Ancient Mysteries: The Sacred Waters of Lourdes (2005)

First of all, don't believe the pouting naysayers who paint this Ancient Mysteries installment as an across-the-board slamdunk smackdown of the Lourdes apparitions. Leonard Nimoy has narrated a broad wealth of fair and balanced documentaries about subjects (such as UFOs) that rightly merit skepticism. (What true believers fail to recognize is that readily ascribing to God any unexplainable or supernatural phenomenon -- whatever it may be -- hardly gives him credit or glory esp. if a modicum of common sense or inquiry should uncover a natural explanation. Being too ready to give God the credit for anything -- say, "the image of Christ" in a potato -- demeans and insults everything that's involved in the words "my utmost for his highest" and just smacks of simplistic pietism.) If anything, Nimoy's script seems lazy in its overuse of the documentarian's dualistic trope of frequent querulous phrasings such as "holy vision or fevered hallucination...?" On the whole, however, the script leaves the eternally dualistic question of faith versus science open to the viewer. It's true that two featured "experts" are authors who simply don't believe in the supernatural but at least one other "talking head" is the chaplain at Lourdes who is clearly sympathetic (just not pushy) about the faith experience that millions have experienced at Lourdes. This A&E special makes an excellent introduction to the origins and the history of the Lourdes apparitions and points out that an independent medical commission has investigated and substantiated some 2,000 healings (while the Vatican, with its extremely conservative process, has verified 64). A few minutes are spent discussing the Marian apparitions at Fatima and Medjugorje but this is a very good introduction to the subject esp. for those with little or no prior knowledge. 3.5 stars.