The film, My Name is Bernadette (2011), focuses, almost as an obsession, on the question of
whether the girl “actually” saw the Virgin Mary in a series of visions at
Lourdes. All too often, miracles are treated as ends in themselves, rather than
as pointers to something deeper. Even the girl in the visual and auditory
(albeit only to Bernadette) apparition identified itself only in terms of a
supernatural miracle, the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception. I contend that Bernadette’s
awe-inspiring spirituality visually conveyed on screen, and Monsignor Forcade’s
spiritually-insightful advice to Bernadette as to her functions in her upcoming
life as a nun is more important than the miracles, even from the standpoint of
religion. In other words, the story-world of the film, which is based on the
true story of Bernadette at Lourdes, is a good illustration of a what happens
when everyone in a large group of people reduces religion to science and even
metaphysics and misses the sui generis (i.e., unique) and core elements
of religion. Such is the power of group-think that conflation of different,
albeit related, domains of human experience can remain hidden in a societal
blind-spot. Not even the film makes this blind-spot transparent.
The full essay is at "My Name Is Bernadette."
