Encounters: The UFO Phenomenon, Exposed!/Encounters - The UFO Phenomenon, Exposed (1995).iso/misc1/misc116.txt

Internet Message Format | 1995-10-20 | 8KB

From: [e-mail] (Titanium Knight)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: ARTICLE: Fatima and environs
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 30 May 93 10:20:19 GMT
Organization: System 6626 BBS, Winnipeg Manitoba Canada
Lines: 142

File: fatimedj.txt

=======================================================================

Note: The following file was originally picked up from the Catholic
      Information Network (CIN #1) in San Francisco (415-387-3251) PCP

      Although I've had this file for sometime,  I  have just  recently
      deemed  it  appropriate to upload this to ParaNet in light  of  a
      number of references to Fatima and the "3rd"  Secret"  in certain
      UFO  related  material.  In particular,  I've seen  this  subject
      referenced  in  the  "Krill"  files and in msg  threads  both  on
      ParaNet and in the Compuserve Paranormal Issues Forum.  Some feel
      that it is related,  at least in part, to some element of the UFO
      phenomenon.   Personally,  I  feel it relates to some "end  time"
      event which could lie over the not so distant horizon.   Although
      much  of  the  speculation surrounding the 3rd Secret  of  Fatima
      seems  to indicate some kind of earthly catastrophe,  its my  own
      feeling  that it also has an explicit political dimension to  it,
      most probably in relation to the Soviet Union.

=======================================================================


>From *The Ratzinger Report*
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori (Ignatius Press 1985)

Fatima and environs

One  of  the four sections of the Congregation for the Doctrine of  the
Faith  (the so-called disciplinary section)  is entrusted with the task
of judging Marian apparitions.

I ask:  "Cardinal Ratzinger,  have you read the so-called 'third secret
of Fatima', which Sister Lucia, the only survivor of the group of those
who beheld the apparition,  forwarded to Pope John XXIII, and which the
Pope, after he had examined it, passed on to your predecessor, Cardinal
Ottaviani,   ordering  him to deposit it in the archives  of  the  Holy
Office?"

The reply is immediate and dry: "Yes, I have read it."

Undenied  versions are circulating in the world,  I   continue,   which
describe the contents of that "secret"  as disquieting, apocalyptic, as
warning of terrible sufferings.  John Paul II himself,  in his personal
visit   to   Germany,    seemed  to  confirm   (albeit   with   prudent
circumlocutions,   privately,   to  a  select  group)   the  undeniably
disconcerting contents of that text.  Before him,  Paul VI,  during his
pilgrimage  to Fatima,  also seems to have alluded to the "apocalyptic"
themes of the "secret". Why was it never decided to make it public,  if
only to counter rash speculations?

"If  this  decision  has not yet been made",  he answers,  "it  is  not
because the Popes want to hide something terrible."

Then  there is "something terrible"  in Sister Lucia's  manuscript,   I
insist?

"If that were so",  he replies, avoiding going further, "that after all
would  only confirm the part of the message of Fatima already known.  A
stern  warning  has  been launched from that  place  that  is  directed
against the prevailing frivolity, a summons to the seriousness of life,
of  history,  to the perils that threaten humanity.  It is  that  which
Jesus himself recalls very frequently:  '... Unless you repent you will
all perish...'  (Lk 13:3).  Conversion--and Fatima fully recalls it  to
mind--is  a constant demand of Christian life.  We should already  know
that from the whole of sacred Scripture."

So there will be no publication, at least for now?

"The  Holy Father deems that it would add nothing to what  a  Christian
must know from Revelation and also from the Marian apparitions approved
by  the  Church  in their known contents,  which only  reconfirmed  the
urgency of penance,  conversion, forgiveness,  fasting.  To publish the
'third  secret'   would  mean  exposing the Church  to  the  danger  of
sensationalism, exploitation of the content."

Perhaps  also political implications,  I  venture,  since it seems that
here, also, as in the two other "secrets", Russia is mentioned?

At  this  point,  however,  the Cardinal declares that he is not  in  a
position  to go further into the matter and firmly refuses  to  discuss
other particulars. On the other hand, at the time of our interview, the
Pope proceeded to reconsecrate the world (with a particular mention  of
Eastern  Europe)   to  the  Immaculate Heart  of  Mary,   precisely  in
accordance with the exhortation of the Virgin of Fatima,  and the  same
John Paul II, wounded by his would-be assassin, on May 13-- anniversary
of  the first apparition in the Portuguese locality--went to Fatima  in
order to thank Mary, "whose hand (he said)  had miraculously guided the
bullet",   and  seemed  to  refer to the  forewarnings  that  had  been
transmitted through a group of children to humanity and that seemed  to
refer also to the person of the Pontiff.

On the same theme,  it is well known that for years, now, a  village in
Yugoslavia,  Medjugorje, is at the center of world attention because of
reported  "apparitions"  which--whether true or not--have already drawn
millions of pilgrims.  But they have also provoked deplorable conflicts
between  the  Franciscans who govern the parish and the bishop  of  the
local  diocese.  Is a clarifying statement of the Congregation for  the
Doctrine  of  the  Faith,  the highest court in  this  matter,   to  be
expected,   with,   of  course,  the approval of the  Pope,   which  is
indispensable for each one of its documents?

He replies:  "In this area, more than ever, patience is the fundamental
principle  of  the  policy  of  our  Congregation.   No  apparition  is
indispensable to the faith; Revelation terminated with Jesus Christ. He
himself  is the Revelation.  But we certainly cannot prevent  God  from
speaking   to  our  time  through  simple  persons  and  also   through
extraordinary  signs  that point to the insufficiency of  the  cultures
stamped by rationalism and positivism that dominate us. The apparitions
that the Church has officially approved--especially Lourdes and Fatima-
-have their precise place in the development of the life of the  Church
in the last century.  They show, among other things,  that Revelation--
still unique,  concluded and therefore unsurpassable--is not yet a dead
thing but something alive and vital.  Moreover--prescinding Medjugorje,
on  which  I  cannot express a judgment since the case is  still  being
examined by the Congregation--one of the signs of our times is that the
announcements  of  'Marian apparitions'  are multiplying all  over  the
world.   For example,  reports are arriving from Africa and from  other
continents at the section of the Congregation that is competent to deal
with such reports."

But,  I ask,  besides the traditional element of patience and prudence,
on what criteria does the Congregation base itself for a judgment,   in
the face of the multiplication of these facts?

"One of our criteria",  he says, "is to separate the aspect of the true
or  presumed  'supernaturality'   of the apparition from  that  of  its
spiritual  fruits.  The pilgrimages of ancient Christianity were  often
concentrated on places with respect to which our modern critical spirit
would be horrified as to the 'scientific truth'  of the tradition bound
up  with  them.   This  does  not detract  from  the  fact  that  those
pilgrimages were fruitful,  beneficial, rich in blessings and important
for  the life of the Christian people.  The problem is not so much that
of modern hypercriticism (which ends up later,  moreover,  in a form of
new credulity), but it is that of the evaluation of the vitality and of
the  orthodoxy  of the religious life that is developing  around  these
places."

---  .
Titan|um Knight -( [e-mail] )-
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