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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.

A little reported fact is how much money these reported miracles can generate.

"I myself believe in miracles."

Do you acknowledge the existence of miracles?

If so do you acknowledge miracles have been preformed by and for Catholics?

If so do you not see that as an endorsement of the Catholic Church by the Holy Spirit?

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”

Jeepers, dear brother in Christ, how do you square "peasant cunning" with "Jesuitical casuistry?" The two are like oil and water.... They do not at all agree. I do not how they can be made to agree....

Can you give me any further insight into this incipient and apparently burgeoning conspiracy theory???