Just In: The Miracle That Earned Sainthood for St. Theodora (Mother Theodore Guerin)

First Step to Sainthood

CORRECTED *:

Now she’s known as Saint Theodora, but for years we’ve known her as Mother Theodore Guerin, the guiding force behind the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary of the Woods.

Random House now presents the seldom told story of the miracle that brought about the canonization of the saint, as told by Bill Briggs.

Saint Theodora entered the religious life in 1825 as Sister St. Theodore, in France. As she advanced in her service, she was called to move ultimately to Indiana, which she did so with some reluctance and trepidation. Today, she is honored for the educational initiatives she undertook while serving as head of the convent near Terre Haute, Ind.

But it is her beatification and subsequent canonization in 2006 that underlies the detective story in journalist Briggs’s The Third Miracle: An Ordinary Man, a Medical Mystery, and a Trial of Faith.

Here’s how the publisher describes it:

“Part detective story and part courtroom drama—with a touch of the supernatural—The Third Miracle exposes, for the first time ever, the secret rituals and investigations the Catholic Church today undertakes in order to determine sainthood.

“On a raw January 2001 morning at a Catholic convent deep in the Indiana woods, a Baptist handyman named Phil McCord made an urgent plea to God. He was by no means a religious man but he was a desperate man. McCord’s right eye was a furious shade of red and had pulsed for months in the wake of cataract surgery. He had one shot at recovery: a risky procedure that would replace part of his diseased eye with healthy tissue from a corpse. Dreading the grisly operation, McCord stopped into the convent’s chapel and offered a prayer—a spontaneous and fumbling request of God: Can you help me get through this? He merely hoped for inner peace, but when McCord awoke the next day, his eye was better—suddenly and shockingly better. Without surgery. Without medicine. And no doctor could explain it. Many would argue that Mother Théodore Guérin, the long-deceased matriarchal founder of the convent, had “interceded” on McCord’s behalf. Was the healing of Phil McCord’s eye a miracle?

“That was a question that the Catholic Church and the pope himself would ultimately decide. As part of an ancient and little-known process, top Catholic officials would convene a confidential tribunal to examine the handyman’s healing, to verify whether his recovery defied the laws of nature. They would formally summon McCord, his doctors, coworkers, and family to a windowless basement room at the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. They would appoint two local priests to serve the roles of judge and prosecutor. And they would put this alleged miracle on trial, all in an effort to determine if Mother Théodore, whose cause for beatification and canonization dated back to 1909, should be named the eighth American saint.

“In The Third Miracle, journalist Bill Briggs meticulously chronicles the Church investigation into this mysterious healing and offers a unique window into the ritualistic world of the secretive Catholic saint-making process—one of the very foundations on which the Church is built. With exclusive access to the case and its players, Briggs gives readers a front-row seat inside the closed-door drama as doctors are grilled about the supernatural, priests doggedly hunt for soft spots in the claim, and McCord comes to terms with the metaphorical “third miracle”: his own reconciliation with the metaphysical. As the inquiry shifts from the American heartland to an awaiting jury at Vatican City in Rome, Briggs astutely probes our hunger for everyday miracles in an age of technology, the Catholic Church’s surprisingly active saint-making operation, and the eternal clash of faith and science.”

We have the book in stock now along with several earlier biographies of Mother Theodore Guerin. If you’ve ever wondered how a saint becomes a saint, this book will pull back the curtain for you.

* CORRECTION: The Sisters of Providence motherhouse is at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, about four miles northwest of Terre Haute. Thanks to reader Dave Cox, who works there, for straightening me out.

Authors Unscripted: The Inadequate Conception

Nice play on words, eh? Immaculate. Inadequate. Thursdays are going to be filled with materials provided by authors. You’ll never know what might show up on this next-to-last day of the traditional work week.

Today, NewAlbanyBooks welcomes Lori Leroy, nee Green, a Hoosier who has been, is, and will be providing the world with a chronicle of the struggle she and her husband have had with conception. I’ve only talked with her by phone, but my first impressions were positive. We’re dickering right now over when to invite her to New Albany for a book-signing at Destinations Booksellers and I’m sure we’ll work something out.

In the meantime, I wanted to offer you a few tidbits about the book. I’m sure some of you (or someone you know) has or is fighting this same battle to bear a child. If so, I encourage you to check out her blog and see if this is a book you’d like to read.

A Fresh Voice on a Troublesome Topic

The book is The Inadequate Conception: From Barry White to Blastocytes: What Your Mom Didn’t Tell You About Getting Pregnant.

She also wrote a blog along the way and continues to keep up a steady stream of articles informative and entertaining. Here’s a link to my favorite post, written at Thanksgiving 2010: Why I Am Thankful for Porn!

It begins thusly: As I have talked to women across the country who are going through fertility procedures, I have noticed a common theme that probably doesn’t happen under many other circumstances—the specialized and authorized use of pornography. In fact, many women are buying their husbands porn so they can create their half of the blessed embryo.

Lori is probably just now digesting one of my preachy, long e-mails about books, bookselling, and the publishing industry. If she can endure it, you can expect to see her here sometime in the coming weeks and you can meet her yourself. And though I did not ask her permission to highlight her book and blog, I’m sure she won’t be bothered by a little publicity.

This is her “official” bio: Lori Green LeRoy is a published author and popular infertility blogger. She is also a woman with a large pair of birthing hips and who has tried for more than six years to conceive both traditionally and with the help of modern science. When she’s not getting blood drawn or undergoing an ultrasound, she is a public relations and marketing professional who lives in Indianapolis with her husband and rescued pets— two yellow English Labrador Retrievers and three cats (and yes, she realizes that she has likely crossed a crazy animal line).

For further reading, Lori’s blog is theinadequateconception.blogspot.com. Not everyone has migrated to the future of blogging: WordPress (I kid!).