The Martindale Booklet, What Happened at Fatima? Clues that the visions were imagined
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. The Virgin supposedly made people have a vision of the sun spinning at the end of the appearances.
A Catholic Truth Society called What Happened at Fatima? was written by C.C. Martindale S.J. It must not be confused with Madigan's CTS booklet of the same title.
Page 2 says that on May 13 1917, Lucia and Jacinta and Francisco experienced the first apparition of Mary at Fatima. Mary said according to Lucia, "I come to ask you to come here six months running, on the 13th, at the same hour. Then I will tell you who I am and what I want. And I will come back here a seventh time."
The lady did not realise that the children would be unable to keep the August 13 appointment. They were arrested that day so instead of Mary appearing to them anyway she had to wait until August 19. And we are told that God knows the future! And a being not saying who she was risks encouraging the children to meet a being that might not be from God at all. This does not agree with Jesus' law that we must love God with all our hearts meaning we keep away from anything that does not prove it is from him. And she never came back to Fatima for a seventh time.
Page 2 says that Lucia asked the lady if she would go to Heaven and the answer was yes. An apparition cannot have the right to tell anybody that. Nobody is supposed to know. Page 2 also says that Lucia asked the entity about two friends of hers that had died for she wanted to know how they got on in the afterlife. The entity said that one was in Purgatory until the end of the world and the other was in Heaven. The booklet says that some books leave this stuff out against Lucia's will for she says the entity really said this. The palpable reason it is left out because anybody can see it was none of Lucia's business if anybody went to Purgatory or not. And it is against Church law to believe in apparitions that canonise people by saying they are in Heaven. Fatima was accepted as a true apparition through Catholicism's notorious inability to be consistent.
Page 2 in the footnote reads that Lucia said the lady looked 15 or 18 years old and the three visionaries called her mulherzinha meaning pretty little lady. The entity was small.
Page 3 says that the entity repeated and re-emphasised the need for the children to keep their monthly dates with the vision on June 13. It is odd that God would send her to say that and not know that the children would be forced to stay away from the apparition on 13 August. The Virgin does not visit often or give messages often so surely she would choose her words carefully and waste no time?
Page 5 reports that the Vicar General of the diocese and a priest saw a globe of light floating around the sky on September 13 prior to the apparition. No wonder Fatima is taken as an example of a UFO sighting with the apparition under suspicion as being an alien.
Page 6 says that Francisco said in September that the lady is always grave (seria) and Lucia said she never sees the lady coming. If you want to say she came off a spaceship then you may. Lucia said near that time that the lady had no stars. Some years later in 1921, she said that the lady had three stars on her dress! She was every bit the liar her mother said she was.
Page 8 - "Jacinta added that the Lady had said the war was ending that day. The Lady had said before and now repeated that she would come no more to the Cova. Upset by Jacinta's saying that the Lady told Lucia the war was ending that day, the Canon returned on October 19. He asked Lucia what words our Lady used. 'The war is finishing today. You must hope for your soldiers very soon.' 'But the war is still going on. How do you explain that? Some people think you heard our Lady say it would finish soon' 'I say exactly what our Lady said.'"
This is proof that the vision did not know the future and made mistakes when trying to predict it. Also she said once that she would come seven times to Fatima and now she said she would not be back though only six appearances had been completed.
Pages 7 and 9 show that during the miracle of the sun, Lucia saw Mary twice in the sun and Francisco said he did not see her in the sun at all. Surely God would arrange that the three visionaries would see much the same thing?
Page 10 speaking of the miracle of the sun mentions two devout ladies who saw nothing at all while a lady kneeling in between them saw it.
Page 10 says that the miracle of the sun did not mean the sun really moved but only that the people had a vision as if it did. Deception then! Hyper-Catholics should hold that the sun really did move and that it was the rest of the world that had the vision - a vision of the sun remaining in place.
Page 10 has Martindale confessing, "I cannot see what special spiritual value is attached to this phenomenon". The miracle was purely about show and silencing those who doubted the apparitions. It was about propaganda not spirituality. It shouts, "miracles are signs from God by which he tells us what doctrines of men are actually his doctrines. " Miracles then are intended to cause division and discord and dissent between the "right" and the "wrong". Catholics who hate Protestants and who think they deliberately stay out of the Catholic Church are encouraged in that attitude by the miraculous signs!
Page 10 says that a noise like a rocket was heard by some when the visionaries said the lady disappeared. More ammunition for the alien theory.
Page 11 rationalises the contradictions and improbabilities in what the children were saying about the vision as being down to the children having been treated harshly so that they hardly knew what was what. That is a mere assumption.
Page 11 has the lady being unlike a living being in the sense that she was all of light as if she were made from it. Instead of facial flesh she had flesh coloured light. Lucia said that. Why didn't Mary appear as a more ordinary person? It looks like what you have here is not the personal Mary but a semblance of her or a mere clairvoyant vision of her. Did the Virgin then never physically come to Fatima after all? Lucia said she could only give the sense of our Lady's words. All that sounds suspiciously like pure imagination. It is easy to imagine you are receiving messages from some being if you think you are getting the sense of what the message is as opposed to actual words.
Pity no writers like to admit that Lucia was kept under strict orders and control after she became a nun. This was so that she could be manipulated for the Church's agenda and so that nothing fatal to her apparition story would emerge from her. And small wonder! She said to Formigao in 1917 that the entity never mentioned penance. That totally contradicts what she said later on in life and in her memoirs.
Page 13 mentions the vision of hell the children had. It was the horrible torture chamber of popular religion that they saw and the booklet states that. It adds that Jacinta became obsessed with hell. Obviously this is a bad fruit and shows the vision led only to her misery.
The booklet tells us that Lucia guided McGlynn when he sculpted the first statue of the apparition. It says it is not like the current versions of the image. It does not match Lucia's fanciful later descriptions.
The booklet though it is Catholic and pro-Fatima is good for it shows that all the Catholic can do is assume that the visions happened and were true. The evidence for the supernatural is doubtful.
Assumptions cannot be made just for the sake of it or completely at random. We all need assumptions. We must make sure our assumptions are rational. For example, if a murder happens then assume that one of the definite suspects did it. Don't assume that some angel came up from Hell and was the killer. You cannot believe in what evidence tells you unless you assume that the evidence is valid unless you get proof that it is planted. It is simply not logical or decent to assume that Fatima is anything other than delusion.
CONCLUSION
The apparitions of Fatima were hoaxes and the Church worked on them through faking evidence for them after it had happened.
The Fatima visions should be categorised with visions of aliens and UFO’s and spaceships not with religion. The apparitions were used as Catholic propaganda, “Here we have a sign that God is real and the Church authorities speak for him so obey these authorities.” That is enough to put one off accepting the veracity of the revelations of Fatima.
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