THEOLOGICAL COMMENTARY ON FATIMA BY JOSEPH CARDINAL
RATZINGER
A careful reading of the text of the so-called third “secret”
of Fatima, published here in its entirety long after the fact and
by decision of the Holy Father, will probably prove disappointing
or surprising after all the speculation it has stirred. No great
mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled. We see the Church
of the martyrs of the century which has just passed represented
in a scene described in a language which is symbolic and not easy
to decipher. Is this what the Mother of the Lord wished to communicate
to Christianity and to humanity at a time of great difficulty and
distress? Is it of any help to us at the beginning of the new millennium?
Or are these only projections of the inner world of children, brought
up in a climate of profound piety but shaken at the same time by
the tempests which threatened their own time? How should we understand
the vision? What are we to make of it?
Public Revelation and private revelations – their theological
status
Before attempting an interpretation, the main lines of which can
be found in the statement read by Cardinal Sodano on 13 May of this
year at the end of the Mass celebrated by the Holy Father in Fatima,
there is a need for some basic clarification of the way in which,
according to Church teaching, phenomena such as Fatima are to be
understood within the life of faith. The teaching of the Church
distinguishes between “public Revelation” and “private
revelations”. The two realities differ not only in degree
but also in essence. The term “public Revelation” refers
to the revealing action of God directed to humanity as a whole and
which finds its literary expression in the two parts of the Bible:
the Old and New Testaments. It is called “Revelation”
because in it God gradually made himself known to men, to the point
of becoming man himself, in order to draw to himself the whole world
and unite it with himself through his Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ.
It is not a matter therefore of intellectual communication, but
of a life-giving process in which God comes to meet man. At the
same time this process naturally produces data pertaining to the
mind and to the understanding of the mystery of God. It is a process
which involves man in his entirety and therefore reason as well,
but not reason alone. Because God is one, history, which he
shares with humanity, is also one. It is valid for all time, and
it has reached its fulfilment in the life, death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. In Christ, God has said everything, that is, he
has revealed himself completely, and therefore Revelation came to
an end with the fulfilment of the mystery of Christ as enunciated
in the New Testament. To explain the finality and completeness of
Revelation, the Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes a text of
Saint John of the Cross: “In giving us his Son, his only Word
(for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in
this sole Word—and he has no more to say... because what he
spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at
once by giving us the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning
God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only
of foolish behaviour but also of offending him, by not fixing his
eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some
other novelty” (No. 65; Saint John of the Cross,The Ascent
of Mount Carmel, II, 22).
Because the single Revelation of God addressed to all peoples comes
to completion with Christ and the witness borne to him in the books
of the New Testament, the Church is tied to this unique event of
sacred history and to the word of the Bible, which guarantees and
interprets it. But this does not mean that the Church can now look
only to the past and that she is condemned to sterile repetition.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says in this regard: “...even
if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made fully explicit;
it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance
over the course of the centuries” (No. 66). The way in which
the Church is bound to both the uniqueness of the event and progress
in understanding it is very well illustrated in the farewell discourse
of the Lord when, taking leave of his disciples, he says: “I
have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth;
for he will not speak on his own authority... He will glorify me,
for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (Jn 16:12-14).
On the one hand, the Spirit acts as a guide who discloses a knowledge
previously unreachable because the premise was missing—this
is the boundless breadth and depth of Christian faith. On the other
hand, to be guided by the Spirit is also “to draw from”
the riches of Jesus Christ himself, the inexhaustible depths of
which appear in the way the Spirit leads. In this regard, the Catechism
cites profound words of Pope Gregory the Great: “The sacred
Scriptures grow with the one who reads them” (No. 94; Gregory
the Great,Homilia in Ezechielem I, 7, 8). The Second Vatican Council
notes three essential ways in which the Spirit guides in the Church,
and therefore three ways in which “the word grows”:
through the meditation and study of the faithful, through the deep
understanding which comes from spiritual experience, and through
the preaching of “those who, in the succession of the episcopate,
have received the sure charism of truth” (Dei Verbum, 8).
In this context, it now becomes possible to understand rightly the
concept of “private revelation”, which refers to all
the visions and revelations which have taken place since the completion
of the New Testament. This is the category to which we must assign
the message of Fatima. In this respect, let us listen once again
to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Throughout the ages,
there have been so-called ‘private' revelations, some of which
have been recognized by the authority of the Church... It is not
their role to complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help
live more fully by it in a certain period of history” (No.
67). This clarifies two things:
1. The authority of private revelations is essentially different
from that of the definitive public Revelation. The latter demands
faith; in it in fact God himself speaks to us through human words
and the mediation of the living community of the Church. Faith in
God and in his word is different from any other human faith, trust
or opinion. The certainty that it is God who is speaking gives me
the assurance that I am in touch with truth itself. It gives me
a certitude which is beyond verification by any human way of knowing.
It is the certitude upon which I build my life and to which I entrust
myself in dying.
2. Private revelation is a help to this faith, and shows its credibility
precisely by leading me back to the definitive public Revelation.
In this regard, Cardinal Prospero Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict
XIV, says in his classic treatise, which later became normative
for beatifications and canonizations: “An assent of Catholic
faith is not due to revelations approved in this way; it is not
even possible. These revelations seek rather an assent of human
faith in keeping with the requirements of prudence, which puts them
before us as probable and credible to piety”. The Flemish
theologian E. Dhanis, an eminent scholar in this field, states succinctly
that ecclesiastical approval of a private revelation has three elements:
the message contains nothing contrary to faith or morals; it is
lawful to make it public; and the faithful are authorized to accept
it with prudence (E. Dhanis,Sguardo su Fatima e bilancio di una
discussione, in La Civiltà Cattolica 104 [1953], II, 392-406,
in particular 397). Such a message can be a genuine help in understanding
the Gospel and living it better at a particular moment in time;
therefore it should not be disregarded. It is a help which is offered,
but which one is not obliged to use.
The criterion for the truth and value of a private revelation is
therefore its orientation to Christ himself. When it leads us away
from him, when it becomes independent of him or even presents itself
as another and better plan of salvation, more important than the
Gospel, then it certainly does not come from the Holy Spirit, who
guides us more deeply into the Gospel and not away from it. This
does not mean that a private revelation will not offer new emphases
or give rise to new devotional forms, or deepen and spread older
forms. But in all of this there must be a nurturing of faith, hope
and love, which are the unchanging path to salvation for everyone.
We might add that private revelations often spring from popular
piety and leave their stamp on it, giving it a new impulse and opening
the way for new forms of it. Nor does this exclude that they will
have an effect even on the liturgy, as we see for instance in the
feasts of Corpus Christi and of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. From
one point of view, the relationship between Revelation and private
revelations appears in the relationship between the liturgy and
popular piety: the liturgy is the criterion, it is the living form
of the Church as a whole, fed directly by the Gospel. Popular piety
is a sign that the faith is spreading its roots into the heart of
a people in such a way that it reaches into daily life. Popular
religiosity is the first and fundamental mode of “inculturation”
of the faith. While it must always take its lead and direction from
the liturgy, it in turn enriches the faith by involving the heart.
We have thus moved from the somewhat negative clarifications, initially
needed, to a positive definition of private revelations. How can
they be classified correctly in relation to Scripture? To which
theological category do they belong? The oldest letter of Saint
Paul which has been preserved, perhaps the oldest of the New Testament
texts, the First Letter to the Thessalonians, seems to me to point
the way. The Apostle says: “Do not quench the Spirit,
do not despise prophesying, but test everything, holding fast to
what is good” (5:19-21). In every age the Church has received
the charism of prophecy, which must be scrutinized but not scorned.
On this point, it should be kept in mind that prophecy in the biblical
sense does not mean to predict the future but to explain the will
of God for the present, and therefore show the right path to take
for the future. A person who foretells what is going to happen responds
to the curiosity of the mind, which wants to draw back the veil
on the future. The prophet speaks to the blindness of will and of
reason, and declares the will of God as an indication and demand
for the present time. In this case, prediction of the future is
of secondary importance. What is essential is the actualization
of the definitive Revelation, which concerns me at the deepest level.
The prophetic word is a warning or a consolation, or both together.
In this sense there is a link between the charism of prophecy and
the category of “the signs of the times”, which Vatican
II brought to light anew: “You know how to interpret the appearance
of earth and sky; why then do you not know how to interpret the
present time?” (Lk 12:56). In this saying of Jesus, the “signs
of the times” must be understood as the path he was taking,
indeed it must be understood as Jesus himself. To interpret the
signs of the times in the light of faith means to recognize the
presence of Christ in every age. In the private revelations approved
by the Church—and therefore also in Fatima—this is the
point: they help us to understand the signs of the times and to
respond to them rightly in faith.
The anthropological structure of private revelations
In these reflections we have sought so far to identify the theological
status of private revelations. Before undertaking an interpretation
of the message of Fatima, we must still attempt briefly to offer
some clarification of their anthropological (psychological) character.
In this field, theological anthropology distinguishes three forms
of perception or “vision”: vision with the senses, and
hence exterior bodily perception, interior perception, and spiritual
vision (visio sensibilis - imaginativa - intellectualis). It is
clear that in the visions of Lourdes, Fatima and other places it
is not a question of normal exterior perception of the senses: the
images and forms which are seen are not located spatially, as is
the case for example with a tree or a house. This is perfectly obvious,
for instance, as regards the vision of hell (described in the first
part of the Fatima “secret”) or even the vision described
in the third part of the “secret”. But the same can
be very easily shown with regard to other visions, especially since
not everybody present saw them, but only the “visionaries”.
It is also clear that it is not a matter of a “vision”
in the mind, without images, as occurs at the higher levels of mysticism.
Therefore we are dealing with the middle category, interior perception.
For the visionary, this perception certainly has the force of a
presence, equivalent for that person to an external manifestation
to the senses.
Interior vision does not mean fantasy, which would be no more than
an expression of the subjective imagination. It means rather that
the soul is touched by something real, even if beyond the senses.
It is rendered capable of seeing that which is beyond the senses,
that which cannot be seen—seeing by means of the “interior
senses”. It involves true “objects”, which touch
the soul, even if these “objects” do not belong to our
habitual sensory world. This is why there is a need for an interior
vigilance of the heart, which is usually precluded by the intense
pressure of external reality and of the images and thoughts which
fill the soul. The person is led beyond pure exteriority and is
touched by deeper dimensions of reality, which become visible to
him. Perhaps this explains why children tend to be the ones to receive
these apparitions: their souls are as yet little disturbed, their
interior powers of perception are still not impaired. “On
the lips of children and of babes you have found praise”,
replies Jesus with a phrase of Psalm 8 (v. 3) to the criticism of
the High Priests and elders, who had judged the children's cries
of “hosanna” inappropriate (cf. Mt 21:16).
“Interior vision” is not fantasy but, as we have said,
a true and valid means of verification. But it also has its limitations.
Even in exterior vision the subjective element is always present.
We do not see the pure object, but it comes to us through the filter
of our senses, which carry out a work of translation. This is still
more evident in the case of interior vision, especially when it
involves realities which in themselves transcend our horizon. The
subject, the visionary, is still more powerfully involved. He sees
insofar as he is able, in the modes of representation and consciousness
available to him. In the case of interior vision, the process of
translation is even more extensive than in exterior vision, for
the subject shares in an essential way in the formation of the image
of what appears. He can arrive at the image only within the bounds
of his capacities and possibilities. Such visions therefore are
never simple “photographs” of the other world, but are
influenced by the potentialities and limitations of the perceiving
subject.
This can be demonstrated in all the great visions of the saints;
and naturally it is also true of the visions of the children at
Fatima. The images described by them are by no means a simple expression
of their fantasy, but the result of a real perception of a higher
and interior origin. But neither should they be thought of as if
for a moment the veil of the other world were drawn back, with heaven
appearing in its pure essence, as one day we hope to see it in our
definitive union with God. Rather the images are, in a manner
of speaking, a synthesis of the impulse coming from on high and
the capacity to receive this impulse in the visionaries, that is,
the children. For this reason, the figurative language of the visions
is symbolic. In this regard, Cardinal Sodano stated: “[they]
do not describe photographically the details of future events, but
synthesize and compress against a single background facts which
extend through time in an unspecified succession and duration”.
This compression of time and place in a single image is typical
of such visions, which for the most part can be deciphered only
in retrospect. Not every element of the vision has to have a specific
historical sense. It is the vision as a whole that matters, and
the details must be understood on the basis of the images taken
in their entirety. The central element of the image is revealed
where it coincides with what is the focal point of Christian “prophecy”
itself: the centre is found where the vision becomes a summons and
a guide to the will of God.
An attempt to interpret the “secret” of Fatima
The first and second parts of the “secret” of Fatima
have already been so amply discussed in the relative literature
that there is no need to deal with them again here. I would just
like to recall briefly the most significant point. For one terrible
moment, the children were given a vision of hell. They saw the fall
of “the souls of poor sinners”. And now they are told
why they have been exposed to this moment: “in order to save
souls”—to show the way to salvation. The words of the
First Letter of Peter come to mind: “As the outcome of your
faith you obtain the salvation of your souls” (1:9). To reach
this goal, the way indicated —surprisingly for people from
the Anglo-Saxon and German cultural world—is devotion to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary. A brief comment may suffice to explain
this. In biblical language, the “heart” indicates the
centre of human life, the point where reason, will, temperament
and sensitivity converge, where the person finds his unity and his
interior orientation. According to Matthew 5:8, the “immaculate
heart” is a heart which, with God's grace, has come to perfect
interior unity and therefore “sees God”. To be “devoted”
to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means therefore to embrace this
attitude of heart, which makes the fiat—“your will be
done”—the defining centre of one's whole life. It might
be objected that we should not place a human being between ourselves
and Christ. But then we remember that Paul did not hesitate to say
to his communities: “imitate me” (1 Cor 4:16; Phil 3:17;
1 Th 1:6; 2 Th 3:7, 9). In the Apostle they could see concretely
what it meant to follow Christ. But from whom might we better
learn in every age than from the Mother of the Lord?
Thus we come finally to the third part of the “secret”
of Fatima which for the first time is being published in its entirety.
As is clear from the documentation presented here, the interpretation
offered by Cardinal Sodano in his statement of 13 May was first
put personally to Sister Lucia. Sister Lucia responded by pointing
out that she had received the vision but not its interpretation.
The interpretation, she said, belonged not to the visionary but
to the Church. After reading the text, however, she said that this
interpretation corresponded to what she had experienced and that
on her part she thought the interpretation correct. In what follows,
therefore, we can only attempt to provide a deeper foundation for
this interpretation, on the basis of the criteria already considered.
“To save souls” has emerged as the key word of the first
and second parts of the “secret”, and the key word of
this third part is the threefold cry: “Penance, Penance, Penance!”
The beginning of the Gospel comes to mind: “Repent and believe
the Good News” (Mk 1:15). To understand the signs of the times
means to accept the urgency of penance – of conversion –
of faith. This is the correct response to this moment of history,
characterized by the grave perils outlined in the images that follow.
Allow me to add here a personal recollection: in a conversation
with me Sister Lucia said that it appeared ever more clearly to
her that the purpose of all the apparitions was to help people to
grow more and more in faith, hope and love—everything else
was intended to lead to this.
Let us now examine more closely the single images. The angel with
the flaming sword on the left of the Mother of God recalls similar
images in the Book of Revelation. This represents the threat of
judgement which looms over the world. Today the prospect that the
world might be reduced to ashes by a sea of fire no longer seems
pure fantasy: man himself, with his inventions, has forged the flaming
sword. The vision then shows the power which stands opposed to the
force of destruction—the splendour of the Mother of God and,
stemming from this in a certain way, the summons to penance. In
this way, the importance of human freedom is underlined: the future
is not in fact unchangeably set, and the image which the children
saw is in no way a film preview of a future in which nothing can
be changed. Indeed, the whole point of the vision is to bring freedom
onto the scene and to steer freedom in a positive direction. The
purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed
future. Its meaning is exactly the opposite: it is meant to mobilize
the forces of change in the right direction. Therefore we must totally
discount fatalistic explanations of the “secret”, such
as, for example, the claim that the would-be assassin of 13 May
1981 was merely an instrument of the divine plan guided by Providence
and could not therefore have acted freely, or other similar ideas
in circulation. Rather, the vision speaks of dangers and how we
might be saved from them.
The next phrases of the text show very clearly once again the symbolic
character of the vision: God remains immeasurable, and is the light
which surpasses every vision of ours. Human persons appear as in
a mirror. We must always keep in mind the limits in the vision itself,
which here are indicated visually. The future appears only
“in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor 13:12). Let us now consider
the individual images which follow in the text of the “secret”.
The place of the action is described in three symbols: a steep mountain,
a great city reduced to ruins and finally a large rough-hewn cross.
The mountain and city symbolize the arena of human history: history
as an arduous ascent to the summit, history as the arena of human
creativity and social harmony, but at the same time a place of destruction,
where man actually destroys the fruits of his own work. The city
can be the place of communion and progress, but also of danger and
the most extreme menace. On the mountain stands the cross—the
goal and guide of history. The cross transforms destruction into
salvation; it stands as a sign of history's misery but also as a
promise for history.
At this point human persons appear: the Bishop dressed in white
(“we had the impression that it was the Holy Father”),
other Bishops, priests, men and women Religious, and men and women
of different ranks and social positions. The Pope seems to precede
the others, trembling and suffering because of all the horrors around
him. Not only do the houses of the city lie half in ruins, but he
makes his way among the corpses of the dead. The Church's path
is thus described as a Via Crucis, as a journey through a time of
violence, destruction and persecution. The history of an entire
century can be seen represented in this image. Just as the places
of the earth are synthetically described in the two images of the
mountain and the city, and are directed towards the cross, so too
time is presented in a compressed way. In the vision we can recognize
the last century as a century of martyrs, a century of suffering
and persecution for the Church, a century of World Wars and the
many local wars which filled the last fifty years and have inflicted
unprecedented forms of cruelty. In the “mirror” of this
vision we see passing before us the witnesses of the faith decade
by decade. Here it would be appropriate to mention a phrase from
the letter which Sister Lucia wrote to the Holy Father on 12 May
1982: “The third part of the ‘secret' refers to Our
Lady's words: ‘If not, [Russia] 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 Via Crucis of an entire century, the figure of the Pope has
a special role. In his arduous ascent of the mountain we can undoubtedly
see a convergence of different Popes. Beginning from Pius X
up to the present Pope, they all shared the sufferings of the century
and strove to go forward through all the anguish along the path
which leads to the Cross. In the vision, the Pope too is killed
along with the martyrs. When, after the attempted assassination
on 13 May 1981, the Holy Father had the text of the third part of
the “secret” brought to him, was it not inevitable that
he should see in it his own fate? He had been very close to
death, and he himself explained his survival in the following words:
“... it was a mother's hand that guided the bullet's path
and in his throes the Pope halted at the threshold of death”
(13 May 1994). That here “a mother's hand” had deflected
the fateful bullet only shows once more that there is no immutable
destiny, that faith and prayer are forces which can influence history
and that in the end prayer is more powerful than bullets and faith
more powerful than armies.
The concluding part of the “secret” uses images which
Lucia may have seen in devotional books and which draw their inspiration
from long-standing intuitions of faith. It is a consoling vision,
which seeks to open a history of blood and tears to the healing
power of God. Beneath the arms of the cross angels gather up the
blood of the martyrs, and with it they give life to the souls making
their way to God. Here, the blood of Christ and the blood of the
martyrs are considered as one: the blood of the martyrs runs down
from the arms of the cross. The martyrs die in communion with the
Passion of Christ, and their death becomes one with his. For the
sake of the body of Christ, they complete what is still lacking
in his afflictions (cf. Col 1:24). Their life has itself become
a Eucharist, part of the mystery of the grain of wheat which in
dying yields abundant fruit. The blood of the martyrs is the seed
of Christians, said Tertullian. As from Christ's death, from his
wounded side, the Church was born, so the death of the witnesses
is fruitful for the future life of the Church. Therefore, the vision
of the third part of the “secret”, so distressing at
first, concludes with an image of hope: no suffering is in vain,
and it is a suffering Church, a Church of martyrs, which becomes
a sign-post for man in his search for God. The loving arms of God
welcome not only those who suffer like Lazarus, who found great
solace there and mysteriously represents Christ, who wished to become
for us the poor Lazarus. There is something more: from the suffering
of the witnesses there comes a purifying and renewing power, because
their suffering is the actualization of the suffering of Christ
himself and a communication in the here and now of its saving effect.
And so we come to the final question: What is the meaning of the
“secret” of Fatima as a whole (in its three parts)?
What does it say to us? First of all we must affirm with Cardinal
Sodano: “... the events to which the third part of the ‘secret'
of Fatima refers now seem part of the past”. Insofar as individual
events are described, they belong to the past. Those who expected
exciting apocalyptic revelations about the end of the world or the
future course of history are bound to be disappointed. Fatima does
not satisfy our curiosity in this way, just as Christian faith in
general cannot be reduced to an object of mere curiosity. What remains
was already evident when we began our reflections on the text of
the “secret”: the exhortation to prayer as the path
of “salvation for souls” and, likewise, the summons
to penance and conversion.
I would like finally to mention another key expression of the “secret”
which has become justly famous: “my Immaculate Heart will
triumph”. What does this mean? The Heart open to God, purified
by contemplation of God, is stronger than guns and weapons of every
kind. The fiat of Mary, the word of her heart, has changed the history
of the world, because it brought the Saviour into the world—because,
thanks to her Yes, God could become man in our world and remains
so for all time. The Evil One has power in this world, as we see
and experience continually; he has power because our freedom continually
lets itself be led away from God. But since God himself took a human
heart and has thus steered human freedom towards what is good, the
freedom to choose evil no longer has the last word. From that time
forth, the word that prevails is this: “In the world you will
have tribulation, but take heart; I have overcome the world”
(Jn 16:33). The message of Fatima invites us to trust in this promise.
JosephCard. Ratzinger
Prefect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith
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