The Consecration and Fatima, Redux

CatholicCullture.Org ^ | Oct 17, 2013 | Dr Jeff Mirus

[RBStealth]

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The first point I wish to make is that I personally believe that Our Lady’s apparitions in 1917 to Jacinta Marto, Francisco Marto, and Lucia Santos (who died in 2005) really took place, and I note here that the evidence for the Miracle of the Sun is overwhelming. During my print publishing days, I published some works by Fr. Robert Fox on Fatima, and also the brilliant history by the late Warren Carroll, 1917: Red Banners, White Mantle. I commend the spiritual insights offered by Our Lady at Fatima, and I have said the Rosary at least once daily now for more than thirty years, including the family Rosary. I recommend this spiritual practice more highly than anything except the sacraments of the Church.

But the second point I wish to make is that even if the Church judges a private revelation as authentic and suitable for the devotion of the faithful, she requires nobody to believe it. These things are not matters of Faith. Not even a pope has to believe in them, even though a prior pope may have reached an affirmative judgment. Some avid promoters of Fatima, however, have tried to impose this private revelation on the Church herself, by referring to it as a special category of revelation, as I indicated. But no such category exists in the Church’s theological lexicon. It is rather a category invented by some ill-advised proponents of the Fatima message who are disgruntled by what they see as the Church’s failure to respond to Fatima as these same proponents would have her do.

[Oratam]

I have always know the church's teaching regarding private revelation, even regarding Fatima, but never considered it as it applied to the pope.

Till now. Thank you.