I might add to my post, mainly in regard to Fatima, where in 1917 Mary
appeared to three (illiterate), poor Catholic Portuguese children ("I
thank you Father, that you have hidden these things from the wise and
learned, and revealed them to children"). He didn't send Mary to
Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson or Kaiser Wilhelm, or even the Pope,
Orthodox leaders or Protestant heads of churches.
WIthin two years two of the children were dead, victims of the Spanish
Influenza plague of 1919 / 20. I suppose the devil made use of that
event to get rid of two out of three inconvenient witnesses. The sole
remaining child became Sister Lucia dos Santos. It is from her that
most of the subsequent testimony has come.
Incidentally I've cheated a bit and cut and pasted most of the
following from a publication put out by the "Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith", entitled "The Message of Fatime". I've
mentioned this for reasons of copyright. The full text can be read
at
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfa=
ith_doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html
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Quote No. 1 "The twentieth century was one of the most crucial in
human history, with its tragic and cruel events culminating in the
assassination attempt on the "sweet Christ on earth". Now a veil is
drawn back on a series of events which make history and interpret it
in depth, in a spiritual perspective alien to present-day attitudes,
often tainted with rationalism.
Throughout history there have been supernatural apparitions and signs
which go to the heart of human events and which, to the surprise of
believers and non-believers alike, play their part in the unfolding of
history. These manifestations can never contradict the content of
faith, and must therefore have their focus in the core of Christ's
proclamation: the Father's love which leads men and women to
conversion and bestows the grace required to abandon oneself to him
with filial devotion. This too is the message of Fatima which, with
its urgent call to conversion and penance, draws us to the heart of
the Gospel.
Fatima is undoubtedly the most prophetic of modern apparitions. The
first and second parts of the "secret"-which are here published in
sequence so as to complete the documentation-refer especially to the
frightening vision of hell, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
the Second World War, and finally the prediction of the immense damage
that Russia would do to humanity by abandoning the Christian faith and
embracing Communist totalitarianism.
In 1917 no one could have imagined all this: the three pastorinhos of
Fatima see, listen and remember, and Lucia, the surviving witness,
commits it all to paper when ordered to do so by the Bishop of Leiria
and with Our Lady's permission. "
Quote No 2.
"Well, the secret is made up of three distinct parts, two of which I
am now going to reveal.
The first part is the vision of hell.
Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the
earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like
transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze,
floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the
flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds
of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire,
without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and
despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons
could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to
frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision
lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind
heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the
first Apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I think we would
have died of fear and terror.
We then looked up at Our Lady, who said to us so kindly and so sadly:
"You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them,
God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.
If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will
be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease
offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of
Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that
this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the
world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the
Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask
for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the
Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are
heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she
will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and
persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father
will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the
end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate
Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will
be granted to the world".(7)"
<<My comment - Note the accurate predictions - the war (World War I)
is going to end, a worse war will break out during the Pontificate of
Pius XI (World War II), a night illumened by an unknown light (about 2
years before WWII, the northern aurora was so bright people outside
London thought it was on fire - a couple of years later it really was
on fire during the Blitz), Russia turned Boshevik the very same year
Mary appeared in 1917, and we know the story of suffering that
brought. Do you think a 10 year old uneducated, illiterate girl would
have these sorts of insights naturally?>>
Quote No. 2
"After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of
Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in
his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they
would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the
splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand:
pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a
loud voice: 'Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense
light that is God: 'something similar to how people appear in a mirror
when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White 'we had the
impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests, men
and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which
there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the
bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city
half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with
pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his
way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot
of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired
bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after
another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and
various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two
arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal
aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the
Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to
God. "
This part is less easily understood. The Catholic Church believes the
third part reached it's culmination in the attempted assassination of
Pope John Paul by a young Turk under orders by Communist authorities
(the would be assassin has become a Christian incidentally, largely
through the Pope's example of forgiveness. He visited him in his jail
cell.). Whilst the Pope wasn't killed, he came close, and there were
an immense number of martyrs in the 20th century. A few years after
the assassination attempt, and what might be called the culmination of
the third secret, the Soviet Union collapsed.
Quote No. 3 - "Public Revelation and private revelations - their
theological status
Before attempting an interpretation, the main lines of which can be
found in the statement read by Cardinal Sodano on 13 May of this year
at the end of the Mass celebrated by the Holy Father in Fatima, there
is a need for some basic clarification of the way in which, according
to Church teaching, phenomena such as Fatima are to be understood
within the life of faith. The teaching of the Church distinguishes
between "public Revelation" and "private revelations". The two
realities differ not only in degree but also in essence. The term
"public Revelation" refers to the revealing action of God directed to
humanity as a whole and which finds its literary expression in the two
parts of the Bible: the Old and New Testaments. It is called
"Revelation" because in it God gradually made himself known to men, to
the point of becoming man himself, in order to draw to himself the
whole world and unite it with himself through his Incarnate Son, Jesus
Christ. It is not a matter therefore of intellectual communication,
but of a life-giving process in which God comes to meet man. At the
same time this process naturally produces data pertaining to the mind
and to the understanding of the mystery of God. It is a process which
involves man in his entirety and therefore reason as well, but not
reason alone. Because God is one, history, which he shares with
humanity, is also one. It is valid for all time, and it has reached
its fulfilment in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In
Christ, God has said everything, that is, he has revealed himself
completely, and therefore Revelation came to an end with the
fulfilment of the mystery of Christ as enunciated in the New
Testament. To explain the finality and completeness of Revelation, the
Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes a text of Saint John of the
Cross: "In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no
other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word-and he has
no more to say... because what he spoke before to the prophets in
parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His
Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation
would be guilty not only of foolish behaviour but also of offending
him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with
the desire for some other novelty" (No. 65; Saint John of the
Cross,The Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, 22).
Because the single Revelation of God addressed to all peoples comes to
completion with Christ and the witness borne to him in the books of
the New Testament, the Church is tied to this unique event of sacred
history and to the word of the Bible, which guarantees and interprets
it. But this does not mean that the Church can now look only to the
past and that she is condemned to sterile repetition. The Catechism of
the Catholic Church says in this regard: "...even if Revelation is
already complete, it has not been made fully explicit; it remains for
Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the
course of the centuries" (No. 66). The way in which the Church is
bound to both the uniqueness of the event and progress in
understanding it is very well illustrated in the farewell discourse of
the Lord when, taking leave of his disciples, he says: "I have yet
many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the
Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he
will not speak on his own authority... He will glorify me, for he will
take what is mine and declare it to you" (Jn 16:12-14). On the one
hand, the Spirit acts as a guide who discloses a knowledge previously
unreachable because the premise was missing-this is the boundless
breadth and depth of Christian faith. On the other hand, to be guided
by the Spirit is also "to draw from" the riches of Jesus Christ
himself, the inexhaustible depths of which appear in the way the
Spirit leads. In this regard, the Catechism cites profound words of
Pope Gregory the Great: "The sacred Scriptures grow with the one who
reads them" (No. 94; Gregory the Great,Homilia in Ezechielem I, 7, 8).
The Second Vatican Council notes three essential ways in which the
Spirit guides in the Church, and therefore three ways in which "the
word grows": through the meditation and study of the faithful, through
the deep understanding which comes from spiritual experience, and
through the preaching of "those who, in the succession of the
episcopate, have received the sure charism of truth" (Dei Verbum, 8).
In this context, it now becomes possible to understand rightly the
concept of "private revelation", which refers to all the visions and
revelations which have taken place since the completion of the New
Testament. This is the category to which we must assign the message of
Fatima. In this respect, let us listen once again to the Catechism of
the Catholic Church: "Throughout the ages, there have been so-called
'private' revelations, some of which have been recognized by the
authority of the Church... It is not their role to complete Christ's
definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain
period of history" (No. 67). This clarifies two things:
1=2E The authority of private revelations is essentially different from
that of the definitive public Revelation. The latter demands faith; in
it in fact God himself speaks to us through human words and the
mediation of the living community of the Church. Faith in God and in
his word is different from any other human faith, trust or opinion.
The certainty that it is God who is speaking gives me the assurance
that I am in touch with truth itself. It gives me a certitude which is
beyond verification by any human way of knowing. It is the certitude
upon which I build my life and to which I entrust myself in dying.
2=2E Private revelation is a help to this faith, and shows its
credibility precisely by leading me back to the definitive public
Revelation. In this regard, Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, the future
Pope Benedict XIV, says in his classic treatise, which later became
normative for beatifications and canonizations: "An assent of Catholic
faith is not due to revelations approved in this way; it is not even
possible. These revelations seek rather an assent of human faith in
keeping with the requirements of prudence, which puts them before us
as probable and credible to piety". The Flemish theologian E. Dhanis,
an eminent scholar in this field, states succinctly that
ecclesiastical approval of a private revelation has three elements:
the message contains nothing contrary to faith or morals; it is lawful
to make it public; and the faithful are authorized to accept it with
prudence (E. Dhanis,Sguardo su Fatima e bilancio di una discussione,
in La Civilt=E0 Cattolica 104 [1953], II, 392-406, in particular 397).
Such a message can be a genuine help in understanding the Gospel and
living it better at a particular moment in time; therefore it should
not be disregarded. It is a help which is offered, but which one is
not obliged to use.
The criterion for the truth and value of a private revelation is
therefore its orientation to Christ himself. When it leads us away
from him, when it becomes independent of him or even presents itself
as another and better plan of salvation, more important than the
Gospel, then it certainly does not come from the Holy Spirit, who
guides us more deeply into the Gospel and not away from it. This does
not mean that a private revelation will not offer new emphases or give
rise to new devotional forms, or deepen and spread older forms. But in
all of this there must be a nurturing of faith, hope and love, which
are the unchanging path to salvation for everyone. We might add that
private revelations often spring from popular piety and leave their
stamp on it, giving it a new impulse and opening the way for new forms
of it. Nor does this exclude that they will have an effect even on the
liturgy, as we see for instance in the feasts of Corpus Christi and of
the Sacred Heart of Jesus. From one point of view, the relationship
between Revelation and private revelations appears in the relationship
between the liturgy and popular piety: the liturgy is the criterion,
it is the living form of the Church as a whole, fed directly by the
Gospel. Popular piety is a sign that the faith is spreading its roots
into the heart of a people in such a way that it reaches into daily
life. Popular religiosity is the first and fundamental mode of
"inculturation" of the faith. While it must always take its lead and
direction from the liturgy, it in turn enriches the faith by involving
the heart.
We have thus moved from the somewhat negative clarifications,
initially needed, to a positive definition of private revelations. How
can they be classified correctly in relation to Scripture? To which
theological category do they belong? The oldest letter of Saint Paul
which has been preserved, perhaps the oldest of the New Testament
texts, the First Letter to the Thessalonians, seems to me to point the
way. The Apostle says: "Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise
prophesying, but test everything, holding fast to what is
good" (5:19-21). In every age the Church has received the charism of
prophecy, which must be scrutinized but not scorned. On this point, it
should be kept in mind that prophecy in the biblical sense does not
mean to predict the future but to explain the will of God for the
present, and therefore show the right path to take for the future. A
person who foretells what is going to happen responds to the curiosity
of the mind, which wants to draw back the veil on the future. The
prophet speaks to the blindness of will and of reason, and declares
the will of God as an indication and demand for the present time. In
this case, prediction of the future is of secondary importance. What
is essential is the actualization of the definitive Revelation, which
concerns me at the deepest level. The prophetic word is a warning or a
consolation, or both together. In this sense there is a link between
the charism of prophecy and the category of "the signs of the times",
which Vatican II brought to light anew: "You know how to interpret the
appearance of earth and sky; why then do you not know how to interpret
the present time?" (Lk 12:56). In this saying of Jesus, the "signs of
the times" must be understood as the path he was taking, indeed it
must be understood as Jesus himself. To interpret the signs of the
times in the light of faith means to recognize the presence of Christ
in every age. In the private revelations approved by the Church-and
therefore also in Fatima-this is the point: they help us to understand
the signs of the times and to respond to them rightly in faith."
Quote No. 4 - This time from "The Final Hour", by Michael Brown, a
Catholic Journalist and author.
"While this was happening a disc of some sort moved in front of the
sun and for ten minutes the sun danced like the firewheels in
Ezekiel. Spinning and throwing off stupendous rays of crimson,
causing reflections of green, red, orange, blue and violet on the
faces below, it gyrated at least three times, shuddered, and began to
plunge downward in a zig-zag fashion, as if to destroy all the earth.
"We're going to die" people screamed. "It's the end of the world!"
Then the sun returned to it's normal position and to the crowd's
amazement their clothes, dampened by hours of rain, were instantly
dry.
As Avenino de Almeida reported in the newspaper 'O Seculo' "Before the
astonished eyes of the people,whose attitude carries us back to
biblical times and who, full of terror, heads uncovered, gaze into the
blue of the sky, the sun has trembled, and the sun has made some
brusque movements, unprecedented and outside of all cosmic laws ....""
Quote No. 5. - This time from Bishop Fulton Sheen, one time television
spokesman for the Catholic Faith, and who wrote a few books. You are
probably aware of Islam's resurgence at this time. There is another
aspect to Fatima not many people know about. This extract is from
"The World's Firist Love" in a chapter entitled "Mary and the
Moslems". It was also published in 1952, 55 years ago, so his insight
into today's confrontation between Islam and the West was salutary.
"At the present time, the hatred of the Moslem countries against the
West is becoming a hatred against Christianity itself. Although the
statesmen have not taken it into account (in 1952), there is still
grave danger that the temporal power of Islam may return (!!), and,
with it, a menace that it may shake off a West that has ceased to be
Christian and affirm itself as a great anti-Christian world power.....
It is our belief that this (conversion) will not happen through the
direct teaching of Christianity ..... which so far has been on the
surface, a failure ...but through a summoning of the Moslems to a
veneration of the Mother of God. This is the line of argument:
The Koran ... has many passages concerning the Blessed Virgin. First
of all, the Koran believes in her Immaculate Conception and also in
her Virgin Birth ....
Mary, then, is for the Moslems the true Sayyida, or Lady. The only
possible serious rival to her in their creed would be Fatima, the
daughter of Mohammed herself.....
The brings us to our second point, namely, why the Blessed Mother, in
this twentieth century, should have revealed herself in the
insignificant village of Fatima, so that to all future generations she
would be known as Our Lady of Fatima. SInce nothing ever happens out
of Heaven except with a finesse of all details, I believe that the
Blessed Virgin chose to be known as "Our Lady Of Fatima" as a pledge
and a sign of hope to the Moslem people and as an assurance that they,
who show her so much respect, will one day accept her Divine Son, too.
Evidence to support these views is found in the historical fact that
the Moslems occupied Portugal for centuries. At the time when they
were finally driven out, the last Moslem chief had a beautiful
daughter by the name of Fatima. A Catholic boy fell in love with her,
and for him she not only stayed behind, but even embraced the Faith.
The young husband was so much in love with her that he changed the
name of the town where he lived to Fatima. Thus, the very place where
Our Lady appeared in 1917 bears an historical connection to Fatima the
daughter of Mohammed......"
**************************************
End of quotes.
Now I'll tell you why God has been sending Mary. First of all He
indicated to John (of Revelation fame) that He was going to send a
portent in the heavens, in Rev. 12 "A great portent appeared in
heaven: a woman clothed with the the sun, with the moon under her
feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars..."
Not long after He warned us through John that at that time "Woe to the
the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you with great
wrath, for he knows that his time is short!"
So first of all God is simply doing what He indicated to John would
happen.
Secondly He would have been well aware that Islam would still be a
viable and powerful religion, but He cares for all people.
Third, He's sending Mary as a JUDGEMENT against a disobediently,
divided church. You see, we're so busy continuing our stupid four
hundred year old bun fight and picking out the bits of scripture that
suit our preconceived notions, that God can give us very blunt
warnings that we're in deep trouble, and we have hardly taken the
slightest bit of notice.
I wouldn't depend on the Rapture to bail you out by the way, because
there isn't going to be one.
Catholicism is a heresy, is it. I suggest you think again. For, you
see, we take the entire Scripture, and not just the bits and pieces
which suit our particular brand of theology. Or to put it another
way, there is only one Roman Catholic Church, and thousands of
different Protestant sects, some of which even share the same name,
but which cannot even agree with each other.
Who are you to tell us what to believe?
"