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I do not know what opinions the Greek Church may have of the events at Fatima (the same name as the daughter of the Prophet, BTW. Hmmm.) in 1917. But I think this element of the so-called "third secret", though particularly apt, has not received the attention it deserves:

"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 splendor 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!'.

Because justification and grace can never proceed from evil, there is no way that the moral failures of the West can have justified the terrorists' acts of last week. Similarly, the horror of their crimes in no way cancels or justifies our pre-existing guilt in a way that would license us to wreak indiscriminate destruction on other innocents.

I have been reading Jeremiah this week. Jeremiah was not a team player. In the hour of crisis, Jeremiah declined to play the booster. He did not preach "Don't worry; be happy"; instead he condemned the sinful ways of God's people, and was for his trouble was deemed a traitor. Even though the Lord eventually saw to the destruction of Babylon, in his wisdom and providence he did not forbear first to employ them as a chastisement to a people gone astray. Looking at this week's pictures of a desolate lower Manhattan, I could not dismiss from my mind the biblical Lamentation for the desolate Jerusalem.

It is perhaps all the more incumbent upon us to consider how the wage a righteous war because attention to Christian godliness in these circumstances may recall the West to righteousness more generally.

Does almost every business in your area have "God bless America" on their marquee like they do in mine? I wonder whether the unwilling entry of America into a war of religion (which this is whether we think of it as such or not) will lead to a revival of faith and an end to the corrosive secularization of our society.

On your other point: In the East we tend to take a dim view of Western Marian visions which do not specifically recall Christians to faith in Christ, but call for more Marian devotion. (You know, of course, we love Our Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, too.)

I do not know what opinions the Greek Church may have of the events at Fatima (the same name as the daughter of the Prophet, BTW. Hmmm.) in 1917

Not a coincidence. Fatima was the daughter of the last Moslem ruler of Portugal, and was indeed named after the daughter of the Prophet. In adulthood, she converted to Christianity and married a local Christian landowner, who renamed the village of his birth in her honor. Hence, "Fatima".