The theology that I studied in the eighties, in a Jesuit university, was noticeably positivist, and it has greatly influenced my way of understanding the faith and God’s actions in human history. Even up to today, I can still remember some of the maxims that are engraved in my mind and that at any moment, act as a benchmark to measure and evaluate the things of God in a way that is perhaps too rationalistic, where Fatima would certainly not belong.
Faith is a reasonable gift – This is the definition of faith given by the First Vatican Council. It is true that faith cannot be rational, but it has to be humanly credible and plausible. If this is not the case, then it is not faith, but superstition. Because God created us as rational beings, He cannot ask us to sacrifice reason entirely in order to believe in Him.
The extraordinary within the ordinary – The extraordinary does not occur extraordinarily, that is, in a dazzling and objectively obvious way in everyone’s eyes so that faith is not needed to believe. On the contrary, the extraordinary happens within the ordinary, in a hidden way that is only perceivable or visible through the eyes of faith.
God does not infringe on the laws of nature – If God created the laws of nature then it will not be Him who will break them first. During my days as a theology student, with this maxim, we sanctioned many of the miracles that Jesus did in the Gospels and sought more plausible explanations for them. For example, the multiplication of the loaves was a miracle of sharing, because many had most probably brought their own provisions.
God does not interfere – God neither punishes nor rewards; he does not interfere in the lives of men; he lets them roam and fare freely. He is not a fireman who comes to put out the fire; should an intervention be needed, He would do it indirectly in a discreet and mysterious way, through mediators inspired by Him, but never directly.
Resurrected was the doctrine not the person – The highest exponent in positivist theology can maybe be found in the Protestant theologian Rudolf Bultmann’s theory on the resurrection of Christ. For him what was raised from the dead was not the person of Jesus of Nazareth, but the "kerygma", Jesus’ doctrine, for being truly revolutionary. Saint Paul would certainly oppose this theologian by saying: if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. (1 Corinthians 15:17)
I also recall in those days the existence of a certain theological schizophrenia; the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of faith, he in whom we believe, were not the same person. In fact, they were studied as two different subject matters and taught by two different teachers, Jesus of Nazareth was studied in Christology and the Christ of faith was studied in Dogmatic Christology.
“A todos los tontos se les aparece la virgem” – A Spanish expression that I heard many times during my years at a university in Madrid. It means: all fools claim to have seen the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is a fact that many of the supernatural experiences, that some people claim to have had, are nothing but manifestations of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. That is why there is this expression to dispel all types of paranormal phenomena.
“It was not the Church that imposed Fatima on the faithful but it was Fatima that imposed itself on the Church!”
Many years have already passed since I studied theology, and life and experience have led me to review some of these positions. For one thing, there are miracles that, for all we know, seem to contradict the laws of nature; it is true that God created these laws, but it is also true that His actions ought not to be limited by them. There is no sense in God creating His own limitations or being limited by anything that He Himself has created.
Even science itself does not look at the laws of nature within the framework of the mechanist physics of Newton. According to Newton, nature by its laws functioned like a precise clock. Afterward, Einstein with his quantum mechanics blew away the determinism of the laws of nature, and they are now understood as not being fixed, certain and absolute. Furthermore, in the laws of nature, the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg substituted the inflexible certainty for fluctuant probability.
What all this means is that things may indeed happen the way we have always seen them happening, but there is still a chance that they may not happen the way we have envisioned thus far. The determinism of Newton’s physics is substituted by chance in quantum physics.
Within the frame of mind of Newton’s physics, it was very difficult to understand miracles since these seem always to go against the laws of nature. However, everything changes when we try to conceptualize miracles within the frame of mind of quantum physics. Trying to understand miracles within the framework of this advanced physics, it then becomes clearer that not only can they happen, but they even do so without contradicting the laws of nature. Therefore the only thing we need to change is our understanding of these laws.
In so doing, it makes it easier for us to understand that the extraordinary can indeed occur extraordinarily. This is the frame of mind by which we can understand and accept the miraculous events that took place in Fatima, Lourdes, and Guadalupe and in hundreds of other private revelations throughout history.
The phrase quoted above was first said by Cardinal Cerejeira of Portugal in 1943 and has since been repeated by many people, including popes. It is probably because it encompasses the experience, or the change of position, of many people with respect to the revelation at Fatima. This is the very same process I myself followed: Fatima imposed itself on me by the depth and meaning of its message and by the candor, simplicity, and goodness of the three young seers, Jacinta who was only 7, her cousin and intimate friend Lucia was 10, and her beloved brother Francisco was 9.
In the midst of the generalized war in Europe with the tragic participation of Portugal and in the social national context of an illuminist and atheistic republican revolution whose purpose was to secularize the society, a beam of light breaks out from the sky.
The supernatural erupts into the natural; the extraordinary takes place extraordinarily to bring life and to strengthen the small battered flock of Christians who fell victims to the wolves of rationalism and atheism and to confuse these very same atheists, leaving them stunned in amazement before a reality they could not understand as it did not conform to their prejudiced ideologies.
The “ignorant” confuse the sage
“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” (Matthew 11:25)
As much in the message as in the message bearers, Fatima follows the paradigm of the Gospel to reveal to the poor and the ignorant those things that still today confound the wise theologians, whose rationalism aims to limit the action of God.
And again, the very same paradigm of the Gospel is also followed with regards to the identity of the message bearers of Fatima –shepherds were the first ones who saw God becoming man in Bethlehem, and shepherds were Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, the seers and message bearers of Fatima.
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) – Since the message bearers were children, only those who are children in the evangelical sense can understand. Fatima only makes sense to the simple of hearts and to those disarmed of intellectual prejudices.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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