The shrine to Bernadette Soubirous, Lourdes, France
Without the slightest sign of irony, the Catholic Church in France has re-opened the Lourdes faith-healing scam in the Hautes-Pyrénées region, which had been closed because of the Coronavirus pandemic. Lourdes, it may be remembered, sells quack cures for all manner of afflictions and illnesses, but is powerless to prevent people catching COVID-19, apparently.
The grotto was officially reopened on February 11, on the anniversary of the date in 1858 on which a young peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, or Sobirós, in the local language, Occitan, then spoken in the Languedoc region of France, whom many townspeople, including her own father, thought was mentally disturbed, claimed to have seen a vison of the Virgin Mary.
Despite herself suffering from ill health and dying relatively young and several of her close relatives, including siblings and both her parents also dying young, the legend grew up, eagerly promoted by the Catholic Church, that the water that flowed from the grotto could cure all manner of physical ailments. Servicing the pilgrims to the shrine has since become a major industry in the area. Lourdes is now second only to Paris in the number of hotels it has and 90% of the inhabitants of the town of Lourdes are dependent on the tourist industry for their living, despite the fact that authenticated cures are as rare as hen's teeth and are almost always of conditions subject to spontaneous remission anyway.
Bernadette Soubirous
As of 2006, only 67 'cures' had been authenticated, although the Catholic Church now claims 70 miracle cures, from the 250 million pilgrims who have sought one. This is about 1 in every 3.7 million people, or a success rate of less than 0.00003%. Not a single 'cure' had included such things as spontaneous regeneration of a limb or an organ, re-joining of a transected spinal cord, regeneration of destroyed brain tissues, repair of gross disfigurement or scarring, or indeed anything at all that could truly be regarded as without scientific explanation, although such cures should be well within the capability of a creator deity able to raise the dead and create living tissues from inorganic substances.
But no-one in the Catholic church seems to be the least embarrassed by the fact that a 'miracle cure' site, where people might have gone to be cured of COVID-19 had it been any good, had to be closed because of the very real risk of catching COVID-19 and becoming seriously ill or dying of it. But why spoil a good scam with a few inconvenient facts?
Further reading: Faking It as Lourdes
Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It
This book explains why faith is a fallacy and serves no useful purpose other than providing an excuse for pretending to know things that are unknown. It also explains how losing faith liberates former sufferers from fear, delusion and the control of others, freeing them to see the world in a different light, to recognise the injustices that religions cause and to accept people for who they are, not which group they happened to be born in. A society based on atheist, Humanist principles would be a less divided, more inclusive, more peaceful society and one more appreciative of the one opportunity that life gives us to enjoy and wonder at the world we live in.
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