"The Power and the Glory" by Graham Greene

Recently finished this book....and liked it very much. Yay for having time to read fiction for fun :) Here is a snip-it from near the end. General set-up: a police officer is bringing a priest to be executed because all things relating to religion/God are forbidden and the government is going about setting up an existence in which God does not exist.

Police officer: "I said I suppose you were hoping for a miracle,"

Priest: "No."

"You believe in them, don't you?"

"Yes. But not for me. I'm no more good to anyone, so why should God keep me alive?"

"I can't think how a man like you can believe in those things. The Indians, yes. Why, the first time they see an electric light they think it's a miracle."

"And I dare say the first time you saw a man raised from the dead you might think so too. It isn't a case of miracles not happening- it's just a case of people calling them something else. Can't you see the doctors round the dead man? He isn't breathing any more, his pulse has stopped, his heart's not beating: he's dead. Then somebody gives him back his life, and they all- what's the expression?- reserve their opinion. They won't say it's a miracle, because that's a word they don't like. Then it happens again and again perhaps- because God's about on earth- and they say: these aren't miracles, it is simply that we have enlarged our conception of what life is. Now we know you can be alive without pulse, breath, heart-beats. And they invent a new word to describe that state of life, and they say science has disproved a miracle." He giggled again. "You can't get around them."