If you read the BBC's coverage of Deacon Jack Sullivan this morning, you might be tempted to believe that something amazing had happened to him. Certainly the carefully crafted words of reporter Michael Hirst tell a compelling story, a story so convincing that after eight years of investigation the Vatican's experts have declared it a miracle, no less.

"Jack Sullivan was in agony. Bedridden after complicated surgery on his spine, the pain was so intense he was unable to sleep and had trouble breathing."

Back in 2000, Sullivan, then in his early sixties, began suffering from a pain in his back. Told by doctors that he might have to quit his religious studies in order to receive an operation, he was dejected and unsure what to do when a documentary about Cardinal John Newman appeared on the telly.

Sullivan prayed to him, and the next morning felt well enough to continue his studies, making it to the end of the academic year before he relapsed, and was sent for "complicated" surgery on his spine. Immediately afterwards he was apparently in all sorts of agony, as you'd expect, but just two days later, in defiance of doctors who told him he would take months to recover, he was able to walk again. Nine years later and the 71-year-old is able to stroll around pain-free like a young man (but with more wrinkles and whiter hair).

Incredible stuff I'm sure you'll agree, but could there possibly be a reasonable explanation for this miracle? Well yes, but incredibly you won't find it until the 24th paragraph of the BBC's credulous article:

"Michael Powell, a consultant neurosurgeon at London's University College Hospital, said a typical laminectomy took 'about 40 minutes, and most patients ... walk out happy at two days'".

And so the story becomes thus: Deacon Jack Sullivan had a pain in his back. After a year it got bad enough that he consented to a fairly routine surgery from which most patients are able to return home in a couple of days. He had the surgery, he got better, and 10 years later he can still walk. Miraculous? Not really.

The problem with these stories is that really it comes down to your word against a lot of wishful thinking. I suspect Deacon Sullivan is an honest man. My guess would be that he got the back pain, desperately wanted to get through his studies, and so pushed himself along until the summer break when surgery would be less disruptive. He might say God enabled him to achieve that; I'd say the old man had a lot of heart. No doubt he recovered well after surgery, but then so do lots of people.

Even if this were a miracle, it would only reinforce a disturbing long-term trend. God used to be able to part seas and flood planets. By the end of the Old Testament he was turning people into pillars of salt and Aaron's rod into a snake. At the time of Jesus, God our omnipotent deity was basically down to party tricks, and now, what, easing an old man's backache for a few months? It's hardly the swaggering, all-conquering God of the glory days.

So what's happened? Are we not devout enough? Is God getting old? Has he lost interest? Are his powers subject to some form of spiritual entropy, leaving him hot and spent in heaven? Perhaps this worrying decline in God's powers is what the Vatican's crack team of miracle investigators should really be researching.