RE HOAXES

 

Solar Miracle of Fatima

 

The Flop of the Century

 

THE WEB

 

An Agnostic Looks at Fatima,

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

 

17 October 1917 O Seculo

 

"The people ask one another if they have seen anything.  The greatest number avow that they have seen the trembling and dancing of the sun.  Others however ... swear that the sun fell almost to the point of burning the earth with its rays".

 

This account by a witness talks about the miracle of the sun at Fatima wherein it is boasted that thousands of people saw the sun spin and change colour.  It shows that the sun dancing and trembling is not supernatural.  If you look at the strong sun it will be hard on the eyes and yourself and you will think it is moving and shaking.  If you are shaking you will think it is the sun that is shaking.  The quote shows that the witnesses did not all agree on what they saw.

 

Firstly

 

The Blessed Virgin Mary allegedly appeared in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917 to three children, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco.  The visions culminated in an alleged solar miracle on October 13, the miracle of the sun. In this miracle, the sun allegedly changed colour and zigzagged around the sky and almost came down on a crowd of people.  The miracle was supposedly seen by up to 70,000 people who had gathered to be with the children during their visions.

 

Lucia revealed that the Lady promised to do a great miracle that day.  This promise was published in the papers and this drew huge crowds on the day of the expected miracle. Sceptics have concluded that this prediction preconditioned the people to see something.  They were not going to go to the effort of going to the Cova and taking a day off work for nothing.

 

The Bible God forbids us to listen to prophets - people who say they have messages from God - if there is any error in them.  Lucia only revealed in 1941 that she was told by Mary in 1914 that there would be another world war - she did this after World War 2 had started.  This is only how a fraud would behave.  It is against the Bible to believe in the prophecy about the miracle of the sun and therefore in the miracle of the sun itself.

 

Greatest Miracle?

 

The greatest alleged miracle of the twentieth century has to be this miracle of the sun at Fatima. 

 

Some books would have you think that it had no less than 70,000 witnesses (eg. Fatima Revealed and Discarded, page 168).  But if you look at the photographs you see that this was an exaggeration.

 

The papers gave a range of between 30,000 and 100,000 people.  That they couldn't get their figures half right is a warning bell. If you look at the press photographs you will remember that photographers would have snapped the largest part of the crowd.  Bearing that in mind we see that the crowd was not as big as the Church and the papers and the priests tried to make out.  Also, there were a lot of children there.  Why are there no accounts of children going berserk during the scary part of the alleged miracle?

 

 

 

 

The Lisbon paper, O Seculo", painted a very impressive account of the alleged miracle.  It was obviously promoting a mystery.  It was the paper that said there was 30,000.  Given its adoring aditute toards the alleged miracle it would not have said that unless it were sure.  The paper gave the folloiwng account, 
"From the height of the road where the people parked their carriages and where many hundreds stood, afraid to brave the muddy soil, we saw the immense multitude turn towards the sun at its highest, free of all clouds. The sun called to mind a plate of dull silver. It could be stared at without the least effort. It did not burn or blind. It seemed that an eclipse was taking place. All of a sudden a tremendous shout burst forth, 'Miracle, miracle! Marvel, marvel! "before the astonished eyes of the people, whose attitude carried us back to biblical times, and who, white with terror, heads uncovered gazed at the blue sky, the sun trembled and made some brusque unheard-of movements beyond all cosmic laws; the sun danced, in the typical expression of the peasants."  This dross goes beyond what most of the witnesses said.

 

If you study the photos, a lot of witnesses were shielding their eyes during the miracle and squinting.  No wonder they were able to look at the sun!

 

The fussing done about the miracle is a mystery considering that the occultist Vintras prophesied that visions would take place at Tilly-Sur-Seulles in Calvados France and when the prophecy was fulfilled in 1896 many people had aerial visions of Mary and there were miracles in which bizarre contortions of the bodies of visionaries took place.  Contortions like that are generally regarded as from Satan no matter how orthodox the doctrine they seem to defend is for they are so pointless and showy.  The miracle of the sun was frequently reported at Bayside New York which was not only the focus of apparitions without credibility for years but which were condemned by the Church and which made mincemeat of the authority of the pope.  When people imagine the miracle happening when there is no miracle or when the miracle is heretical and therefore from Satan there is no point in taking any implication of such miracles seriously.  In other words, you don’t consider becoming a Catholic if you see the sun spinning and turning different colours.  It wouldn’t do any harm to consider seeing a therapist or a psychiatrist or your optician. 

 

So that all will believe

Lucia wanted the lady to do a big miracle so that everybody would believe.  In July, the Lady told that her she would perform the miracle she wanted in October “so that everyone will believe your story” (page 33, What Happened at Fatima?). 

 

The Lady later appeared to the three children in Valinhos and discussed the miracle she would do in October.  She told them that because of the scepticism of the unbelievers the miracle would be less dramatic and great.  So she had changed her mind about doing an extremely striking super-miracle and set her Immaculate Heart on a less spectacular one.  The less wonderful the miracle is the more reason people have to disbelieve it and yet she said she wanted the miracle done to make people believe.  An all-knowing God does not change his mind or spout such stupidity for he knows all things and you only change your mind when you realise you have made a mistake.  The Virgin at least partly broke her promise.

 

The Lady said that everybody would believe the story of the children upon seeing the miracle.  But everyone did not believe when it happened.  Many in the crowd saw nothing! 

 

Many decided to wait until the Church decided what level of veracity and accuracy could be attributed to the Fatima events.  The Virgin obviously did not want an ecclesiastical investigation!  The real Virgin Mary would have.  Not everybody even seen the miracle of the sun though the Lady promised they would all see it.

 

The vision was subjective

 

The miracle is proven to be a subjective experience by the fact that no observatory noticed any change in the sun that day or a change in its position.  Christians often say that Satan doesn’t have miraculous powers but uses tricks that look like miracles.  Whatever the so-called miracle did, it did not then demonstrate the miraculous power of God.  There are no scientific accounts of the miracle.  Is it wiser to believe the machines than the people?  You must decide.  If three doctors say a person has cancer and a machine which has no faults says they are wrong which do you believe?

 

The atmosphere was right for many to say that the solar miracle had happened because even before it people were reporting strange things.  Some thought the sky had gone dark in September though Canon Formigao who was the first to support Fatima saw nothing untoward at all (page 51, What Happened at Fatima?).

 

Many of the people had umbrellas up.  Lucia had told them to put down their brollies before the apparition though it was raining (page 78, The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary) which shows that she was planning a solar illusion and had touching concern for the old people who could have caught pneumonia.  The brollies might have blocked their vision of the sky so they had to go down.  It is obvious that not many would have listened to her or even heard her but many would have noticed people taking brollies down and then they would have followed suit.  Mc Clure thinks the crowd did not expect to see the sun spinning but they all knew a miracle was promised and I don’t doubt that being asked to put the umbrellas down was an indication that it was time for the miracle.  Since the crowd was so large and it was hard to see the apparition site they would have realised that any sign would have to take place in the sky and that most obvious orb in the sky, the sun.  The ban on using umbrellas alone would have suggested that.  And people were seeing strange things in the sun months before the miracle of the sun (page 76, Fatima In Lucia’s own words).  The role of suggestion and emotionalism and imagination in the miracle cannot be underestimated.  Lucia was able to trigger many of the people in their highly charged emotional state to imagine seeing the sun spin.

 

Lucia shouts to look at the sun

 

In October, a crowd of 70,000 had gathered.  At the end of the visions, the Lady who had identified herself as the Lady of the Rosary, let the children see Jesus and Joseph and herself in the sun.  Lucia shouted for the crowd to look at the sun. 

 

Some say that there is no way of proving that Lucia shouted that the crowd must look at the sun before anything happened.  Only a few at the front would have heard her and they might not have seen what maybe Lucia and some of the rest were seeing in the sky for their own imagination and memory would colour their perception of what they thought they were seeing.  And you know the way it is with eyewitness reports at occasions like that.  Some would misremember her saying to look at the sky before anything happened.  But in all probability she did tell them to look at the sun. She had the stage set when she told them to put their brollies down.

 

The accounts do not all agree

 

Many of them but not all (page 77, The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary) saw the sun spinning or changing colour or both but the accounts do not agree (ibid 78, 80).  Now, for the Lady to want the crowd to look at the sun which is very dangerous over visions that might have been hoaxes or paranormal freaks shows that she was not the Virgin Mary but something else – perhaps something equivalent to a fairy-tale playmate.  Despite all the photographers who were present there are no photos of the changes in the sky or any physical evidence.  The best the defender can do is produce photos of eclipses in far away lands! (page 78, The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary).  When a miracle is given for unbelievers one would expect the Virgin to have done a better job of seeing to it being authenticated.  The picture below shows nothing strange.  If it was taken at Fatima which is doubtful then the person who took it thought it was odd.  It seems the desperation to see a miracle was at work.

 

 

Some of the witnesses must have been liars

 

It seems that a crowd that could have been between 50,000 and 70,000 were at the Cova and were drenched to the skin  (The Thunder of Justice, page 137).  It seems they were up to their ankles in mud.  But when the crowd endured so much discomfort which would only have brought them ridicule if nothing happened it is clear that they were desperate to convince themselves or their companions that they saw something.  At that stage there was no miraculous or scientific proof that the children were telling the truth.  Most of the people then had no regard for evidence and would lie or convince themselves they saw something when they saw nothing.

 

Many people would have said they saw something though they did not.  The Virgin had said the miracle was for unbelievers and those who saw nothing might have been accused of being so stubborn in unbelief that doing a miracle to convince them would not work.

 

Also anybody who defended the miracle of the sun was helping to undermine the brutal atheistic government and would have felt that it was their duty to lie for Portugal and the Church.  Though lying was a sin they probably felt that they had no choice but to say what wasn’t true so it wasn’t wilful lying. It was popularly believed that if the miracle failed to happen the children would be lynched (page 54, What Happened at Fatima?) so there was pressure on people to claim that they saw something.

 

The miraculous drying of clothes?

 

It had been wet.  The people thought their clothes dried miraculously.  They must not have realised that they had not been wet or not noticed that they had dried out which shows what kind of mental state many of them were in.  Even today, people claim that Lourdes water dries on their bare skin instantly when they emerge from the baths at Lourdes.  That is not true!  It dries quickly but you do not come out as dry as you went in.  Skin is waterproof and can dry and drip dry fast anyway.  Its only places like Lourdes where they do not reach for the towel as they normally do that they have any experience of being nude and wet.  The clothes can absorb a lot of the moisture as well.

 

The majority of testimonies about the Solar Miracle of 1917 never mention the drying of clothes.  This is inexplicable.  Many of them would have thought that what happened the sun was an illusion especially after hearing that the sun only seemed to move where they were at.  So they would have dwelt more on the instant drying had it really happened.  There is one eyewitness testimony that says the drying never took place.  Please read the testimonies compiled by Jaki. 

 

The photos show no evidence of anybody getting wet or being wet at all.  And that includes the photos from minutes before the Miracle.

 

Not all saw the solar miracle

 

The Virgin had vowed at Valinhos to convince all that her apparitions were true and from God by performing a great miracle  (The Thunder of Justice, page 137).  But all in the Cova did not see the miracle of the sun so she lied.  The Church lies that the 70,000 did see the miracle (page 54, What Happened at Fatima?) but then we are told that no two people seem to have seen the same thing (page 55, What Happened at Fatima?). “It is clear that only a proportion of the crowd, probably less than half, actually witnessed the miracle.  There is some evidence to the effect that only those who were standing in a broad band across the centre of the Cova saw the vision; but the truth of this is now impossible to establish” (page 78, The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary).  The Cova was a natural amphitheatre which may mean that the event was a natural illusion caused by the way the sun’s rays were focused by the landscape.  This would explain the broad band.  The children might have seen it before when they were looking after sheep and planned to have the crowd there that day to see it.  Remember Lucia did not roar at the people to look at the sun until she saw the “miracle”.

 

In a Fortean Picture Library photo in The Book of Miracles some of the people are not looking up at the solar miracle evidently because they have seen nothing and all of the faces looking up are not amazed.  There are no open mouths or hands to the mouth.  There is nobody showing any sign of fear.  This picture tells a lot of the real truth about the solar miracle.  It says Lucia herself did not see the miracle (page 54, What Happened at Fatima?) though it seems she saw figures in the sun.  So the only one who could prove that the Virgin was appearing did not see the super-miracle.  Again, the lady does not care about proving the apparition authentic.       

 

An illusion?

 

Fr Manuel Pereira da Silva wrote that the sun seemed to have come down to the height of the clouds and began to whirl.  The people looked yellow. But if you look up at the sun and pretend you don’t know how high it is it looks as if it is as high as the clouds.  And looking at the sun would make it seem to whirl especially when it is a scary thing to look at for we all know what harm it can do to your eyes.  The people looked jaundiced because you cannot see colours right if you have just been looking at an excessively bright light.

 

An account in a newspaper, Ordem, mentioned the sun changing colours and whirling.  That can be explained by looking at something too bright for you.  It would do strange things to the eyes.  The heat mentioned at the time of the miracle was caused by excitement. 

 

Dr Almeida Garret who witnessed the miracle did not agree with the people who said the sun turned a dull silver.  He remarked how the sun could be looked at without pain but sometimes that can be done.  It is easy when you are excited and anxious to see the paranormal before your very eyes.  If you want to fire walk, you won't even feel the heat when the desire takes over and you parade across the coals.  Same effect.

 

Because some people reported seeing something happening over Fatima miles away that day, researches sometimes conclude that mass hysteria cannot account for the miracle of the Sun.  Were these witnesses telling the truth?  It is curious that they didn’t report anything happening to the sun but strange occurrences in the clouds and sky above Fatima.  What they saw doesn’t match what the witnesses at Fatima saw that day.

 

The people at the Cova knew that the children stared into space with few blinks to see their vision which was the traditional practice.  When two or more people stare at a strong light source they will be subjected to illusions and different colours and the light changing shape and seeming to come towards them or go away from them.  Try it and see.  You can make a room seem to fill up with light and colour and things seem to move simply by staring fixedly at the one spot.  Many of the people in the crowd wanted to see a vision and they would have stared deliberately and perhaps in eagerness to see something and the illusion started. 

 

Garret said that the clouds seemed to pass behind the sun.  But then the miracle of the sun was deceptive for there is no evidence that the sun moved that day except in the eyes of the people.  Science can prove that it did not move.  Would God do such a dishonest miracle?  When the best ever miracle implies that God is a trickster the rest can’t be reliable at all.  Some of the people thought the sun was coming at them which scared them witless and could have prevented them from thinking straight.  If there had been no miracle they would have imagined there had been.  If a layer of clouds obscures the sun the sun can look pearly.  Clouds look pearly.  The light could be bright enough to make it look like the clouds are moving behind it and not in front.  People do not normally look at the sun so don’t be surprised if these explanations seem too simple to be true.

 

The stratospheric dust

 

Steuart Campbell found that a cloud of stratospheric dust could explain the miracle and change the image of the sun and make it easy to look at (The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, Journal of Meteorology, UK, Vol 14, no. 142, October, 1989).  The sun could still have been strongly bright depending on where one was standing that day meaning that different people could have seen different things.  And besides if you see the sun changing you will be caught up in fear and how accurate would your memory be of it?  The dust can make the sun easy to look at and make it appear to be different colours even blue and violet.  He reported that  a similar event happened in China in 1983 where the sun looked blue and red because of the dust.

 

Catholics dismiss this for they say it doesn’t explain how the sun moved across the sky and zig-zagged.  Not everybody saw the alleged zig-zagging and if you look at a bright object and look away to the side it may seem to have moved to where your eyes are focused on now.  The object may look smaller which can give the impression that it is going back and if you look at the object again it will seem as if the object is coming closer to you for it will look bigger than the illusion.

 

 

 

 

The message reflects badly on the miracle

 

The solar miracle is dubious because it happened for the sake of the message of Fatima.  And the message in one word is reparation, reparation for the sins and unbelievers of the world.  This is a message of evil and perversion.  If Jesus paid for our sins then there is no need for reparation and he cannot ask for it for it is a sacrifice for us because there are plenty of sacrifices we could be making.  The Devil would not do such a miracle nor would a God so the miracle can only be false.  The evidence against it is strongest.

 

If it was a miracle, then it was a miraculous illusion.  It was a divine magic trick.  It is an indignity to God to suggest that he does such things.  A real God does real miracles.  If the solar miracle of Fatima happened it was not the Solar Miracle of Fatima but a Miracle Solar Illusion.  God deceived the witnesses by making them think that he had done something to the sun.   If the super miracle happened then it warns us not to take miracles seriously as signs and revelations from God about what religion is true.  The standard Catholic view is that God does real miracles but Satan does illusionary ones. Enough said!

 

The Catholic Church says divine miracles have mostly good fruits.  Fatima started the spinning sun trend in religious fanaticism and it has carried on – especially in Medjugorje – and has left many blind or with bad sight due to damage done by gazing at the sun.  Another bad fruit is that the sun miracle is reported at false apparition sites and has left many convinced of the truth of silly apparitions.  Plus some who thought at the time of Fatima that the sun was going to fall on top of them were evidently nearly driven to insanity and there could have been a stampede in which people had died.  The normal instinct when you see anything like that is to run away.  There was no stampede which is evidence that there was no sun seen falling down to earth though some said there was.  Or did they suspect or see signs that what they thought they saw was somehow an illusion?  The Christian religion says we must love God totally and our neighbour as ourselves meaning that it is best for all people to serve God alone and to do it by helping others and ourselves not for our sake but for his.  This is so unnatural that few do it and so what is the point in Mary’s miracle for its attraction was the display of power and its strangeness.  People like to feel that there is a God of power to look after them which is what they want to run after miracles for.  But that is quite contrary to the Christian religion which wants them to run after God and nothing else. 

 

When most people wreak havoc over religion though they do not know if it is right or wrong why trust them when they cry, “Miracle”?

 

Let us finish with an important line in Mc Clure’s wonderful book, The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary, “There are surprisingly few convincing accounts of the solar event at Fatima” (page 80).  Yet this miracle is the reason for believing in Fatima and it is a weak one. 

 

It seems 10,000 people saw the Miracle of the Sun at  Heroldsbach, Germany in 1949 which was a place graced by alleged apparitions.  The Church, through the bishop of the diocese and the Holy Office, condemned the apparitions for hereticla teaching.  By implication, the Miracle of the Sun associated with the visions was condemned too.  One witness declared that the sun "grew lighter and lighter and more dazzling. The sun seemed to become more blinding and bigger and to be coming nearer us. I felt blinded. I had the overwhelming impression of something quite abnormal and also felt that something awful was going to happen at any minute. I was terrified ... Then the sun began to turn very quickly on its own axis and the rotations were so clearly visible that it seemed as if a motor was turning the sun's disc at a regular speed. During this process it took on the most wonderful colours."

 

The Miracle of the Sun does not mean that Mary really appeared at Fatima.

 

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CONCLUSION

 

The greatest miracle of all time, the solar miracle of Fatima is far from impressive once you get behind all the hype and propaganda of the Church. The Church investigated the apparitions of Fatima but it never ever investigated the solar miracle.  It never looked for depositions about it.  Why did so few write down what they experienced?  Why should we take it seriously when we have no depositions?

 

RECOMMENDED BOOK

 

CELESTIAL SECRETS

 

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE FATIMA INCIDENT

Anomalist Books, San Antonio, New York, 2007

 

THE BOOK

 

Celestial Secrets.  I absolutely loved this book.  I couldn’t put it down. It argues that in relation to the apparitions of Mary to three children at Fatima in 1917 that the entity was not Mary at all but the Church made sure people would think it was.  It explores evidence from the original accounts that the phenomena had too much in common with reports of visions of alien messengers and spaceships to be genuinely Catholic.

 

DEVIOUS RELIGION

 

I have always suspected that the Catholic Church, despite its antagonism towards miracles, will hijack some of them when they are popular enough and when it gives Church image and coffers a boost.  The Church fears miracles and apparitions due to its belief that God has established the Church to teach us and the Church is infallible.  It says miracles and apparitions only draw attention to aspects of what the Church already teaches.  The Church says we are not obligated to believe in them of they are not part of the faith.  The Church says that God has stopped revealing new truth since the last apostle of Jesus died and the Church with his guidance tells us what God’s teaching is.  It fears apparitions and miracles because they can tend to make the witnesses or apparition your teachers in preference to the Church.  This has happened at Medjugorje where messages from Mary are given out without any effort being made to provide them to legitimate Church authorities to check them for orthodoxy first.  The visions of Medjgourje are the real magesterium for devotees of the apparition.

 

The Church claims that apparitions and miracles verify that she is the true Church and are signs from God to that effect.  Yet it doesn’t investigate any miracles that don’t fit Catholic orthodoxy such as milk-drinking Hindu idols.  It doesn’t even investigate most miracle and apparitions reported by Catholics.  A religion that does that is plainly lying when it says that miracles authenticate the claims it makes.  Besides the Church says we are obligated to believe in the miracles of Jesus in the Bible and even today the Church rejects more impressive miracles at Lourdes as not genuine.  It expects us to take the word of the gospels for it that Jesus did miracles and ignore many modern miracle testimonies some of which are supported by doctors.

 

In the book we read that the Church took charge of the evidence and testimony in relation to the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima and controlled Lucia the only surviving main witness to make sure anything that was said was what the Church wanted to be said (Foreword ii).

 

The book is based on the original records which the Church kept locked up for six decades (Introduction iv).  Two authors of the book Ferndades and d’Armada spent 25 years researching diary entries and letters and other sources of information at the time of the apparitions to get at the true story.  

 

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FATIMA PREDICTED?

 

The Catholic Church disapproves of spiritualism and mediums yet it is a fact that some big event to take place on May 13 1917 was predicted by the spirits and published in newspapers before the event.  This was the date of the first apparition of “Mary” at Fatima.  Chapter 1 deals with this anomaly. On February 7^th that year, a spiritualistic automatic writing transmission from an entity called Stella Matutina went as follows.  It said that judging was wrong and that though God doesn't allow the future to be seen he makes exceptions and to be confident in the prophecy.  “The date of May 13^th will be one of great happiness for the good souls of the world”.  It then says to have faith and be good and that love is always at your side and friends will assist you in your work and the brightness of the morning star will illuminate the path for you. 

 

Catholics often believe that demons are behind such communications.  If so, demons would not advertise Fatima unless it was their work.  The prophecy is made in religious terms indicating that the event would be a religious one.   The message says the event will back up spiritualism. Spiritualists would not be saying a great religious event will happen and for people to get guidance from it and from spiritualistic friends if the apparition was going to be really of the Virgin Mary representing Catholic orthodoxy.

 

Stella Matutina or Morning Star could be the Virgin Mary.  Morning Star is one of her titles in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  In Isaiah in the Bible, Morning Star is the name of Lucifer who Catholics say is the Devil. 

 

If we have a supernatural communication from Mary predicting the apparitions, could it be that the vision was of Mary but not the Roman Catholic Mary?  This Mary was pro-spiritualism and so was a spirit guide not an infallible Mother of God or semi-deity.

 

A group of psychics in Lisbon got the number 135917 a cipher for the date of the first apparition and published the message in newspapers in March 1917.  The publication of a number and a few words was a strange thing to do.  To spiritualists it seems they felt compelled to do so, so it was an important date.

 

The Church totally ignored these prophecies (page 12) for it was only interested in making Fatima fit Church teaching.

 

What must not be forgotten is that if something supernatural happened at Fatima on May 13, the entity was not the orthodox Roman Catholic Virgin Mary.  It was only the priests of the Church who said it was.  It was only an interpretation.  It was only a human interpretation.  They claimed it was up to their commission of investigation to decide who the vision was.  If the predictions were genuinely supernatural, then we have something better than that.  We have evidence from the beyond that the entity was not Mary.  It is no use saying, “O demons knew what God was going to do at Fatima and send his mother there and they tried to spoil it all by making it look like it was not God’s work.”  You can’t blame demons every time something comes up that disturbs you.  Then the demons never made any significant effort to inspire the mediums to try and claim the apparitions.  When something doesn’t look contrived nobody has the right to say it is contrived.  Besides, the interpretation from the beyond is more authoritative for it is supernatural.  It could still be wrong but at least it is not a human one and we know what they are like for errors!

 

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THE ANGELS

 

In the 1940s, Lucia claimed that angels appeared before the apparitions of Mary in 1917 to prepare for the visions of Mary.  Some preparation, the angels never mentioned Mary!

 

Lucia one of the three visionaries at Fatima, never mentioned seeing angels when she wrote her account in 1922.  In 1924 during the Church investigation she never mentioned it either and took an oath to testify that she saw nothing but Mary (page 46).  Later she produced stories about apparitions of angels that were granted by God to prepare for the visions of Mary.

 

Lucia was asked by Canon Formigao if she had seen a figure wrapped up in a white sheet.  She admitted to hiding something when he asked her for she didn’t want to talk about it (page 49).  This would support the idea that she didn’t know what she had seen.  It raises problems for the identification of her visions.  The Canon advised her to say nothing because it might compromise the story about the apparitions of the Virgin Mary (page 51).  What an honest man!

 

Page 56 says that in 1941 Lucia reported a revelation from an angel in 1917 that gave such a complicated vocabulary full of theology that children of her age couldn't understand.  Nobody corroborated her testimony.  The prayers allegedly taught by the angel were copied from a book writing by Father Alvares de Moura.  It is undeniable that Lucia was lying.  She said that the words of the angel were miraculously engraved on her mind so that she wouldn’t forget (page 61).  This statement is hard to reconcile with Catholic claims that sometimes people seeing visions and getting messages make mistakes with the messages and that this may have happened in relation to Fatima.  The claims are pure sophistry anyway – the Church uses them when it needs to find a loophole to authenticate apparitions that make errors.

 

The angel gave Lucia a communion host and Francisco and Jacinta took from the chalice of blood (page 63).  The book points out that even an angel cannot give children of that age communion.  Church law is clear on the matter that children cannot receive communion until they see it is the body of Christ and are instructed and prepared.  Children drinking blood is sick.  The book says it was unlikely to be wine and less likely to be blood and reasons that Lucia was putting a Catholic interpretation on a non-Catholic event.  They were thought to be drinking something an alien gave them as Francisco described the drink a strange and didn't know what it was  (page 93). 

 

Why didn’t it give all three the host?  Why just Lucia?

 

Some Catholics say the communion wasn’t real but symbolic but the angel said it was the body and blood of Christ horribly outraged by evil men.  There is no reason for the symbol interpretation.  It seems the original story didn’t have all this stuff  and Lucia and others were seeing a white figure in a sheet and were embarrassed to talk about it.

 

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VISIONS OF MARY

 

Mary appeared at Fatima to the three children Lucia and Jacinta and Francisco in 1917 starting on May 13^th.

 

The fact that there had been several apparitions reported of Mary over the centuries in the region of Fatima (page 38) lends support to the thought that the three witnesses of Fatima might have been influenced by them to wrongly interpret what they saw.

 

Jacinta told the parish priest in July 1917 during the apparitions, that the lady she saw wore a knee-length skirt and that when the lady left she raised her toes up with the heels pointing down and the body already disappeared.  This is so bizarre that it beggars belief.  It is no wonder Celestial Secrets surmises that the experiences are identical with the contactees who claimed to have encounters with aliens.  The entity was not the Virgin Mary who wouldn’t behave so strangely. 

 

Francisco said that the Virgin didn’t move her lips as she spoke and didn’t move as if she were some kind of doll (page 96).  Lucia had a light within that made her understand the Virgin (page 97).  With such a bizarre method of communication, it would be easy for Lucia to imagine communications from her Catholic conscious.  Did she think the vision was putting thoughts in her head?

 

The vision made buzzing noises (page 249).

 

Canon Formagao had severe problems with the Virgin wearing a knee length skirt which even prostitutes of the time didn’t have the audacity to wear (page 151-153).  This made him suspect that the vision was of the Devil but he deduced that it must have been really Mary for apparitions are authenticated not by the testimony of witnesses but by their popularity among pious people.

 

The earliest evidence about the 1917 apparitions is that the entity interpreted as Mary never said she was of the family of God or Christ or mentioned Jesus or God. Lucia and Jacinta says she wanted a chapel built but they were not sure if she said she was the lady of the rosary or if she meant she wanted a chapel for the lady of the rosary.  Though lady of the rosary is a title of the Virgin Mary an entity carrying a rosary might call itself the lady of the rosary in another way: just the lady with the rosary.

 

Pro Fatima booklet, What Happened at Fatima?  tells us that the vision said to Lucia that she must say the rosary every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war “for only she can help you” (page 32).  The booklet expresses puzzlement at the entity talking as if she is not Our Lady or Mary.  Also, the “for only she can help you” implies that God won’t help unless Mary is invoked.  This contradicts the Bible doctrine that Jesus Christ intercedes for sinners.  This being was not the Mary of Christianity.  We must not forget that Roman Catholicism is not a true form of Christianity.

 

It is certainly doubtful that the vision was really of Mary.

 

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FATIMA 1 AND 2

 

There are two versions of Fatima.  Fatima 1 is the authentic one and Fatima 2 is the Catholicised and embellished version invented by Lucia which was published in 1941.  Fatima 1 doesn’t function as Catholic propaganda and Fatima 2 does (Celestial Secrets, page 147).  To create Fatima 2, the Church through the Bishop of Lieria in 1921, ordered Lucia to be taken away from her own people and silenced.  She was not allowed to return to Fatima without permission and her mail had to be checked.  Even letters to her mother were in this category and nobody was allowed to directly write to her (page 148).  She became a nun under duress in Porto at 14 years of age.

 

Investigators differ as to when Fatima 1 and 2 started.  My preference s that Fatima 1 was the story in the few years following the visions and that Fatima 2 started in the 1920s though the inventing involved in it started in force in 1941 when Lucia came out with more fantasies. 

 

In 1941 Lucia reported a revelation from Jesus demanding that Portugal by government enforcement should have no secular celebrations during Mardi Gras but practice prayer and sacrifice and penance (page 149).

 

Lucia lied about her imprisonment at Ourem in August 1917 but her own family denied this as did the prison cook (page 196).

 

Lucia claimed that she was threatened by being boiled with oil but a friend Maria do Carmo Menezes testified that the phrase came from her and said Lucia and Jacinta never mentioned being jailed (page 196).  She knew them well and they stayed with her one month following the alleged jailing.

 

She lied in her memoirs about the sacrifices made by the children (page 196).

 

In Fatima 2, claims that the Virgin said in 1917 Russia will put its errors all over the world and start wars were made.  The lady threatens the world to have devotion to her immaculate heart or wars will start.  She said God would punish the world by war.  But in World War II most of the people killed were innocent.  Devotion to saints even Mary is optional and for Mary to blackmail doesn’t seem to point to her being a holy entity.  Some Christians believe Mary was evil and was damned and that Jesus came from an evil thing to prove his own holiness.  Certainly the Bible never speaks of her being sinless.

 

Mary said that sinners go to Hell and that to save the world and sinners God wants to establish devotion to her Immaculate Heart. The book says that this devotion had already been popularised since 1838 and that in 1850 there were already over 12,000 brotherhoods in honour of the Immaculate Heart  (page 228).  So what was God on about.

 

The children were given a vision of Hell which was declared to be the First Secret of Fatima.  What was the secret then for Hell was a central dogma of the Catholic faith?  This comes from the Fatima 2 stage where Lucia was adding on to and improving her story.   In Fatima 1 this vision wasn’t mentioned (page 231).   Clearly, Lucia decided after the visions to say there was a secret.  She stupidly picked something silly as the secret, a vision of Hell.  It couldn’t have been which shows it was all she could think of and she invented the vision.  Eventually her imagination led to the invention of the Third Secret of Fatima in the 1940’s which she pretended to have been told by Mary in 1917. 

 

The book shows that in 1917 there was no Third Secret because Lucia said that if the people knew the secret they would be sad or just much the same (page 164).  Hell would make them sad as would the prophecy of a bishop in white being shot after climbing over a mountain of corpses.  But she indicates that the holy people praying around her all the time mightn’t be upset by it at all.  Lucia then lied in the 1940’s that she had been told the Third Secret by Mary in July 1917.

 

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THE MIRACLE OF THE SUN

 

In October 1917, during the vision’s last visit to Fatima she allegedly made the sun spin and exude different colours before a crowd of 70,000 people.

 

The complaint I would have to make about the book is the assumption that the miracle of the sun at Fatima was seen by 70,000 people (Foreword i).  The fact is that only some of the crowd saw it and no two people saw the same thing and no proper investigation was conducted.  Witnesses were not cross-examined.  Very few reports from witnesses exist.  Some reports about a silver disk where the sun was would suggest that a spaceship was appearing.  Some said the sun seemed to be falling down and panicked so if they had been many in number there would have been a stampede.  If it was a spaceship why didn’t everybody see it?  But alien encounters and even alien abduction stories are full of similar problems.  Not everybody is able to see the spaceships.  The silver disc couldn’t possibly have any religious significance.  It is a sign from aliens if anything.

 

Lucia had shouted at the crowd to look at the sun and later she said she didn’t remember doing so and there is evidence documented in the book of amnesia.  Something was playing games with her brain.  How can we trust her visions when we cannot trust her memory?  The amnesia sounds like that reported in most apparitions involving aliens. 

 

Curiously the book omits the fact that UFO’s were seen in the month preceding the solar miracle.  Two priests and a child saw a glowing globe slowly moving from east to west and it vanished in a flash of light.  Others who saw it said it came down to the apparition site and said it looked like an airplane.  During the same occasion, the lady made petals seem to fall – this is a mark of many UFO events (page 76, 77, The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary, Kevin McClure, Aquarian Books, Northamptonshire, 1983).  This can be taken as confirmation that the children were not seeing Mary but having experiences akin to what people having visions of spaceships and aliens experience.  McClure says that Fatima doesn’t match close encounters of the second kind in the sense that such encounters do not involve people changing colour which was reported by some who looked at the sun during the Miracle.  These people still looked at something bright which could have tricked their eyes and besides most of those seeing the miracle didn’t speak of this colour changing.

 

Afonso Lopes Vieira and a group many kilometres away from Fatima saw something like a revolving globe of snow over Fatima that day (page 76, The Book of Miracles, Headline, London, 1996).  Sounds like our spaceship again.

 

The vision of Gilberto Santos at Fatima in 1917 is interesting.  He saw the crowd of pilgrims swathed in the darkness of night and their faces turned into sallow shapes little more than skulls and their faces were expressions of extreme torment (Celestial Secrets, page 229-230). Is this a sign from Heaven that the apparition was going to lead the people to Hell?  Evangelical believers would say that Mary worshippers are in danger of Hell until they convert to faith in Christ alone.   Santos didn’t take the vision to mean that but we can.  Some would say that his not doing so indicates the authenticity of his vision.  His is more convincing than that of the three children.

 

It is interesting that on the anniversary of the first Mary vision, May 13^th, 1925 that the sun was seen at Alcacer do Sal behaving suspiciously like spaceships.  Luis Antonio Carraca and his family and fifteen others saw the sun change shape and then glowing objects started to appear around it and started to turn into multicoloured lights that framed the sun (page 111, 112).

 

At Fatima in 1957, Father Anibal Coelho, the Postmaster General and others saw a UFO at Fatima.  They couldn’t make out the shape of the object they saw in the sky for it moved about at great speed.  It didn’t make any sound nor did it emit light.  The witnesses are certain that it was not an airplane or a shooting star.

 

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LATER VISIONS

 

“You at least seek to console me”, said Mary to Lucia in 1925.  She then prescribed a devotion of the five first Saturdays.  Now can we believe that Lucia was the only one trying to console Mary?  The message would encourage the sin of spiritual pride where one can seem humble and self-effacing but be practicing pride in its most dangerous and deceptive form.  Scores of devotional books such as The Imitation of Christ were written to try and prevent pride.   Mary would not say such a thing and we must question Lucia’s humility in reporting it.  The wording used in the apparition is disturbingly close to the wording used in the Sacred Heart Apparition to St Margaret Mary Alacoque in 1673.  Plagiarism.  What need was there for a new devotion?  Lucia was trying to match the fame of St Margaret Mary.

 

CONCLUSION

 

The Fatima visions should be categorised with visions of aliens and UFO’s and spaceships not with religion.  The apparitions were used as Catholic propaganda, “Here we have a sign that God is real and the Church authorities speak for him so obey these authorities.”

 

 

 

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BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM: 

The Amplified Bible 

 

The Following Work Explains the Miracle of the Sun http://www.meessen.net/AMeessen/MirSun.pdf

Its written by Professor Auguste Meessen
Institute of Physics, Catholic Univeristy of Louvain.
 

 

BOOKS CONSULTED 

 

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

"Apparitions and Miracles of the Sun." International Forum in Porto “Science, Religion and Conscience”. 31 Dec. 1005, 1645-6564: 199-222.

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

Novos Documentos de Fatima, Loyola editions, San Paulo, 1984

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

Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 133-135

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

Dunning, Brian. "Illuminating the Fatima "Miracle of the Sun"." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc., 22 Jul 2008. Web. 25 Jan 2012. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4110>

 

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The Crowd During the Miracle of the Sun – from www.fatimaconference.org

 

Notice that the photos show they were taken in ordinary light.  The miracle then didn’t show up on camera!  Some people had to shield their eyes to look at the sun.  Others look too relaxed to be seeing a miracle.  Some are not looking at the sun at all.

 

Our photographer didn’t see much when he was so interested in photographing the people!