Immaculate Deception

Can anyone tell me why this woman is not prosecuted? Her actions directly led to the death of her daughter of neglect by ensuing that she did not receive appropriate medical treatment. Whether she deserves treatment or punishment should be for a court to decide but I fail to see how relying on supposed miracle cures and when they fail, concealing the fact of her death for months from both the authorities and neighbours and even telling her grand-daughter not to go “into mummy’s room, because she is tired” can be seen as normal behaviour by anyone.

The scamming (sorry, treatment) of the gullible (sorry, faithful) at Lourdes leads to delusions as we see here. Ordinary people faced with extraordinary events will cling to anything that they believe may help them. Unfortunately the church feeds this delusion with its claims of miracles and holy water cures. Interestingly the church, as any good scam artist would do, still tells people to continue their conventional treatment just in case their faith-based treatment is all bullshit. And then they can claim these treatments as working!

There are a number of claimed miracle cures attributed to Lourdes, each one on the face of it seems inexplicable and miraculous to some degree, but they all seem to be internal afflictions which could have been misdiagnosed in the first place. If they really want to claim a miracle why does this Immaculate Conception not try and re-grow a leg or a piece of missing tissue.

Why was Bernadette believed simply because she called the vision the “Immaculate Conception”? It is trotted out in all the time to be proof, after all a 12 year old girl could not possibly have known about the meaning behind these words. However four years before the visions The Immaculate Conception was solemnly defined as a dogma (i.e. "fact") by Pope Pius IX in his constitution Ineffabilis Deus and surely it is less miraculous that a pious church-going girl might have heard this phrase in church or conversation around adults than it would be for a vision to have told her.

Also, on a slightly semantic point but nontheless interesting given Bernadette’s claims, surely the Immaculate Conception is Jesus not Mary? She would be the Immaculate Conceptee and God the Immaculate Conceptor but her son (Jesus) the Immaculate Conception.