Reverend Canon JEFF GOLLIHER (The Cathedral of St. John the Divine): Lord have mercy. The Lord be with you. Let us pray.
BETTY ROLLIN: Each week at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, Reverend Canon Jeff Golliher conducts a healing service. Forty-four-year-old Robert Parra, who suffers both from thyroid cancer and chronic asthma, is greatly comforted, he says, by the laying on of hands.Mr. ROBERT PARRA (Worshipper): I feel warmth. I feel tranquility. I feel peace. I feel like I'm in heaven for just seconds.
ROLLIN: And you feel well?
Mr. PARRA: And I feel well.
ROLLIN: Sick people often turn to their religion for help or comfort, for hope. Many hospitals have chapels, and clergy is usually available for patients who want spiritual counsel. The benefits of religion and prayer in this context have not been questioned; nor have the benefits been scientifically tested until now, with studies that seem to show that religion not only advances spiritual well-being but improves physical health.
Daily religious practices -- among them, Buddhist meditation, Jewish davening, and Catholic rosary recitations --have been found to lower heart and respiration rate. A recent controversial study conducted by Duke University Medical Center indicates that those who regularly attend religious services live longer. Most controversial are studies of intercessory prayer, sometimes called distant healing. These are prayers offered for sick people by others at distant locations.Unidentified Woman #1: Twelve different religions will be praying for you during your angioplasty and hospitalization, okay?
Ms. PAT DORAN: Sounds interesting.
ROLLIN: Pat Doran, a patient at Washington Hospital Center, is one of 1,500 participants at six different hospitals in Duke University's mantra study, which will test the efficacy of long-distance prayer. Half of the patients will be prayed for and half will not, and no one will know who is in which group. The prayer givers include Carmelite nuns in Maryland, Buddhist monks in Nepal, and, in the Jewish tradition, written prayers will be placed in the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.Of course, there's no way to know if those patients who are not being prayed for by the designated prayers are in fact being prayed for by, say, family members or by themselves.
Pat's doctor, a co-investigator of the study and head of this unit, is himself a believer in long-distance healing.
Dr. AUGUSTO PICHARD (Washington Hospital Center): Energy can be transferred a long distance, and if energy is transferred there is influence at the other end.ROLLIN: Another believer and early proponent of long-distance healing, Dr. Larry Dossey, was recently invited to speak at New York Hospital. The proof that long-distance prayer works for humans, he says, is that it works for animals, plants, even bacteria.
Dr. RICHARD SLOAN (Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center): The problem with many of those studies is that they fail to control for the physical condition of people prior to going to church. People who are too sick can't get to church in the first place.
Chaplain LARRY VANDECREEK (The HealthCare Chaplaincy): One of my major concerns is that physicians and researchers can move to the conclusion that religion is instrumental in health and thus religion is used for health benefits, that religion becomes something that is useful.
Mr. PARRA: Then there's a time that you don't get that call or that answer back immediately, which is problematic, but I -- God works on his own time, I figure.
