IRACLES ARE HOAXES

Fraudulent Revelations of Sister Lucia

Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta were the visionaries of Our Lady of Fatima.  These three children claimed they saw Mary on a number of occasions in 1917.  Francisco and Jacinta died. 

Lucia became a nun in 1921.

She didn’t see Mary again until 1925 at Pontevedra.

The Virgin said to Sister Lucia: “I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of 5 consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite 5 decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for 15 minutes, while meditating on the 15 mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me” (inside cover, The Rosary and the Crisis of Faith).

Too many errors here! The fact that it is promised only to those who practice this devotion implies she is not going to help anybody else. Why make the promise if she would help anyway? Catholics have all prayed, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” If Mary loves her son she will help us to love him when we are dying regardless of the five first Saturdays. Lucia really insulted Mary. Perhaps in revenge for the fact that Mary would not appear to her and never did. Catholics say the promise will not stand for people who obey the conditions but hope to be able to sin all they want in future because Heaven is guaranteed. So the sin that makes the promise ineffectual for you is mortal sin. They can commit all the venial sins they wish for these do not finish the friendship with God. Some of these venial sins will be sins like drunkenness and sex which are venial when you get too carried away. God cannot complain for we will all commit venial sins anyway. If we don’t there is not need for the promise. Mary is encouraging venial sin which the Devil would do for he likes sin and venial sin leads to mortal sin – the final break. Either Lucia made her vision up or the Devil appeared to her. Either way we cannot be impressed by her for if she thought the Devil’s message was God’s then how good a person is she really?

Just like the vast majority of very devout Christians have never read the Bible for themselves, so most Catholics are unfamiliar with, have forgotten or don’t understand Catholic dogma. They will take the Virgin to be guaranteeing them salvation for doing the five first Saturdays. The revelation is just asking for trouble.

Many critics have held that the five first Saturdays is just a cynical scheme for Lucia to become as popular a saint as St Margaret Mary who said the Sacred Heart of Jesus told her to announce similar benefits for those who practiced the nine first Fridays. It is imitation. Imitation has been the reason the Church rejected many alleged apparitions in the past. It is a sign of faking and lying.

Wouldn’t it be a better idea to prescribe three slow Hail Marys a day with meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary in the hope of making reparation? It would mean more meditation and reparation and sincerity. It is supposed to be important to keep in touch with God every day. The silliness of the Virgin’s plea makes it self-refuting. Is it fair of her to suggest that anybody who finds they have to go to confession outside one of the Saturdays breaks the devotion?

Lucia had another visit from Mary in 1929 at Tuy, Spain, who told her that the moment had come for the pope and all the bishops to make the consecration to her Immaculate Heart which will save Russia (page 52, The Third Secret of Fatima). Why didn’t she appear to the pope herself and get it done? The pope was asked to do this with all the bishops of the world which was unrealistic for many of them were sceptical of Fatima (page 138, The Thunder of Justice).

Jesus appeared to her in 1931. He disclosed that he would not let Mary triumph over the world and flood with truth and peace until Russia was consecrated because he wanted to promote devotion to the heart of Mary. What a terrible reason! Devotion to Mary is not necessary for salvation and here Jesus threatens the world over it! The devotion could have been promoted without going about it with the use of blackmail. He also said that Russia will have spread communism through the world and the Church will be persecuted for when the consecration is done it will be too late (page 74, Fatima Revealed and Discarded). Russia was persecuting the Church then so he means it will be persecuted throughout the whole world when Russia’s errors take over. He also said that like Louis XIV would not listen to what he demanded of him through St Margaret Mary so the Church will not listen until it sees the terrible consequences. So Fatima authenticates the dubious Sacred Heart hallucinations of St Margaret Mary (page 75,79). What happened with Louis XIV was that he was blamed for causing the French Revolution by not consecrating France to the Sacred Heart as the vision that manifested to St Margaret Mary wanted. Jesus is saying that Atheists who agree with Russia that there is no God are a danger to the Church. Only inauthentic visions authenticate unacceptable visions.

Jesus told Lucia years later that when the consecration would be done it would be too late. Mary evidently thought that the pope would listen to her. What makes it more stupid is that the Church had not recognised Fatima as authentic by then and never recognised her post-Fatima visions. Fatima was not recognised until the 13^th October 1930 (page 139). Lucia expected the whole world to listen to her alleged visions when that was all they were – alleged!

In a vision in 1943, Jesus told Lucia that the sacrifice and penance he wants from everybody now is keeping his laws (The Rosary and the Crisis of Faith, inside cover). Penance is unpleasant and hard but the Bible Jesus’ burden is gentle and his yoke is light (Matthew 11:28, 30) and his commandments are not difficult (1 John 5:3) and according to the Psalms (see 119) they are a joy to live out. Perhaps it is a penance to change one’s bad ways. But that is what the Holy Spirit is in us for, to make it easy. It seems that God wants us to hate doing his will which is good advice for a sinful world if you are on the Devil’s side. This person was not Jesus Christ but an invention by Lucia.

In 1952 the Virgin appeared to Lucia to tell her that the pope had not consecrated Russia to her immaculate heart as she had desired and that there can be no peace in the world until it is done (page 183, Fatima Revealed and Discarded).

Some have linked the weeping Virgin statue of Syracuse with the sadness of the Fatima Virgin at her message being abandoned. There is something amiss when the tears are real human tears for the Church says the Virgin cannot literally cry though she symbolically pretends to cry during some apparitions for she is a glorified being and flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of Heaven and so must be radically changed and filled with heavenly health and happiness (page 192, Fatima Revealed and Discarded).

None of the later visions were authenticated by the Church. It seems absurd to have a visionary who has had some authentic visions and then less authentic ones.

None of the consecrations of Russia by the Church fulfilled the Virgin’s request in the way the Virgin said it should be done.

Lucia says the 1984 one carried out by John Paul II did (page 84-85, What Happened at Fatima?). To the objection that the pope never named Russia specifically but just said those peoples Lucia said he meant Russia and that was enough. She’s trying to fool for he could have said Russia. When he didn’t he was not doing what the Virgin asked. And the Lady did ask for Russia to be consecrated which means Russia had to be mentioned though Lucia says her asking that does not mean that. The pope allegedly said he meant Russia afterwards but what use is that? Had the pope had a sincere intention he would have said Russia to literally fulfil the Virgin’s request just in case for she was fussy. She rejected the 1965 consecration of Russia by Paul VI at Vatican II because the bishops with him were not solicited to do it (page 83, What Happened at Fatima?). Lucia rejects the intention argument here for you could say though the consecration was sprung suddenly on the bishops they intended to consecrate Russia so the suddenness does not make the consecration fail to be what Mary wanted. Mary must have as many double standards as she has. What Lucia is up to is this. Soviet Communism got stronger after the previous consecrations so she would not accept them and she invented excuses to prevent her being seen for the false prophet she was. With the weakening of communism and because she could not ridicule every consecration forever she had to accept the one of 1984. Had it failed she would appeal to Jesus saying that the consecration would be too late when it would happen. She was hoping it would take place as Communism was collapsing so that she would seem to be an impressive prophetess and her imaginary mentor the salvation of the world. She was hoping to be able to rig the fulfilment of the prophetic promise. She proved she was a scheming religious manipulator who deserves no trust. Nobody can look at the claims of Lucia and fail to see how incredible and egocentric they are. By teaching the message, Lucia not only saves souls from Hell but she also saves the world and collapses communism. When a person says he or she is the best we think they are being bigheaded and bombastic but she goes about it in a less blunt way and she is a humble saint! Strange! Yet if I said Jesus appeared to me and told me to say a prayer for the world that would guarantee the salvation of the world I would be condemned as someone looking for glorification. It was solely because Fatima was useful in the sinister Catholic agenda that Lucia’s claims were endured at all.

John Vennari in an article entitled, Where is the Conversion of Russia? (www.dailycatholic.org) stated that by accepting the 1984 consecration as the right one after more than 70 years of being rigid about what conditions were needed Lucia was as good as admitting that she fabricated or imagined or both the vision that revealed the need for the consecration. It has been noted that Lucia accepted the debunking of Fatima by Cardinal Ratzinger. And the conversion of Russia that was supposed to follow the consecration never happened. Russia has got far worse since the consecration with its being the central country for distributing child porn and having live porn broadcast from Moscow on television. It couldn’t be further from the Catholic faith. To say it will convert one day is no good for then no link would be evident between the consecration and the conversion. Prophets who maintain that y will follow x and then say that y will be decades or centuries after x are definitely guessing and have no knowledge of the future at all. The Vatican ordered the world to accept the 1984 consecration as being what Mary asked for at Fatima indicating that Lucia changed her tune to lick the pope’s boots.

Jesus stated clearly in the Sermon on the Mount that it is the fruits of the false prophets that you shall know them. So then Fatima and the subsequent visions by encouraging opposition to abortion by its approval for the doctrine that Mary was preserved from Original Sin at her conception in her mothers’ womb has caused a lot of trouble. One example being the shooting of abortion doctors by pro-life people who are not convinced by that argument that it is wrong to kill one doctor to save thousands of unborn children. It is a worthless argument for it is self-evidently rubbish. The human being does not begin at conception therefore abortion at the early stages is not wrong. Even if the dogma of the Immaculate or Sinless Conception did not imply this, most people think it did therefore Satan could play on that. He does not need to put heresy into the messages of any apparition of Jesus or Mary or whoever that he is engineering at all which means that the Church is talking nonsense when it says a true apparition from God can be known as God’s work when it agrees with the Church in all matters for God speaks through the Church and will not contradict himself in a miracle or apparition. When that is the case it is only nonsense for God to perform apparition miracles for they don’t make us any the wiser. Their inability to capture trust only makes it a waste of time to perform them and even makes them dangerous and forbidden. It is a sin for a visionary to attend more than one apparition for the first one would be spontaneous and not her or his fault but she or he has a say if she or he is going to look at any more visions. If the visionaries were really open to the light of the Holy Spirit they would know these things but they act as if they do not. When the visionaries have such bad fruits among themselves then it is obvious that whatever is sending them visions it is not God. This means that we should believe in no apparitions allegedly from Heaven at all. That goes for Jesus’ appearances in which he testified to his resurrection as well.

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The Encyclopaedia on Fatima

In the New Catholic Encyclopaedia’s entry, FATIMA, we learn that the patriarch of Lisbon had got Canon Manoel Formigao to question the children often while the apparitions were happening. The children who could hear the Lady would have been made more careful by this fact. Remember, Lucia was bombastic about her memory in her memoirs. The entry confesses that Lucia was wrong to say the Lady promised that World War One would end on October 13^th 1917 but blames her interpretation! Lucia was unlikely to make such a mistake and so her understanding must have been right. Who could forget the day a terrible war was to end and forget that same day too? The Lady had lied so if the Virgin Mary does not lie this lady was not her. And it is no use to blame Lucia for the Virgin’s being wrong for the Virgin would have known that the child was not registering it well and told her clearly what she meant once more. In religious ecstasy, the vision and the voice it has sound more real than one’s daily surroundings so she could not forget.

The commission was started in 1922 when Jacinta and Francisco were dead leaving only Lucia. It was so easy for her then to get it to go her way. And she did keep things from it and yet she accepted their approval of her visions which was dishonest for they hadn’t heard the whole story. A child that deceives will only get worse as she or he grows up.

The entry says that the visions of Lucia subsequent to Fatima were not tested by the Church like the Fatima ones were. The Church may permit them to be preached but neither officially approves or disapproves of them. This proves beyond any doubt that the Catholic Church knows more about the visionaries than it is letting on. It does not trust Lucia. The Church knows that you cannot point to a visionary and say that this vision is true and supernatural and that this other one she had is neither or that they don’t know what to make of it. The Church insists that she cannot approve visions if there is any doubt at all. If she starts picking and choosing she could and should accept every apparition in the world as genuine.

God in the Bible (Deuteronomy 18) forbids this selectiveness. He said there that if a prophet is always right and predicts the future right then his revelations are to be entirely thrown out if he makes one false prediction or makes an error.

You can get a bunch of experts who will come up with a verdict after a commission and you can set up another with a different selection and the verdict will be the opposite. And even if their verdict is the same the reasons could be very different. In that case neither commission is of any help for it is vital that the same reasons and perceptions be accepted and point to the same result. I mean two experts saying essiac cures cancer means nothing if one of them is convinced by testimonies of cancer patients who were cured and the other thinks there is psychic power in essiac and that is evidence enough that cancer cures must happen. The reasons are more important than the verdict for there can be no proper verdict without them. A person who believes you are good because they saw it in your astrology chart may be right that you are good but they only think it because of a bad reason. It is not you they honour but their perception of you that they get from astrology. That is not honouring the truth. A truth believed for the wrong reason is not a healthy or good truth. It might as well be a lie.

Lucia calls us to devote ourselves to Our Lady of the Rosary or Our Lady of Fatima. But all we end up doing is believing experts which is so silly. What makes it worse is that it is experts who have not published their deliberations fully and accessibly for us to peruse. This is why all authenticated apparitions of the Catholic Church should not be taken seriously.

The entry tells us that Lucia contradicted what other trustworthy people said in things which were of secondary importance. We are informed that she did this a number of times. If she was unintelligent or a liar she could not have been a true visionary of the Blessed Virgin who has the power to make a person give her message reliably and who would choose the right person.

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CONCLUSION

The apparitions Lucia had after Fatima are dubious.  She made no effort to provide any evidence that her claims were true.  Also, the apparitions are problematic from the viewpoint of Catholic theology. 

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BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:

The Amplified Bible

BOOKS CONSULTED

Alexandrina The Agony and the Glory, Francis Johnson, TAN, Illinois, 1979

Celestial Secrets, The Hidden History Of The Fatima Incident, Anomalist Books, San Antonio, New York, 2007

Fatima – in Lucia’s own words, Sr Lucia, Postulation Centre Fatima, 1976

Fatima Revealed and Discarded, Bro Michael of the Holy Trinity, Augustine, Devon, 1988

Is This The Third Secret? IF Colquhoun, 45 Nicholas Court, Swansea, 1995

Looking for a Miracle, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books, New York, 1993

New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. Washington, District of Columbia, 1967

Os Mouros Fatimidas e as Aparicoes de Fatima

Queen of Peace (Newspaper), Fall 1995, Pittsburgh Center for Peace

Reason and Belief, Bland Blanschard, London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974

The Book of Miracles, Stuart Gordon, Headline, London, 1996

The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary, Kevin McClure, Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, 1985

The Rosary and the Crisis of Faith, Msgr. Joseph a. Cirrincione and Thomas A. Nelson, Tan, Illinois, 1986

The Third Secret of Fatima, Brother Michael of the Holy Trinity CRC, Tan, Illinois, 1991

The Thunder of Justice, Ted and Maureen Flynn, Maxcol Communications Inc. Sterling VA, 1993

What Happened at Fatima? Leo Madigan, Catholic Truth Society, London, 2000

THE WEB

An Agnostic Looks at Fatima,

http://www.portcult.com/index.fat.htm

Where is the Conversion of Russia? John Vennari

www.dailycatholic.org/issue/2002Mar/mar22fat.htm

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