Expert: Fr. Michael - 6/15/2006

Question
Father- in a previous answer yo gave me, you made a pejorative reference to "Fatimism" by which I assume you mean the Marian apparitions at Fatima. Is it your opinion that those apparitions were false? What do you think about that? Thank you.

Answer
       Catholics venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary above the Angels and Saints, as she is Queen of the Angels and Queen of the Saints, but what about Fatima?  It seems that some people are raising Fatima to a doctrine of the Catholic Faith equal to Sacred Scripture and Tradition.  Some Catholics, and even some priests, seem to be raising the Blessed Virgin Mary to the status of a goddess, equal to
Christ the Lord. What is the correct way to look at all of this?

       It is a salinent characteristic of our times, just as it was in the second and third centuries before the Fall of Rome, that the world is out of balance.  Some Catholics are liable to push even good things to an extreme that
makes them err.

       One of the best comments on Fatima, which is totally consonant with the traditional teaching of the Church on private revelation, was published in the year that Pope Pius XII died, under the imprimatur of His Grace John Carroll,
Primate of Ireland at the time, in a tome directed to Catholic priests:

  Private devotion to Our Lady of Fatima may, with due precautions, be permitted.... The approval given by the Holy See to this, as to all private revelations, means simply that the Church does not oppose belief in it; the faithful are allowed to believe in it with due caution....

       Thus, everything must be kept in perspective.  There is nothing in Fatima opposed to the faith if one wishes to believe.  However, as private revelation, it can never be compulsory in belief.

       As to the notion that the Blessed Virgin Mary is a goddess equal to Christ the Lord is blasphemy, a blasphemy that the Virgin would be the first to condemn.