Lourdes has become a household word throughout the Catholic world and a reality that cannot be disregarded for the world at large. Yet, both in the one environment and in the other (to quote Bernadette herself), ‘I am afraid that many people skim over the surface of things.’ Be this as it may, it is certainly most important that Lourdes, and all that Lourdes stands for, should be seen not merely as a fact to be reckoned with but also as a sign to be interpreted. Like the Incarnation itself, in the light of which this sign must be interpreted, it was initially something unassuming in appearance, an affair of very simple people for the most part and one that must have seemed at first to promise little impact on the world at large. But in the course of a hundred years it has become a sign from heaven that all who run may read, and must read. The miracles wrought there have commanded attention; but it is not the miracles of Lourdes that are the most significant; it is the miracle of Lourdes itself.

Cardinal Ottavian, in an article that he wrote in the Osservatore Romano in 1951, pointed out that there has been a very great change in the way in which people regard the possibility of miracles today as compared with fifty years ago. Then, under the influence of Modernism and liberal criticism, the tendency was to reject as absurd an element of ‘wonder working’, or miracle from religion, and to regard any accounts of events purporting to be miraculous as suspect. Now, he observed, the climate of opinion has changed. There is a tendency to be interested in paranormal phenomena, and among certain people this interest has degenerated into an uncritical and irrational appetite for the marvellous in religion. It is very easy, when subjected to such influences, to become interested in the marvellous for its own sake and to regard the supernatural as only consisting in the wonderful and inexplicable. One becomes more interested in stories of miracles worked by saints than in the saints themselves, and the consequent dislocation of religious concentration can lead to outbursts of superstition.

There is still a tendency, which will probably persist as long as this planet remains inhabited, to belittle the miracles at Lourdes. This is exemplified by two fairly recent books. I want, in this article, to suggest that the attempts to explain away, as it were, the supernatural element in the recorded events, rests on the failure of those who try to do so to distinguish between what Catholics call proximate and ultimate causes.

Few modem writers who have taken the trouble to go into the medical aspects of Lourdes would deny that remarkable recoveries do occur there, and that, in the prevailing circumstances, the standards of medical detective work undertaken to exclude mistaken diagnosis, hysteria and fraud, are high. It is true that the great majority of officials and doctors who make up the three bodies which handle the evidence (the Medical Bureau at Lourdes, the Medical Commission, the Canonical Commission set up by the Bishop) are Catholics; but it is unlikely that these men, concerned with their own and their Church’s good name, would deliberately deceive both Catholics and non-Catholics so successfully for so long. I shall not here concern myself with the consideration of either the cruder explanations put forward to account for the cures at Lourdes, or with the history of Bernadette with the growth of the medical services which now supervise the investigation of alleged miraculous cures. These aspects of the shrine’s activities have been dealt with in many books, to which the reader is referred.

A First impression of Lourdes is never worth recording. The aeroplane touches down at Tarbes, the little pilgrimage climbs into a coach, the tarmac unrolls in all the secular splendour of a large main road. Arrival by train is only a more congested version of arrival by train at any crowded spa. And from either approach the city of Lourdes at first glance has nothing particularly striking to offer.

The pilgrim, in fact, must give himself time. Above all, he must draw no rapid conclusion, whether favourable or not. Lourdes is like a promontory thrust into the familiar dimensions of time and space and it is fitting to explore it slowly and with an awe appropriate to the act of investigation.

In the city itself incongruities abound. The air seems to rain medals, rosaries, postcards. Shops have unexpectedly nationalistic names, like ‘St Lawrence O’Toole’. Little notices on the counter announce Ici on cause wallon and great bazaars, like some reverential Woolworth’s, overflow with excellent people buying containers in plastic for Lourdes water, and tiny statuettes brightened with phosphorescent paint.

MGR F. Trochu published in 1954 Ste Bernadette Soubiraus, now translated and ‘adapted’ by Fr J. Joyce, s.j. (Longmans; 25s.): omission of notes and references has reduced the book from 585 pages to 400 and it will doubtless be the definitive ‘life’ of St Bernadette in English. Yet I feel that a History of Lourdes is still required. Lest I seem over-critical, and at the risk of being over-personal, may I say that already at school I was spell-bound by ‘Lourdes’—in spite of books. Lasserre’s book was clearly a ‘literary’ work by an enthusiast, not an historian: two persons sent me Zola’s Lourdes, no less clearly rationalist, though I could not then know of its deliberate mendacity. I went to make a novena at Lourdes and sought for every trace of Bernadette and Abbé Peyramale. I returned, and remained, ever more beholden to our Lady of Lourdes, but not till, long afterwards, I read Fr Cros’s three big volumes, did I feel that my ‘devotion’ had historically irreproachable foundations. A ‘history’ must not seek, or be afraid, to ‘shock’.

Instinctively I turned to page 40 in the translation: Bernadette on her way to collect wood passed an old woman who was ‘doing some washing’. I knew that Bernadette had said des boyaux. I turned to Trochu: the translation was quite faithful; but the French relegates the boyaux to a coy footnote. ‘La Pigouno’ ‘did not hide’ that what she was washing was—would ‘offal’ offend the delicate ears of England, or even America? Again, when the children returned after the first Apparition, Toinette says (page 46) that she will go to sell the bones they had collected, so ‘the mother hurriedly began to tidy Toinette’s unruly curls’ (recoiffers les boucles folks de T.).