Editor’s Note: Despite statements from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that the entire Third Secret of Fatima was made public by Pope John Paul II in 2000, some have continued to insist that part of the secret was suppressed.
A recent example appearing in a blog said that a German priest named Fr. Ingo Dollinger claimed that then-Cardinal Ratzinger had told him shortly after the secret was published that part of the message was still secret.
On May 21 of this year, the Vatican Press Office published a communiqué from now retired Pope Benedict XVI, the former Cardinal Ratzinger, which denied the claim. “In this regard,” said the communiqué, “Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI declares ‘never to have spoken with Professor Dollinger about Fatima,’ clearly affirming that the remarks attributed to Professor Dollinger on the matter ‘are pure inventions, absolutely untrue,’ and he confirms decisively that the ‘publication of the Third Secret of Fatima is complete’.”
Q. Has the Church made an official statement regarding the transgender controversy? — G.M., Massachusetts.
A. We saw a cartoon recently that shows a doctor holding up a newborn baby and the mother asking, “Is it a boy or a girl?” The doctor responds, “We’ll have to wait until the child decides.” That cartoon wouldn’t even have made sense a year or two ago, but now it illustrates a serious problem facing our society: Who decides a person’s gender — the person or the God who made human beings “male and female,” according to the Book of Genesis? Can a person who is born male or female choose later on to identify as a member of the opposite sex?
In his recent apostolic exhortation The Joy of Love, Pope Francis warned about an “ideology of gender” that denies the sexual differences between men and women. He said that “it is one thing to be understanding of human weakness and the complexities of life and another to accept ideologies that attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality. Let us not fall into the sin of trying to replace the Creator.”
The Holy Father said that “we are creatures and not omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created” (n. 56).
Q. Our church does not use salt in the blessing of the holy water. Is this a norm that the pastor or deacon has the option to use? — M.A.W., Illinois.
A. Yes, adding salt to holy water is an option, although it was a customary practice in the past. Here is how the custom is explained in the Encyclopedia of Catholic Devotions and Practices by Ann Ball:
“Holy water is ordinary water sanctified by the blessing of the Church. The blessing consists of exorcisms of water and salt; the salt is added to the water in the form of a cross to signify that this water is now preserved from corruption. The practice of putting salt into the water comes from the incident of the miraculous cure of the poisonous well where the prophet Elisha used salt to purify the water of a well (see 2 Kings 2:19-22).”
Q. In a recent column, Raymond De Souza said that among the preternatural gifts that Adam and Eve received was that of integrity. How could Eve have had integrity if she gave in (and seemingly so quickly) to the serpent? And, while we’re at it, how did either Adam or Eve know what it would have meant to die? — C.W., Minnesota.
A. In the May 12 column you referenced, Raymond De Souza said that integrity is defined as “completeness, the absence of every defect, perfection of nature. Man had complete control over his feelings and sensations, having consequently no inclination to evil. The inclinations of the flesh, or instincts, which man shares with animals, were completely under the control of his mind. It was what is called a state of innocence, whereby his will was united and subject to God’s will. His soul and body were united in perfect order.”
But while Adam and Eve had been given many wonderful gifts, including that of integrity, they also had free will and, in the words of De Souza, they “managed to mess up the works. It is a mystery how or why they listened to that crawling liberal socialist who, like his descendants, made great promises and delivered nothing but misery, want, and unhappiness.” Here is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the Fall:
“Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience to God and lack of trust in his goodness. In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully ‘divinized’ by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to ‘be like God,’ but ‘without God, before God, and not in accordance with God.’ Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness. They become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted image — that of a God jealous of his prerogatives” (nn. 397-399).
As to how Adam and Eve knew what it meant to die, God must have given them some knowledge of what death meant when He told them. “You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and bad. From that tree you shall not eat; the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die” (Gen. 2:16-17). Our first parents were highly intelligent, which is why their sin was so grievous and why it impacted all of their descendants, and they would have understood clearly what God was telling them. That’s why they tried to hide from God, as if that were possible.
In a subsequent column on “The Meaning of Original Sin,” Raymond De Souza said that “Adam knew perfectly well that God had warned him of the consequence of his disobedience: He would die. Period. . . . [T]here was also an element of bad will, because Adam was not the victim of passion or caprice: He acted from cool reason and on full deliberation, which showed the calculated malice of his sin. . . . Adam was not an idiot. He knew perfectly well that he was not divine. He knew that God, his creator and master, had laid down the rule of law. If you disobey, you will do evil and be punished by death.”
Q. The reading at Mass today from chapter 11 of Mark’s Gospel, when Jesus curses a fig tree, has always puzzled me. Mark says that Jesus went to the tree looking for some figs to eat, but He found nothing but leaves since “it was not the time for figs.” So why did He curse the tree, saying, “May no one ever eat of your fruit again”? — K.R., Connecticut.
A. Figs were common in Palestine and were a favorite fruit, but there were no figs on this tree because it was only April and figs didn’t appear until June. So why was Jesus so upset when He must have known there would be no fruit on the tree?
What He was doing was sending a message to Israel, a nation that was often symbolized by a fig tree. He was saying that the failure of the tree to produce fruit represented the failure of Israel to be fruitful in following God’s commands. It was a signal that Israel’s Temple worship and sacrifices were coming to an end and that their lack of faith would spell doom for them.
Mark tells us that Jesus then entered the city of Jerusalem and drove the money-changers and animal-sellers out of the Temple because they had turned a house of God into “a den of thieves.” He and the apostles then spent the night in Bethany and, when they were heading back to Jerusalem the next morning, they saw that the cursed fig tree had now withered to its roots. The tree was not only without fruit, it was dead, just like the Temple was dead. While beautiful and majestic from the outside, the Temple was rotted on the inside and would soon suffer the same fate as the fig tree when it would be destroyed by the Romans in AD 70.
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