Virgins Galore

In Patrick Marnham’s book Lourdes, there is a description of the commercial grossness of the area. He provides a vivid description of the infamous “souvenir alley,” the shame of the town:... These shops are not selling little dolls in national costume, or scarves painted with the regional arms, or cheap jewellery; they are selling “objects of piety.” [As one gets closer] the strings of beads turn into rosaries, thousands and thousands of rosaries of every size, colour and price. The mannequins turn into Virgins; baby virgins, haggard virgins, flashing virgins—(“Our Mama with the lights on,” as one Brazilian pilgrim put it). There are virgins in a snow storm, virgins in a television set, little cutie-doll bug-eyed half-witted virgins praying on velveteen mats; virgins in make-up, virgins in modern dress and the world-renowned hollow, plastic virgins whose crowns unscrew to turn into bottle stoppers. There are Virgins in Grottos, and there are virgins in grottos mounted on varnished Dutch clogs, an international two- horrors- in-one.

The Afflicted Visionary

Most who uncritically accept the miracles of Lourdes are unaware of what occurred to young Bernadette Soubirous, the originator of the grotto story. She herself never made any claim that the vision she said she had seen there promised cures at the shrine. In fact, she called the vision the local French equivalent of “the lady” and the identification of the figure with Mary was made by others. Bernadette was asked by an English visitor about certain miracles that had been reported during her last visit to the shrine. She replied, “There’s no truth in all that.” Asked about cures at the shrine, she answered, “I have been told that there have been miracles, but ... I have not seen them.” Bernadette was herself chronically ill, and she chose to visit hot springs in another town to treat her ailments. She was taken into a convent and died slowly and painfully in 1879, at age 35, of tuberculosis, asthma, and several complications. Her father, crippled and partially blind, died still afflicted. Lourdes is only the most famous of 15 similar shrines that were already located in that area of France and were all visited regularly by the ailing before the Bernadette story was told. The tradition of healing grottos was well established by the time Bernadette came up with her vision, and the town merchants of Lourdes were already selling souvenirs and holy water long before the inevitable shrine was built. They were aware of the commercial possibilities presented to them and they were prepared and eager for prosperity.

There Is a Baby in the Bath Water

Alexis Carrel, a French physician who dropped then re-embraced his Catholic faith, wrote a book which has been taken to be highly supportive of medical miracles. The Voyage to Lourdes tells of a Dr. Lerrac (obviously “Carrel” reversed) who visits Lourdes and discovers miracles there. The manuscript was found among Carrel’s papers after his death, and it has been taken to be a disguised account of his own 1902 visit to that shrine, though there is no reason to believe it is such an account. Libraries place it in category “230”—Religious Nonfiction. Statements by the character Lerrac are quoted in several other books that support belief in the Lourdes miracles, fortified by the fact that author Carrel was a Nobel laureate in medicine. The baby in the bath water here is in a very perceptive statement Carrel made early in this century, before the relationship between mind and health was at all understood by medical science:[These events] prove the reality of certain links, as yet unknown, between psychological and organic processes. They prove the objective value of the spiritual activity which has been almost totally ignored by doctors, teachers and sociologists. They open up a new world for us.

For expressing this opinion, Dr. Carrel was severely reprimanded by his medical colleagues, who had yet to accept such an idea. They had long known about what is called “bedside manner,” but they had failed to recognize the more far-reaching effects of tender loving care. The danger of this fascinating baby in this very murky bath water is that it can grow up to be a monster.