finality of Muhammad, or the denial of the Trinity — truths that stand in direct contradiction to Christian Revelation.

Protestant stigmatization: the case of Cloretta Robinson

The first medically documented case of stigmatization in a non-Catholic is that of Cloretta Robinson (Oakland, California, 1972), a ten-year-old Baptist girl who developed intermittent bleeding in her left palm and then at four other sites during the nineteen days preceding Good Friday, after reading a book about the Crucifixion^[33]. The episode was published in the journal General Psychiatry (1974) by Loretta Early and Joseph Lifschutz, who describe superficial marks and bleeding with no underlying organic wound, disappearing at the end of the period. Ian Wilson, in The Bleeding Mind (1988), would go on to catalog several other non-Catholic cases, almost all superficial and transitory^[34].

Let us compare this with the stigmata of Padre Pio (1887–1968), which appeared on 20 September 1918, never healed over fifty years, examined in detail by Doctors Luigi Romanelli (1919), Amico Bignami (1919), Giorgio Festa (1919 and 1920), and Antonio Cardarelli, and which bled daily enough to fill an entire chalice without causing either the expected anemia or the feared infection. Dr. Luigi Romanelli, chief physician of the civil hospital of Barletta, sent by the Capuchins' General Ministry, examined Padre Pio on 15 and 16 May 1919 and several times through 1920. His report, preserved in the Acta of the apostolic process, describes the wounds on the hands as "covered by a reddish-brown membrane, without hemorrhagic points, without oedematous or inflammatory edges in the surrounding tissue," and concludes explicitly that they do not fit any known clinical pattern: no infection, no enlargement, no healing after more than a year of observation^[35]. The Bignami report (July 1919), though written by a skeptical physician, professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Rome, arrives at the same conclusion: no known chemical treatment (acid, phenol, iodine) can produce this kind of wound — "wounds presenting an absolutely particular character," in his own words^[36].

Between a few spontaneous red marks that heal in nineteen days and through-and-through incurable wounds that bleed daily for half a century without becoming infected, the difference is not one of intensity but of nature.

To claim that "this exists elsewhere too" without adding "but not at all in the same proportions nor with the same meaning" would be intellectually dishonest. The phenomena exist, but their nature, their scale, and their function differ radically.

Levitation: centimeters versus several meters

Saint Joseph of Cupertino was "cut off from view" countless times by the ambassador of Spain to the Holy See, Admiral Juan Alfonso Enríquez de Cabrera (1645), and by John Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Calenberg (1649), a Lutheran who converted in part due to the astonishment at what he had seen — the hilt of his sword having been raised to check whether there was any thread or hidden support, and finding nothing^[40]. More than seventy levitations are attested by official reports. The scale and the documentary quality are without equivalent in any other religious tradition. A note of honesty: the inquiries for canonization were conducted after the saint's death (1664-1695), on the depositions of witnesses still living; the most spectacular heights come from late accounts, disputed by skeptical authors (Gordon Stein, "The Lore of Levitation," Skeptical Inquirer, 1989; Joe Nickell, "Secrets of the 'Flying Friar'," 2018). But the core dossier passed the most severe scrutiny: Cardinal Lambertini, the future Benedict XIV, then promoter of the faith, examined the depositions himself before the beatification of 1753^[41].

Stigmata: superficial marks versus lasting wounds

The difference is not one of degree but of nature: transitory marks during a period of intense meditation versus anatomically through-and-through wounds, observed by university physicians, lasting for entire decades without infection or scarring.

Incorruptibility: chemical mummification versus supernatural preservation

Joan Carroll Cruz, in The Incorruptibles (TAN, 1977), lists 102 canonized or beatified cases whose bodies were found intact, in conditions that rule out the known natural processes of mummification (supple and not dry bodies, preservation in damp soils, sometimes several centuries after death)^[47]. The contrast here is almost definitional: in Catholic incorruptibility, it is precisely the absence of any process that makes the phenomenon inexplicable. In sokushinbutsu, it is the presence of a radical process (urushi + dehydration + burial alive) that makes it explicable.

This quantitative comparison nevertheless misses the point. The real dividing line between Catholic miracles and the prodigies of other traditions is not one of scale; it is one of function. Catholic miracles, in their vast majority, precisely confirm a defined doctrine. It is this structure of sign (cf. Dei Filius DS 3009, CCC § 156) that distinguishes them from any isolated phenomenon.

Eucharistic miracles → real presence

The Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano (c. 750), examined scientifically by Professor Odoardo Linoli, head of pathological anatomy at the Arezzo hospital and professor at the University of Siena, in November 1970 and March 1971, reveals that the flesh preserved for thirteen centuries in the Basilica of San Francesco is a fragment of human myocardium, of blood group AB — the same group as that recorded, with the methodological reservations that such comparisons call for, on the Shroud of Turin and on the Veil of Manoppello according to the publications of their proponents^[48]. The case, an old one locally venerated, has not received formal recognition from the archbishop (cf. Bouflet, Une histoire des miracles, p. 74). Linoli summarizes his conclusions, published in Quaderni Sclavo di Diagnostica Clinica e di Laboratorio in 1971, as follows:

"The Flesh is real flesh. The Blood is real blood. The Flesh and the Blood belong to the human species. The Flesh consists of heart muscle tissue. In the Flesh and in the Blood, proteins were identified, in percentages identical to those of fresh blood serum. In the Blood, the minerals proper to blood were found: chlorides, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, sodium, calcium." — Prof. Odoardo Linoli, Quaderni Sclavo di Diagnostica, 1971^[49]

The miracle of Buenos Aires (1996, examined by Dr Frederick Zugibe in New York in 1999, when Jorge Mario Bergoglio was archbishop) and that of Sokółka (Poland, 2008) produced, decades apart, the same result independently: heart tissue from the left ventricle, in a state of acute stress "close to agony", joined to a fragment of consecrated host without a seam^[50]. What these miracles attest is precise and doctrinal: the real, true, substantial presence of the Body and Blood of Christ under the appearances of bread and wine, as defined at the Council of Trent (session XIII, 11 October 1551, DS 1640-1641).

No Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim prodigy confirms a specific dogma of its tradition. The goddess Namagiri does not appear in a host; Sufi karāmāt do not ratify the uncreated nature of the Quran; sokushinbutsu provide no scientific evidence for the cycle of rebirths. The phenomena remain individual or pietistic; they do not constitute a system of converging doctrinal signs.

Marian apparitions → the divine motherhood of Mary

The recognized Marian apparitions — Guadalupe (1531, an acheiropoiete image — that is, not painted by human hand — on the tilma of Juan Diego), Lourdes (1858, "I am the Immaculate Conception" in answer to Father Peyramale), Fatima (1917, public miracle of the sun before 70,000 witnesses) — are never abstract signs: they precisely confirm that she who appears is the Mother of God, repeating the truths defined by the councils of Ephesus (431), of Lateran (649), and by the dogmas proclaimed in Rome (Immaculate Conception 1854, Assumption 1950). Christ has never contradicted himself in the long series of recognized apparitions; and all of them call to prayer, to conversion, to penance — not to the founding of a rival religion.

Stigmata → the reality of the Passion and the Resurrection

The stigmata of the saints confirm the historical and saving reality of the Passion. When Padre Pio's wounds open at the very place where recent archaeological studies of the Shroud have identified the actual injury (hands at the wrist, and not at the palm alone, as medieval iconography depicted it), they attest that the Crucifixion took place as it is described, and that the blood of Christ is effective for the salvation of the world. The few superficial marks reported in a Baptist child after a pious reading do not, by nature, have this function of attestation of a central dogma.

Incorruptible bodies → the resurrection of the flesh

The incorruptibility of the bodies of Catholic saints substantially anticipates the resurrection of the flesh. The Catechism states it in simple terms:

"If we are truly united to the risen Christ by the Holy Spirit, we shall also be called by him to share in the resurrection." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 990^[51]

The intact body of Bernadette in Nevers does not merely say "this woman was holy"; it says "Christ has truly conquered death, and human flesh is destined for the resurrection". It is a doctrinal sign, not merely a pious curiosity. A sokushinbutsu, by construction and by its founding mythology, says something else: "this man, by his own ascetic strength, became a Buddha of flesh". The underlying theology is in fact the opposite: human ascetic performance versus God's free gift.

A statistical convergence without equal

Joachim Bouflet, historical consultant to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and the leading authority on the subject (Une histoire des miracles. Du Moyen Âge à nos jours, Seuil, 2008; Une histoire des phénomènes mystiques, Seuil, 2020), summarizes the Catholic position by distinguishing the individual prodigy — what he calls a "closed marvel" revolving around a sage and his disciples — from the ecclesial miracle in the canonical sense, ordered to the Church's investigation and to the confirmation of a mission, a dogma, or a cause for beatification^[52]. It is this public function of doctrinal sign that qualifies the Catholic miracle under canon law for causes of saints, and which is almost always lacking, by construction, in Sufi karāmāt, Indian siddhis, yogic vibhuti, and the accounts of Tibetan vajrayāna (Tantric Buddhism).

The subject, like all borderline subjects, involves three symmetrical traps against which the Catholic tradition warns.

Rationalism that denies everything

The first pitfall is denying the very possibility of prodigies, through a materialist prejudice inherited from the eighteenth century (Hume, Voltaire) or through an impoverished Christianity that no longer believes in miracles. This pitfall leads, in its degraded Catholic version, to "demythologizing" the Gospel itself (Bultmann), to explaining the Resurrection as a subjective event, and to losing the motives of credibility spoken of by Vatican I. It is as destructive to the faith as it claims to save it: if nothing can be a miracle, then the Resurrection of Christ is nothing, and faith becomes a pious psychology.

Syncretism that validates everything

The second pitfall, the opposite one, is to infer that "since prodigies exist in all religions, they are all equally valid." This conclusion is philosophically weak (an extraordinary fact does not validate the conceptual system in which it occurs; the demons themselves work prodigies, according to the Bible) and theologically contrary to Dominus Iesus:

« Il est contraire à la foi de l'Église de considérer l'Église comme un chemin de salut à côté de ceux que constituent les autres religions. » — Congrégation pour la Doctrine de la Foi, Dominus Iesus, § 21, 6 août 2000^[53]

Illuminism that believes everything

The third pitfall, more subtle, is believing too quickly in the least spectacular prodigy, whether it comes from an unrecognized apparition, a fashionable visionary, or an exotic guru. The Bible warns: "False christs and false prophets will arise, and they will perform great signs" (Mt 24:24). Saint John teaches prudence:

« Bien-aimés, ne vous fiez pas à tout esprit, mais éprouvez les esprits, pour voir s'ils sont de Dieu, car beaucoup de faux prophètes sont sortis dans le monde. » — Saint Jean, 1 Jean 4, 1^[54]

Illuminism devours poorly formed communities. In recent history it has produced as many disasters as rationalism: falsely Catholic sects, morbid devotions, false seers, an emotional dependence on phenomena rather than on Christ.

The Catholic way: neither laughing too fast nor believing too fast

The Catholic position holds the balance. Herbert Thurston, a British Jesuit and great expert in mystical phenomena, put it this way:

The method of Herbert Thurston, a British Jesuit and great expert in mystical phenomena, shifts the question: less whether the fact is physically possible than whether the testimonies are solid enough to assert that it occurred^[55].

Five criteria, three possible origins, a time-tested grid of discernment — and at the heart of it all, the primacy of Christ, who is "the way, the truth, and the life" (Jn 14:6), and to whom every true sign leads back, whatever the path by which the person comes to him.

To the question can there be miracles in other religions?, the precise Catholic answer is now stated in five propositions:

1. Yes, God can, through his free mercy, work an extraordinary grace in favor of a person outside the visible communion of the Church — "whoever is not against us is for us" (Mk 9:40).
2. But this prodigy, assuming it to be real, never by itself validates the doctrine of the religious system in which it appears: it manifests a particular grace, not the truth of a whole.
3. The examination of an extraordinary phenomenon follows a classical grid: reality of the fact, doctrinal content, spiritual fruits, moral life of the subject, consistency with the Revelation already given.
4. The great majority of spectacular phenomena reported outside Christianity prove, on examination, to be either ambivalent and late (Milarepa, karāmāt), or chemically explicable (sokushinbutsu, embalmments), or unmasked as conjuring (Sai Baba), or superficial and transitory (non-Catholic stigmata); a few cases remain genuinely enigmatic (Itigilov, Ramanujan's genius), but without comparable doctrinal significance.
5. Catholic miracles, by contrast, display three structural features that distinguish them qualitatively: they are of greater quantitative magnitude (Joseph of Cupertino, Padre Pio, Bernadette), they are accompanied by a verifiable life of holiness over time, and above all they confirm precise doctrines defined by the Magisterium — real presence, the divine motherhood of Mary, the Passion-Resurrection, the resurrection of the flesh. This function of doctrinal sign is what makes them motives of credibility according to Vatican I.

This answer is neither contemptuous of other traditions nor naively triumphalist. It is, simply, honestly applied Catholic discernment.

• What is a miracle? — the classical definition from Augustine to Vatican I, and the Thomistic grid of the three orders.
• Mystical levitations — Saint Joseph of Cupertino, Saint Teresa of Ávila, the criteria of Olivier Leroy and Herbert Thurston.
• Bilocations — Padre Pio, Anne-Catherine Emmerich, and Catholic discernment.
• Buddhism — a Catholic view of the great schools of Buddhism.
• Islam — a Catholic view of Islam and its prophetic claims.
• Outside the Church, no salvation? — how the Church articulates the uniqueness of salvation with the presence of elements of truth in other traditions.
• Why Christianity is the truth — the overall case that places the question of miracles within Catholic apologetics.