Fátima again… (Fátimagain?)

Question from Jacob:
Hey. So I am gonna ask about Fatima again. Yes I know I talked about it In detail before but I haven’t talked about the 3rd secret much. I previously mentioned that Pope John Paul’s assassination attempt happened on the Fatima anniversary. Apparently on the same hour as well, what is the chance for that? I believe that the pope fulfilled the lady’s task for Russia in 1984 and 7 years later the Soviet union collapsed. I should probably also mention that Putin strongly favours the orthodox church that is also devoted to Mary.

Answer by SmartLX:
The assassination attempt was on the exact Fátima anniversary because the would-be assassin Mehmet Ali Ağca was obsessed with Fátima. This was obvious to those who saw him in prison afterwards, and at the trial where he appealed to the Vatican to release more information about it. The timing was no coincidence, let alone divinely guided coincidence. It was more of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Of course Putin favours the Russian Orthodox Church, the most powerful denomination in Russia. Russia went largely Christian when Communism collapsed, as we’ve discussed, and any political leader who wants to appeal to the faithful will go through the majority church. There’s nothing surprising about this.

Fátima Recap

Question from Jonathan:
So how do you explain events life Fatima where over 70000 people simultaneously saw a miracle as it was foretold by a little girl, check it out if you don’t believe me it’s very well documented. If that’s not enough for you it also made accurate predictions.

Answer by SmartLX:
I’ve addressed both of these points quite recently: the mass miracle here and the predictions here. If I’ve missed some detail which you think is important, comment in the appropriate article.

The War According To Fátima

Question from Jakob:
It’s been a while since I posted but anyway this time it is about the Fatima prophecy, to be precise, the second secret. I am writing this on a touch screen so I can’t quote it for you now but you can read it on RationalWiki if you like. It was written right after Hitler declared war on the Soviet Union and it pretty much predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse and that Russia would be converted.

Answer by SmartLX:
Here’s the whole “secret” which, for context, is claimed to have been spoken to some shepherds by an apparition of Jesus’ mother Mary in 1917:

“You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”

“The war” refers to World War I. As RationalWiki says, it gets at least one thing wrong because World War II broke out seven months after the death of Pope Pius XI and therefore during the Pontificate of Pius XII. Catholics would be very surprised if the real “O Maria” got the wrong pontiff.

As for the rest, it gives two options: either communist Russia will continue its expansion and keep persecuting the Church or communism will fail and Russia will adopt Europe’s majority religion. Really, what else could have happened to Russia in World War II and the ensuing Cold War other than one of these two things, or one and then the other? Predicting every likely outcome is like putting a chip on every square of a roulette table; you don’t deserve much credit if one of your numbers comes up. In this case it’s as simple as just betting on both red and black.

To tie this into other material on this site, my piece on prophecies would categorise this one as #1. High Probabililty of Success.

O Fátima

Question from Jakob:
I have a question about the supposed Sun miracle at Fátima. An crowd of about 70,000 people saw it; I should note that nobody saw the same thing and thousands saw nothing at all. The Vatican said it’s worthy of belief. Now 70000 people can’t hallucinate at the same time, can they?

Answer by SmartLX:
If thousands saw nothing at all at the so-called Miracle of the Sun that gave rise to the incarnation of the Virgin Mary now known as Our Lady of Fátima, then 70000 people didn’t hallucinate at the same time. It doesn’t mean none of them did.

A multitude of people with beliefs ranging from fervent to non-existent crowded into an empty field with high expectations of something miraculous happening, but no idea what. As soon as exposure, overlong gazing at the sun, rare weather effects like a parhelion (check the Miracle link above for a picture) or pure zealotry drove someone to declare that they saw something strange in the sky, thousands more looked up instead of around them, and were far more prone to have a similar experience. Afterwards, there was much discussion among the lucky subset about what they had seen, which would have resulted in much greater consistency between accounts once they went to write it down. Once stories got out, the crowds got bigger, the expectations were higher and the chances of strange perceptions only went up, until it all peaked on 13 October 1917. The initial stories mentioned the sun, so later you had thousands of poor sods staring right at the thing far longer than they should, which would have played havoc with their eyes.

Several specific explanations have been suggested over the years, but I just look at the circumstances and I think I would have been amazed if no one had had a strange experience. It was a strange thing to do, and to be told to do by three Portuguese preteens.