Mary inspires the most delicate sentiments of Christian piety

At Lourdes, Fatima and other Marian shrines, an impartial observation has been established concerning Marian apparitions or miraculous graces obtained through Mary’s intercession. These are facts that defy any natural explanation. To date, 1,200 healings in Lourdes have been recognized by doctors as scientifically inexplicable. The Catholic Church has declared only 44 of them miraculous. For 30 years, 11,000 doctors, regardless of religious belief or scientific opinion, have had free access to the Medical Findings Bureau records. A cure that is declared miraculous therefore has the greatest possible guarantee.

What is the deeper meaning of these miraculous occurrences in God's plan? It seems that through these facts, God wants to respond in a radical way to modern unbelief. How could an unbeliever, faced with these facts, persevere with sincerity in his unbelief? Shouldn’t these facts lead us to bring back the Mother of God into the evangelical Church? Are they not an irrefutable proof of the role that Mary is called to play today for our salvation?

Today, in many countries, the existence of Christianity is at stake. It would be utter recklessness to ignore the voice of God who, through Mary, speaks to the world, and to turn one's back from her only because He makes His voice heard in the Catholic Church. And especially because the Reformed Church never parted with the Mother of God. She was expelled only after the Thirty Years' War and in the time of the free-thinking philosophers of the 18th century.

By smothering the devotion to Our Lady in evangelical hearts, they destroyed the most delicate sentiments of Christian piety.

Published in Brother Albert Pfleger’s Collection of Marian Stories, taken from a manifesto published in 1971 by a group of Lutheran theologians from East Germany.