I can see that you completely misunderstand Fatima’s place in the Catholic faith, but I’ll address each of your points in an effort to get you to stop listening to those who haven’t a clue what they are talking about:
To Della
First of all, Fatima is an approved apparition. That means the Church thought it important enough to look into the matter and decided that it truly WAS Our Lady.
No, the Church never says that any apparition of Our Lady WAS Our Lady, even if popes, bishops and priests use the coloquial expression “Our Lady said when she appeared at Fatima…” when discussing the message of an apparition. What the Church rules is that a particular apparition and its messages are “worthy of belief”, not “must be believed because Our Lady actually appeared and said thus and so.”
What would be the point in determining the authenticity of an apparition if no heed would be paid to the message brought by Mary?
Here, you are exaggerating to make your point seem unassailable. I never said that “no heed” should be paid to a message from Mary in an apparition. What I said was, and I’ll repeat it for those who don’t want to go back to my previous post, that the pope determines if and when any directives by any apparition are to be done or not. That is why he is the pope, not Mary nor the seer she appeared to.
Second, countless popes have tried to consecrate Russia since Fatima. If they didnt think that much of it, why did they bother?
Once again, you’ve misread me in your own mind. I never said the popes think little of the message of Fatima. Those are your words, not mine. I said, once again, that the pope decides what is to be done about any messages from any apparition delivered by any seer. Do read what I write and not what you want to read into it.
I find it very disturbing that you find it necessary to reword what others have written to make it sound like we are in direct opposition to you, when that is simply not the case. I think you’d better reexamine how you process what others write/say to correct this flaw in your approach or you won’t have fruitful conversations but shouting matches in which you learn nothing and the other person just gets frustrated answering things s/he never wrote or said.
Third, you are being very harsh to Sr Lucia. She has been nothing but obedient to the various popes throughout the years! Also, I think you need to recognize just how much of the bible was written by/talking about “seers”.
How harsh? By calling her a seer? She was a seer, what else should I call her? But, that’s not really the issue for you. Once again, and disturbingly, you aren’t saying back to me what I wrote but what you read into my words–a very dangerous and harmful thing to do TO YOURSELF, not to me. Of course she’s been obedient to all the popes during her lifetime, I never said otherwise. The problem here is that you don’t know the difference between private revelation and public revelation.
The seers of the Bible were delivering God’s public revelation to mankind. Jesus himself was the last “seer” to reveal God the Father’s public revelation, Jesus himself, to mankind. We are bound to believe this type of revelation which is a part of the Sacred Tradition of the Church.
As to private revelations, such as apparitions, we are NOT bound to believe them if we have good cause to doubt them. They are not binding on the faithful nor on the pope. No one has to do what Sr. Lucia said Our Lady requested us as individuals or the pope to do. Our Lady herself knows this which is why, in approved apparitions, never demands anything but asks that certain things be done and promises good things if they are done. But she herself, as an obedient daughter of the Church, submits herself to the rulings of the Holy Father. It is the pope who has the authority to decide what will be done in answer to any messages given by any seer from any apparition.
For your edification and education in this area of Church teaching I recommend “A Still, Small Voice” by Fr. Benedict Groeschel (you do consider him reliable, I hope!). It is easy to read and quite informative. You really are misunderstanding quite a few things here and need to educate yourself to the truth of what the Church teaches about apparitions and their place in the life of the Church.
