Given that danger, I was irritated by the silly bits at the end of the Telegraph report Bomb scare at Lourdes. Here they are:
Around 200 million people have visited the shrine since 1860, and the Roman Catholic Church has recognised 67 miracle healings, the last in November 2005.Why would Lourdes build up "enemies" because it engages in commerce? Why don't the enemies moan about Oxford Street or Bluewater shopping centre instead? They are a lot more commercial than Lourdes. If a town has a religious shrine in it, are all the people of that town supposed to live in some kind of monastic super-community without owning anything?
Despite this, the Lourdes (sic) has built up enemies over the years among those who criticise its commercialism. It makes millions from tourism and souvenir selling every year.
Others, including members of the Catholic Church, are deeply sceptical of its alleged healing powers, attributing them to superstition.
On the second point, it is true that many people are sceptical about the miracles of Lourdes, but in reports such as this, the one thing that you never hear of is the Lourdes Medical Bureau. Richard Dawkins did not mention it when he did his own piece about Lourdes. Anyone medically qualified or with other reasonable cause can consult the records of all the 67 approved miracles, including the medical records from before and after the alleged cure.
It is perfectly proper for people to question the authenticity of miracles. The Church does so rigorously as a matter of standard practice. What is not rational is simply to "be a sceptic" without any reference whatever to the evidence that is made available. That does not deserve the honourable name of scepticism. The more accurate word for making an a priori judgement without reference to the evidence is prejudice.
2 comments:
There has been a bomb in the past on the Stations of the Cross.
Surely the real story is that there were 30,000 people there. How many celebrity entertainers can get such an audience week after week?
The good news was that it reminded the world of what happens in Lourdes and of the feast of the day. Even BBC TV covered it (using TF1 film with a journalist reporting from Paris).
On August 12th 1983 in Lourdes, I was awoken by an explosion in the early hours. I was was working for the 'Pelerin d'un jour' and in the morning I found out that some organisation opposed to the commercialisation of Lourdes had carried out the act. This was just a few days before Pope John Paul arrived as a pilgrim. One day later I was taking day pilgrims over the Stations of the Cross and we looked at the missing head of Pilate's bronze statue! Nothing will ever stop our lived faith.
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