"But People Can Believe What They Want"

Those are the words of Father Casimiro Roca of the Santuario de Chimayo, a New Mexico church known as the Lourdes of America. A NY Times article (Chimayo Journal: A Pastor Begs to Differ With Flock on Miracles) tells of the faithful who visit this holy shrine to take dirt they believe to be blessed with miraculous powers from a hole in the church floor. How can tens of thousands take dirt from the hole without endangering the building?

Simple, and it's neither a miracle nor a secret. A caretaker fills the hole with trucked in dirt so believers can take the dirt to "eat it, brew it in tea or rub it on the afflicted body area." Father Roca, who has ministered the shrine for 50 years, readily admits that the dirt is not miraculous and does not try to hide the fact that it is transported in to fill the hole. Yet pilgrims believe otherwise.

People want to believe. Common sense, and in this case the nearest sympathetic authoritative figure, cannot dissuade the populace from this fatuous attitude. Believing, of course, makes it neither true nor sensible. Yet with believing comes solace, warmth and inner peace.

Anecdotal evidence implies that parts of the educated world such as Australia and northern Europe, where major religions play a significantly smaller cultural role than in the U.S., have a correspondingly larger population of believers in alien visitations, occultism, fairies, gnomes and other such nonsense. One hears these suppositions and can't help but wonder if the human physiology dictates that a majority of us value something other than truth to be most important.

As the good Father said, people can believe what they want.