I watched the film yesterday on television and I realised that all three visionaries are now reunited in heaven. At the time the film was made, Lucia was living in a convent in Portugal.
shareYes, you are right. Lucia unfortunately passed away in February of this year. My parents are both from Portugal and coincidently, my mother is from Fatima. I adore this film.
God rest their souls.
What always amused me was watching Susan Whitney as that illiterate little peasant girl in 1917 and realizing that she was now a Carmelite sister in Coimbra with a word processor. "So you must learn to read and write" indeed! She wrote memoirs about her cousins for their canonization process, and a book called "The Appeal of the Fatima Message".
shareThere was a great deal of confusion about Lucia. Some wondered about her suddenly altered physical appearance when she emerged from secrecy in the late 60s at the 50th Fatima Anniversary Mass, I believe. It looked like a different woman, and some have suggested that it was.
A lot can be made of that third secret. The Vatican released something else, instead of it, only a few years ago with then Card. Ratzinger's signature. And that only encouraged people to try to look beyond and behind the scenes to explain the obvious fraud. But as it gets weirder and weirder, maybe too much time is spent on that. But I also don't want to be accused of indifference not to the Fatima messages in apparition, but even to such a third secret. We may just never know.
One thing about the Fatima messages is that the faith is not lost in Portugal. Well, clearly it is, from the top down. So some have argued that the top down isn't always so effective in Portugal, and that while every leader might turn to paganism, let's say, some of the common people will just continue, even without much publicity, to believe in the Catholic Church - again even if the local and national bishops seems to speak of other things, instead. No matter what authority dictates against the faith, such people suggest that many Portuguese Catholic laymen will just brush it off and do as their parents did, and their parents before them. Myself, I don't know. Might be nice to think that's true.
I look at it this way, the apparitions took place in an atmosphere of we-the-people vs. the government, and I assume that when she said "in Portugal the dogma of the faith will always be kept" she meant among those same we-the-people, not necessarily officially.
sharebump
shareLucia was the holiest woman on Earth. RIP
shareHeaven doesn't exist, like hell neither. And this girl Lucia, nothing against her, was mentally unstable. Wouldn't be surprised she was suffering from some form of schizophrenia.
shareCan you prove any of those claims?
Wouldn't be surprised if you weren't,either :)
So you believe in the "dancing Sun"?
shareWell, i wasn't there.
From what i have read ,different people saw different things.Some who wre there never saw anything but then again,some who were miles away did.
There was obviously something going on but i have no idea what.
By the way, i apologise for my last post.
I should n ot have made the crack about your being crazy like you said she was.
There ya go,I am obviously better than you. I can say sorry when i am in the wrong.
People "see" what's in their minds. If in their minds there are crazy things, they will end up seeing crazy things. And "think" it was real.
shareThat's obviously why you think you are intelligent ,then :)
Those who were there may have been told to look at the sun but those miles away would not have known that the "miracle" was going to involve the sun,so they would not have "had it in their heads" How do you account for them seeing the same things as those close by? ESP,which you deny exists?
Still waiting for you to disprove the predictions.
Come on.Admit that you cannot.
Even those who were right there insist they didn't see anything funny with the sun. It was all mental suggestion.
shareonly a few and some of those were believers,so,if it worked on thousands of others why did it not work on them?
The ones far away would not have been aware it was going to involve the sun so no "power of suggestion" there unless the suggestion was telepathic.
Can't you get it through your thick skull?
If i told you i was going to perform a miracle at a certain time would you just stare atthe sun not knowing what the miracle was going to be?
If i told you you wre going to drop dead in 5 minutes would you do it? and if not,why not? That's "power of suggestion"
The people who were right there didn't know it was going to involve the sun. The kids just said there would be a miracle everyone could see. Most people who were interviewed later said they had thought Mary would appear to the whole crowd. They were probably focusing their attention on the tree and its frame. But then Lucia said "Look at the sun" . She said later she didn't even notice she was saying it. It was an "interior impulse", when she saw the images of Jesus, St. Joseph and so on. She thought everybody was going to see those, and that would be the miracle. It may have been an involuntary "wow, look at the sun", but in any case was not like the very dramatic way she does it in the film.
You've got me?! Who's got you?!
some saw nothing...there were those who were totally skeptical and were there to see the children fail...how do you explain that they saw....it was not the sun...the sun was behind the clouds
here is an interesting bit of info...there is a trio of books out there...they examined all the old records, spoke to people etc etc....they made a rough drawing of the area....then plotted where people were standing.....the really interesting thing is.......
the people who saw something were in a particular swath of area....seemed the others outside of that swath did not see....
the distinctive movements were seen in 4 different areas cova da Iria,Minde, Alburitel, and Aljustrel.
peoples clothes were dried...a mass halucination could not do that.....something happened that day......they did not see the sun ,it was behind the strange clouds
This may be the book trilogy you mentioned - I think they're very good, except that the translation from Portugese leaves something to be desired:
https://www.amazon.com/Joaquim-Fernandes/e/B004N728T2/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1484891341&sr=1-1
(The first three titles, from left to right on the Amazon page.)
Lucia in 1921 entered a boarding school operated by the Dorothean Sisters in Vilar. She was told to use another name, ie "Maria das Dores", and to reply if anyone asks her where she is from "My home is near Lisbon".
She later on joined this order, and made perpetual vows, in 1934.
Pius XII gave her an official dispensation to leave this active order, to join the papal cloister of Carmelite nuns in Coimbra in Portugal, in 1948. The following year she was solemnly professed (in record time, as it normally goes for a lot longer), and remained living there until her death in 2005, at the age of 97.
If the events of Fatima which happened to her as a child, were the product of just a childish imagination or mental instability, this would hardly have been the basis of somebody living a very difficult vocation as a Carmelite nun, which requires a lot of personal discipline and dedication.
I have a number of female friends that had a shot at being an enclosed Carmelite, but had to leave, because of the strict regimen required of prayer and self sacrifice, finding that the vocation is very difficult, which even impacted on their physical health.
If she was out to just fool everybody, how does Sr Lucia's nearly six decades of enclosed life, square with this, in addition to earlier in her life being in another active order, where she also made final vows?
If we read her biography, no one can deny (even sceptics of the Fatima events) from a psychological perspective, she comes across as a very stable person, with a deep commitment to religious life, but more importantly the ability to reach the high standards required of this lifestyle. In a nutshell, hardly the product of daydreamers or the mentally ill. A person who is challenged on a number of fronts, often tries this and that, but rarely succeeds at anything they attempt for the long term.
I am not trained as a psychologist, but if there are any who come on here, I am very interested in your perspective about this.