Faith healers meet non-believing doctor

CONFRONTATION

Faith healers meet non-believing doctor

By Veronica T. Velosoyap

Of the Journal Staff

If wise men have any doubts about the ability of faith healers, they didn’t bother to hide it a bit when they recently came face to face with a growing legion of ‘psychic surgeons’ at the NSDB auditorium.

The occasion was an open session conducted by the Psychological Association of the Philippines where leaders of at least 500 faith healers from all over the country, doctors, non-believers and the curious were on hand.

Participants

The principal participants in the round-table conference were Guillermo Tolentino, sculptor, founder of the La Humilidad Center of the Union Ispiritista Cristiana de Filipinas, Inc. (UICFI), former UP professor of fine arts; Dominador Viola, dentist by profession, president of the UICFI for 14 years; Guadalupe Estrada, UP graduate of philosophy, retired professor and practicing ‘magnetic healer’; Leonora Pangan, nurse, ‘psychic healer’, and official medium of the Kawanggawa (Charity) Center of Tolentino, and Dr. F. G. David, non-believer of faith healing, experimental psychologist, physiologist, and psychophysiologist.

These faith healers who have 500 healing centers throughout the country would rather be referred to as ‘psychic healers’ or ’spiritual healers’, to emphasize that their healing power comes from ’spirits’ and is God-given.

Medium

Anybody can be a ‘medium’ of the spirits as long as he or she is highly trained by the UICFI officials and possesses the following requirements: ability to concentrate the mind and its energies on one focal point, power of the will to control situations, ability to feel love and compassion for fellowmen and excellent physical health.

The two common kind of spiritual healers in the country are the ‘psychic or spirit surgeons’ and the ‘magnetic healers’.

The magnetic healer does not perform any operation. There is no opening of the victim’s flesh. The healing consists merely of the laying of hands and the sprinkling of ‘magnetic fluid’ (in plains terms, water, on the affected area of the body.

Psychic surgeon

The psychic surgeon is a more powerful, more developed medium. Considered as a master among his fellowmen, the psychic surgeon cuts with his fingers the sick body and ‘operates’ without sophisticated surgical tools and leaves no unsightly scars.

While some ailments can be cured with just one psychic surgery, it takes more than one treatment to be ‘magnetically healed’.

The ’strong and powerful’ psychic healer can also ‘work wonders’ by means of ‘absent-healing’ or healing by means of telepathy when the sick person is unable to go to the healing center.

Healing day

Sunday is usually healing day in all the scattered centers of the UICFI, although, in case of emergency, any day of the week is fine.f

Because these spiritual healers’ creed is noble-heartedness and love for neighbor, they do not charge a single centavo at all from their patients.

Estrada said that since the start of their organization half a century ago, they have cured ‘thousands’.

Sickness

Pangan said that none of their patients complained of the same sickness after having been spiritually healed. Although, she said ‘not all sick persons deserve to be cured. Their sickness is a God-given punishment as penance for their sins’.

She added that spiritual healers are supposed to lead clean lives and be morally upright to serve as effective mediums between the physical world and the spiritual world.

Pangan, a practising nurse, said that since she became a ‘psychic surgeon’, she had ‘a better understanding of the Christian religion and its tenets’.

Before operating on the sick person, Pangan said she chants some prayers from the Bible and communicates mentally to the person what the Great Healer Jesus Christ said: ‘I will that you be well again’ or ‘Get up and never sin again’.

‘Spirit’

Then she calls on the ’spirit’ to help her.

‘I can see the spirit come in the form of rays and I have developed that powerful sense of hearing thereby I know when the spirit comes to me. I know also if the spirit comes from the lower or the upper world’, she said.

Once the spirit wishes that person to be cured, Pangan goes into a trance.

‘Seeing the light emanating from my fingers’, she proceeds to ‘operate’. There is no fixed length of time for operation, it all depends on the ’spirit’. It may last from 10 minutes to more than six hours.

Asked about the possibility of the healer being contaminated by the contagious diseases of patients, Pangan answered that the ’spirit’ has provided them with some sort of ‘preventive magnetism’.

Contamination

‘No medium has ever been contaminated’, she said.

When Dr. David asked the spiritual healers about the alleged anomalous quality of ‘human tissue removed from the operated person’, the spiritual healers admitted that ‘in some cases there is some fakery involved because we are but humans. Just like the medical doctors also indulge in some fakery. There are fake spiritual healers, too, just as there are fakes in other professions.’

Also questioned was the attribution of the spiritual healing to ’science’. After some verbal exchange, it was classified safely as ‘transcendental science’.

The conference lasted more than its scheduled three hours, leaving non-spiritists still at a dilemma over whether to believe or not that chanting of Biblical passages, sprinkling of water, rubbing of alcohol-filled cotton wad and ‘finger-cutting’ can really make a sick person well.

The Times Journal

Monday, April 29, 1974

[How one wishes that there were a video of this “confrontation”. This newsfeature leaves much to be desired; the part devoted to faith healers is much longer than the refutation by Dr. David. Although, considering the popularity of faith healers at that time, it is a tribute to Dr. David’s courage that even outnumbered as he is 4 to 1, he faced them headlong and perhaps even contributed to the later decline in their popularity.]