Do miracles occur?

Another oldie. I wrote this in 2003.

I’m the only person I know who has bathed in the waters of Lourdes, where the Blessed Virgin appeared to St. Bernadette almost 150 years ago and where 5,000,000 annually flock, many looking for a miracle. Bathing in the waters of Lourdes is something that I’ve looked upon as virtually a unique experience, and it is - at least in the circles in which I’ve traveled. How many people do you know who have had a miraculous experience, whether successful or not?

I was born with a club foot plus additional complications. It was these additional complications – a leg of stunted growth, a knee that didn’t bend – that made me a candidate for a miracle. My parents had been told by the orthopedist that a portion of my leg would be amputated when I reached puberty so that I could be fitted with a “normal” prosthesis. My mother, a firm believer in the teachings of the Church, felt that God could be called upon to prevent the amputation and render me whole. It was natural for her to put her beliefs into practice, so off to Lourdes we went in the summer of my eleventh year.

The heart of the shrine then as now was the grotto, the site of the first miracle (the discovery of a spring where none had existed). It is the water from this spring that has miraculous powers. Naturally, the area surrounding the grotto was filled with the infirm in wheelchairs, on crutches, lying on stretchers, leaning on their companions. People of all ages and with all sorts of maladies had come, as we had, to be made healthy. Hundreds of crutches enveloped the small chapel that had been built into the grotto; they had been left by those who were cured at Lourdes.

The grotto still housed the miracle spring, but the water was now piped into a building where there were rooms containing bath tubs. It was to one of these tubs that my mother accompanied me and watched and prayed as I sat in the miraculous waters. Most bathers must have found the experience very moving. But I did not. Perhaps, I was too young, too wrapped up in my daily life, too eager to get on to the next experience, not enough of a believer. Who knows why? My strong feeling then and my vivid memory all these years later is that the water was cold. That’s it! No thoughts of a miracle and what that might mean. No prayers. No appreciation of what my parents had gone through to bring me there. Just the typical self-centeredness of a pampered child.

One could conclude that, in addition to being a spoiled brat, I was also a child of the scientific century, where miracles did not occur, where science could explain everything, and, thus, it was right and fitting that my reaction was primarily physical. The scientist would say that my parents were superstitious and simply grasping at straws to help their child.

Fifty-five years later, there is a certain truth to these conclusions. But, in these same fifty-five years, there have been times where the truly unexplainable did happen to me and people I know. Perhaps, the world doesn’t move solely and at all times to the laws of science. Science has yet to fully explain the power our minds and spirit can exert over our bodies. Maybe I was wrong in 1948 and after. Had I been blessed or more receptive, a miracle might have occurred to me as it did, according to Lourdes’ records, to Maddalena Carini who visited the shrine a month after me.

I acknowledge that man is gullible and can be easily deceived by others or his own wishful thinking. Mass hallucinations have occurred. Pious frauds have existed. Closer, more comprehensive and independent examinations have explained away a number of claims of the miraculous. And, yet, there remains a doubt in my mind that questions the certitude of those who assert the impossibility of miracles.

Have miracles occurred at Lourdes? I’m not sure, but the process of verifying that a miracle happened there is fairly conservative. There are two levels of medical investigation. The first level, it is true, is that of the Medical Bureau at Lourdes. One could argue that, being based in Lourdes, they have a vested interest in finding miraculous cures. But, there are some built-in safeguards to minimize this. The most important of these safeguards is time. The person claiming to be cured first has to demonstrate that he had a condition incurable by medical means before he visited Lourdes. Then, the claimant must return at least one and, often, many years later for subsequent examination. Only if 75% of the doctors agree is the case referred to the second level.

This second level, which was established in 1947, consists of thirty medical specialists from around the world. Again, time is the primary safeguard to prevent false claims. The claimant can be examined for several years before a decision is reached. This second level, the Lourdes International Medical Committee, has referred only 29 (2.2%) of the 1300 cases they have investigated up to the third level, the religious level.

This third level is comprised of priests, theologians and canonists, whom the skeptic would claim to be very prone to seeing miracles where none exist. However, of the 29 cases referred to them, they have rejected about one-third. So that since 1947, only 1½% (19 of 1300) of the claims of a miracle have been approved. That is, 19 of the cures ascribed to the waters of Lourdes have been found to be “certain, definitive and medically inexplicable”.  Furthermore, in the past 145 years, despite the hundreds of crutches arrayed around the chapel, only 66 miracles are claimed, or one every two  years or so. In fact, in the past fifty-five years, that average has increased to more than two years and eight months.

Yes, it does seem odd to be talking about miracles in the twenty-first century. But maybe these claims are justified. Have I been unable to explain a tiny percentage (1½) of events that have happened to me over the years? Do odd things happen once every two years or so? I’d have to answer “yes” to both questions. What would your answer be?

Have miracles occurred at Lourdes? You tell me.