I don’t understand certain radical Fatima followers. I’m not completely up on the whole phenomenon, but evidently the Blessed Mother asked the three visionaries at Fatima in 1917 to ask the Pope to consecrate Russia so that it could be converted. And the Pope did ... twice. The first time was when he consecrated the whole world, but the radical Fatima types say that wasn’t what the Blessed Mother meant. (Did she tell them that? Isn’t Russia part of the world? Sister Lucy, the only remaining visionary alive said it fulfilled the requirement and she’s the one the Blessed Mother talked to.) So, the Pope consecrated Russia again, this time by name. Still not good enough for these people.
Their evidence? Just look at Russia: rampant crime, corruption, abortion, and so on. And it’s still mainly Russian Orthodox (and atheist)! How can you call that converted? they ask. (Aside from the fact that it’s no longer an officially communist atheist country and the locus of evil ideology in the world.)
Well, what did they expect? Instant conversion of all the people? It’s not like the countries that are mainly Catholic are doing all that much better. Look at Italy. Less than 35 percent of the people attend Mass on Sunday. And there’s crime, corruption, and abortion there. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a country that would fit these people’s definition of being consecrated and converted to Catholicism.
I think it’s a dangerous thing when you let your devotion to a particular miraculous event, like an apparation, whether it’s approved or unapproved, take precedence over your faith in the Church as a whole. Or your devotion to a particular rite for the celebration of the Mass, for that matter.
What prompts it is I was thinking about it. I don’t have to have a reason to post my opinion about something on my own web site, do I?
And I don’t think people who prefer the Tridentine rite to be radical, just as I don’t think people who have a devotion to Our Lady of Fatime are radical. What’s radical are those who place their particular devotions above their obedience to the Church and to the Pope.
If someone were to say that the Pope is a heretic or that they’re leaving the Church because the Tridentine is no longer normative, and the Novus Ordo has replaced it as normative (as the SSPX do), that would be radical.
Just as are people who continue to claim a conspiracy and coverup by the Church because their particular interpretation says the Fatima request wasn’t followed and they reject the Pope’s authority because of it.
In my day job, I’ve been seeing correspondence from people claiming that the Church’s troubles with the Orthodox in Russia, Georgia, and so on as because of the Pope’s alleged failure to consecrate Russia. They also deny the authority of the Church to state that it has been done, attribute conspiracies to Church leaders who are supposedly misleading us as to the Third Secret of Fatima, and deny that their leader, Fr. Gruner, was authentically censured by the Church.
I see a parallel with SSPXers who deny the authority of the Church to promulgate the Novus Ordo, claim the see of Peter is vacant, attribute (usually Masonic) conspiracies to those who came up with the idea of reform, and deny that Archbishop Lefebvre was authentically excommunicated.
I see the parallel. Maybe others don’t.
And how quickly is this conversion supposed to take place? Months? Years? Decades?