Heresies and lies in the Virgin's Revelations at Fatima 1917
The Virgin Mary allegedly appeared in the middle of six consecutive months to three young children, Jacinta born 1910, Lucia born 1907 and Francisco born 1908 in Fatima Portugal in 1917.
This examination of the Virgin Mary’s appearances to Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco in Fatima in 1917 is based on Lucia’s memoirs.
The white Lady told her that she would take the other two children to Heaven soon but that Lucia would have to stay on earth longer and she would go to Heaven (page 73, Fatima In Lucia’s Own Words). The children died. But we cannot prove that Lucia revealed this prediction before the event so if the apparitions were from God we would be able to for he would not make a prophecy and withheld evidence for it. Lucia confessed that this was not told until she wrote her memoirs after the event (page 29).
The Fatima lady said that if a man who was ill repented and converted he would be healed within a year. That is terrible for to say a sick person may have deserved it or does deserve it is awful.
A private revelation being inferior to the faith which says nobody can be totally sure of salvation has no right to tell anybody that they will go to Heaven or who will go there. The Fatima Lady however even told the children when they asked about Maria das Neves and Amelia if they were in Heaven that Maria was but Amelia will be in Purgatory until the end of the world (page 18, What Happened at Fatima?). There is no reason to believe that Amelia was doing much wrong and she died in her teens so if she deserved to be in Purgatory that long the rest of us must deserve to be there longer. It has been stated that until the end of the world is just a metaphor for a long time and not necessarily to the end of the world or that it is conditional meaning that prayers for the dead would reduce Amelia’s sentence (page 19, What Happened at Fatima?). First of all, the Lady can be taken literally and she gave no hint not to take her literally so literally she should be taken. Prophets should not be putting times in non-literal language for a con could do the same. Secondly, God would not sentence Amelia to the end of the world and then reduce that sentence because of Masses and prayers for her for he would have known from the start how much help she would get. The Lady had no right whatsoever to say those things about Maria and Amelia when she was only an unauthenticated vision and there is nothing more serious than stating what a person’s spiritual state is and where they are now. Yes I know the real Virgin Mary would have the right but when she is appearing in an apparition she cannot exercise that right.
The Lady told the children to come to the Cova, the apparition site, every thirteenth for a while to see her. On the 13th August, the children were detained by the police and did not make it to the Cova for the apparition. They did not see the Lady. The Lady had not foreseen this when she asked them to come every month on the thirteenth day. The Lady was not the Virgin. The Lady could have appeared anywhere so she broke her promise when she did not appear that day but a few days later in Valinhos. This shows she was not a supernatural being at all.
The Lady forecasted a worse war than World War One during the reign of Pius XI if Russia was not consecrated to her and that God would send it to punish the world (Is this the Third Secret? page 5). See Martindale's What Happened at Fatima? page 14 where the lady is recorded as saying, "The war is ending; but if men do not cease from offending God a new and worse one will begin in the pontificate of Pius XI". The Second World War did not happen during the reign of Pius XI but Pius XII. Deuteronomy 18 says that if everything a prophet predicts is correct one error attributed to God suffices to prove that the prophet was a fraud and should be totally ignored. Evidently, the prophet cannot use the excuse, “I misunderstood God”, for if that could be allowed then the people would be in danger of being misled. God would be shown as inept.
I detest the suggestion of Lucia’s Virgin that the Second World War as retributive for it makes Hitler an instrument of God who should not have been ashamed when Mary gave permission for the retribution in 1917. What about the innocent Jews? Fatima would be of diabolical origin if there were a Devil. It is typical of papal arrogance and vengefulness to accept such apparitions as holy. Retribution is wrong and vindictive. It is better to jail criminals not to punish them but because we have to do something to curb crime. Why? Because no matter what the Catholic Church, Jesus and Our Lady of Fatima say, to say the sin is hateful is the same as saying the sinner should be hated for sin is something that a person does and it is part of the person. The lie that to say the sin is evil or that which should be despised is to say that the doer of the sin is despicable is at the root of the Catholic system. Satan ironically is according to Jesus, the Father of Lies (John 8:44). The only way to avoid hating the evildoer along with the evil they do is to hold that evil is not intending to be bad but the product of mental sickness. Evil is irrational and evil people are not in their right minds.
The condemning of Russia meaning communism amounts to an incitement to hatred. Bad deeds are an abuse of communism. They are not part of communism.
The Lady promised a strange light would appear to show that the next world war was near (page 136, The Thunder of Justice). The light never appeared but Lucia had to make do with an Aurora Boralis – a natural event! The Lady meant something supernatural for natural strange lights have been with us all the time. Lucia was not telling the truth.
God would be more concerned about the quality of a prayer that its quantity or its words or who it is being said by. The Virgin of Fatima accuses her God of being a snob.
The Virgin said that World War Two and persecutions of the Church and the Pope suffering a great deal would be arranged by God to punish the world if people did not stop offending God (Is this the Third Secret? Page 5).
Would God punish the world for sin by persecuting the Church and the Holy Father as the Lady said? That is just what a sinful world would like?
The Virgin showed the children a vision of the fire of Hell with fire and demons with horns (page 162, Fatima In Lucia’s own words). Children could only take it literally therefore she wanted that. The children believed that the Virgin was not the devil for she went up and not down into the ground where Hell was (page 69, Fatima In Lucia’s own words). The Virgin told them that there was a real and literal fire in Hell for sinners to burn in forever. As if the loss of God is not torment enough for the sinners! How vindictive it was to say a thing like that! By the way, the real Virgin would not have encouraged the children to believe she was Mary on the strength of such weak and shallow arguments concerning her appearance and how she moves! Francisco had a vision of a demon he saw in Hell one time he was praying (page 60, What Happened at Fatima?). He was prone to hallucinations for no real visionary would have any vision that the Church cannot authenticate.
The assumption that Our Lady adjusts her revelations to suit the understanding of her visionaries is unacceptable. The Mother of God can make them understand without resorting to tactics that could mislead. Why not show them dark shadows crying out with despair? Children could understand that the fire of Hell is deep sadness if it is not literal. At least the Virgin let them know that God does torments the souls in Hell against the popular modern notion that they torture themselves.
The Virgin said, "Many souls go to Hell because they have no one to pray for them or make sacrifices for them." So if you don't pray, you are or could be to blame for somebody going to Hell. That is a terrible accusation! Why does God wait until you ask him before he helps somebody? Does he care more about being asked than doing good? God is being insulted too! You would need to have a considerable religious ego to imagine that your prayers save people from Hell! It is just a way of feeling good about doing nothing! And it implies that it is better to pray for a person to keep them out of Hell than to feed a starving baby. If there had to be a choice, you would be expected to pray!
The Virgin said that most people who go to Hell go because of sins of the flesh. This is pure Catholic anti-sexualism. Most people die in old age when sex is no big deal. Sins against faith are more serious than sexual sin for they strike at the authority that says sex is bad. These sins are the commonest with most Catholics not knowing the faith properly and not wanting to know much. The Virgin said no such thing unless she was really Satan himself in disguise.
The Lady revealed hell to them as part of a secret. Since the Church taught the existence of Hell anyway and it was no secret the secret had to be that this vision of Hell was literally true.
The Church says that revelations can only be accepted as authentic if they do not add to infallible revelation but tell us to follow it. Fatima does add to it with its teaching about the need to consecrate Russia and for making the sun spin for mass conversion for obviously neither the Bible or tradition say such things or that they might be done.
The Fatima apparition is not a genuine revelation from a God of love. It should be shunned.
BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible
BOOKS CONSULTED
Alexandrina The Agony and the Glory, Francis Johnson, TAN, Illinois, 1979
Celestial Secrets, The Hidden History Of The Fatima Incident, Anomalist Books, San Antonio, New York, 2007
Encountering Mary, Sandra Zimdars-Swartz, Avon, New York, 1991
Fatima – in Lucia’s own words, Sr Lucia, Postulation Centre Fatima, 1976
Fatima Revealed and Discarded, Bro Michael of the Holy Trinity, Augustine, Devon, 1988
Is This The Third Secret? IF Colquhoun, 45 Nicholas Court, Swansea, 1995
Looking for a Miracle, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books, New York, 1993
New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
Os Mouros Fatimidas e as Aparicoes de Fatima
Queen of Peace (Newspaper), Fall 1995, Pittsburgh Center for Peace
Reason and Belief, Bland Blanschard, London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974
The Book of Miracles, Stuart Gordon, Headline, London, 1996
The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary, Kevin McClure, Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, 1985
The Rosary and the Crisis of Faith, Msgr. Joseph a. Cirrincione and Thomas A. Nelson, Tan, Illinois, 1986
The Third Secret of Fatima, Brother Michael of the Holy Trinity CRC, Tan, Illinois, 1991
The Thunder of Justice, Ted and Maureen Flynn, Maxcol Communications Inc. Sterling VA, 1993
What Happened at Fatima? Leo Madigan, Catholic Truth Society, London, 2000
THE WEB
An Agnostic Looks at Fatima,
http://www.portcult.com/index.fat.htm
Where is the Conversion of Russia? John Vennari
www.dailycatholic.org/issue/2002Mar/mar22fat.htm