M
Mintaka
Guest
I believe there’s a verse about not believing teachings that contradict the gospel, even if the person saying it claims to be Christ. But that doesn’t apply because nothing said at Fatima was contrary to the gospel or the teachings of the Church.
And if you read the links or my posts, you would see that the children did have visions of Christ.
Lots of people have visions of Christ, you know. It’s quite common – a dirt common gift of the Holy Spirit, in fact. In general, visions aren’t anything that visionaries even bother to talk about, except maybe to their spiritual advisors or closest friends. What’s unusual is that the kids got prophetic messages for other people, that the messages turned out to be true, and that other people saw things besides them. (Well, that and that the kids were so young.)
Discernment is important in these things, and discernment was done. By the kids, who asked pertinent questions. By their parish priest. By the bishop. Heck, by the Communist mayor who imprisoned them and the newspaper reporters who swarmed them. Finally, by Lucia’s spiritual advisors and her fellow nuns, as well as the Holy See.
There are procedures for these things, believe me. Visions are common, and so are crazy people and bedeviled people. You run into a lot more of the latter demanding attention for their visions. Bishops get a lot of practice dealing with such things – too much. And yet you act as if the Catholic Church never had any idea of such a thing possibly being able to occur, when it happens all the time.
sigh
If you want to learn about discernment and visions, several Doctors of the Church have written several books worth of helpful hints based on personal experience, observation, and prayer: St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, St. John of the Cross’ Ascent of Mt. Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena, etc. etc. etc. And that’s just scratching the surface. The major point you’ll learn is that most of the time, it’s not even worth paying much attention or thought time on visions from God, because once you’ve had the vision, you’ve gotten whatever benefit you’re going to get. Only the odd vision is educational for other people; and Fatima is that odd vision.
If you don’t want to believe Fatima’s true or useful, or if you think saying the Rosary’s pointless, fine. But what happened at Fatima’s not Satanic, and it’s silly to say it is.
Why are you so interested in this topic? It’s not like Fatima’s anything integral to Christian faith. I mean, it’s like you were arguing against the US Constitution by ripping on Sesame Street. Sure you’re going to get some passionate defenders and some passionate haters, but you’re not going to decide anything much about the Elastic Clause.
That was a quote from water, not me.