Catholic Replies
Q. I have often heard about the Third Secret of Fatima, including the attempt on Pope John Paul’s life and an apostasy from the faith. I have never seen the actual text of Sr. Lucia’s written document on this. Could you please print the text of her statement? — R.M., via e-mail.
A. During her apparition to the three children at Fatima on July 13, 1917, the Blessed Mother revealed three secrets, two of them spoken by her and the third a series of images seen by the children.
The first part of the secret was a vision of Hell, “where the souls of poor sinners go,” said our Lady. “To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.” She then taught the children a prayer to be said after each decade of the rosary: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of Hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy.”
The second part of the secret was our Lady’s warnings about World War II, which would be preceded by an “unknown light” during the pontificate of Pope Pius XI, who reigned from 1922 to 1939, and the rise of Communism. She called 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.”
Regarding the third part of the secret, which was not revealed until 2000, Sr. Lucia wrote as follows:
“After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’
“And we saw in an immense light that is God ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it,’ a Bishop dressed in White. ‘We had the impression that it was the Holy Father.’ Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark.
“Before reaching there, the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions.
“Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels, each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.”
Pope John Paul interpreted this vision as referring to the assassination attempt on his life on May 13, 1981, the anniversary of the Blessed Mother’s first appearance to the children at Fatima 64 years earlier. The reason he was not killed, the Holy Father said later, was that the Blessed Mother’s hand guided the bullet away from what would have been a fatal path. That bullet was subsequently set in a crown on the statue of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal.
Following the release of the text of the Third Secret, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the future Pope Benedict XVI, published a lengthy commentary on the content of the secret, which can be read on the Internet (type in “Third Secret of Fatima”) or in such books as Fr. Andrew Apostoli’s Fatima for Today and Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone’s The Last Secret of Fatima. At the end of his commentary, Cardinal Ratzinger said:
“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 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.”
Still there are those who do not believe that the whole Third Secret was revealed, that what Cardinal Ratzinger called “exciting apocalyptic revelations” were kept from the faithful. Asked in 2001, four years before her death, whether any part of the secret had not been made known, Sr. Lucia replied: “Everything has been published; there are no more secrets. If I had received new revelations, I would not have communicated them to anyone, but I would have told them directly to the Holy Father.”
Q. At a recent daily Mass, there were two choices for the first reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. Choice one (5:21-33) included Paul’s statement that “wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord,” but option two (5:25-32) left out that verse. Is there a way that the first selection can be explained so it doesn’t seem to put women down? — K.R., Connecticut.
A. We think so. There is no question that men over the centuries have used these verses to put women down and treat them as slaves, but they were wrong and sinful to do so. Thus, Pope John Paul, in his 1995 Letter to Women, said that he was “truly sorry” for this mistreatment of women and said that the time had come to set “women free from every kind of exploitation and domination” (n. 3).
But what about St. Paul’s remarks? First of all, the first option above is preferable because it says in verse 21 that husbands and wives should “be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.” So it’s supposed to be a mutual submission of both spouses, not one lording it over the other. Oftentimes, people begin this reading with verse 22, which says that “wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.”
Second, what does it mean to be subordinate or, in other translations, “submissive”? It means that wives should put themselves under the mission of their husbands, which is to serve them in the same way that Christ served the Church. Paul says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church. How did Christ show His love for the Church? He died for her. And so husbands are supposed to have that same sacrificial love for their wives. In summary, said Paul, “each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband” (Eph. 5:33).
As Christopher West said in his book Good News About Sex and Marriage, “What woman would not want to be submissive to her husband if he truly took his mission seriously to love her as Christ loved the Church? Those husbands who insist on having their wives take this Bible passage to heart ought first to take it to heart themselves.”
Q. Apparently there will not be any more Purgatory after Christ comes again at the end of time. Thus, it would appear that those people in God’s grace at that time will have suffered their Purgatory on earth prior to the Second Coming. Your comments, please. — R.B.K., Virginia.
A. You are right that there will be no Purgatory after the Second Coming — only Heaven or Hell — so those who would normally be candidates for Purgatory will undergo some kind of purification before the end. It could be having to experience the “great tribulation” described by Jesus in chapter 24 of Matthew’s Gospel. Those will be scary days!
