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| Critical Documentation of Fatima published by the Sanctuary of Fatima |
As I read the Documentation provided by the Sanctuary of Fatima, I could see some curious things about the apparitions so venerated in Catholicism.
The first reference to Russia is provided by Sister Lucy in 1930. Prior to this - that is, in the various initial interviews and testimonials - Russia is mentioned neither by the children nor by the numerous testimonials of those involved.
Only in Lucia's memoirs, written in the 1940s, there is the first reference that Russia will "spread its errors around the world" and the prophecy about the beginning of World War II appear for the first time. Sister Lucy did not reveal these words of the apparition until after those facts had occurred.
Solar phenomena, however, constitute the strongest fact in the Apparitions. The documentation brings many witness statements. It was a spectacle of light, color and movement in the sky (which has also been reported in the Medjugorje apparitions). But there were also people claiming to have seen nothing.
A strange fact is that, at the first appearances, the priest who interviewed the children feels uncomfortable with something unusual: the children describe that the Lady wore a skirt "knee length". According to the priest, Mary could only appear with the utmost modesty. But the description of the apparition in the initial interviews with the seers (in 1917) goes like this:
- How was she dressed?- She has a white dress that goes down to just below the middle of her leg and covers her head with a cloak of the same color and length as the dress.- The dress has no embellishments?- In the front, there are two golden strands, which fall from the neck and come together by a tassel, also golden, at the middle of the body.- Is there a belt or some ribbon?- There is not.- She use earrings?- Use some small yellow rings.
Subsequently, all descriptions of Mary's skirt go until the feet in an apparent attempt to "correct" the seers (in which Sister Lucy collaborated). No earrings appear in the official images.
Another strange fact is the mismatch of information about the end of World War I. In the interview on October 19, 1917, with seer Lucia (p. 99), its written:
- On the thirteenth day of the current month Our Lady said that the war ended that day? What were the words she used?- She said: "The war is over today; wait here for your [Portugal] military very soon"(...)- But look, the war is still going on! ... The newspapers report that there has been fighting after day thirteen! ... How can this be explained if Our Lady said the war was over that day?"- I do not know. All I know is that I heard she say the war was over on the thirteenth day. I don't know anything else.- Some people say they heard you say that Our Lady had declared that the war was over soon. It is true?- I said it just as Our Lady had said.
And in the interview with Jacinta (p. 104):
- She said: I come here to tell you not to offend Our Lord, who was very offended, that if the people amended, the war would end, if not the world would end. Lucia heard better than I what the Lady said.- She said that the war was over that day or that it was over soon?- Our Lady said that when she got to heaven the war would be over.- But the war is not over yet! ...- It will over, it will over.- But then when is it over?- I think it ends on Sunday.
In fact, the war only ended about a year later. In an interview in 1924, Lucia seeks to undo the mistake (p. 321):
It seems to me that she said in this way: 'Convert and the war is over today, wait for your military very soon.' My cousin Jacinta told me at home that she said: ''Convert and the war to be over within a year.' As I was thinking about the requests I wanted to make, I didn't pay much attention.
This same Lucy, who had so much difficulty understanding a simple sentence, later, that is, in the 1940s, will describe long speeches of the apparition making prophecies about the beginning of the Second War (when it had already begun).
From the theological point of view, the apparition was also widely criticized. In the article "The Appearances of Fatima and Orthodox Christianity" we are warned that "to say, therefore, that we must make 'reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary' literally puts her in the place of God." The text also criticizes the materialistic concept of grace present in apparitions, as if it were a kind of commodity to be stored and distributed in exchange for good works.
Miriam Lambouras in "The Marian Apparitions" shows how many Fatima-like apparitions contributed to a low view of Christ:
Equally doubtful is the suggestion of replacing "Christ our God, patient, all-merciful, compassionate, who loves the righteous and has mercy on sinners," with a distant, impersonal, angry figure, engaged in punishment and revenge. La Salette's apparition says, "I [Mary] can no longer hold the heavy arm of my Son"; Fatima's apparition: "... He is already very offended." In San Damiano, 1961, "The Eternal Father is tired, very tired ...". In Oliveto Citra, Italy, in 1985, we again heard, "I can no longer hold the righteous arm of my Son." The sayings echo the unbalanced but very popular teachings of some latin saints and preachers of the past, in which Christ's kingdom of justice was opposed to Mary's kingdom of mercy. "If God is angry with a sinner, Mary takes him under her protection, she impedes the avenging arm of her Son and saves him" (Alphonsus Liguori). "She is the sure refuge of sinners and criminals from the rigor of the wrath and vengeance of Jesus Christ"; she "prevents the evil that He [Christ] would do to the guilty" (Jean-Jacques Olier).
Desmond Seward in "The Dancing Sun" states: "One of the most disturbing aspects of these apparitions is that the Virgin appears as an autonomous figure while Christ is strangely absent. It is she who mourns over the sinful state of humanity, she who decides who will be healed ("some I will heal, some not")."
From all this, I claim that we have no legitimate prophecy elements to confirm the divine origin of these events. If you want to believe, you can believe it; I just don't understand the attempt to throw the 'qualities' of this supposed apparition in the face of other Christians. It is much safer to hold to what is right in faith.
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Bellow is part of a review of the book Fátima: milagre ou construção [Fatima: miracle or construction] by portuguese journalist Patrícia Carvalho.
Bellow is part of a review of the book Fátima: milagre ou construção [Fatima: miracle or construction] by portuguese journalist Patrícia Carvalho.
Solidly grounded on the Critical Documentation of Fatima, a publication of the Fatima Sanctuary itself, the book reveals some interesting aspects of the history of the apparitions that the Portuguese village witnessed between May and October 1917. [...] It may also be a little embarrassing to know that the bishop of Leiria, Monsignor José Alves Correia da Silva, ordered the purchase of land and a project for the sanctuary before opening the diocesan inquiry about the apparitions; that canon Manuel Nunes Formigão, one of the main responsible in the spread of devotion, was a man obsessed with having a sanctuary like Lourdes in his country, believing that [Lourdes sanctuary] was responsible for the "re-christianization of France", as he wrote; and that Lucia's mother often read to her daughter a kind of popular catechism called the “Abbreviated Mission,” which contained, among other things, a detailed account of Mary's appearances in La Salette, France - in very similar terms to Lucia's description of the apparitions.
Even more important is to take into account the fact that what is known today as the second and third parts of the "secret" of Fatima - that is, the most controversial parts, which mention the need for Russia to be converted and the procession of martyrs headed by the Pope - does not date from 1917. Initially the subject of visions that Lucia reports already had when she was a nun, Russia only became part of the history of the apparitions in 1941, when the seer wrote her third memory. The moment in Europe was of world war and in Portugal the anti-communism was growing.
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As for the "sun miracle", bellow are part of the descriptions from the Critical Documentation of Fatima:
"And then they ask each other whether they saw and what they saw. The greatest number confess that they saw a trembling, the dancing of the sun; but others claim to have seen the face of the Virgin with a smile, swear that the sun has turned about himself like a firework wheel, that the sun lowered almost to the point of burning the earth with his rays ... Some say saw the sun successively change color ... "(p. 76) "(...) what I saw that was truly strange in the heath of Fatima? The rain, at the pre-announced time, ceases; the dense mass of clouds break and the star-king - silver disk - in full zenith appear and begin dancing in a violent and convulsive dancing, which many people imagined to be a serpentine dance, so beautiful and shinning colors successively covered the solar surface ... "(p. 115) "This rosy-pearly disk had the dizziness of movement. It was not the flicker of a star in full life. It was spinning on itself at a rushed speed. Suddenly a cry is heard as a cry of anguish from all those people. The sun, retaining the speed of its rotation, stands out from the firmament and raging advances over the earth threatening to crush us with the weight of its fiery and big millstone. These are seconds of terrifying impression. During the solar event, which I have been describing in detail, there were changing colors in the atmosphere. "(P. 151) "The globe of the sun, like a dull silver disk, revolved around an imaginary axis, and at that moment, seemed to descend into the atmosphere, towards the earth, sometimes accompanied by an extraordinary brightness and intense heat. The sun's rays were yellow, green, blue and purple, they say, but I only noticed the yellow color." (P. 161)
It seems to have been a tremendous spectacle of light, color and movement of the sun. I wonder what a miracle like this means. It is also interesting the fact that the "sun miracle" is often reported in relation to the Medjugorje's apparition: https://www.medjugorje.com/medjugorje/signs-and-miracles/the-spinning-sun.html
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