On February 22, The Times published a short review of the 1943 movie The Song of Bernadette, which was shown recently on television.
For some, faith and doctrine are not enough. They have to have their “miracles”, as a French parish priest wrote...- John Guillaumier, St Julians
Here’s the review: “In 1858 France, Bernadette, an adolescent peasant girl, has a vision of a beautiful lady in the city dump. She never claims it to be anything other than this but the townspeople all assume it to be the Virgin Mary.”
This review sums up what actually happened at Lourdes.
As the review points out, those “visions” of an “adolescent peasant girl” were not “Marian apparitions” at all. They were the subjective imaginings of a lonely, depressed teenager.
The Catholic populace of the remote town in the Pyrenees attributed the teenager’s “visions” – visions that they themselves couldn’t see – to supernatural causes.
The Church initially discountenanced pilgrimages to the site of those dubious apparitions but it finally succumbed to popular credulity, as it did in the case of Padre Pio.
If God had a message for mankind, He would pass on His message to one of the world leaders who can influence global events – such as His “Vicar” in Rome – or to a saintly bishop or priest rather than to an adolescent girl or to peasant children at a village in Portugal.
God’s messages would be addressed to all mankind rather than to Roman Catholics only. His messages would go beyond the request for the recitation of the rosary and His concerns would transcend the welfare of the Pope or the “conversion” of Russia. Authentic supernatural intervention would address and alleviate the world’s major problems.
Of such divine intervention, history offers no evidence. As for the occasional healing that takes place at the sites of popular pilgrimage, such phenomena can be ascribed to the psychic and biological forces of the live individual himself.
At Fatima in 1917, mass hysteria erupted during the improbable, wonder-working “miracle” of “the spinning sun” after an alleged “Marian apparition”, an event that would have been catastrophic for planet earth and all living creatures on it had such an event actually taken place.
On December 3, 2009, The Times reported a similar outbreak of mass hysteria in Ireland: “Catholic pilgrims have suffered eye damage after staring at the sun in the hope of witnessing an apparition of the Virgin Mary...On one occasion in October, some 10,000 people gathered at the Knock shrine in northwestern Ireland hoping to see Mary... Some of those present said they had seen Mary and attributed her presence to the sun suddenly breaking through the clouds, changing colour, appearing to come closer or spinning in the sky.
“Eamonn O’Donoghue, an ophthalmologist at University College Hospital in Galway, said he had several patients whose retina had been burnt by the sun during a visit to Knock. Mr O’Donoghue said: ‘If you get a burn to your macula (a part of the retina), you are going to see bizarre visual phenomena’.”
For some, faith and doctrine are not enough. They have to have their “miracles”, as a French parish priest wrote in his testament to his parishioners: “If religion were clear, it would have fewer attractions for the ignorant. They need obscurity, mysteries, fables, miracles and incredible things!”