Chapter 3
The drover’s daughter
Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
(St. John 1:46)
If the apparitions at Lourdes were a fraud, then Bernadette was the
least likely person to pull off the charade. Consider the casting. Who would
pick for this role a girl of fourteen, not literate, from a desperately poor
family, a girl who enjoyed solitude and the company of sheep? Did she have
any aptitude, inclination, training or connections to equip her for deception
on a grand scale? Not a scrap. On the contrary, her transparent honesty, her
common sense and her spontaneous grasp on reality – all these were widely
attested. So it was not remotely possible to fit on this guileless girl the mask
of an ultra cunning liar, one who could hold to the lie to the end of her days.
Nor did she show the faintest hint of being prone to hallucinations. Nor did
she possess
– as she would have needed – sublime dramatic gifts, sustained
over several months – skills beyond the range of the greatest actors of her
time. All these possibilities were thoroughly investigated – professionally
and objectively – and tossed out as being not worthy of further
consideration. But the strongest evidence was supplied by Bernadette
herself. Consistent in her testimony through almost endless questioning, she
was incredibly mature, patient, balanced, bright and articulate. Even more
eloquent, though, was her short life after her visions; a life perfumed with
the Christian virtues. Then there is the warranty of the miracles. More about
this later.
So Bernadette was an impossible candidate for the central role in a
gigantic confidence trick. Yet she stands in a well-known tradition of
visionaries. Consistently, the record shows that the simplest vessels are the
purest and are highly favoured in heaven. So it has been from the beginning.
Mary of Nazareth was also young, pure, obscure and – in the sense of being
uncomplicated – simple.
As with all history, hindsight distorts and clouds our perspective.
We see history as events that happened ‘then’ and not as ‘now’ and we bring
to the study much baggage that is worse than useless. In this baggage are a
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