I watched on old film on this last night - 'The Song of Bernadette'. I remember seeing it as a kid and my main recollection is how people took the film to be absolutely accurate in every way even though it was based a novel which in turn was based on the life of the girl.

Anyway; there are many recorded healings of afflictions and illlnesses, some indisputable, but the most odd thing about it is that the body of the girl Bernadette has never decayed even though no preservatives have been applied.

How do we explain all this?

maybe she is just playing dead?

It's down to deep faith, just as we have deep (and some blind) faith in our team staying up this season.

Faith is very much like following a football team:- you worship your team and players, you go once a week, you pray for your team to score or the other to not.You meet people of a similar persuasion as yourself with a common aim. Both possess fanatics of a sort. You arrange functions with like-minded poeple where you can get together have a good laugh and a drink.

My own thoughts on this is that one person in 10 million are born with a gift, and not all will use it for their own personal gain. Bernadette (I guess) used hers for the benefit of others less fortunate, and deserved the canonization she recieved.

I don't do religion and I certainly don't do Catholicism despite being brought up as a Catholic. That said I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I understand all the universe. For example go back three hundred years with a box of matches and you would have been burned as a witch. The most mundane things that we take for granted today would have been seen as miracles a hundred years ago.

What then will we know in a thousand years?

Your mention of matches is a good example, because these gifted people, and I include in that category inventors,sages,etc, were streets ahead of the average person. Back to the match thing, if you did go back with a box say 300 yrs once the box ran out how many people today would possess the knowledge to recreate/produce some, not many I guess, and I include myself in that.

99.9% of the people on this planet are just going through the motions every day, it's the remainder who are actually responsible for our advancement.

It is a phenonomon that certainly defies the norm. Perhaps someone found a way of preserving her body and kept it to themselves, but that is as far fetched as some of the accusations levelled at the "lourdes question".

I know of a girl who was in a sanatorium suffering from TB in the fifties. The Medics didn't hold out much hope for her and decided to operate as a last gasp chance. If I remember right one lung had collapsed and the other was nearing to joining it. It was serious anyway.

The operation was due to take place on a Friday morning. On the Thursday evening before the operation the girl's mother gave her a glass of water taken from the spring at Lourdes.
Before the operation was to be carried out on the friday morning, X Rays were taken and both lungs were operating as if nothing had happened.

The girl is now in her seventies.

Her mother, who is now dead, visited Lourdes year after year after that. She couldn't answer your question either Mr I, other than to say that her prayers had been answered.

Don't know about mysteriously preserved bodies but I do know that the population of Lourdes do very well out the whole thing. Lots of plastic religious stuff, expensive crap rooms, expensive crap food etc etc.

If I found a well preserved miracle worker I'd get her on display quick. Or swap her for a monster to pop in the lake out the back. Either way the financial benefits are huge.

Sadly that is one of the downsides to these places but that's enterprise and taking opportunity when it presents itself.
The people who see a football stadium as their church are also presented with merchandise and crap food ( don't want to start the pie debate up again, but Morrell's are best ). Par for the course I think.
Funny though, if you believe in something ( me with Pools ) you willingly buy the merchandise, but when I last visited St James' Park I was shaking my head at all the "clowns" pouring money into the club shop.
I suppose it's the same at Lourdes.

when they last exhumed her they found her practically mummified so maybe the 'legend' isnt as miraculous as they claim?

I hadn't really known the story of Bernadette before, but there seem to be quite a few details about it that would be known to only the very few people who dug up the body. I've heard that some sorts of soil preserve bodies in this way, but the bodies start to decay, obviously, when they're exhumed. In a sceptic mode, I wonder whether the exhumers might have done a bit of secret embalming on Bernadette, after she was retrieved?

About the process of 'healing', though....I'm convinced that is a reality, even if no-one knows how it works. I don't think it's anything to do with religious belief...just physics that we don't understand yet. I can convince you, if you like, if you've ever got a spare hour.

i think you will find the pies from the farm shop in murray st are the best and morrells are just a cheap imitation of what they used to be. fact

I bow to your superior knowledge.

unless you are on about steak pies then blackwells at norton take some beating

The mystery of mankind eh.
Its like people who say Ghosts, God, ufo's, Life after death etc.... do not exist etc...
Who knows.
We certainly dont know for sure what is out there and what lies beyond, though we can certainly presume.
For example if space is infinite, and how could it not be, then our Big Bang and the universe born of it, leaves a lot of space to account for.
Also, if this life as we know it ends, which it will one day, is this the end, forever
No more footy, drink, sex.
Its absurd to believe that there's nothing else, or maybe its absurd to believe there is!!

Their pork pies are very good too

Well seems as though the general standard of pies takes priority on here over the meaning of life.

Know what you mean, in 1996 I was driving to Lisbon but we had to go to Toulouse first. Driving down the autoroute towards Bilbao I seen a sign saying 'lourdes' . As a good Catholic boy, as indeed were two of the other passengerees.... we decided to take a look. Apart from ac ouple of extrmely tidy young nuns the place was like Blackpool - even Lourdes fag lighters with a picture of Jesus's old dear on it.