False Accusations About A True Apparition

 

Regular readers of this blog know that I do not make apparitions (those approved by the Church) to be the focus point of the Faith; they are not. I call Apparitionists people who exalt private revelations and apparitions whether approved by the Church (such as Our Lady of Fatima) or not (such as Our Lady of the Roses) over the teaching of the Church. They obsess over the alleged "true meanings" of messages (as if salvation depended on them), or even accept them to the exclusion of authentic Church doctrines in some area(s). The late "Fr." Gruner falls squarely in this category.  

Personally, I don't think Traditionalists should concern themselves over private revelations. To make the terminology clear, "private revelation" has nothing to do with the number of persons that claim to have seen and/or experienced something. "Public Revelation" refers to the Divine Deposit of Revelation given to the Church for all human beings to believe, so that they may be saved. Public Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle, St. John, in 100 AD. Private revelation refers to all communication by God (directly or indirectly) with humans after Public Revelation ended. I can't stress strongly enough that no private revelation, including those deemed "worthy of belief" by the Church, need to be accepted by Catholics. You can reject any or all private revelations and you would not be a heretic, nor would you commit a sin.

On the other hand, private revelations must not be lightly dismissed as totally irrelevant and of no importance either.  Obviously, if the Church approves something as worthy of belief, we can believe it without fear of sinning against faith or morals. God communicates to us for a reason. To be certain, I believe in approved apparitions without making them the focus point of faith. I have devotion to Our Lady of Hope and Our Lady of Fatima. I wear the Five-fold Scapular, pray the Rosary daily, insert the "Fatima Prayer" at the end of each Rosary decade, and try to attend Mass every First Saturday of the month. These are great Catholic devotions all Traditionalists should try to maintain. 

That having been said, I was shocked to find an article circulating among some Traditionalists on the web and Twitter claiming that Fatima was a false apparition. Each time, the person calling the reality of Fatima into question would begin by correctly stating that private revelations need not be believed, and then present the article which claims Fatima was of demonic origin. It is one thing not to believe in a Church approved apparition, and quite another to claim it to be diabolic. 

There have been thousands upon thousands of reported apparitions to various individuals from the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and various saints. Holy Mother Church, in Her wisdom, would investigate any such serious claim and declare it "worthy of belief," reject the apparition as false, or render no judgement pending further proof. To show how solicitous the Church is for the eternal welfare of Her members, very few apparitions have met with approval. The manifest weight of the credible evidence must fall down squarely on the side that Heaven has spoken, so that no one should be lead astray by frauds, the mentally ill, or the deceits of Satan. Only the following Marian apparitions have Church approval pre-Vatican II (since there is currently no authority to pass judgement during the Great Apostasy) and notice how few there are; only ten (10):

1. Our Lady of Guadalupe (took place 1531; approved 1555)

2. Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal (took place 1830; approved 1837)

3. Our Lady of LaSalette (took place 1846; approved 1851)

4. Our Lady of Lourdes (took place 1856; approved 1862)

5. Our Lady of Knock (took place 1879; approved 1879)

6. Our Lady of Fatima (took place 1917; approved 1930 by the local bishop and in 1940 by Pope Pius XII)

7. Our Lady of the Good Event aka Our Lady of Quito (took place 1594-1634; approved 1611 while still taking place)

8. Our Lady of Hope (took place 1871; approved 1872)

9. Our Lady of Beauraing (took place 1932-1933; approved 1949)

10. Our Lady of Banneux (took place 1933; approved 1949)

There are seven cases where the Holy See and local Ordinary have not pronounced directly on the supernatural character of the apparition, yet have implicitly attested to their veracity by approving the public religious activity inspired by the apparition and/or authorizing liturgical veneration:

1. Our Lady of the Pillar (took place 40 AD while Mary was still alive; considered the first Marian apparition wherein Our Blessed Mother assisted the Apostle St. James the Greater)

2. Our Lady of Walsingham (took place 1061)

3. Our Lady of Mount Carmel (took place 1251)

4. Our Lady of the Watch (took place 1490)

5. Our Lady of Siluva (took place 1608)

6. Our Lady of Pellevoisin (took place 1876)

7. Our Lady of Zion (took place 1842)

Hence, from the year 40 AD to 1958, we have only 17 apparitions of Mary that have explicit or implicit Church approval. To claim that Fatima is from Hell would be an indirect denial of the Indefectibility of the Church--i.e., the Church cannot give that which is evil or erroneous to Her members. If, ad arguendo, the apparition at Fatima didn't happen, it didn't produce anything contrary to Faith and Morals. Yet, it if came from Satan, there would have to be things contrary to Faith and/or morals, because the adversary of mankind does not do anything for our benefit. 

In this post, I will examine the blasphemous article "Why Pay Any Attention To Fatima?" and demonstrate why it is the article itself, and not Fatima, to which we should pay no heed. 

Attempting to Sound Catholic

The source of the article is the website cogwriter.com, by Dr. Bob Thiel. Thiel was originally part of the "Worldwide Church of God"(WCG) sect, run by Herbert W. Armstrong (d. 1986). "Armstrongism" was an eclectic mix  of mainline Protestantism and Seventh Day Adventist teachings, along with what Armstrong himself would say as the self-declared "Prophet of God on Earth." WCG teachings included the necessity of observing Mosaic dietary laws to be saved, denial of the Most Holy Trinity, avoidance of doctors and medicine, observing Saturday as the Sabbath, and denial of divorce (of course, when Armstrong wanted a divorce, that teaching changed, and he also went to doctors and took medicine while prohibiting his followers from doing it, living to the age of 93).  

After Armstrong's death, many new sects came from dissatisfaction among his high-ranking members, one such being the aforementioned Bob Thiel. Thiel founded the "Continuing Church of God" or "CCG." His sect rejects the Holy Ghost as God, and has many strange teachings similar to Armstrong.

(See ccog.org/statement-of-beliefs-of-the-continuing-church-of-god/). 

The article, Why Pay Any Attention To Fatima? (hereinafter WPATF), doesn't list an author. It appears to be a chapter of a book, but I could not locate it. The fact that it appears on a website run by Thiel means either (a) he is the author, or (b) he approves the content as it is on his site. He appears to be the author since you will find a short bio and picture of him on the last page. There is no mention of his religious affiliation.  I knew something was off prior to finding out this information. For example, the article claims that the apparition could not be "the Mary of the Bible." Also used to describe her are the phrases "Mother of Jesus," and once "Mother of Christ" but never the Mother of GOD, Our Blessed Mother, and other distinct Catholic titles. The article informs us:

Learning the truth about the shocking messages of Fatima could save you and your loved ones from making horrible mistakes.

What, exactly, would those "mistakes" be? Praying the Rosary? Wearing the Scapular? Making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary? It never tells us, but wants us to believe Our Lady of Fatima was a demonic deception. What proof do they offer for this assertion?  That will now be examined.

Attacking the Blessed Mother of God

Below is a list of the attacks on Our Lady of Fatima and my response to each one. 

1. The apparitions at Fatima were predicted by occultists.

A group of occult psychics in Portu, Portugal claimed that “something transcendental” would occur on May 13,1917. And this was published in the Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Notícias. There was another prediction claimed to have been written on February 7, 1917 in Furtado de Mendonça, Portugal by way of “automatic writing” that moved the psychic’s hand and wrote the following backwards (and in Portuguese):

The day of May 13th will be one of great happiness for the good souls of the world…Always at your side shall ye have your friends, who will guide your steps and who will assist ye in your

work…The brilliant light of the Morning Star will illuminate the path.

~ Stella Matutina

So the above occult prophecy claimed that a lightbringer would illuminate a path on May 13, 1917. Stella is Latin for star. Matutina is associated with the morning. It may be relevant to note that the name Lucifer means lightbringer, and he is associated in sacred scripture with both the morning and stars (Isaiah 14:12-13), as well as becoming known as Satan the devil (Revelation 12:9). Although Jesus is also called the “Morning Star” (Revelation 22:16), using the type of automatic backward writing to reveal His mother does not seem to be biblically appropriate (cf. Isaiah 8:19-20), hence it should not be concluded that this Stella Matutina was Jesus. (See WPATF, pg. 33).

What is the source of this information? I referenced the book in the endnotes, Celestial Secrets: The Hidden History of the Fatima Incident (2007) by Joaquim Fernandes and Fina D'Armada. The authors believe that Our Lady was actually an alien sent by a UFO. There is a trio of books (this one and two others) attempting to prove this whacky thesis. Moreover, the books are promoted by  Andrew D. Basiago, a "UFOlogist." Besides an attempted run for President of the U.S. in 2016, Basiago claims he:

• Can teleport himself through time and space
• Has made contact with Bigfoot
• Went to Mars in 1981 and converses with Martians who live there 

(See, e.g.,https://www.inverse.com/article/14577-confessed-time-traveler-andrew-basiago-is-running-for-president-knows-he-ll-win)

These are the people we are supposed to believe over Church authority regarding Fatima. The trilogy is itself occult (talking to "beings from other worlds"--more than likely demons if not delusions of mental illness) and used by Thiel to make Fatima look "demonic." Moreover, occultists will often use the superior knowledge of demons to make something true appear false and vice-versa--if such an occult prediction even happened. No less than 20 of Thiel's 96 endnotes reference this occult book.  

2. The Blessed Mother was allegedly dressed immodestly.

Throughout the book, much is made of alleged claims by the seers of Fatima that Mary was immodestly dressed. From WPATF:

In 1917, the Catholic priest and investigator Canon Manuel Nunes Formigao interviewed the three Fatima children. Here is some of what he wrote:

Jacinta confirms that Our Lady’s dress fell only to the knees… Our Lady obviously could not have appeared other than dressed with the utmost decency and modesty…{This} constitutes a serious problem, opposing the very validity of the Apparition, giving rise in the spirit to the dread that this whole affair is a mystification, prepared by the Prince of Darkness. (pgs. 25-26).

This information is supplied by (you guessed it) Celestial Secrets. The dominant instrument used by the authors and promoters of that book, to convince the reader of their research prowess and to buildup interest and credibility for their product, is the highlighting of their previous visit to the secured Fatima Shrine archives in 1978. During that visit they were permitted to view the largely unknown personal notes of the local Fatima priests of that year of 1917, especially those who had directly interviewed the children. They have since been made public in 1992. They tell a different story from the cherry-picked quotes.

These initial recorded accounts by seer Jacinta (and Lucia) are tellingly conflicting with the young seer Francisco's descriptions, where the only knee-length clothing that he reports throughout all of his testimony was the mantle headpiece, a fact conveniently omitted, along with the fact that an investigative priest is supposed to be skeptical and not jump to supernatural conclusions in favor of the apparition. Even after that, the demonic must be considered as well. Lucia and Jacinta were no doubt scared by the questioning, and even probably misunderstood by the priest. The manifest weight of all the evidence explains why the Bishop approved the apparition as authentic upon the final report in 1930. 

3. Calling Dogma into question.

WPATF tries to link the Mother of God to the pagan goddess Diana by attacking the Dogma of the Assumption:

Some believe that the reason that August 15th was chosen as the day for the feast of the “Assumption of Mary” is that it was related to a similar festival for Diana. The Catholic Encyclopedia suggests questionable circumstances:

Regarding the day, year, and manner of Our Lady’s death, nothing certain is known... The belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is founded on the apocryphal treatise De Obitu S. Dominae, bearing the name of St. John, which belongs however to the fourth or fifth century. It is also found in the book De Transitu Virginis, falsely ascribed to St. Melito of Sardis, and in a spurious letter attributed to St. Denis the Areopagite...Regarding the origin of the feast we are also uncertain.

Thus, it is known that this dogma originated from false sources. It was not officially adopted as Catholic dogma until 1950. (See pgs. 23-24). 

In endnote 43, theologian Ott is cited to support this blasphemy:

The “assumption” became Catholic dogma in 1950 (though it was alluded to earlier). According to Dr. Ott “express scriptural proofs are not to be had” he indicated that it first appeared in documents

falsely ascribed to Jerome and then other documents in the 5th and 6th centuries (others claimed false fourth century documents). Hence, this too, is an innovation and not an apostolic tradition.

Here's what theologian Ott actually says in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, (1955):

Direct and express scriptural proofs are not to be had. The possibility of the bodily assumption before the Second Coming of Christ is not excluded by 1 Corinthians 15, 23 as the objective redemption was completed with the sacrificial death of Christ, and the beginning of the final era foretold by the prophets commenced. It probably is suggested by St. Matthew 27, 52, 53: "And the graves were opened: and many bodies of the saints that had slept arose, and coming out of the tombs after His Resurrection came into the holy city and appeared to many." According to the more probable explanation, which was already expounded by the Fathers, the awakening of the "saints" was a final resurrection and transfiguration. If, however, the justified of the Old Covenant were called to the perfection of salvation, immediately after the conclusion of the redemptive work of Christ, then it is possible and probable that the Mother of the Lord was called to it also...Pope Pius XII confirmed: "the unanimous doctrine of the ordinary Church Teaching Office, and the unanimous belief of the Christian people" in a solemn definition on November 1, 1950. (See pgs. 208-209; 211; Emphasis mine). 

Theologian Ott further explains that apocryphal letters were a hinderance to the Assumption's development, not that it "first appeared" in such documents. As to the Catholic Encyclopedia, here's what was left out:  The earliest known literary reference to the Assumption is found in the Greek work De Obitu S. Dominae. Catholic faith, however, has always derived our knowledge of the mystery from Apostolic Tradition. (Emphasis mine). 

4. Other Falsehoods.

• The apparition did not refer to herself as Mary. Nonsense. There are so many sources on this point even the article backs off saying, "Even if the apparition possibly later called herself Mary..." 

• Mary did not refer worship to Jesus. In True Devotion to Mary, St. Louis DeMonfort reminds us of this Catholic Truth: [Regarding Scrupulous Devotees of Mary] It is all they can do to endure that there should be more people before the altar of the Blessed Virgin than before the other, as if those who prayed to our Blessed Lady did not pray to Jesus Christ through her. They are willing that we should speak so often of Our Lady and address her so frequently...[they say]“We must have recourse to Jesus Christ; He is our only Mediator. We must preach Jesus Christ; this is the solid devotion.” What they say is in a certain sense true, but in the application they make of it, namely, to hinder devotion to our Blessed Lady, very dangerous; and it is, under pretext of a greater good, a subtle snare of the evil one. (Emphasis mine).

• Referred to the Lady of the Rosary. As if the Rosary is evil!! They also cite to the Celestial Secrets to "prove" Lucia was not sure if the Apparition spoke of herself or another. More cherry-picked claptrap.

• Mary wanted a chapel built for her own glory. Blasphemy. Again, he who honors the Mother honors the Son all the more--it is to the ultimate glory of God. 

Finally, the article takes a shot at Our Lady of LaSalette, stating that the seer Maximin Giraud:

...reported false prophecies such as that the Antichrist would arrive in the end of the 19th or commencement of the 20th centuries. The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office actually forbade the discussion of that very secret on which the Church never passed final judgement.

THE SUPREME SACRED CONGREGATION OF THE HOLY OFFICE DECREE CONCERNING THE COMMONLY CALLED "SECRET OF LA SALETTE."

It has come to the attention of this Supreme Congregation that certain ones are not lacking, even from among the ecclesiastic assemblage who, responses and decisions of this Holy Congregation itself having been disregarded, do proceed to discuss and examine through books, small works and articles edited in periodicals, whether signed or without a name, concerning the so-called Secret of La Salette, its diverse forms and its relevance to present and future times; and, this not only without permission of the Ordinaries, but, also against their ban. So that these abuses which oppose true piety and greatly wound ecclesiastical authority might be curbed, the same Sacred Congregation orders all the faithful of any region not to discuss or investigate under any pretext, neither through books, or little works or articles, whether signed or unsigned, or in any other way of any kind, about the mentioned subject. Whoever, indeed, violates this precept of the Holy Office, if they are priests, are deprived of all dignity and suspended by the local ordinary from hearing sacramental confessions and from offering Mass: and, if they are lay people, they are not permitted to the sacraments until they repent. Moreover, let people be subject to the sanctions given both by Pope Leo XIII through the Constitution of the offices and responsibilities against those who publish books dealing with religious things without legitimate permission of superiors and by Urban VIII through the decree "Sanctissimus Dominus Noster" given on 13th March 1625 against those who publish asserted revelations without the permission of ordinaries. However, this decree does not forbid devotion towards the Blessed Virgin under the title of Reconciliatrix commonly of La Salette. 

Given at Rome on 21st December, 1915. 

Aloisius Castellano, S. R. and U. I. Notary.

Conclusion

It is true that we are not bound to believe in private revelations, nor should we make them the focal point of our faith. However, to attack an approved apparition of the Church as being of "demonic origin," is an evil assertion and must be rejected. It is heretical to declare anything as coming from error and evil when Holy Mother Church has solemnly approved it for Her members. When anyone dares to attack something approved by the Church as evil, scrutinize it carefully, and you'll find out it's false--like WPATF. 

The article is written by the leader of a non-Christian sect trying to sound Catholic. He cites to occult sources (and perhaps the mentally deranged). He quotes sources out of context and cherry-picks what was written in said sources. All of this to the denigration of the Mother of God, Mary Most Holy. Let us venerate the Blessed Mother under her title Our Lady of Fatima, and remember well the words of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Father and Doctor of the Church:

Let us not imagine that we obscure the glory of the Son by the great praise we lavish on the Mother; for the more she is honored, the greater is the glory of her Son. There can be no doubt that whatever we say in praise of the Mother gives equal praise to the Son.