Fátima – Eat, Drink and See Mary

A Letter to John Scopes

A good friend of mine in Australia vacillates between atheism and agnosticism. For Chris, the one thing that inhibits his casting off of the yoke of theism once and for all, is a nagging doubt over the supposed Milagro do Sol, the Miracle of the Sun. This is an allegedly miraculous event that took place in Fátima, Portugal, on October 13, 1917.

According to the Catholic Church, on that date, following a series of monthly appearances leading up to the event, the Virgin Mary caused the sun to dance in the sky, in an incident witnessed by thousands of people. If true, it would certainly lend credence to Catholic doctrine. An appearance by the virgin mother of Jesus Christ, some 1900 years after her death, to thousands would be hard to dismiss by even the most cynical of skeptics. It is an event worth looking at, particularly as it is often proffered as one of the strongest proofs of the teachings of the Catholic Church. Only three days ago (May 13th 2010) Pope Benedict XVI said mass at Fátima to 400,000 faithful. It certainly has Chris's attention.

Events Leading up to the “Miracle of the Sun.”

As with any story that happened a long time ago, and which contains miraculous elements, it is sometimes hard to definitively sort fact from fiction in the story of Fátima. However, what follows is, I believe, largely accepted by historians, by the Catholic Church and by others who have who have looked into the issue.

On May 13, 1917, some five months before the purported miracle, three young shepherd children from devoutly Catholic families (Lúcia Santos and her younger cousins, siblings Jacinta and Francisco Marto) claimed that they saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary. They also claimed subsequent sightings in each of the following months leading up to the October incident. In these appearances, they claimed that the Virgin Mary exhorted them to pray and to serve penance for their sins, which they did by saying Rosaries, wearing tight clothing and foregoing water on hot days.

Portugal in 1917 was a largely rural and relatively uneducated part of Southern Europe. It was also devoutly Catholic and the story of the alleged apparitions spread quickly through the local community. The children had reported that the Virgin Mary appeared to them on the 13th of each month (save August, which was the 19th) and would appear again on October 13 in an event that would be so spectacular as prove to the World the truth of what the children were saying.

On that day, thousands of people, including scores of journalists armed with cameras, flocked to the location, a field called the Cova da Iria, to await the divine appearance. Contemporary estimates of the crowd range from 30,000 to 70,000.

Alas, Mary was a “no show.” Her doubt-erasing public appearance did not materialize. However it had been a rainy morning and as the clouds dissipated around noon, many people claimed that they saw the sun dance against the blue sky. The reports are largely inconsistent, with some claiming the sun changed colors, others claiming it simply danced and still others claiming it spun around or shot toward the Earth. Having inconsistent reports as to what exactly transpired is nothing unusual. Given a large enough number of witnesses this will always be so and should not, of itself, be taken as proof that nothing happened. Even in noncontroversial events captured on live television, witness reports will vary widely as to what actually occurred. We human beings have a surprisingly low ability to perceive and report with acuity.

Nevertheless, a few spectators here and there claimed that Mary appeared privately to them, while many saw nothing. However, it is fair to say that the core claim of the Catholic Church, that many people recorded the sun dancing in the bluing sky, is true. Many did claim this. Certainly not the “thousands” the story has subsequently grown into over the years, but yes a number of people. While I cannot discern an exact number from what I have read, my “best guess” is a few hundred.

Apart from the “three secrets of Fátima,” which were gradually released by Lúcia, the oldest of the children, over the decades following the incident, that is pretty much it. The appearances stopped, the Cova de Iria became a sacred site for the Catholic Church, and the local population went back to farming and herding.

So, exactly how substantial is the Fátima claim of a solar dance?

The first point to note is that no other people anywhere in the World recorded the sun performing these maneuvers. Given that October 13 is about three weeks after the annual September Equinox, which means days and nights around the World are of roughly equal duration, and given that the sun’s dance supposedly took place at roughly noon Portugal time, the solar pirouettes would have been visible to everybody in Southern and Central Europe, Scandinavia, the British Isles, Africa, Russia, the Middle East and much of Asia. This entire swath of the planet was bathed in daylight. Yet nobody in any of those locations recorded anything.

In addition, no solar or other astronomical observatory anywhere in the world recorded the alleged event. None of the thousands of ships at sea that still navigated by the sun recorded anything unusual and nobody at the Vatican itself (a seemingly more appropriate and very receptive audience) saw a thing. Finally, no Muslims, Jews, Buddhists or atheists in Fátima itself recorded anything out of the ordinary. Clearly, whatever occurred was a purely local, Catholic affair.

More fundamentally, the sun has a diameter of a little under 1,400,000 kilometers. The speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second. That means that, for the sun to appear to the naked human eye to have danced, it would had to have moved no less than about half its diameter in a very short time. If it did so in less than about 2.33 seconds, it would have been moving faster than the speed of light, which would have broken a law of nature or two being developed around that time by a certain Swiss patent clerk. Additionally, if the sun did indeed move, the orbits of the planets would have been thrown into chaos and the Earth would have experienced monster tides all over the planet. None of this occurred.

Despite the huge number of journalists present, all toting cameras in the hopes of snapping the photograph of the millennium, not one photograph of Mary or of the sun’s dance was taken. I think it is fair to say that, like beauty, the “Miracle of Fátima” was in the eye of the beholders.

But that still leaves open the question of what did happen. We are still left with the claims of hundreds of people to have seen various “miraculous” things. Is it possible that so many people could all be wrong? A closer look at the personalities involved is warranted.

The first thing to note is the three shepherd children themselves. At the time they made the claims they were ten, nine and seven years old. That is, the eldest would have been in fifth grade and the youngest in second grade. About the age of the children on South Park. Second, they were all totally illiterate, as was much of rural Portugal at the time. Think back to how developed your mind was at that age and how easily you were given to flights of fancy and familial and social pressures. I expect you (as I) still believed in one or more of Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Monsters lurked in our bedrooms at night and fairies and pixies played in our gardens.

This was not the children’s first claim to have seen figures from heaven. The year before, they claimed to have seen angels on three separate occasions. It is also telling to follow what happened to the three children after matter died down.

Despite being worthy of a personal visit from Mary, when the two siblings contracted influenza shortly after, Mary was strangely absent. Despite the nightly prayers and pleadings of their families, they both died slow agonizing deaths. Francisco Mato died a painful death at home, while his sister’s death was even more drawn out and agonizing, including operations (without anesthetic due to her poor heart) and numerous hospital visits in a desperate effort to save her life. In short, they both suffered horrible illnesses as the months of prayers from their parents went unanswered, and were both dead within two years of the alleged miracle.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me a strange way for a deity to treat his chosen messengers. It reminds me a bit of a cartoon I once saw, where two Jews are standing outside of Auschwitz Concentration Camp on the day of its liberation by the Red Army. They both stand open armed, looking toward the sky and pleading, “Next time, choose someone else.”

The third child, Lúcia, had an even more telling life after Fátima. It seems she liked the taste of fame that it brought her. In addition to seeing Mary and various angels above, she reported seeing the Virgin Mary again in 1925 at a convent in Spain. She then reported being visited by Jesus at the same convent. She was transferred to another convent and, sure enough, in 1929, reported that Mary returned and appeared to her again.

Indeed, Lúcia reportedly saw Mary in private visions periodically throughout her entire life. For example, a particularly bright Aurora Borealis in 1938 provoked poor Lúcia into believing that Mary was again appearing to her. She eventually left her convent and enrolled in yet a third. She would also periodically claim that, back in 1917, Mary revealed certain “secrets” to her. The secrets themselves are long and rambling but to give you a taste, here is a representative part of one of them, revealed by Lúcia in 1941, some 24 years after Mary supposedly related it to her:

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….

You get the picture.

I think it is fairly safe to say that Lúcia suffered from lifelong delusional schizophrenia. She was what an impatient person might term an attention seeking nut job. A complete head case. In fact, Lúcia’s apparitions increased in frequency to the point where the Catholic Church started wishing she would shut up and go away. It pretty much locked her away, prevented anybody from seeing her and forbade her from talking about the apparitions. It is hard not to conclude that the basic idea of the Church was, “Look, they believe us. Just shut up and go away or you’ll blow it for us all.”

Fast forward to Conyers, Georgia in 1998. Mary Folwer, a local resident, claims that the Virgin Mary appears to her on, yes, the 13th of every month. According to Ms. Fowler, Mary appeared to her in private on her farm and revealed miraculous secrets to her. Word soon got out and the crowd grew every month. It peaked at 80,000. As with Fátima, rumors swirled of miraculous sightings and healings (See http://www.cnn.com/US/9810/13/virgin.mary.01/)

However, Mary, or course, only ever revealed herself to Ms. Fowler in private and nobody witnessed the meetings. Ms. Fowler emerged after each one to pass on Mary’s latest message. Despite being less than 50 miles from the Worldwide headquarters of CNN in Atlanta, no film is ever captured of Mary.

Have a look at http://www.conyers.org/1/. It seems the Virgin Mary has adopted the internet. This is a web site maintained by the people behind the Conyers incidents. You can make a donation to them if you wish. Just click on “Donate Now”. I wonder if Mary also internet dates; “Nice Jewish girl, Aquarius, 5 foot, 4 inches tall, likes long walks in the park and slow dancing. Seeks Jewish carpenter with his own business. I’ve been a virgin for the last 2,000 years and I will get pregnant even if you don’t touch me. Might give birth in a barn.”

I doubt she would get many dates.

I was living in Georgia at the time all this went on and Ms Fowler was locally known to have mental issues. I guess Mary only appears to the mentally unstable for the same reason that aliens tend to abduct drunken fisherman in Mississippi. As they say, if one person believes they talk to god, we call them a lunatic; if a dozen do, we call them a cult; if a billion do, we call them Christians. While all this was happening, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians were under FBI siege in their compound in Waco, Texas. An amusing bumper sticker read, “David, your mother is awaiting you in Conyers, Georgia”.

I could readily cite five or six other examples from around the World where Mary is alleged to regularly appear (Guadeloupe, Medjugorje and Akita, for example. See http://www.theworkofgod.org/aparitns/Aparitns.htm). A few factors are common to them all. First, Mary is virtually always "bathed in a beautiful light". She only appears in total privacy and disappears before anybody else sees her. No photos or film ever record the events. Her audience is inevitably a lone person (usually female) or a very small group. She always has “messages,” often three. The messages are always of “love and hope” and demand prayers and submission to her or to god. The messages often contain predictions, but never something verifiable like, “Tomorrow, the headlines in the New York Times will be….”. The locations are always rural, surrounded by a largely religious and gullible population and accessible to traffic and crowds. Farms feature prominently. A Marian apparition on Broadway and 45th would impose significant logistical problems.

There was really nothing particularly unusual at all about Fátima. It is nothing more than one in a regular series of unverifiable, improvable Marian apparitions. It is not unusual that, out of a crowd of between 30,000 and 70,000, a few hundred recorded seeing a “miracle.” Conyers and the other sites boast similar numbers. If you have any doubts as to the ability of a crowd to whip up religious fervor and collective gullibility, I suggest you turn on your television one Sunday morning and watch an American evangelical church service. Recall that, at Fátima, these were people who travelled miles to witness a miracle based on the stories of a delusional, schizophrenic ten year-old. I suggest they were quite a willing, receptive audience. It would have been a miracle if none of the indulgent throng reported anything.

When storm clouds clear, light does indeed prism and split. Ever heard of a rainbow? Next time a storm clears, take note of the unusual brightness and clarity of the light and how it seems to stream throught he clouds in different colors. Indeed, light streaming through clouds often appears on religious cards and books as a representation of god.

Some people have proposed unusual atmospheric phenomena to explain Fátima, such as rare dust clouds or sun dogs. I don't think these explanations are either convincing or necessary. Simple collective human gullibility coupled with the bouncing, splitting light from a run-of-the-mill midday storm is a sufficient explanation for me. Put a few thousand devoutly religious, miracle-expecting people of any faith under a clearing sky and then poll them for who saw something resembling what they were all hoping for in the first place. Positive hits are inevitable.

If Fátima demonstrates anything at all, it is the astoundingly low standards set by the Catholic Church for accepting the veracity of miracles (although, admittedly, the "evidence" accepted at Lourdes and Guadeloupe is even weaker). It is also a great demonstration of the principle that the strength of evidence a person requires in order to believe something is inversely proportional to their desire to do so. Pope John Paul II attributed his surviving Mehmet Ali Ağca's assassination attempt to "Our Lady of Fátima" because the attempt happened on May 13. I attribute it to medical science. The date does sound coincidental, until you consider that there is not a day in the year free of some alleged miracle or ceremony for some saint. Recall also, he still took the bullets; "A bit more warning, please, Mary" would seem an appropriate response.

The Catholic Church is desperate for any kind of validation of its obscure fantasies and will readily indulge a gullible rural population in their supernatural nonsense in order to keep their flock happy and devoted. Indeed, they kept one of Lúcia's rantings, the so called "Third Secret of Fátima" under wraps until 2000 (she had released it to the Church in 1944) thereby drumming up a vast following of conspiracy theorists about what it said.

When released, it was said to have predicted the above 1981 assassination attempt on the Pope (some 19 years earlier). Mary's messages are generally very good at predicting events that have already happened. If you want to read the third message, you can easily Google it, but suffice it to say that it does not come close to a meaningful prediction of anything. It is as psychotic and rambling as the one quoted above. If it did predict the attempt by the way, why would the Pope not simply have avoided it? He had the "warning" in his hot little papal hands. The whole thing is infantile.

You have to hand it to the Catholic Church however, they sure know how to sell blue sky, or bluing sky, to the willing buyer.