May is a month that Catholics traditionally devote to honoring the Blessed Mother. One of my favorite Marian memorials falls in the middle of the month, May 13, when we honor Mary under her title “Our Lady of Fatima.” I’m not a big devotee of Marian apparitions, but because of my work promoting John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (TOB), I have gained a great interest in Fatima. What’s the connection? I could write a doctoral dissertation on it, but I’ll provide the short version in my two columns for the month of May.
As most Catholics know, between May 13 and Oct. 13, 1917, Mary appeared to three peasant children in Fatima, Portugal delivering a three-part message — the “three secrets” of Fatima, as they’ve come to be known. The first secret presented a horrifying vision of hell. The second involved a prophecy of World War II and the warning that “Russia would spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church.” However, Mary assured the children, “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”
Mary also told the children that “the Holy Father will have much to suffer.” This brings us to the “third secret” of Fatima, which was not publicly revealed until the year 2000. In 1917, the children saw a vision of bullets and arrows fired at “a bishop dressed in white.” Sixty-four years later, while driving through the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, a “bishop dressed in white” was gunned down by Turkish assassin Ali Agca … on the memorial of Our Lady of Fatima: May 13, 1981.
Many years, later John Paul II reflected: “Agca knew how to shoot, and he certainly shot to kill. Yet it was as if someone was guiding and deflecting that bullet.” That “someone,” John Paul believed, was the Woman of Fatima. “Could I forget that the event in St. Peter’s Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of the Mother of Christ … has been remembered … at Fatima in Portugal? For in everything that happened to me on that very day, I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet” (“Memory and Identity,” pp. 159, 163).
The fact that John Paul was shot on the memorial of Fatima is well known. What few people know is that the pope was planning to announce the establishment of his Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family on that fateful afternoon. This was to be his main arm for disseminating his teaching on man, woman, marriage and sexual love around the globe. Could it be that there were forces at work that didn’t want John Paul II’s teaching to spread around the world? (In fact, by May 13, 1981, John Paul II was only about half way through delivering the 129 addresses of his TOB. Had he died, obviously, the full teaching never would have been presented.) And could it be that, by saving his life, the Woman of Fatima was pointing to the importance of his teaching reaching the world?
It would be over a year later that John Paul officially established his Institute (of which I’m a proud graduate). On that day, Oct. 7, 1982 — not coincidentally the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary — John Paul II entrusted the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family to the care and protection of Our Lady of Fatima. By doing so, it seems he himself was drawing a connection, at least indirectly, between his miraculous survival and the importance of the Theology of the Body.
Digging deeper, the precise link, I believe, between John Paul II’s TOB and Fatima lies in Mary’s mysterious words about the “errors of Russia” and the promised “triumph” of her Immaculate Heart. John Paul II’s TOB is like weedkiller applied to the deepest roots of the “errors of Russia” that have spread throughout the world. As such, the spread of the TOB throughout the world is a sign, I believe, that Mary is preparing us for her triumph.
But what does it mean to speak of “the triumph of the Immaculate Heart?” What are the “errors of Russia” and how does John Paul II’s TOB combat them? We’ll explore these questions in the next column.
May 13th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Just a note, there is a part of the Third Secret of Fatima that has not been made public knowledge. In the vision of the bishop dressed in white, he is led up a hill by soldiers, through the ruins of a city with the dead bodies of priests and other bishops everywhere, and in the vision he was actually shot DEAD. I do not think that the vision applied to Pope John Paul II, because he was not being led by soldiers to a hill in a ruined city with other dead bodies of priests and bishops everywhere when he was shot. Also in the message there is a part that reads at what is supposed to be the end of the statement, “In Portugal the Faith will always be preserved..etc.” and it ends there, leaving the reader to deduct that there is something more concerning how the faith would fare in other places, countries. The Blessed Mother always explained her statements to the children. After the vision of Hell, which is pretty self explanatory, Our Lady says tot the children, “You have seen Hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them (sinners), God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.” She revealed to Sister Lucia:
“Behold my heart surrounded with thorns which ungrateful men place therein at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console me. Announce in my name that I promise to help at the hour of death, with the graces needed for salvation, whoever on the First Saturday of five consecutive months shall:
1. confess and receive communion
2. recite five decades of the Rosary and;
3. keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary with the intention of making reparation to me.”
The Five First Saturdays of Reparation were requested to atone for the five ways in which people offended the Immaculate Heart of Mary;
1. Attacks upon Mary’s Immaculate Conception
2. Attacks upon her Perpetual Virginity
3. Attacks upon her Divine Maternity and the refusal to accept her as the Mother of all mankind.
4. For those who try to publicly implant in children’s hearts indifference, contempt and even hatred of this Immaculate Mother.
5. For those who insult her directly in her sacred images.
Offenses to Mary and to Jesus are still happening today and with even more intensity! Mary’s promise is still in effect, Fatima is not over. We are not yet in the Era of peace promised by Our Lady of Fatima. More people need to be told of his devotion so that they may embrace it.
I am in agreement with the idea that someone was certainly trying to stop JPII from disseminating the Theology of the Body, since we know that Our Lady Of Fatima told the children at Fatima that more souls go to Hell for sins of the flesh than for any other sin, and that usually means sins of impurity and sexual immorality. I just do not think that JPII is the bishop the vision is referring to. I do believe that Our Lady of Fatima saved him from the assassination attempt so that the Theology of the body would be made known and also because he was truly devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. I just believe that there is more to the Third Sacret that is still under wraps. There is a DVD that is now being released, called “The Secret Still Silenced”, a documentary about the Third Secret of Fatima having a second part that has not been disclosed for reasons of “prudence” and not causing mass hysteria. You can order it from the Fatima Center at 1-888-328-4621. Very worth looking into!
May 13th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
I can appreciate the words and efforts of stutmann9 to promote the Five Saturday Devotion, but I take issue with the writer’s thought that the Vatican is in some way holding back on the information regarding the third secret of Fatima.
Kindly read the Vatican’s full statement on the Message of Fatima here:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html
If you read it to the end, it includes the exact text in question, and a very thorough interpretation of it as it applied to JPII and previous popes, and is signed by none other than Card. Joseph Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI).
May 13th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
In the vision of the bishop dressed in white, he is led up a hill by soldiers, through the ruins of a city with the dead bodies of priests and other bishops everywhere, and in the vision he was actually shot DEAD. I do not think that the vision applied to Pope John Paul II
I’m certainly no expert on Marian apparitions. However, Salvation History is full of typological references and cross-references where an apparently fulfilled Type turned out not to be so on further reflection. When Nero was turning Christians into human torches to light his gardens, people thought he was the Antichrist — and with good reason. Lots of Christians met their deaths — and their immediate route to particular and final judgment — at Nero’s hands. But Nero did not bring about the end of the world (or even coincide with it). Thus, he couldn’t have been the Antichrist.
Still he was a type of antichrist — meaning a prefigurement of the Church’s great enemy whose atrocities are recounted in the book of Revelation. By this I mean that Nero was a type of Antichrist in a way similar to the way that Melchizedek was a type of Christ (although the Types represented are diametric opposites). Both prefigure the ultimate reality whose time, within time so to speak, has (or had, in the case of Christ) yet to come.
Thus, even if JPII were not the bishop from the Fatima prophesy, he can readily be called a type of that bishop, insomuch as his suffering reflects that of the bishop of the prophesy even if it does not perfectly fulfill the prophecy. To say that the Church’s prophesying, in other words, can apply to only one circumstance is a bit short-sighted. Such prophecies might be said to apply perfectly to only one circumstance — i.e. to the fulfillment of the Type. But imperfectly fulfilled types (meaning those which reflect the prophesy without fulfilling it in every way) do come along.