Why Not Nineveh 40?

There's a new traddy-masculinist meme going around called Nineveh 90, a sort of exercise in group discipline for overcoming habitual sin and preparing for the centennial of the first apparition of the Blessed Virgin in Portugal. It is being organized by a certain priest, Richard Heilman. I'm not one to look down on these "Let's build good habits together" movements, and the tie to the Fatima devotion is not a terrible way to set something up, but I couldn't help notice that the N90 Challenge begins Feb. 13, the day after Septuagesima Sunday, and ends May 13, the day before the Fourth Sunday of Easter.

Now, I understand that the building of good habits takes time, effort, and repetition, but the 90-day commitment includes penances like avoiding alcohol, sweets, television, and non-uplifting music, whatever that means. (Why not include abstinence from the marriage bed—a popular medieval penance—while they're at it?) It's all well and good for Catholic men to be using the season of Lent for their penitential overtures, but Easter is celebrated on April 16 this year. Will they continue their penitential habit-building while the rest of the Church is feasting the Resurrection of Our Lord? Or will they be doing extra penances when Lent starts, and only cease those at Easter?

Compounding this confusion is the reference to God's judgment that the prophet Jonas preached against the wicked city of Nineveh: "In forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown." I fear that Fr. Heilman has let the findings of pop-psychology get the better of him by ignoring the number of penitential days in the very text he bases this meme upon!

I would not care much about N90 if I didn't know many Catholics trying to talk me into joining them. It's disheartening that I cannot yet convince them that the liturgical year takes precedence over psychological trends and devotions to private revelations. Will they be doing penance during Eastertide? On Easter Sunday itself? Somehow, I do not think that Our Lady of Fatima would be pleased.

And besides, nobody's going to convince me to start wearing the miniature Carmelite habit again.

Here at the End of All Things

With the centennial of the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Fatima rapidly approaching, a fresh round of eschatological predictions have begun in the traddosphere and beyond. While I’m a bit of a wet blanket on the Fatima Parade, I can’t ignore the historical significance of the Mother of God initiating a major celestial sign seen even by blasphemers and unbelievers. The hundredth anniversary of her appearances would not be an unreasonable time for her to reappear and remind us of our duties towards God.

I grew up in an atmosphere of calm, Protestant assurance that the End Times, they were a-comin’. My family’s bookshelves were filled with prophetic insights into the events of the 1970s and 80s, with authors like Hal Lindsey, Salem Kirban, and Jack Chick forming the apocalyptic imagination of my childhood. The creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 was considered a special sign that God was preparing to wrap things up in a big way, and all that was left was to get a few other political powers in place. Dispensationalist Zionism survives into the new millennium in large part because of the shockingly successful Left Behind series of novels, but also because world events continue to provide raw material for terrifying speculations.

We Catholics have our own forms of eschatological speculation, although there are so many schools of thought that a newcomer can scarcely make heads or tails of them. Aside from a few clear doctrines like the Resurrection of the Dead and the Final Judgment, most of the details are up for grabs. There will be a great apostasy towards the end, and the Antichrist is likely to be a final individual opponent of Christ and his Church. Some of the other beliefs—the three days of darkness, the coming chastisement, the great monarch—are all fascinating but far less certain.

When I came into the Church, I intentionally ignored the internal eschatological speculations as much as possible, having decided that I had had my fill of those in my younger years. But an intense interest in the Second Coming is not necessarily intellectual restlessness; it is a yearning for the hope of our deliverance from this world of death and defeat. The world is a burden to us, even though it is often joyful and enlightening. Too much does this world drag us down, too much are we disillusioned by Church politics and world politics, too much are we exhausted from fighting our own concupiscence. We hear so many stories of our brethren in other parts of the world suffering and dying for the Faith, and we greatly desire the hope of Christ’s return to put an end to the futility of this life. It is a virtuous desire to see ultimate Justice have its Day.

And when he broke the fifth seal, I saw there, beneath the altar, the souls of all who had been slain for love of God’s word and of the truth they held, crying out with a loud voice, “Sovereign Lord, the holy, the true, how long now before thou wilt sit in judgement, and exact vengeance for our blood from all those who dwell on earth?” (Apoc. 6)

I do not know if the formulations of eschatological timelines is wisdom or mere idleness, but the fulfillment of Our Lady’s warnings of war should be enough for us to take her seriously. The fact that the centennial of her appearance coincides with the 500-year anniversary of Fr. Luther’s reformation should also give us pause, as should the Holy Father’s celebration of this event. We do not know what events are already in motion, whether in preparation for the end of all things, or for a temporal judgment against “those who have mastery of the world in these dark days” (Eph. 6).

The end times will not be lovely, and they will not be pleasant to live through, but our desire must always be set towards them. The final prayer of Holy Writ—“Come, Lord Jesus”—should be our constant prayer, as well. Come now in our souls, and come again to end this world.

Fatima, Chiliasm, and Russia—“Oh My (Jesus)!”

I have rarely paid much attention to the apparitions in Fatima or in other places, but a recent conversation with a devoted priest and Fatima’s upcoming centennial has gotten me reconsidering some of the things said there by the Blessed Virgin. The transcription of her discourse on war by Sr. Lucia is of particular interest to many Fatima devotees:

If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The [First World] war is going to end; if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI.... In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

The “period of peace” has been interpreted many ways, some reaching absurd heights. Even though the context clearly refers to peace in terms of a rest from war and military aggression, many interpret it as a worldwide conversion of men to the True Faith. “So, the period of peace to be given to mankind can only mean the peace of Christ reigning in the hearts of men,” says one commentator.

This borders on the ancient error of Millenarianism or Chiliasm, which posited that Christ would return bodily to earth and reign gloriously but carnally from Jerusalem for one thousand years before the Resurrection and Final Judgment. While the Fatimite Millennials do not say that the Second Coming will come before the “period of peace,” some of them argue for the rise of the Great Catholic Monarch who will rule over this period. This monarch is a French figure predicted by a few saints, but never given much credence by Church authorities.

It is more reasonable to think that the prophesied “period of peace” will be a more worldly kind of peace: a cessation from war but probably without a revival of anything resembling Christendom. Russia will be converted—supposedly to the Catholic Faith, and not to Russian Orthodoxy—which will certainly be a miracle all of its own.

Will this actually happen? Is Fatima only a private revelation that can be ignored? Did the popes heavily edit all of the three shepherd children’s messages so that we don’t really know what all Mary said? Oh, these are all questions far above my paygrade.

I would, however, enjoy having an excuse to be rid of the “Oh my Jesus” prayer at the end of every Rosary decade. The church ladies are unable to pray it aloud without infusing the opening phrase with as much emotion as their mantilla-draped hearts can muster. (The Portuguese original begins with “Ó meu bom Jesus,” but the official Latin text starts with “Domine Iesu,” stripping out some of the latent sentimentality. Let’s fix the English according to the textum Latinum!) However, as long as I accept the longstanding tradition that the Second Eve bestowed the Rosary to the Church by means of a private revelation, I suppose must accept her right to amend it by the same means 700 years later.

St. Dominic, do your thing!

Open Question: Where Do We Stand?

First a note to Marko, who asked for an exposé on the un-Romanized Cistercian Missal. I found a scan of a Missale Cisterciense from 1606, thirty-one years prior to the Romanization. The text is very legible and I could certainly do a series on it after I finish the Gallican rites and a short series of posts I have planned on a few early figures in the emerging traditionalist movement. 

Now, where do we stand with regard to private apparitions? The Rad Trad asks because these apparitions have proliferated in the last two centuries and, with very few exceptions, all seem to follow a particular pattern: the Blessed Virgin Mary comes to someone young, tells him or her that God wants something to happen, there is a word about the Pope, and, sometimes, instructions to institute some sort of devotion on a specific day of the week or month.

A common feature of these apparitions is that people use them as banners for their own political causes or theological opinions. Case in point, Fatima. Everyone who has spent time with traditionalist Roman Catholics knows that a significant portion of them have a strong penchant for Fatima and has realized that the message of Fatima is somewhat fungible. Everyone from the respectable "indult" Mass goer to the FSSPX "hardliner" to the sedevacantist can reasonably lay claim the general points of Fatima, that God is punishing the Church by taking away the Mass for the failure of Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI etc. to compel the bishops of the world to do some sort of consecration regarding Russia. Traditionalists look to Fatima to explain bad bishops and the absence of 1962 Masses, but they are not alone in looking to Fatima. More mainstream Catholics occasionally countenance Fatima for violence in the world and the spread of Communism. Recently I was treated to an apocalyptic sermon by a Ukrainian deacon certain that Russia's theft of Crimea pointed to the immanence of the last days.

Another issue with these apparitions is that they can be coupled together to create new messages. Archbishop Lefebvre was fond of La Salette ("Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of anti-Christ") and his ordinand, Richard Williamson, favors Akita. To a baroque minded Roman Catholic the relationship between Fatima and La Salette would be self-evident: the Pope did not carry out the Russia request, so God has punished the Church by allowing Rome—and hence the Church, because in the baroque perspective there is little distinction on this matter—to lose the faith and the Mass. To a Ukrainian Catholic, or a Melkite, or someone with a medieval mindset this interpretation would not work. And to a mainstream Roman Catholic La Salette would be "approved," but also "far off" or "not happening now."

So which is it? Who is right? Are any of them right? Does it even matter to us? Opinions on the nature of apparitions even varies. The Church calls them "private" revelations because they are not part of the deposit of faith and because Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle, who according to tradition was St. John the Evangelist. I have heard one priest say that while Fatima is optional, it is not really optional. Another took a middle ground, almost to say "Whatever helps you." Recently I was told of a very medieval priest named Ronald Silk who absolutely refused these sorts of devotional apparitions.

Some readers might be aware of a lesser known approved apparition in Knock, Ireland. It is compelling both in what it is and what it is not. As the story goes, a dozen or so people witnessed several radiant white figures: a lamb on a table-like altar with a cross behind it, and to the left Ss. Mary, Joseph, and John; moved, the seers prayed the Rosary in the rain for hours. No end times messages, no popes, no new devotions. Just prayer. Does the Rad Trad believe it? No idea, but the circumstances and non-message were certainly counter-cultural at the time.

One last time: where do we stand on this?