Orthodox Rebuttal of Fatima Teachings

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CampionTheChampion

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As a Protestant convert, I’m seeking to find the smallest possible Catholic Mary to believe in. This has led me to question apparitions. Anyways, I stumbled across this strange rebuttal to the Fatima experiences.

http://www.orthodox.org/Fatima.pdf

Pages 11-13 show his interesting reasons for denying doctrines assumed/taught by Fatima. In summary: Making religious experiences or miraculous signs the criterion of our faith opens the floodgates to every sort of demonic delusion. Fatima should be ignored because to pay attention to it leaves us open to possible demonic delusion.

Thoughts?
 
if you want to emulate our Lord, you will not minimize the role that Mary has in the economy of salvation. The Archangel Gabriel, speaking the exact words of God, called her “full of grace” i.e. one who has been graced to the full. She could hold no more grace. Consider that our Lord conceived of her in the divine intellect, then brought her to the flesh so that she could, in turn, give flesh to Him. Jesus designed His own mother.

The mother of God.

Ponder that.

IME, a few Orthodox are angry at the Catholic church, displaying a very Protestant-like attitude.

Why? Separation is its own punishment.

I’ll go and be silent now.
 
Popes do not go around embracing and endorsing things that open their flocks up to “possible demonic delusion”. Moreover, before the Vatican decides to officially approve and promote an apparition, they check it extremely thoroughly for anything demonic about it. They have trained experts working in that area who, believe me, are light-years ahead of whatever your convert’s brain has arrived at in trying to minimize Mary, which to me is in itself a demonic act.

You’re not required to believe in private revelation such as Fatima, so if it makes you uncomfortable, then feel free to ignore it. If you’re having trouble ignoring it to the point where you need to come up with arguments making Mary “as small as possible”, then the problem is in your own head - not with Fatima and Our Lady.

I also think that if Protestant converts or wannabe converts put 1/10 of the time into practicing their faith that they seem to put into trying to make Mary go away, they’d be a lot further ahead.
 
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Seriously? There are Orthodox who don’t believe in visions, apparitions, or private revelations?

What do they do, go to church and spit on icons, too?

The history of Orthodoxy and the Eastern side of Christianity is full of apparitions and visions! How the heck are they denying them???

I guess I’m going to have to go look at this cracky webpage, just to see how stupid it gets.
 
Ooooh. Reading the PDF. Well, it seems that Fatima is hinky because Mary appeared to us heretical, schismatic, horrid Catholics, and because some Orthodox like it.

It elides right over any points that would make sense to Orthodox (like how the kids made sure to check if the people appearing to them were able to pray and say the Lord’s Name).

It pretends that Orthodox people never call Mary by different titles. (So I guess I was imagining that Mary’s icons have different names, because that would make every icon represent different people!)

It pretends that Orthodox apparitions and miracles never promote popular devotions, and especially not new ones invented in the last century or so. (I guess that this icon’s use against alcoholism is EEEEVULLL.)

Crikey, it just goes on and on… Whoever is writing this crud is clearly very suspicious of any kind of devotion that isn’t the devotion of specific kinds of mentally austere monks. Anything he doesn’t like, he throws the Desert Fathers at it. But he doesn’t mention anything in the Desert Fathers that is warm and human, and there’s a lot of that. He doesn’t distinguish between what is good for beginners, and what is good for those who are advanced and closely guided.

Back into the fray. Apparently his real beef is that Orthodox wanted to pray the Rosary in order that Russia would be converted from atheism and Communism defeated. He decides that it’s really… an evil plot! To convert Orthodox into evil evil Catholics!

And since he can’t just leave it there, he starts to go into advanced conspiracy occult crap. All the modern Marian apparitions are from Antichrist! And the devil infests all apparitions to kids! And people near puberty! And people well past puberty, whom we will claim are close to puberty! And so on… and on… and on. It’s a little better written than your average Protestant writing anti-Catholic junk, but it’s not particularly Orthodox in tone.

The truth is that a lot of the famous Marian apparitions of recent times were to kids; but a lot of them were to adults or to elderly people, or to entire villages at once. And the same thing is true throughout history, East and West.

Of course he “has a point” at the end, about private revelations not being something that one should accept without proof or careful examination. Which is why the Church carefully examines them. But given his assumptions, he can’t accept that Catholic bishops or popes have any sense or standing.

So yeah, if this guy had lived in Constantinople back in the day, he’d be an Ikonoklast.
 
This document has been created by someone who is not Catholic but Orthodox. So every mention of things said by our Blessed Mother which refers to Catholic belief is criticized and discarded. (The Rosary? yes, Purgatory? yes, The value of works? yes… etc. etc.) Of course this person objects to the apparition and calls it bogus or something demonic.Toward the end the author calls the Fatima apparitions “a powerful attack on the Orthodox church” due to its mentions of Russia.

Please don’t use something like this anti-Catholic document as a means to convince yourself the apparitions are not true. We are not required to believe any apparitions, however the fact that it has been thoroughly investigated and approved by the church should give you peace about Fatima and those who do believe it.

Searching for the truth should lead you to prayer about this subject. Ask her Son to help you see the truth about His mother and approach your prayer with an open heart rather than one searching for ways to avoid it.
 
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CampionTheChampion said:
As a Protestant convert, I’m seeking to find the smallest possible Catholic Mary to believe in.
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My thought on this, as a fellow convert, is that this is an impoverished view of Mary and not an authentically Catholic approach. It’s not even a very intellectually honest approach, really, because the Church fathers have plenty to say about Mary and even the Reformers venerated her. I can suggest the Charles Dickson book A Protestant Pastor Looks At Mary.
CampionTheChampion said:
Making religious experiences or miraculous signs the criterion of our faith opens the floodgates to every sort of demonic delusion
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Well, one could say our entire religion is founded on miraculous signs and experiences—from Abraham to Moses to Mary to Peter and Paul and beyond. The Bible is full of miracles and signs.

But as to apparitIons, the Church examines them and either finds them worthy of belief or not. You are not required to believe them, follow them, or participate in them . They declare no new doctrine and do not add anything to the deposit of faith in that manner.
 
I’m also a Protestant convert, and initially, yes, I was hesitant about Marian devotion. The Blessed Virgin doesn’t say much in the Bible, but her role is much more immense than we can imagine. Even the Bible says a sword pierced her heart as well. I don’t think we can comprehend just what this spiritual suffering means. Mary wills what God wills – salvation and conversion of souls. She has great intercessory abilities because God raised her to that level — by His own will and providence. It would seem to be for our own good to ask for her help to reach God.

Just as God cares, so does Mary care for human affairs.

I wonder what the Orthodox think about the spread of Russia’s errors (Communism) that was prophesied…
 
CampionTheChampion said:
I’m seeking to find the smallest possible Catholic Mary to believe in.
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After reading that opening line, I realized that there was nothing positive that I could possibly contribute to this thread. “Smallest possible Catholic Mary to believe in?” How completely foreign to me…and more than likely to anyone partaking in this particular thread.
 
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Fátima is approved by the holy roman catholic church.

Try to do some research on the “criteria for approval of private revelations”…

At Fátima there was “the miracle of the sun” with tens of thousands of eye witnesses, correctly predicted in advance by the children.

So, refusal of Fátima requires far more (from methodology itself) than the miswriten document you just shared.
 
CampionTheChampion said:
As a Protestant convert, I’m seeking to find the smallest possible Catholic Mary to believe in.
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Why? Have you not considered that God praised Mary?

Luke 1:26-28
King James Version (KJV)
26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, 27 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

Let’s break this down:
ANGEL GABRIEL
  1. an angel is a messenger of God. That is what the word, angel, means.
  2. this angel, Gabriel, is one of the four angels that stands before the throne of God.
WAS SENT FROM GOD
  1. God sent this angel to Mary.
  2. Since this angel is a messenger of God’s, God sent Him to deliver a message.
  3. Therefore, the angel was not speaking on his own, but was communicating God’s message to Mary.
  4. If we skip down to verse 28, we see that this was a message of praise (i.e. blessed art thou).
  5. Therefore God praised Mary through His Angel.
That is great praise indeed. Do you know of any man whose praise is worth more than God’s? In other words, what do you value more highly, the praise of man or the praise of God?

Is there anything that you could say or do which would be greater praise to Mary than that which God already did?
 
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Mark121359 said:
After reading that opening line, I realized that there was nothing positive that I could possibly contribute to this thread. “Smallest possible Catholic Mary to believe in?” How completely foreign to me…and more than likely to anyone partaking in this particular thread.
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No matter how “small” one tries to make Mary, she will still be bigger and greater than any of us and all of us put together.
I think it’s a bit of a backhanded tribute to her greatness and pervasiveness that so many posters seem to have such a difficult time just putting her aside, although they obviously would like to do so.
Salve, Regina!!
 
I hope I didn’t say anything too inflammatory…

But my point was that usually, the Eastern side of things is intensely into Marian devotion. Inteeeeensely. I mean, we’re talking “Vladimir Putin is afraid to badmouth the Mother of God.”

And Marian apparitions are very typical of Orthodox religious experience, especially during time of war. For historical reasons, they tend to have a lot of “wonderworking icons” where we tend to have “wonderworking statues” as well as wonderworking 2D representations of the saints; but there is a lot of overlap.
 
NuclearReceptor said:
The Blessed Virgin doesn’t say much in the Bible
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Saint Jospeh doesn’t say a word! Yet his role…

The “Magnificat” said by Our Lady is a lot !!! Unparalleled in beauty, hail oh full of grace…
 
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Hey guys! I hope this isn’t too random for this thread… But I felt it may be a good time to ask: what did the lady at Fatima mean when she said “only I can help you?” this kinda makes me uneasy. I am in RCIA, so I’m trying to understand. 🙂 no hate is intended I assure you… Just a bit thrown off and wanted to know context
 
JesusReigns said:
But I felt it may be a good time to ask: what did the lady at Fatima mean when she said “only I can help you?” this kinda makes me uneasy. I am in RCIA, so I’m trying to understand.
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I believe what was said was during the Third Apparition on July 13, 1917 and was reported by Sister Lucia as being:
“What does Your Grace want of me?” I asked.

“I want you to come here on the 13th of next month, to continue reciting the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace in the world and the end of the war, because only She can help you.”
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The specific interpretation of this statement is that Mary is the one who can help bring about the end of the war going on at the time (WWI). The more general interpretation is that God is angry with the world and Mary is the intercessor who can keep the wrath of God from bringing down bad punishments on us if we don’t mend our sinful ways and appeal to God through Mary for help.

In other words, things are really a mess, God’s really mad at us, and Mary is our help and our hope in such a situation where God is just about to lose patience and let us have it.
 
I didn’t expect all these replies. Thanks everyone. I’ve skimmed but will more thoroughly read and reply tonight.

Joe.
 
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