Prayer and Politics

Another study of the effect of prayer on medical recovery was released last week. Some people question whether prayer can be studied scientifically, because it involves the supernatural. But prayer also involves natural processes of mind-body connection. This recent study looked at whether patients recovered better from surgery if they were being prayed for by other people and whether it made a difference if the patients knew for sure others were praying for them. The study did not show the prayers had any beneficial effect on recovery.

Other studies have shown that people pray mostly for themselves, and less often for others. Religious experience is very personal but also has communal aspects. Those who believe in a soul or continuing spirit usually believe in individual responsibility for what happens to that soul or spirit after death. Many people offer prayers of intercession for other souls and spirits, typically for relatives or others with whom they identify or for whom they feel affinity.

I have lots of personal experience with prayer. Thirteen years of Catholic education exposed me to a vast arsenal of prayers, including many in Latin. Memorization was definitely required, even if understanding lagged. I prayed for my personal safety and freedom from hurt and sometimes tried to make prayer deals with the deity. Sometimes we prayed for the poor souls in purgatory or the poor “pagan babies” overseas. My most heartfelt prayers were offered after going to confession and then to the altar rail to say the assigned number of Hail Marys and Our Fathers. There I would linger and reflect on what I had done wrong and who I had hurt and how I had hurt Jesus, and I would let Him know how bad I felt about doing wrong and how honestly I intended to try to do better.

In my late twenties, no longer a practicing Catholic, while traveling in Europe I made a visit to Lourdes. The Lourdes Grotto was familiar to me because the Church of my youth, Immaculate Conception, had a side altar that was a Lourdes replica, including photographs of the hanging crutches left behind by those cured at Lourdes. I visited the museum at Lourdes, which included documentary evidence of the cures, but the cynical lawyer side of me was not impressed. What did impress me was a nurse from Ireland who told me that she spent her annual vacations helping with the “malades”at Lourdes because it inspired her. Her inspiration came not from anyone being cured, but from the change she observed in the patients who came to Lourdes solely focused on being cured, but who then began to know and be concerned about other patients and then they started praying for the cure of the others. The miracle of Lourdes to this nurse was that by transforming their prayers to concern for others, her patients were making life better for themselves.

The Catholic mass now includes community prayers for specific members of the Church community and for needs of the broader community. But sometimes the community is not broad enough. I remember going to a prayer service just before the start of the Gulf War and hearing prayers for our troops and their families, but no prayers for the Iraqi troops and their families or even for the Iraqi people. When I used to say bedtime prayers with my children I encouraged us to end our list of prayer beneficiaries with the all-encompassing “and everyone everywhere”.

As a former attorney, I also have about forty years of professional prayer experience. Lawyers end legal pleadings with a “prayer for relief”, which literally says the petitioner “prays for” a list of desires, all for the benefit of the petitioner and usually at the expense of the other party. Petitions by guardians and trustees might be considered as prayers of intercession on behalf of others, but most legal prayers would not be inspiring to the Irish nurse at Lourdes.

There is a politics of prayer. Republicans, Conservatives and Libertarians pray for themselves and for anyone else similarly situated. They seek relief from whatever they find personally oppressive, most notably payment of taxes and submission to governmental regulation. Democrats and Progressives pray for intercession on behalf of the less fortunate. They seek help to lift the downtrodden, through the use of taxes and governmental regulation as needed. Since praying for others makes the person praying healthier and happier, Democrats should be better off in that regard. Democrats can even pray for Republicans - that they will see the error of their way and be converted.