Hi Dr. B.
Good to have your reply. I'm glad that you're still here helping us all with your logic, knowledge, and kindness.

Yes to all you say. That sun in the Portugal sky surely should have convinced some. Then came WWII. There was Loretto. When the European Christians decided that only Our Lady could save them from the Turks, realizing the value of Christendom, praying unceasingly as one body, victory was given to them. Corona can provide a few hard-to-prove lessons, but I fear it portends some awesome implication. The wrecked economies, the raising of chaotic Cain in our cities, the strained civil and international relations. Do those represent an iceberg tip. sunken ship, or mere fleeting shadows?

Good to be back. May God bless and thank you.

"But insofar as Jesus is God, and insofar as Mary is requested to use her influence as Jesus's mother, is it not asking Mary to try to change God's mind?"

Of course, because God is both eternal and immutable, he simply cannot change his mind about anything.

But, from all eternity, he knows what prayers will be offered by whom and when, and thus, foreordains by his providence what his appropriate response would be given the contingent fact of these prayers taking place.

I am not addressing anything to do with how he chooses to respond, but am just pointing out that the nature of prayer in no way contradicts either God's immutability nor its efficacy.

I am not drawing any hard inferences, but the report that just came out is at least interesting:

https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/new-coronavirus-losing-potency-top-18340690

Could enough Italians finally have gotten on their knees?

I know. The skeptics will easily mock all such things. There is always a way to explain away everything. And maybe nothing will come of it. But I would hope they might at least pause to wonder just a tiny bit.

I got this personal email from someone in Italy just this morning:

"Yes, it is strange, the virus is starting simply to disappear in Italy.
We now have about 2 to 6 cases in Rome a day, that are new.
There still 6000 people in the hospital but very few new serious cases. Why is this? No one has tried to explain it yet. "

Glad to see you back! :-)

My library has a book "Our Lady of Guadalupe" by Anderson and Chavez, but I've never taken time to read it. Because of your questions, today I glanced through it and discovered a few curious facts.

In 1736, a typhoid plague struck New Spain (I had to look that up--New Spain consisted of about half the new world including much of the western half of the U.S. as well as all of Mexico and many other other countries.) After the plague raged about nine months, ravaging the resources of Mexico City (during which time people prayed but not as a unified effort), the population of Mexico City as a whole swore allegiance, prayed to, and made Mary Patroness of the city under her title "Our Lady of Guadalupe." At the end of nine days of prayer by the Mexico City populace, the death rate dropped to a few/day from the usual 40-50.

The authors state that similar prayers were made in 2009 during the swine flu epidemic. They do not say whether those later prayers brought about the visible answer the people wanted.

Hello David - It's been a while since I've checked this site. Seems the same regulars are here. Couple points:
1) Effects of prayer are not always visible; more often than not we're given answers as intellectual or intuitive probabilities or certainties. Prayers are not answered unilaterally; God has the final say. His will is not ours. His time is not our time. The attempt to understand why God has given a 'non-answer' can often lead to a glimmer of an insight as to why.
2) Just as we ask our earthly parents for gifts, the answer may be 'no, not now, or not ever.' So with God.
3) Mary can never fail! Having agreed to be the mother of the Redeemer, her action brought supernatural life and salvation to the world. That is no small accomplishment.

No, you are quite right. One can always be certain that prayers ultimately assist that the will of God be done, but we have no crystal ball as to what that will may be. I am not among those who want to do surveys about whether prayers get answered as requested. If a genuine miracle does occur, then one can start looking for the prayers that may have helped produce it. In a sense, isn't that what is done during the process for naming someone a saint?

Notice that I said, "Believers will, of course, believe...." I did not say they would be right.

Believers will, of course, believe that God did answer their prayers and that the plague was thereby shortened. Unbelievers will, as usual, see and believe nothing of the sort . . .

Surely you are not claiming that "believers" can know that the pandemic—if it does indeed ever end—was shortened because God shortened it in response to prayers. By that kind of thinking, "believers" can claim that prayers of petition are always efficacious. If I pray for my grandmother to survive cancer, as a "believer" I could claim that while she didn't survive indefinitely, she did survive three days instead of two. How can "believers" assume it was God's will that the pandemic be shortened? What ever happened to the old saying about God answers all prayers, he just sometimes says No?

"is it not asking Mary to try to change God's mind?"

I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding by many as to how prayer can work to change events here on earth. No, prayer does not "change God's mind," since he is eternal and immutable.

Still, from all eternity, God sees that prayers are either said or unsaid. The saying of the prayers are voluntary movements of our human wills in accordance with God's eternal will that justice and mercy be done and that goodness prevail. But God can take into account from all eternity his knowledge that prayers will have been said and that he therefore can "adjust" reality to reflect those acts of petition, adoration, praise, and so forth, accordingly.

Whenever I try to explain this, I am trapped in our temporal language with past, present, and future tenses which do not actually exist in the divine eternity. So please try to take that into account.

"The prayer, after all, has not ended the pandemic, and aside from an abrupt and inexplicable end to the outbreak, how is it possible to see a visible effect of this kind of petition?"

Why must one expect to see a "visible effect?" If God intervenes so as to shorten the pandemic, must we be able to see it occur? I think this is again to misunderstand how God answers prayer. If the pandemic seems to be shorter than expected, we humans have no way of telling any real effect in all likelihood -- for the same reason all our estimates are so inexact anyway.

This does not mean that God did not answer the prayers. Believers will, of course, believe that God did answer their prayers and that the plague was thereby shortened. Unbelievers will, as usual, see and believe nothing of the sort -- unless God chooses to work some terribly visible and undoubtable intervention in nature for all to see, as he appears to have done in the miracle of the sun at Fatima in 1917 (for those who have eyes to see it).

Hi David,
I hope you are doing well under the circumstances. You, Ficino, Dr. B. and Jim the Scott (and anyone else here in hotspots) have been in my thoughts and prayers, since I know New York has been very hard hit.

Interesting questions, as always. I’ll address the first part.

Primarily, Our Lady of Guadalupe is "Patroness of the Americas", so it would make sense for any American Catholic, (North, Central, or South), to invoke her intercession.
(Likewise, she is also "Heavenly Patroness of the Philippines", so it would make sense for someone in the Philippines to invoke her as well.)
Even though it is a private revelation, she is one of the few Marion apparitions that is Church sanctioned and accorded a feast day.
Archbishop Gomez is archbishop of Los Angeles, where the prayer originated from. Given the high Mexican, and Mexican-American population in Los Angeles, it’s a natural devotion. In Los Angeles, on her feast day, thousands upon thousands gather at churches at 3, 4, 5, in the morning to sing to her and bring her flowers.( It’s quite beautiful.) So this invocation would make sense for this community.

As I’m sure you know, there are numerous private devotions and practices that have become an integral part of the Catholic religion, like the rosary, sign of the cross, Stations of the cross, crèches, stained-glass windows, and various Marian devotions. So, this isn’t out of the ordinary for Catholicism. Although it’s not required to engage in these practices, it’s part of the beauty of Catholic religion and culture. These expressions of beauty, and creativity, and imagination, and celebration, is quite human, isn’t it?

I'm glad that you are surviving in the epicenter of the pandemic.

I believe that since Mary is body and soul in heavenly glory she has the ability to appear in a familiar understandable form to those she chooses to address. In the US, especially Los Angeles, a Hispanic-like Mary is surely acceptable.

I'm sure that you have previously discussed the issue of prayer changing God's mind, so I won't try to explain that.

Fortunately your assumption that prayer will fail to end the pandemic is wrong, it will end it, maybe not by your criteria though.