Fraudulent Revelations of Sister Lucia the "visionary" of Fatima.
Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta were the visionaries of Our Lady of Fatima. These three children claimed they saw Mary on a number of occasions in 1917. Francisco and Jacinta died.
Lucia became a nun in 1921.
She did not see Mary again until 1925 at Pontevedra.
"You at least seek to console me", said Mary to Lucia in 1925. She then prescribed a devotion of the five first Saturdays. Now can we believe that Lucia was the only one trying to console Mary? The message would encourage the sin of spiritual pride where one can seem humble and self-effacing but be practicing pride in its most dangerous and deceptive form. Scores of devotional books such as The Imitation of Christ were written to try and prevent pride. Mary would not say such a thing and we must question Lucia's humility in reporting it. The wording used in the apparition is disturbingly close to the wording used in the Sacred Heart Apparition to St Margaret Mary Alacoque in 1673. Plagiarism. What need was there for a new devotion? Lucia was trying to match the fame of St Margaret Mary.
The Virgin said to Sister Lucia:
"I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of 5 consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite 5 decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for 15 minutes, while meditating on the 15 mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me"(inside cover, The Rosary and the Crisis of Faith).
Too many errors here! The fact that it is promised only to those who practice this devotion implies she is not going to help anybody else. Why make the promise if she would help anyway? Catholics have all prayed,
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen
If Mary loves her son she will help us to love him when we are dying regardless of the five first Saturdays. Lucia really insulted Mary. Perhaps it was in revenge for the fact that Mary would not appear to her and never did.
Catholics say the promise will not stand for people who obey the conditions but hope to be able to sin all they want in future because Heaven is guaranteed. So the sin that makes the promise ineffectual for you is mortal sin - ending your relationship with God. They can commit all the venial sins they wish for these do not finish the friendship with God. Some of these venial sins will be sins like drunkenness and sex which are venial when you get too carried away. God cannot complain for we will all commit venial sins anyway. If we don't there is not need for the promise. Mary is encouraging venial sin which the Devil would do for he likes sin and venial sin, so the Church says, leads to mortal sin which is the final break. Either Lucia made her vision up or the Devil appeared to her. Either way we cannot be impressed by her for if she thought the Devil's message was God's then how good of a person is she really?
Mary did not say, "I promise my son will assist at the hour of death with all the graces necessary for salvation". She said she would do it. This was not a lady who came to bring people to her son. She directs people to herself and not her son.
Just like the vast majority of very devout Christians have never read the Bible for themselves, so most Catholics are unfamiliar with, have forgotten or don't understand Catholic dogma. They will take the Virgin to be guaranteeing them salvation for doing the five first Saturdays. The revelation is just asking for trouble.
Many critics have held that the five first Saturdays is just a cynical scheme for Lucia to promote herself to become as popular a saint as St Margaret Mary who said the Sacred Heart of Jesus told her to announce similar benefits for those who practiced the nine first Fridays. It is imitation. Imitation has been the reason the Church rejected many alleged apparitions in the past. It is a sign of faking and lying.
Wouldn't it be a better idea to prescribe three slow Hail Marys a day with meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary in the hope of making reparation? It would mean more meditation and reparation and sincerity. It is supposed to be important to keep in touch with God every day. The silliness of the Virgin's plea makes it self-refuting. Is it fair of her to suggest that anybody who finds they have to go to confession outside one of the Saturdays breaks the devotion?
Lucia had another visit from Mary in 1929 at Tuy, Spain, who told her that the moment had come for the pope and all the bishops to make the consecration to her Immaculate Heart which will save Russia (page 52, The Third Secret of Fatima). Why didn't she appear to the pope herself and get it done? The pope was asked to do this with all the bishops of the world which was unrealistic for many of them were sceptical of Fatima (page 138, The Thunder of Justice).
Jesus appeared to her in 1931. He disclosed that he would not let Mary triumph over the world and flood with truth and peace until Russia was consecrated because he wanted to promote devotion to the heart of Mary. What a terrible reason! Devotion to Mary is not necessary for salvation and here Jesus threatens the world over it! The devotion could have been promoted without going about it with the use of blackmail. He also said that Russia will have spread communism through the world and the Church will be persecuted for when the consecration is done it will be too late (page 74, Fatima Revealed and Discarded). Russia was persecuting the Church then so he means it will be persecuted throughout the whole world when Russia's errors take over. He also said that like Louis XIV would not listen to what he demanded of him through St Margaret Mary so the Church will not listen until it sees the terrible consequences. So Fatima authenticates the dubious Sacred Heart hallucinations of St Margaret Mary (page 75,79). What happened with Louis XIV was that he was blamed for causing the French Revolution by not consecrating France to the Sacred Heart as the vision that manifested to St Margaret Mary wanted. Jesus is saying that Atheists who agree with Russia that there is no God are a danger to the Church. Only inauthentic visions authenticate unacceptable visions.
In a vision in 1943, Jesus told Lucia that the sacrifice and penance he wants from everybody now is keeping his laws (The Rosary and the Crisis of Faith, inside cover). Penance is unpleasant and hard but the Bible says the burden offered by Jesus is gentle and his yoke is light (Matthew 11:28, 30) and his commandments are not difficult (1 John 5:3) and according to the Psalms (see 119) they are a joy to live out. Perhaps it is a penance to change our bad ways. But that is what the Holy Spirit is said to be in us for, to make it easy. It seems that God wants us to hate doing his will which is good advice for a sinful world if you are on the Devil's side. This person was not Jesus Christ but an invention by Lucia.
Some have linked the weeping Virgin statue of Syracuse with the sadness of the Fatima Virgin at her message being abandoned. There is something amiss when the tears are real human tears for the Church says the Virgin cannot literally cry though she symbolically pretends to cry during some apparitions for she is a glorified being and flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of Heaven and so must be radically changed and filled with heavenly health and happiness (page 192, Fatima Revealed and Discarded).
None of the later visions were authenticated by the Church. The 1917 original visions were. It seems absurd to have a visionary who has had some authentic visions and then less authentic ones. It is an outrage that she stressed those visions though they were not authenticated like the 1917 ones were. They outstripped the former in importance. She had no right to promote them so much when they were not checked out. Like Melanie Calvat she took advantage of having had recognised authenticated visions in order to put forward new claims.
Jesus stated clearly in the Sermon on the Mount that it is the fruits of the false prophets that you shall know them. So then Fatima and the subsequent visions by encouraging opposition to abortion by its approval for the doctrine that Mary was preserved from Original Sin at her conception in the womb has caused a lot of trouble. One example being the shooting of abortion doctors by pro-life people who are not convinced by that argument that it is wrong to kill one doctor to save thousands of unborn children. It is a worthless argument for it is self-evidently rubbish if you assume the embryos really are human beings with the right to live. The human being does not begin at conception therefore abortion at the early stages is not wrong. Even if the dogma of the Immaculate or Sinless Conception did not imply this, most people think it did therefore Satan could play on that. He does not need to put heresy into the messages of any apparition of Jesus or Mary or whoever that he is engineering at all which means that the Church is talking nonsense when it says a true apparition from God can be known as God's work when it agrees with the Church in all matters for God speaks through the Church and will not contradict himself in a miracle or apparition. When that is the case it is only nonsense for God to perform apparition miracles for they do not make us any the wiser. Their inability to capture trust only makes it a waste of time to perform them and even makes them dangerous and forbidden. It is a sin for a visionary to attend more than one apparition for the first one would be spontaneous and not her or his fault but she or he has a say if she or he is going to look at any more visions. If the visionaries were really open to the light of the Holy Spirit they would know these things but they act as if they do not. When the visionaries have such bad fruits among themselves then it is obvious that whatever is sending them visions it is not God. This means that we should believe in no apparitions allegedly from Heaven at all. That goes for the appearances of Jesus in which he testified to his resurrection as well.
FINALLY
The apparitions Lucia had after Fatima are dubious. She made no effort to provide any evidence that her claims were true. Also, the apparitions are problematic from the viewpoint of Catholic theology. She wrote her memoirs after the Church investigated her 1917 visions and approved them. It is dishonest to do that and implies she was not telling them everything. Worse the memoirs speak of the vision predicted World War II but the trouble is the war was happening when she wrote so she was writing a prophecy after the event! Her writings created and fed a pathological fear of communism and lives were destroyed over that so her lies proved very destructive. Pope John Paul II ended up enabling and blessing dictatorships that he thought were resistant to communism.
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
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