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The Lady of Fatima: Has Mary Appeared in Visions?
Christian Research Institute ^ | Hank Hanegraaff

Posted on 02/19/2010 11:32:44 PM PST by bogusname

THE LADY OF FATIMA- Introduction Some Roman Catholics believe that Mary, the mother of Christ, has actually appeared to people in places like Fatima and Medjugorje. Well, did she?

THE LADY OF FATIMA- Biblical? In evaluating the alleged appearances of Mary, our primary concern would be to determine whether these apparitions are indeed biblical. Interestingly enough, these “Marian apparitions” (as they are commonly referred to) are inextricably woven together with the official Catholic teachings about Mary which, by the way, is known as Mariology. In fact, it would be fair to say that Catholic Mariology is the very foundation of Marian apparitions. It’s been well said that a structure is only as solid as its foundation; and in looking at Marian apparitions, we need to examine the integrity of this whole concept referred to as Catholic Mariology.

(Excerpt) Read more at equip.org ...


TOPICS: Catholic; General Discusssion
KEYWORDS: agendadrivenfreeper; blessedvirginmary; bvm; catholic; catholicwhiners; fatima; mary; olfatima; virginmary
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To: HarleyD

No kidding $10,000? It can’t be Mary. I know full well she wouldn’t show up just to give someone the shaft.


21 posted on 02/20/2010 5:09:21 AM PST by bogusname (Banish All Liberals)
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To: HarleyD

The article posted along with this posting seems, at least to me, to be anti-Catholic to the extreme. This, of course, is anybody’s right. This, however. does tend to lend a sense of high urgency on the part of the author of this article to try to create an environment to relegate the Catholic Church to no more than a raging insignificant and illegal organization.

Nihil dictum est, non-dictum est.


22 posted on 02/20/2010 5:15:10 AM PST by tenthirteen
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To: Salvation

Being a ‘Momma’s boy’ myself, I get offended when heretics, who don’t have the slightest idea what they are talking about, start insulting the Mother of God.

Devotion to Our Lady reaches back far into the church. Even before the revolt. One of the Father’s of Heresy, Martin Luther, had a devotion to Mary.

Since we are talking about apparitions, I was recently studying on Our Lady of good success. Our Lady had some interesting things to say about the 20th century, when she appeared back in the late 1600’s.

http://www.olrl.org/prophecy/goodsuccess.shtml

The Rosary is the weapon!


23 posted on 02/20/2010 5:19:32 AM PST by Cap'n Crunch (Rush Limbaugh, the Winston Churchill of our time)
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To: bogusname

You wrote:

“I have even deeper and much more complicated questions.”

I doubt that.


24 posted on 02/20/2010 5:24:14 AM PST by vladimir998 (Part of the Vast Catholic Conspiracy (hat tip to Kells))
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Comment #25 Removed by Moderator

To: Cap'n Crunch

“The Rosary is the weapon!”
No. The rosary is idolatry. You are praying to another god. Mary cannot hear your prayers. She’s dead. We will see her in heaven, but she is just an obedient human, and nothing special.

She must weep to see people elevating her to a false goddess.


26 posted on 02/20/2010 5:38:02 AM PST by Cyclops08
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To: Salvation

Pray the Rosary daily for peace. Very simple message.

Jesus instructed, “when you pray, pray like this...’our father.’ “

Pray to God, not a human.

MH recital of fact.


27 posted on 02/20/2010 5:46:14 AM PST by BannedinBostonx ( love. ...and myob. be that shining city on a hill -- rr4ever!)
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To: bogusname

Your young men shall have visions and your old men shall dream dreams.

I have no problem with visions and dreams.


28 posted on 02/20/2010 6:38:07 AM PST by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It! Those who support our troops pray for their victory!)
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To: tenthirteen
The article posted along with this posting seems, at least to me, to be anti-Catholic to the extreme.

I wouldn't look on it as "anti-Catholic". Instead I would look on it as pro-Protestant. Perspective does matter.

29 posted on 02/20/2010 6:50:48 AM PST by HarleyD
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To: Cyclops08

All accurate and valid points. Thanks for that excellent post.


30 posted on 02/20/2010 6:54:20 AM PST by bogusname (Banish All Liberals)
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To: agere_contra
I don't see at all that he was referencing the gospels alone as he did say, "writings produced by members of the catholic church."

They,(non-catholics)implicitly trust the choices made by the Church. As you have stated is not necessarily the case. Many do not agree with the catholic churches choices and or decisions on numerous things which I think you'll see on this thread.

One thing which disturbs me about the catholic membership and clergy is that if one disagrees with the dogmas and rituals etc. of their church they are anti-catholic. I for one am not anti-catholic but I do disagree with many of their practices and claims. It just seems if you are catholic you must abide and believe in what the church determines moreso than what Christ Himself has determined...or in fact has warned against.

31 posted on 02/20/2010 10:10:31 AM PST by caww
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To: bogusname
These apparitions are not from God.

In your "learned" opinion.

32 posted on 02/20/2010 10:11:38 AM PST by A.A. Cunningham (Barry Soetoro is a Kenyan communist)
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To: Cyclops08
Publicly flaunting one's ignorance is not a character trait you should be proud of.

I am a former catholic. I left.

Good riddance.

33 posted on 02/20/2010 10:17:33 AM PST by A.A. Cunningham (Barry Soetoro is a Kenyan communist)
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To: Cyclops08

Yes, I pretty much can agree with your view of the grave errors in the catholic church.

As well I tend to think the over-load of information, numerous rites, and barrage of relics and focus on these has caused a moving away from the centrality of Christ.

I visited the Vatican website for quite awhile recently....admiring some of the photo shots of cathedrals etc. (I appreciate old buildings.) But it was very disturbing to notice several shots of their pope ‘crowning’ a life sized figure of Mary in the center of the square there...and the pope bowing before this statue. There were other shots of popes who also did so at various statues of Mary. Just very disturbing to say the least. It’s as though she has become the queen to the pope and the go to personhead over and above Christ.


34 posted on 02/20/2010 10:42:44 AM PST by caww
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Comment #35 Removed by Moderator

To: Cap'n Crunch
One of the Father’s of Heresy, Martin Luther, had a devotion to Mary.

While Catholic no less! Heresy? As a Catholic he would have been familiar with it.

36 posted on 02/20/2010 10:52:00 AM PST by xone
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To: BannedinBostonx

“Jesus instructed, ‘when you pray, pray like this...”our father.” “

I’m not sure if you know this or not, but there are six “our father” prayers said in a standard 5 decade rosary.

Freegards


37 posted on 02/20/2010 11:28:04 AM PST by Ransomed (Son of Ransomed Says Keep the Faith!)
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To: Cyclops08

Excellent. The parallel heretical religious system is antichrist.


38 posted on 02/20/2010 11:51:46 AM PST by esquirette (If we do not know our own worldview, we will accept theirs.)
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To: Cyclops08

“”Catholics have added so much bogus bologna to the Bible its ridiculous.””

Do you not realize that your Bible is from inspired tradition of the Catholic Church and the Church predates the New Testament? Thus,all dogmatic Catholic teaching is just as inspired by God as the tradition of the Bible itself

Here is lesson for you from the late Blessed Fulton Sheen...

“When finally the Gospels were written, they recorded a tradition; they did not create it. It was already there. After a while men had decided to put in writing this living tradition and voice, which explains the beginning of the Gospel of Luke: “That thou mayest know the verity of those words in which thou hast been instructed.” The Gospels did not start the Church; the Church started the Gospels. The Church did not come out of the Gospels; the Gospels came out of the Church.

The Church preceded the New Testament, not the New Testament the Church. First there was not a Constitution of the United States, and then Americans, who in the light of that Constitution decided to form a government and a nation. The Founding Fathers preceded the Foundation; so the Mystical Body of Christ preceded the reports written later by inspired secretaries. And incidentally, how do we know the Bible is inspired? It does not say so! Matthew does not conclude his Gospel saying: “Be sure to read Mark; he is inspired, too.” Furthermore, the Bible is not a book. It is a collection of seventy-two books in all. It is worth opening a Bible to see if we have them all and have not been cheated. These widely scattered books cannot bear witness to their own inspiration. It is only by something outside the Bible that we know it is inspired. We will not go into that point now, but it is worth looking into.
When finally the Gospels were written, they did not prove what Christians believed, nor did they initiate that belief; they merely recorded in a systematic manner what they already knew. Men did not believe in the Crucifixion because the Gospels said there was a Crucifixion; they wrote down the story of the Crucifixion, because they already believed in it. The Church did not come to believe in the Virgin Birth because the Gospels tell us there is a Virgin Birth; it was because the living word of God in His Mystical Body already believed it that they set it down in the Gospels.

A second fact to be remembered is that this Mystical Body of Christ has a memory, as we have a memory. If our physical life extends back forty-five years, we can remember two world wars. We speak of them as a living witness, not from the books written but from having lived through them, and maybe through having fought in them. We may later on have read the books about these two world wars. Yet they are not the beginning of our knowledge but only a recalling or a deepening of what we already knew. In like manner, Our Lord is the Head of the new humanity, the new fellowship, or the spiritual organism that St. Paul calls His Mystical Body. To this Mystical Body Christ is associated, first in His Apostles, and then in all who believed in Him throughout the centuries. This Body, too, has a memory, reaching back to Christ. It knows that the Resurrection is true because she, the Church, was there. The cells of our body change every seven years, but we are the same personality. The cells of the Mystical Body, which we are, too, may change every fifty or sixty years; yet it is still Christ that lives in that Body.

The Church knows that Christ rose from the dead and that the Spirit descended on the Apostles on Pentecost because the Church was there from the beginning. The Church has a memory of over nineteen hundred years, and this memory is called tradition. The Apostles’ Creed, which was an accepted formula in the Church around the year 100 and which summed up the Apostles’ teaching, is as follows:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell; the third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into Heaven, sitteth at the right Hand of God, the Father Almighty, from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Note the words “conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.” The truths expressed in the Creed were essential for entrance into the Church. Everyone who was baptized early into Christ’s Mystical Body believed in each of these truths. The Virgin Birth was as much an accepted Truth as the Resurrection in the first Christian centuries.
There is not one single quotation of the Gospels in the Creed. The early members of the Church were recording the early Christian tradition, of which the Gospels were only the literary expression. There are also several volumes of writings from within the first hundred years of the life of Our Lord; for example, the writing of St. Clement, one of the successors of St. Peter, who wrote in the year 92; and also Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, one of the successors of John the Evangelist; and Irenaeus, who names the twelve bishops of Rome; and Ignatius of Antioch, who said that he wanted to be “ground like wheat between the jaws of lions to be a living bread for His Savior.”

Many of these writers do not quote the Gospels. We have fifteen hundred lines from Clement, and yet only two texts of his are from the New Testament; he was recording the Christian beliefs, accepted by the witnesses of Christ. Polycarp quotes the Gospel only three times, for he lived on familiar terms with many who had seen Our Lord, and he wrote what he knew and had learned from the Apostles. Ignatius of Antioch (who lived within seventy years of the life of Our Lord) wrote: “Our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived of the Holy Spirit… and was truly born of a virgin.”

There is a double evidence from which we can draw, to learn true Christian teaching: one is the revealed Word of God in the Scriptures—the other is the continuous teaching of the Church from the very beginning, that is, her living memory. Just as lawyers, in proving a point, use not only the bare statement of law but also the way the courts have understood and interpreted that law, so too, the Scriptures are not a dead letter but are living and breathing in the beautiful context of a spiritual fellowship.

In the year 108, there were still many living who had been boys when Our Lord was crucified—who as young men saw and conversed with the Apostles before they were martyred—and who, in scattered parts of the Roman Empire, were already familiar with the Christian tradition passed on through the Church. Some of the other Apostles were not martyred until later—John did not die until the year 100. Some of these early writers were closer to John and other Apostles than we are to World War I. And this much is certain: if the Apostles, who lived with Our Lord and who heard Him speak on the open hills and in the temple—who listened to Him preach on the Kingdom of God forty days after His Resurrection—did not teach the Virgin Birth, no one else would have taught it. It was too unusual an idea for men to make up; it would have been ordinarily too difficult for acceptance if it had not come from Christ Himself!” -Archbishop Fulton Sheen


39 posted on 02/20/2010 12:27:16 PM PST by stfassisi ((The greatest gift God gives us is that of overcoming self"-St Francis Assisi)))
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Comment #40 Removed by Moderator


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