Fatima and "Traditional" Catholicism

[Paxinterrahominibus]

Most trads I know are crazy about Fatima. I Would be considered by most people as “trad” but don’t believe Fatima to be authentic. Unfortunately “trads” created an identity and a culture of their own which does not always follow what the Church actually teaches. They also add a lot of things to the actual tradition and treat them as elements of the tradition that if you reject makes you in their eyes some sort of modernist or heretic (Like the scapular).
Don’t let them tell you stories and stick to what the Church teaches. It may affect your social life with those trads but if you remain silent and pretend to go with the flow you will only accumulate anger and frustration and might leave the Church altogether. Hang out with non trads, you could find solid people among them, and they are nicer to be around.

And dont listen people on this forum who will tell you that if you have a problem with something you should just shut up. Knowing that you are not alone thinking the way you do is extremely helpful and soothing. And that is what a forum is for anyways.

 

[Gripper]

I have problems with Fatima, but haven’t rejected it totally.

What problems?

 

[TMC]

Whoa, who is openly rejecting Mary? I haven’t seen any of that in this thread.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

If you have been banned, the rules don’t permit you to create a new account and return to the forum.

 

[Emeraldlady]

This is the first I’ve ever heard that there are Catholics who reject Fatima! I really don’t understand why. All the Popes have accepted it and the children are now canonised. The Holy Spirit would surely have not let canonisation happen if Fatima was suspect?

Sadly wealth oriented groups like Tradition, Family and Property, through their “Country name” needs Fatima scheme, have tarnished the holy simpleness of the apparition by using it as a money tree. That’s my only bug bear.

 

[Trinacria2020]

I don’t care what your opinion is on Fatima

I’m really struggling with your tone here. If you don’t care what my position is, why did you bother commenting? That sounds very antagonistic and not at all civil.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I explained above that it sounded like you had an issue with your fellow traditional parishioners throwing venom at you for not believing in Fatima, so I said maybe you want to avoid that by simply not expressing your doubts about it. You then got upset, I’m not sure why.

We probably get people here doubting some apparitions every week. It’s normal here (but like I said this isn’t an all traditional forum). As long as people are respectful of Mary and don’t try to argue that the Pope was wrong to approve such and such, nobody gets bothered about it as the Church doesn’t require belief in apparitions.

I personally have my apparitions I don’t believe in but if I go to my (non-trad) church and announce that to the prayer group gang who I know just loves that apparition, they’d probably flip. I just excuse myself when they start going on about said apparition and worse yet relating it to Donald Trump. People also sometimes get mad on here if they want to post about their pet apparition and get told it’s not approved so we can’t talk about it.

I don’t post with a tone. Doing that gets the post pulled. I’m just rather blunt I reckon.

 

[commenter]

This is the first I’ve ever heard that there are Catholics who reject Fatima! I really don’t understand why. All the Popes have accepted it and the children are now canonised. The Holy Spirit would surely have not let canonisation happen if Fatima was suspect?

The Popes have accepted it as private revelation.
Canonization of saints is related to their personal Holiness.

 

[Trinacria2020]

This is the first I’ve ever heard that there are Catholics who reject Fatima!

So, maybe without meaning to, you underscored my point… :slightly_smiling_face:and I absolutely mean this in a good way, since you are illustrating the crux of this topic. Just to clarify; ALL apparitions are classified as “private revelation”, meaning no Catholic is under any obligation to believe them. The canonization of the sibling children has nothing to do with the apparition itself, nor does it validate any supposed miracle; they were canonized as witnesses to the faith, specifically because there were subsequent miracles that were attributed to them. Just an aside, Lucia is still not canonized, which is neither here nor there, just a clarification.

As with any apparition (or religion itself) of course there are people who seek to make money off of it. That’s just human nature and to me doesn’t “tarnish” anything anymore than someone fraudulently going door to door “collecting” for March of Dimes when in reality they put the money in their pocket. Bad people to bad things often in the name of something recognizably good.

My personal feelings on why I do not accept Fatima are precisely because I have seen nothing which cannot be explained. The so-called messages were never seen by anyone until long after the events cited within them occurred (1941 to be exact), despite the myth being they were “seen” by the visionaries in 1917. That’s one. The second is the so-called “secrets” have created a large amount of columny and conspiracy within the church…and neither God nor Mary works that way (at least, never in the history of the church prior). When God wants His message to be known, it is known. No if’s, and’s or but’s. Lastly, when I look at prior approved apparitions, the tone and wording is in fact quite different (I typically use Guadalupe and Lourdes as a litmus).

I want to underscore, I absolutely do not discount anyone’s personal devotion to the BVM or Fatima here; if Fatima brings you closer to God, then this is wonderful. However, if it makes one tense, paranoid or causes hatred and/or conspiracy towards the Catholic church and its hierarchy, then in my opinion it should absolutely be avoided. I hope this makes sense, and thank you so much for your comment.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The Popes have accepted it as private revelation.
Canonization of saints is related to their personal Holiness.

Correct, and while private revelations to beati and saints are automatically approved, we aren’t required to believe in those either. We are only required to believe the Church correctly beatified or canonized the saint.

 

[Trinacria2020]

The Popes have accepted it as private revelation.
Canonization of saints is related to their personal Holiness.

Very well said. I actually commented something similar before reading YOUR reply (which I should have done prior)

 

[mrsdizzyd]

I’m not a trad or a rad trad. I’m just a Catholic who appreciates tradition.

I will say that I do end up around quite a few rad trads and I can’t think of one who isn’t crazy about Fatima. I have wondered why. My best guess is that Fatima fits in nicely with American Conservatism. Without exception each one of these trads is very very politically conservative.

 

[Emeraldlady]

The Popes have accepted it as private revelation.

commenter:

The Popes have accepted it as private revelation.
Canonization of saints is related to their personal Holiness.

Very well said. I actually commented something similar before reading YOUR reply (which I should have done prior)

All of the accepted apparitions since the death of the apostles are reguarded as private revelation. If the Church through her charism, approves them, how would any Catholic feel it warranted to reject their authenticity?

 

[StudentMI]

All of the accepted apparitions since the death of the apostles are reguarded as private revelation. If the Church through her charism, approves them, how would any Catholic feel it warranted to reject their authenticity?

Simple. The Church says we can.

 

[Emeraldlady]

commenter:

The Popes have accepted it as private revelation.
Canonization of saints is related to their personal Holiness.

Correct, and while private revelations to beati and saints are automatically approved, we aren’t required to believe in those either. We are only required to believe the Church correctly beatified or canonized the saint.

How can one not believe but believe that the Church is correct?

 

[Emeraldlady]

Emeraldlady:

All of the accepted apparitions since the death of the apostles are reguarded as private revelation. If the Church through her charism, approves them, how would any Catholic feel it warranted to reject their authenticity?

Simple. The Church says we can.

The Church says we can reject the authenticity of approved apparitions? Where?

 

[StudentMI]

It says no one is obligated to believe in them. Heck, Fr Benedict Groeschel wrote a whole book on the topic.

 

[Emeraldlady]

It says no one is obligated to believe in them. Heck, Fr Benedict Groeschel wrote a whole book on the topic.

How are using the word ‘believe’? For example I’d heard about Our Lady of Guadalupe before but in Australia, we don’t celebrate or commemorate the apparition as a national Church. But I still believe in it because it has been approved by the Magisterium.

 

[StudentMI]

You know how I’m using it. I’m not getting into a semantic argument. A Catholic is allowed by the Holy Catholic Church to not believe in a private revelation.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

How can one not believe but believe that the Church is correct?

Because private revelations often contradict each other, contain stuff that is hard to understand, are subject to misinterpretation by the saint or by other humans, generally might contain some errors. In the worst case maybe the revelation did not come from God but was just the saint’s imagination working overtime or they ate a funny mushroom that day.

It doesn’t mean the person isn’t holy, it just means we aren’t required to believe in approved private revelations. God guided his Church to put that rule in place. If we believe that God guides his Church, then why would we question the rule?