How accurate are these claims regarding Fatima?

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I hope this was in the right forum. Might be better in Traditional Catholicism or Apologetics.
 
Why are you even reading a site like that? Why wouldn’t you get your information from a Catholic source instead of a snarky self proclaimed skeptic? Look at this from the masthead.

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This tells you right away they have an agenda.
 
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They have some good information on things like UFOs and such. I am not against reading the other side of things, as well. So I’m just wondering, are those claims true?
 
Let the person making the claim prove it.
You know what? They can’t.
Anybody can take anyone’s name that’s in authority and splash ‘they said this’ all over the internet. By the tone of the article, the truth doesn’t seem to matter to them.

We have this incredible event in history. The children gave the date, time and location, and 70 thousand people witnessed an amazing event. Yet, this isn’t enough for some people. It’s like the words in scripture when Jesus says ‘Even if someone rises from the dead, they wouldn’t believe’. Luke 16: 31
 
To say it’s disrespectful is an understatement, it’s about as unscholarly and biased an “article” as I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s pure vitriol from someone who clearly hates the Church with a passion.
The quotes from an ex-friar and Ratzinger, are they true? Well, no offence to the former friar, but the very fact that he is an “ex” friar tends to inform me that his faith in Christ and the Church probably aren’t in good shape. The quotes in question:
  • Lúcia was a person who lived in a “delirious world of infantile fantasies” and suffered “religious hallucinations.”
    According to who? An ex-friar who was speaking 83 years after the visions about a woman he’s presumably never met, and giving his own personal opinion based on what evidence?
    -He went much further in his claims, accusing the clergy of Ourem and the Catholic Church of psychological abuse.
    Accusing. Based, again, on what evidence other than his clearly biased opinion?
    -Father Mario de Oliveira claims the two children who died from the flu died due to religious fasting.
    They died from the flu. The spanish flu which was an epidemic at the time. Not religious fasting. Again, evidence?
    -Fatima, he says, is a hoax kept alive because of the attention it gets and the money it makes.
    According to some random ex-friar, who biases are getting clearer by the second.
Honestly, it’s not even worth the time of day brother. Anyone can make accusations with no evidence and post them on the internet. This stuff only damages our faith, I’d stay away. 🙂

PS - You’ll notice that he’s using an ex-friar to give weight to his anti-religious article. Hypocritical.
 
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StudentMI said:
So I’m just wondering, are those claims true
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Well, if there is a 12-page commentary by Cardinal Ratzinger, you should be able to find it, and see if he said what they claim. My bet is that, if that phrase does appear, it’s been taken out of context.

As for the “ex-friar,” (and again, if he actually said those things), you should look into his history, and why he’s “ex.” Does he have an agenda? Has he left the Church entirely? Etc.
 
puer.dei said:
Well, if there is a 12-page commentary by Cardinal Ratzinger, you should be able to find it, and see if he said what they claim. My bet is that, if that phrase does appear, it’s been taken out of context.
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You don’t say. I wish I could post the well-known Wonka meme here.

I note that when the Skepdic website discusses what Ratzinger allegedly said, it does not link to the actual Vatican website that contains the 12-page Ratzinger document in question, but instead to an article by SFGate, which I doubt is neutral on the subject of Catholics (you can probably guess why). Moreover, if you read Ratzinger’s document, which he wrote as head of the CDF, he does not express any skepticism that Lucia actually had the revelation. He disagrees with the interpretation that it was only about Pope JPII’s attempted assassination and instead he sees it as a representation of the persecution of the Church throughout past history, which would include the assassination attempt; he also disagreed with those who thought it referred to a future apocalypse. (I edited the previous sentence, I didn’t write it correctly the first time.) As he points out, Lucia was not responsible for the Vatican’s or anyone else’s interpretation of her private revelation. She didn’t interpret it herself, she just passed it along to the Vatican.

So the skepdic website is quoting a probably biased news source that quoted one line of 12 pages of Ratzinger out of context and made it say something that Ratzinger doesn’t suggest at all. Yeah, real credible website. I wouldn’t even rely on it for the UFO information after reading such a poorly done piece.
 
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One can find websites where seemingly important people deny the holocaust, deny the moon landings, believe the earth is flat and there are lizard people controlling everything.

We decide whom we trust. For me, I trust the Church.
 
Well that’s the thing. This guy makes claims and puts his spin on everything.
 
Just popped over to see what the story was, the usual blah blah disrespect,
Id just like to say 70000 people is some collective hallucination, and everything has been pretty spot on thus far, there were atheist newspaper people at Fatima that had change of heart and they were there to discredit the whole thing, also what is going on today the Blessed Mother warned about all this at Fatima, if we did not get our act sorted, things are going to get worse so say your Rosary everyday.
 
StudentMI said:
the Fatima prophecy - The Skeptic's Dictionary

Yes yes, I know. It’s an atheist source and the tone is disrespectful. But the quotes from a former friar, Ratzinger? Are they true?
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Others have weighed in on Ratzinger. Looking up information regarding “Mario de Oliveira,” it appears he’s someone who wrote a book attacking Fatima. As far as I can tell, though, he has no special “credentials” for this, i.e. personal knowledge of anything involving Fatima. That doesn’t mean his arguments are wrong, but it does mean one has to approach it the same way any random person who writes a book attacking Fatima is approached: Look at their arguments and see if they’re valid. I do not have the book and do not know Portuguese, so I can’t really comment on much in this. But simply saying “this guy argued it was false” doesn’t ultimately mean more than “this guy argued it was true.”

I did find this blog post that attacked him (it is in Portuguese, but fortunately there are automated translation services online that let you understand it like Google Translate), which claims that he actually denies even the miracles in the Bible–but I cannot verify this claim. It does link to a video that perhaps gives evidences, but that video is in Portuguese so I can’t see if it backs up the claim.

Perhaps someone who knows Portuguese can look at it and weigh in. But until that point, I’ll maintain that “he said it’s fake” without knowing better his arguments is akin to saying “this other guy says it’s true” which is not very useful.
 
Damian02 said:
Id just like to say 70000 people is some collective hallucination…
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It was reported that thousands of people saw something. That’s a world of difference from thousands of people actually seeing it. We have a film of JFK getting shot and people still argue about what they actually saw.

And hundreds of thousands of people saw the Virgin Mary on multiple ocassions at Zeitoun and that wasn’t true. And that was in recent memory. I’d say there are people still alive today who saw it.

Hundreds of people swore that they had see her literally just down the road from me when it was simply a shadow caused by a fence post. Unexplained Australia - The Coogee Virgin

People see what they want to see. They don’t trust the media now, but treat a story over a century old as being the literal truth.
 
I think the die-hard devotees of Fatima, the ones who insist on maintaining that some secrets still exist and turn the whole thing into a conspiracy on what has been left untold, invite continued criticism of the apparitions. Specifically, many still maintain that “Russia was not consecrated properly” because for some reason, the last 7 or 8 popes have refused to do what Mary specifically told them. Furthermore, the Church considers this a closed matter and that the consecration has been indeed performed.

However, it seemingly benefits a set of folks to keep this conspiracy alive, because anytime something seems amiss in the Church or the world, the default answer is “It’s because the Pope never consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary according to Our Lady of Fatima!!!” It just never stops with some of them. When conspiracies like this persist, they just invite criticism from the secular world.

The core message of Fatima is prayer and repentance. Unfortunately, in my opinion, I think some leaders in the Church used the message in a Western-influenced political manner to be used against the Russian Orthodox Church in the following decades after the apparitions were reported. And even more unfortunately, the core message of Fatima has been obscured by continuing conspiracies which reduce the message to a type of cloak and dagger game within the Church. So as long as the conspiracies continue, so will the attacks against the apparitions.
 
Freddy said:
And hundreds of thousands of people saw the Virgin Mary on multiple ocassions at Zeitoun and that wasn’t true.
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How have you concluded that wasn’t true? The Zeitoun appearance is accepted by the Church.
You are not required to believe it occurred, but you saying “it wasn’t true” is your opinion, not a factual statement.
Same goes for you saying, “Fatima Miracle of the Sun didn’t actually happen.”
 
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Freddy said:
And hundreds of thousands of people saw the Virgin Mary on multiple ocassions at Zeitoun and that wasn’t true. And that was in recent memory. I’d say there are people still alive today who saw it.
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On what basis do you declare it “wasn’t true”?
 
Tis_Bearself said:
The Zeitoun appearance is accepted by the Church.
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The Coptic Orthodox Church approved it. I don’t think the Catholic Church ever did. It would actually be a bit odd if the Catholic Church did, given that it happened at a Coptic Orthodox Church, which is Oriental Orthodox, not Catholic.
 
JSRG said:
The Coptic Orthodox Church approved it. I don’t think the Catholic Church ever did.
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The Catholic Church left it to the authority of the Coptic Church and did not make any official statement. However, it was credibly witnessed by a number of Catholics in the area, and to my knowledge the Catholic Church has not challenged the judgment of the Coptic Church or disagreed with it. I have also heard Catholic clergy cite it expressing belief in it, and the Miracle Hunter website lists it as “Coptic Approved” without noting any sort of Catholic opposition to it.

Edited to add, here is an example of Catholic acceptance of Zeitoun - a ChurchPop article concluding with asking Our Lady of Zeitoun to pray for us. There are many more such articles.

 
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Tolle_Lege said:
I think some leaders in the Church used the message in a Western-influenced political manner to be used against the Russian Orthodox Church in the following decades after the apparitions were reported.
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Yes, this is annoying. One reason why the Divine Mercy devotion was suppressed for so long was an interpretation of it going around based on Polish nationalism. The red and white rays coming from Jesus were supposed to be the Polish flag or some such misinterpretation. People really need to just check their politics at the door when it comes to this stuff.
 
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