# Der Junge Lutheraner_Frankfurt am Main_Januar 1950_S3
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Number 1

January 1950

Page 3

A Physician's Verdict

Our present age is so rich in miracles that the thought suggests itself of seeing, in the accumulation of these wondrous healings and apparitions, a special providence of God for our stricken Europe:

On the other hand, however — and these very considerations are by no means lacking in quite clear indications — one must bear in mind that the origin of these "miracles" is not to be attributed to a divine revelation, but rather is traceable to people's own longing for one.

The legendary origin story underlying the wondrous healings at Lourdes should be sufficiently well known through F. Werfel's novel and the corresponding film.

The story has it that since the year 1858 — that is, for ninety years now — an unbroken chain of healings of a supernatural kind has taken place.

By a miraculous healing we must understand, medically speaking, a cure which by its very nature cannot be explained by natural forces. Now, in order to establish these miracles as supernatural events, physicians must be brought in, since as experts on the forces of nature they would presumably be best qualified to certify a miracle.

The developmental history of Lourdes now shows that until the year 1892 the miracles took place without any medical certification, until in that same year a "Bureau de Constatations," staffed by two physicians, was set up, which served the above-mentioned purpose of a medically critical assessment.

But let us hear what an authority in the field of nervous disorders has to report in his lectures on "Psychoneuroses and Their Psychic Treatment" (published by A. Francke, Bern 1905). Professor DuBois, associate professor at the University of Bern, writes (17th lecture, page 203):

"The cures achieved there (at Lourdes) are on the whole rare; many concern neuropaths, who could have been healed just as well and just as quickly by any other suggestive influence. Other patients with physical ailments declare themselves cured because at Lourdes they lost nervous disturbances that accompany the organic illness, or because they noted (established) a decrease in the painful symptoms, which — let us not forget — are essentially always psychic in nature.

But above all, I have found among the physicians of the certification bureau, despite their undeniably good faith, such a state of mind that their observations lose all value in my eyes.

Already convinced from the outset, these physicians do not have so much as a trace of critical spirit; their trust in the testimony not only of physicians but of quite arbitrary persons exceeds all bounds, and I could gather from their reports that many of the so-called miracle cures owe their occurrence only to this thoroughly deficient certification."

So much for Prof. Dr. DuBois in 1905 on Lourdes and its miraculous healings. But the hope that the progress of the sciences would cause the second fifty years of Lourdes miracle healings to appear in a more critical light comes to nothing when we read a book published in 1933: "Miraculous Healings of Lourdes." The authors of this book are the leading members of the "Bureau de Constatations" at Lourdes.

These are Dr. August Valles (President of the medical certification bureau) and Dr. Robert Dubuser (member of Our Lady of Lourdes), who now endeavor, by means of very instructive medical illustrations and in a sentimental narrative style, to bring home to the medical layman, in seemingly scientific reporting, a considerable number of miraculous healings.

We can best recognize the deceptiveness of this scientific pretense in the case, as related, of Peter de Rübber. He was a woodworker whose left lower leg was crushed in 1867. After eight years of unsuccessful medical treatment, his leg — from which two completely suppurating bone stumps protruded — was healed within seconds at Lourdes-Dastacker.

The uniqueness of this miracle would have required that this supernatural event be made known to the world — and especially to the medical world — through publication, for critical assessment. Instead, at first nothing at all happened. Peter de Rübber lived another twenty-three years, and his autopsy, which showed a normal lower-leg bone, prompted three Belgian physicians to take up this story and publish it as a great miracle (1900). All this twenty-five years after his "miraculous healing."

These three physicians thus created, by virtue of their medical authority, out of an unproven tale a medically proven miracle — at least for the world of laymen.

The heads of the Lourdes "Bureau de Constatations," Dr. Valles and Dr. Dubuser, took up this old story again in 1933, added memorable illustrations, and presented it once more, with the same superficial lack of criticism, as a reheated miracle to an astonished world.

When we consider that these same physicians must render their verdict daily between natural events and miracles, then I believe we need have no concern about the emergence of further miracles, and that, as far as Lourdes is concerned, we can still today subscribe to the opinion of Prof. DuBois, that superstition on the threshold of the twentieth century was just as vigorous as it was in the Middle Ages. (Dr. med. G. Munder)

Must We Criticize?

When the notice about "What Do We Say About Lourdes?" caught my eye, it struck me as very strange. I too have seen the film "The Song of Bernadette," and I do not judge the film and the pilgrimages to Lourdes to be propaganda. For whoever takes part in these pilgrimages with a believing heart will surely find it a blessing as well. We cannot always understand the customs and practices of the Catholic Church. When I once attended a Marian devotion last year, it struck me as very odd that Mother Mary was constantly invoked for help. I mentioned this to a Catholic woman and told her that we could seek help only from God and from Jesus. She replied that this was indeed all they did; but that they invoked the saints as their intercessors to God and to Jesus. I would also like to include here a remark that gave me much food for thought. When I was once talking with acquaintances about the Church and Luther, a seventeen-year-old apprentice (a Sudeten German Catholic) said to me: "Even the Catholic Church owes Luther a very great deal!"
I believe it is not our task to find fault with other confessions, but that it is better for us to respect and honor every believing person, regardless of which confession he belongs to. And let us rather strive to become a congregation like the one at Philadelphia, so that we may be found faithful before God. (See Revelation 3:7-13.)
J. St., Kassel.

Our Opinion

Is the personal respect we ought to show to other people in any way affected by the question, "What do we say about Lourdes?" "Give honor to all men!" God's Word admonishes, yet at the same time demands: "Test everything!" Scripture even warns that there will be "false teachers, who shall bring in alongside them destructive sects, and deny the Lord who bought them" (2 Peter 2:1). And the Lord Jesus calls to us: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves" (Matthew 7:15). Therefore a position on Lourdes cannot be dismissed with the objection that it is not our task to find fault with other confessions. It is not fault-finding when we warn against the belief in miracles at Lourdes and the propaganda that is carried on with Lourdes; rather, Scripture itself makes this our duty. The Apostle Paul writes in his First Epistle to Timothy (chapter 4:1ff.): "The Spirit says expressly that in the latter times some will depart from the faith and cling to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, through the hypocrisy of liars." And Paul makes it the duty of Timothy, and thereby of every servant of the Word, indeed of every Christian, to warn the brethren of this: "If you put these things before the brethren, you will be a good servant of Jesus Christ."

Lourdes in the Light of Scripture

The congregation at Philadelphia, after all, is praised precisely because it has kept God's Word and has not denied the Lord's name, and it is given the admonition: "Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown." (Revelation 3:8, 11) We must ask ourselves whether a sober judgment and a clear position on Lourdes also belong to our holding fast to what we have.

For our assessment it is immaterial how many miraculous healings have occurred at Lourdes over the years. Far more important for us is the question of whether such a belief in miracles can stand in the light of Holy Scripture. And what is decisive for us as Lutheran Christians is how we regard the veneration of saints, and especially the veneration of Mary, which receives a strong boost in the Roman Catholic Church through the miracle-spring of Lourdes and is deliberately nurtured there. This tendency also underlies the film "The Song of Bernadette," and is all the more troubling precisely because the film's direction is so masterfully done. For the veneration of saints, and especially the veneration of Mary, in the Roman Catholic Church is contrary to Scripture and is a desecration and denial of the name of God and of our Savior.

When, as a prisoner of war, I had occasion to converse at length with a Catholic clergyman about questions of faith, he once tried, by pointing to Lourdes and the healings achieved there, to convince me that the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church alone were true and alone brought salvation. In the course of this we also came to speak of the veneration of Mary, and he challenged me to name him a passage of the Bible by which the veneration of saints could be shown to be unscriptural. I gave him the well-known word from the prophet Isaiah: "Doubtless you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us. You, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name" (Isaiah 63:16). At that he fell silent, taken aback, and never touched on this subject again. But we must likewise hold the Roman veneration of saints up to the light of the other word of God: "I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols" (Isaiah 42:8).

Therefore we must also today regard it as a denial of his name when Mary or other saints are invoked as intercessors. "We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1), and whoever invokes other intercessors lays hands on the honor of the name of Jesus Christ.

The congregation at Philadelphia (Revelation 3:7f) is warned "of the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." What is going on at Lourdes, and what is being reported about it through press and film across the whole world, is more than propaganda. It is a great temptation for all "them that dwell upon the earth," and quite especially for us Christians. How can we be kept from this temptation? God tells the congregation at Philadelphia in these words: "Because you have kept the word of my patience, I also will keep you from the hour of temptation."