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21. The Church Thanks God for Fatima
THE
MESSAGE OF FATIMA, let it be insisted upon, has the vigorous approval of
the Church.
The falsettos of renewal that would drown out
the heavenly voice of those 1917 apparitions are only discrediting
themselves. They decry the guarantee of a miracle to the young seers, as
though the miracle of the sun couldn't happen when in fact it did. They
may not have heard of the additional fact, for they never mention it, that
the arid expanse of the Cova da Iria now holds a reservoir of the clearest
water which flows into it from two springs not there before. Even they
could hardly consider it a succession of accidents that in 1921, just when
pilgrimages from the European countries began converging on the Cova and
drinking water became a desperate need, the first spring bubbled out of
the soil; and that, as the crowds grew larger, the second came to life in
1927 to double the supply; and that, thirdly, cures beyond the power of
medicine have been wrought by helpings from that blessed reservoir which
is fed by the two springs and stands near the Sacred Heart monument. But
the false renewalists are not impressed.
Our Lady of Fatima seems to embarrass them.
They refuse her maternal forewarnings even though many of her predictions
have already come true. They ridicule her plea for penance at the exact
time an undisciplined cult of doing one's thing threatens social chaos.
They renounce the traditional devotion that has repeatedly saved
Christianity from ruin, and in so doing have contradicted Our Lady of
Mount Carmel, of Lourdes, of Fatima, with their shrill decree: "The rosary
is out!"
The boldest of them go further. They claim to
speak for the Church and would have their dupes believe that her official
magisterium couldn't care less about Fatima. They lie. Or, if they
honestly think that, they anyhow err. Deaf to the pronouncements of the
supreme pontiffs, blind to the acknowledgements of the liturgy, they need
educating.
Already in 1918, just a half year after the
final apparition at Fatima, Pope Benedict XV in addressing the Portuguese
hierarchy referred to "the extraordinary aid from the Mother of God" which
the Church had there received. Pope Pius XI, the next vicar of Christ,
used the very same adjective of Fatima. In a similar letter to the
bishops of Portugal, dated November 10, 1933, he wrote that "in your
country so flourishing with the Christian spirit, which quite recently the
Virgin Mother of God deigned to favor with extraordinary benefits, it will
not be difficult." Difficult to do what? To establish Catholic Action,
which His Holiness was then strongly recommending to the faithful. His
successor in the Holy See, to show the world what he thought of Fatima,
did not stop with proclamations in its favor. He did more. He introduced
into the liturgy the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, assigning it
to a date in August.
The revised liturgy, retaining the feast, has
transferred it to the Saturday following the feast of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus earlier in the year. And that means, the very next day. The new
arrangement must surely please the Angel of Peace who in his instructions
to the young shepherds associated the two together. But the honor is not
restricted to a single day of the year. The liturgy encourages a Votive
Mass of the Immaculate Heart on the first Saturday of every month, when
the date is open.
Not that the Angel of Peace invented devotion
to the Immaculate Heart, he but re-emphasized its importance, renewed
interest in it. A century before, the miraculous medal and the green
scapular were both carrying a design of it. Two centuries before, St.
John Eudes had been preaching it and writing about it. Still earlier,
scriptural commentators included it in their sacred eloquence. "With what
words shall I, a lowly man," asks St. Bernardine of Siena in a sermon on
the Visitation, "express the exalted sentiments of the Virginal Heart?"
He knew that only one other ever felt the emotions of humanity so nobly.
The angels themselves, he adds, could not recite her Magnificat as
did the Mother of God. They cannot put into the words the warmth
of her sublime feelings because they do not have her heart.
Pope Pius XII, not satisfied to have honored
the Immaculate Heart, under the impetus of its appeal also inserted into
the liturgy a renewed recognition of Mary the Queen. He was not
inventing. He was rather reaffirming. He was only stating the facts when
he wrote in his October encyclical of 1954, that the memorials of
Christian antiquity, its traditional prayers, its enduring works of art,
all "declare the Mother of God preeminent in royal dignity." He cited St.
Anthanasius, St. Bonaventure, St. Peter Canisius, for his purpose. And he
gave the world the reason for his additions to the liturgy: "The time for
doubting Fatima has passed. It is now time for action."
He amply practiced what he advised. His record
shows a plenitude of action. He consecrated the world to the Immaculate
Heart of Mary in 1942. In 1951 he ordered the Holy Year to be concluded
for the world, not in Rome, but at Fatima on October 13, the 34th
anniversary of the miracle of the sun. Less than a year later he
consecrated the world again to the Immaculate Heart, this time
specifically mentioning Russia. And two years after that, he elevated to
the status of a basilica the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima.
Therein, he remarked, as his sufficient justification, "lie buried the
bodies of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who were favored with a wonderful
vision of the Mother of God."
To return for the moment to the 1951 closing of
the Holy Year at the shrine, let this be remembered. While Pope Pius did
not attend the ceremony but was represented by a delegate, he did his own
speaking to the enormous assemblage. His address, radioed from Rome into
the amplifiers surrounding the Cova da Iria and beyond, held the audience
spellbound. An unbroken hush waited for each successive word. The voice
of the Lord's vicar pleaded in fluent Portuguese for prayer and penance as
the only means to peace—with special emphasis on the daily rosary. The
tens of thousands, overflowing the spacious esplanade into the outer
reaches of the amplifiers, would seem not to have missed a word.
"The most spectacular thing I've ever seen,"
said Andrew Gold of the scene. "If we made it in Hollywood, nobody would
believe it." The cameraman for Warner Brothers, in the country at the
time for the filming of The Miracle of Fatima, was impressed by
what the eye could see. However, he did not see to the heart of the
matter. Frank Conniff did, "If the roots of faith strike so deep," that
journalist concluded his dispatch to the American Newspaper Syndicate,
"there is no reason to believe that they do not still endure in countries
under Communist domination."
No reason whatever! They do endure. And they
will continue to endure. Should every country in the world fall to
Communist domination, a remnant of believers will not have yielded. And
Our Lady will take what faith remains to build from it, with the consent
of a chastened mankind, a new era of God and of undisturbed peace. She it
is who will dominate the atheist revolution. Satan cannot win. The faith
that brought out the tens of thousands to Portugal's favorite shrine on
October 13, 1951, will not have been eradicated. It will in sad truth be
destroyed in the tepid of soul, but not in the strong clients of Mary.
They will never desert her divine Son.
Our Lady of Fatima said it herself, in her
third apparition, that Portugal will not lose the Faith. She said it
immediately after predicting the spread of errors out of Russia through
the world if men did not repent. The country has since—indeed, as late as
April of 1974—fallen under Communist control. A military coup seized the
government. Yet no threat of bombs, no obstacles put in their way, could
deter the crowds from converging on the blessed grounds of the basilica to
observe the fifty-seventh anniversary of the miracle of the sun, October
13, 1974. Their fervor at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass bore out the
truth, so far, of the Marian prophecy.
The Church, as custodian of the Faith, has
reason to thank God for Fatima. There, as at the other Marian shrines,
devotion to Jesus predominates. The basilica invites nocturnal adoration
of the Blessed Sacrament, during which confessions are heard while prayers
are said from midnight to dawn. At the morning Mass it sometimes requires
as many as twenty-five priests and deacons to distribute Holy Communion to
the crowds packed into the cova as well as the church. Microphones keep
the outdoor worshippers in touch with the happenings at the altar. And
while the faithful are receiving their Eucharistic Lord, the choir chants
a succession of hymns in Latin or Portuguese, some of them of an exquisite
charm. Infidels who have attended the ceremonies out of curiosity have
admitted to an elation of spirit when the vast multitude breaks into a
unison of holy shouts, which in English would read:
Hail to Jesus
in the Blessed Sacrament!
Hail to Jesus
our Lord!
Hail to Jesus
who is our Love!
The message of Fatima inculcates ever so
tenderly not only love for the Christ of Catholic sanctuaries but faith in
his doctrines as taught by his Church. Pope Pius XII called it somewhere
in one of his addresses a catechetical survey. He considered it of
topmost importance. Accordingly, year after year, he never once failed to
send a representative to the Portuguese shrine to attend the ceremonies on
its two key dates.
His legate there, on May 13, 1956, would
himself within a short time occupy the Chair of Peter. He had come to
voice the praises of Our Lady of Fatima. And in his leisurely enthusiasm
he did. He described in detail the miracle of the sun because it was so
obviously a direct sanction from the Omnipotent upon the story of the
privileged seers. Cardinal Roncalli then concluded with restraint, on a
tender note. He reminded his overcrowded audience that the dying Savior,
having willed us into the care of his mother, expected her to show us her
solicitude "even corporally, now here, now there, in womanly form. Thus
can her apparitions be explained in the history of the Church."
Pope John XXIII did not surprise those who
really knew him when he declared Fatima "the centre of Christian hopes."
It was what any reader of his Journal of a Soul would expect of
him. Busy as the old pontiff was, he would never settle for less than all
fifteen decades of the rosary every day. He meditated on the mysteries as
the beads slipped through his fingers, drawing from the great truths a
tireless renewal of his inner peace. He was acting entirely in character
when he bequeathed to the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary his pectoral
cross, now on display there. In 1962 he showed another sign of affection
for the shrine. He established a new feast for it, with a special Mass to
enhance the honor. His emissary to the anniversary celebration the
following May 13, while Pope John lay dying, gave the papal reason why
from the pulpit. "The Holy Father," Cardinal Larraona said for him,
"desires through this tender means to enrich the spiritual treasure of
Fatima, and also to contribute to making better known and move widely
practiced the message given here at Fatima for mankind."
Pope John's successor in the Chair of Peter has
carried on his policy with undiminished fervor. To close out the third
session of Vatican Council II, on November 21, 1964, Pope Paul consecrated
the world anew to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He had earlier conferred
on her the title Mother of the Church. He had, for that matter,
begun the day's routine by concelebrating with twenty-four prelates a Mass
in her honor. The prelates had been selected only from dioceses that had
a major Marian shrine to their credit. On both sides of the great altar
at St. Peter's there hung an assortment of tapestries depicting the
prerogatives of the handmaid of the Lord from Nazareth. Previous to the
Mass, I had almost forgotten to mention, a solid half hour of hymns to
Mary were sung by the Sistine choir. It was her day.
Before discussing the more than 2,000 bishops
in attendance, the supreme pontiff gave them his word that he would send
to the shrine at Fatima as a token of his esteem a golden rose. They rose
in unison to applaud the announcement. They did it thunderously. They
were in no hurry to stop. It was a prolonged outbreak of joy.
Pope Paul made good his promise. The golden
rose arrived at Fatima in time for the next year's anniversary
celebration. It is still there. It carries its own explanation. If put
into English the inscription beneath it would read: "Pope Paul VI,
imploring the protection of the Mother of God upon the whole Church,
dedicates this Golden Rose to the Sanctuary of Fatima, May 13, 1965."
On the same pertinent date a year later, Pope
Paul sent his chosen representative to Fatima. The crowd at the Cova da
Iria, who had waited through a rainy night for the morning Mass and the
rest of the ceremonies, heard Cardinal Cento declare "a complete harmony
between the message of Fatima and the documents of Ecumenical Council
Vatican II." A person would have to be loose-minded to pretend that the
statement did not reflect the thinking of Pope Paul. A representative
represents, not disagrees.
But in 1967 Pope Paul did not send a delegate
to officiate in his stead at the Golden Jubilee of Mary's first apparition
at Fatima. He went in person. And on that holy ground, where the
children had their visions of "the Lady all made of light," the Holy
Father offered an outdoor Mass to her Immaculate Heart, preached a homily
to her honor, led the Prayer of the Faithful, which was addressed to her
divine Son on her behalf and included petitions from the international
assembly in Portuguese, Spanish, German, French, Hungarian, Italian,
Russian, et cetera. The petitions in whatever tongue were all for
peace on earth, in due time, as prescribed by Our Lady of Fatima. The
Holy Father himself, out of his high regard for her, had come here from
Rome on "a pilgrimage of prayer and penance" and "in the interest of
peace." He said so, in a statement to the news media.
Pope Paul, by his presence at that fiftieth
anniversary, May 13, 1967, was professing to the world his firm confidence
in the apparitions of Fatima. He could not have shown it to greater
effect than when he posed alongside Sister Lucia of the Immaculate Heart,
the Lucia of the visions, a cloistered nun there by papal invitation, as
together they faced the hundreds of thousands in attendance and the untold
millions who from the continents and islands of the world watched the
telecast. The cameras, manipulated by experts, caught every move of the
central figure in white. Once there came a curious break of silence as
though the commentators didn't quite know what His Holiness was up to:
when he approached the famed pilgrim statue to place at its base a rosary
of possibly the largest beads on earth. It was a conclusive act of faith,
on the part of the supreme pontiff, in Our Lady of Fatima.
In view of the continuous sanction of the Holy
See, and the endless pilgrimages to the hallowed spot, and the
ever-increasing enrollment of the Legion of Mary, the Blue Army of Our
Lady, the Militia of the Immaculate, it is a misrepresentation to say the
Church couldn't care less about Fatima. Nor did Pope John, in deciding
not to reveal to the world the expected secret of 1960, betray a
disinterestedness. It was just the opposite. He renewed his effort to
inculcate devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary, and to have the nations heed
her maternal admonitions.
Reading the momentous secret, which the
surviving seer had faithfully written down in Por5tuguese and sealed away
in an envelope, Pope John pondered over its gravity; had no doubt of its
importance to him; then chose not to share it with the world. He had his
reason, which was that such a revelation would serve no necessary purpose
so long as the faithful in sufficient numbers practiced the counsel of
prayer and penance, which he admonished them to do, and which he felt
confident would in the end bring out of the chaotic discord of the times
the blessing of peace. His close associates, Cardinal Ottaviani and
Cardinal Lercaro, have so informed us of Pope John.
"The secret is important," Cardinal Ottaviani
has explained, "but important to the Holy Father to whomo it was
destined." Asked why her sealed message from the Blessed Mother had by a
strict request been kept unopened until 1960, Sister Lucia answered simply
that by then it would have become clearer. And so it had. Having read
it, Pope John "said to me immediately afterward," writes Cardinal
Ottaviani, "that he understood it entirely."
But it was Cardinal Lercaro who, in a written
address to be delivered at Fatima, May 13, 1960, expressed with the
authority of a chosen agent the attitude of Pope John. Due to a sudden
illness, the papal legate could not be there to deliver the address
himself, which did not matter; someone else did it ample justice. Giving
a faithful resume of it, the local bishop read out its salient
pronouncements to the huge international audience who afterwards heard
translation in French, German, Italian, English, and other tongues.
"We have come here today," the audience was
told, "not because we are curious to learn the secret, but because we feel
guilty for not having fulfilled what has been so clearly demanded of us."
The address insisted on the eventual defeat of evil and the restoration of
peace which Our Lady had promised the three children. "Let us then," it
concluded, "consecrate ourselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary to hasten
the moment of her triumph."
Not in the select circle of the defined dogmas
anymore than twice two is four, the story of Fatima enjoys an overwhelming
credibility of its own. Its prophecies come true, its tremendous miracle
of the sun, its many lesser miracles, its consistent support from the
Church, its wealth of doctrine, certify its validity. The nine
apparitions, from the Angel's first to Mary's last, afforded the children
a catechetical review. The communion of saints, heaven, hell, purgatory,
the malice of sin, the forgiveness of sin, the pre-eminence of Christ the
Redeemer, the role of his mother in the economy of salvation, the Holy
Eucharist, the Sovereignty of God, His Providence, His Triune Grandeur,
were all included.
Nor does the consignment of the 1960 secret to
the Vatican archives weaken the Fatima message. Whatever it was that Pope
John read, whatever bad news the record may have contained, did not turn
him against heaven's directives for peace. It stirred him to action all
in favor of them. It induced him to sit down and compose an encyclical on
the rosary, a plea for its daily use, which he issued in time for a
worldwide circulation before October of the same year.
In it Pope John referred with his usual calm to
the dread prospects of our day. His was no Pollyanna optimism. "The
statistics are there," he wrote, "frightening in their cold presentation
of the facts: a general contempt for life, an insane desire for power and
domination, a subtle but stubborn false teaching that uses anti-Christian
theories and an anti-Christian spirit as a basis for deciding what kind of
structure to give social life for the masses who are being fed mere
counterfeits of the truth."
Yet for all that, the great apostle of
benevolence preserved an unshaken serenity. Throughout his warnings hope
dominated. His encyclical on Our Lady of the Rosary left no doubt that he
had confidence in her. To Pope John her revelations at Fatima were
clearly a reminder from heaven that God had not given up on the human
race. It is a conviction that lies implicit everywhere in his discourse
when it does not shine out like a sunburst; as certainly it does in the
declarative appeal to the faithful for "greater fervor in praying to the
Mother of Jesus who is our mother too."
Pope John, instead of revealing the Fatima
secret, told us in 1960 to mind our business—the Fatima message. It is
still good advice. Certainly he considered it of prime importance. He
pleaded to the individual not to ignore it. He reminded us of the inner
peace that would result from a sweet compliance.
He himself had the confidence of that inner
peace. It showed on his face. It served notice to the world that, come
what may from the malice of man toward man, even should there be an
outbreak of nuclear horrors, even should there be a furious attack on the
Church from without and an insane attempt to destroy her from within, evil
would not prevail. No, Our Lady of Fatima would! |