Posted on 05/05/2010 10:48:55 AM PDT by markomalley
"Fatima is a particularly significant place for this Pope," said Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi on Tuesday, noting that it was also a destination for two former Popes. The Holy Father has a thorough knowledge of the history of the Marian sanctuary, he added.
Fr. Lombardi held a press conference at the Vatican to prepare the media for the Pope's next trip out of the Vatican. He will be visiting Portugal from May 11-14.
The spokesman referred to the Pope's stop in Fatima on May 13 as the highlight and "heart" of the upcoming four-day trip to Portugal, according to Vatican Radio. But, he pointed out, Benedict XVI will not be the first Pope to visit the Marian shrine.
Two other Pontiffs have been to Fatima. In 1967, the sanctuary hosted Paul VI, and John Paul II visited in 1982, 1991 and 2000, at which time the visionaries Jacinta and Francesco were beatified.
The Portuguese shrine is not unfamiliar to Pope Benedict, since as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger extensively studied the message of Fatima. Fr. Lombardi said on Tuesday that the Pope has been involved with history of the Marian sanctuary in a "very deep, personal way."
It was him, for example, who was called upon to give a theological perspective when the third secret of Fatima was made public in 2000.
The Vatican spokesman said that the Holy Father will also deliver an intense message during his Fatima visit. Upon his arrival at the sanctuary on May 12, he will remember John Paul II and the 29th anniversary of the assassination attempt that nearly took his life on May 13, 1981.
This visit marks the Holy Father's 15th Apostolic Journey abroad in his five years and is his first to Portugal as Pope.
During today's general audience, the Holy Father greeted the people of Portugal in their language, telling them that he will be there this coming weekend at the invitation of the president of the nation and the episcopal conference.
He said he was "happy to be able to visit the 'land of Holy Mary'" on the 10th anniversary of the beatification of the shepherd children.
According to Portuguese press reports, local police are planning for a cumulative total of 450,000 people at the celebrations in Lisbon, Fatima and Portugal during the four-day visit.
The devil uses flying saucers and I believe aliens are demons, this would back up Quix’s whole argument.
Scripture and verse, please for the stenographer portion. We do not believe Paul was insane, of course not.
The Fatima visit was not of God. It was the stuff of fallen angels.
Okay, Mr. Spaceman. Prove your claim.
FOR THOSE SERIOUSLY INTERESTED IN THE OTHER EVIDENCE RE FATIMA . . .
From
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1YPRCYH1HY74C/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R1YPRCYH1HY74C
An Instant Classic, July 24, 2005
By Dante Rosati
This review is from: Heavenly Lights: The Apparitions of Fatima and the UFO Phenomenon (Paperback)
First published in 1982(!) in Portuguese (which has kept it
virtually invisible to most of UFOlogical community), this book is now published in translation, complete with an imprimatur in the form of a forward by Jacques Vallee.
What do you get if you take away the Christian interpretation from the Fatima apparitions? Only the largest and most dramatic mass UFO sighting in history, witnessed by ~50,000 people!
In this meticulous phenomenological presentation, the authors have dug deep into the historical record as only Portuguese speaking researchers could, tracking down accounts from the time in the form of newspapers, meteorological reports, letters written by witnesses to their relatives, and even a couple of eye witnesses still alive when they were doing their research.
What is crucial here was going back to the original testimonies and stories. Lucia, the primary “seer” (”experiencer”?), later entered a convent, and her story became progressively more and more attuned to the Catholic paradigm, her writings made subject to approval by Church authorities. The authors have put less emphasis on these later “official” versions, and relied more on the first reports. Lucia originally never said it was the Virgin Mary she saw, it was the adults around her that jumped to that conclusion. Based on the time and culture they lived in, how else could they have interpreted it?
What emerges is something far stranger and less easy to
interpret than a “simple” Marian apparition. Through careful analysis and comparison with other UFO cases, they show that most if not all elements present in the Fatima apparitions are found throughout the UFO literature as well.
Of course the unique element of this case is the mass sighting on October 13, 1917, when a large crowd of approximately 50,000 people including all social classes from farmers to professors and journalists witnessed a whole host of dramatic phenomena involving the sun (or possibly a craft or energy phenomena appearing similar to the sun), strange atmospheric effects, as well as objects traveling through the sky, some apparently with occupants. There is a chapter of statistical analysis of witness testimonies, correlation of descriptions of the event from four towns using trigonometry, as well as discussion of chromatic, thermal and atmospheric effects, mechanical breakdowns, simultaneous cures, and much more.
While others have raised the issue of Fatima in relation to the UFO phenomena, this book is the first to my knowledge to present in-depth original research on anything like this scale. I believe it is indeed an instant (20 years later!) classic describing one of the most important cases on record.
I don't recall that anywhere in the canon of Scripture. Do you have other sources?
and I believe aliens are demons
I believe that the Toronto Blue Jays will win the next two World Series.
this would back up Quix’s whole argument.
This constitutes proof? An unsupported statement purporting to be fact, and a statement of belief. That backs up an entire argument?
SIMILARLY THIS:
The First Scrutiny, December 1, 2007
By Laura A. Yantsos - See all my reviews
This review is from: Celestial Secrets: The Hidden History of the Fatima Incident (Paperback)
This book truly is the first “scrutiny” of Fatima, and its time is overdue for “scrutiny” of such events is a condition demanded by the Roman Catholic Church. and was not done in the case of Fatima.
And may I be perfectly frank in stating that I see this Fatima episode far more simplistically than the authors. I see it in part as a case of “peasant cunning” that later evolved under Jesuit supervision into the more formalized school of thought known as “casuistry” first promulgated by rabbinical scholars and the Jesuits in the 17th Century.
But the real culprits in my opinion are certain prelates of the Church in Portugal and even in Rome itself who while allowing the building of a Fatima basilica and allowing worship to take place at this “shrine” before the scrutiny was over... or even begun, ignored the numerous glaring inconsistencies in the testimony, especially the obvious sign of false apparition found in the length of the skirt, for the testimony of the children elicited by the priests assigned to question the children, showed that this “vision’s” skirt was described by the children as “below the middle of the leg” and “knee-length”, far too short both then and now for she who is both Full of Grace and the Mother of God. This was not only reported by the authors who have scrutinized the historical record directly from the official Shrine archives, but was reported earlier by Fr. John DeMarchi in 1947 who wrote more than one book about Fatima (with imprimatur) that contained some of the transcripts of the children’s responses.
In other words, from the beginning, and early on it was obvious to anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of the Catholic religion, and knowledge of the “rules” about what constitutes an apparition “worthy of belief”, that this apparition was absolutely and without question, false.
I had read in one of the tomes on Fatima entitled The Whole Truth About Fatima that one of the members of the canonical committee assigned to scrutinize Fatima disclosed that the members never at any time sat down together to discuss any of the issues raised by the factual evidence in the entire 8 year period that the committee was in place. And in reading this scrutinizer’s complaint, one has to wonder whether this particular scrutinizer had any actual knowledge about the length of the skirt and of the other glaring inconsistencies found in the testimony before such testimony was “transformed” by an adult Sr. Lucia as well as her “spiritual directors.” At the end of the 8 years, this canonist scrutinizer, who never had an opportunity to do his job, states that Canon Formigao came to the other committee members for their approval at the end of their 8 years of idleness, and they, acting no better than compliant wives, signed the prepared approval handed to them.
It goes without saying that while I am incompetent to explore the areas the authors explore, i.e. ufology, I find the factual similarities between the events at Fatima and other “UFO” experiences to be disturbing enough because when viewed within the framework of the Catholic religion, those similarities (i.e. testimony of subterranean thunder, Lucia’s multiple pre-apparition visions of shrouded sheets that she saw with other children, spirals of smoke seen at the place where the vision stood, buzzing of bees or the sound of flies heard by many when the vision was allegedly speaking, all testified to by either the seers and/or many witnesses) can be construed, in Catholic parlance, as coming from, shall we say, “below.”
I myself believe in miracles. I believe that Our Lord performed miracles while he walked the earth, and He is perfectly capable of performing miracles down to this very day. But as a Catholic, I would judge a miracle then or now even more harshly than any atheist because while an atheist tells us that a thing is not true unless it can be proven and maintains a certain objectivity because of this self-imposed standard, my religion also allows me the same kind of objectivism, but what he is missing, I have, which is the knowledge and love of Our Lord, and anyone who knows Our Lord and loves Our Lord, would never want to be the instrument of attaching any false thing, like a phony apparition, to Him.
And I do not fear the kind of “judgementalism” that has been made anathema today and that would otherwise restrain so many Catholics from making the following statement:
While we live in an age where the hierarchal order seems to have been completely leveled, I am still a believer in the immutable truth that such an order exists, and therefore I am still capable of pointing the finger where it belongs, which is at the captain of the ship, who in this case while they appear to be a hirelings of the worst kind, are hirelings who represent themselves to be the Church’s apparent hierarchal authority in Portugal and even in Rome itself, for Fatima was an invention, a hireling’s invention, containing askew prayers and visions that in some significant ways prepared the way for a new religion - a false religion, for these prayers are quoted by the hirelings of our present day to justify the new religion now firmly in place. Fatima was, in effect, a vehicle that helped lead many Catholics to loosen their grasp and understanding about something far more profound and stupendous than the “miracle of the sun.”
I am looking forward to reading the authors’ last volume of their trilogy of books on Fatima.
There’s plenty of proof backing up my belief, I have to go to work in about 10 minutes otherwise I’d be happy to post sources. Go google alien abductions and Jesus and read to your hearts content.
TOO TRUE!:
- -
The Vatican Strawmen Society found out what the Wizard of Oz did for Scarecrow and now the whole lot of them are walking along this FR thread on their way to the Yellow Brick Road.
I guess I need to get out my copy of the Catechism and see where the lessons in mean-spirited absurdities are.
Have a nice evening at work, but regardless, there is no way that I'd put my computer through the mess that I'd google up about Jesus being abducted by aliens. If you'd summarize and present a case, that'd be appreciated.
Invoking the name of Jesus during alien abductions has been documented to stop the abduction, etc. anyways leaving.
They are referenced to: http://www.calvin.edu/
There are no documented alien abductions; therefore invoking the name of Jesus during something that never existed has a completely unknown effect.
It is concealed by replacing the word “head” with the word “mother”. The word “mother” is a title that denotes authority. God Himself takes the title of Father. It grants Mary authority she doesn’t have in Scripture. In Scripture she has no authority at all.
Humans that in their hearts do not love God and have turned away from His Son, have created an idol for themselves that they prefer instead. A woman. They much prefer to pray to and worship and love this woman idol than God.”
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Most cults, (probably every one related at all to Christianity)
are heavily into EXTRAPOLATION AND INFERENCE as well as assumption and fantasy loosely associated with Scripture.
I just didn’t realize how true that was for Roman Catholics et al until I joined FR.
I disagree.
On could merely leave Mary as Scripture does.
Task finished.
Fade to black for this dimension and as far as this dimension is concerned.
Get on with the business of The Gospel AS CHRIST instructed.
There’s not a shred of Biblical justification for the huge UNBIBLICAL INDUSTRY
built upon the Mary caricature fostered by the Vatican Institution.
Ironic, indeed.
That was a completely rhetorical statement since it is obvious that you have never read the Catechism.
I believe most of that, for you.
I’m not at all certain about for some others.
A little reported fact is how much money these reported miracles can generate.
This has all gone well beyond what I can fathom.
INDEED.
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