2/25/2009

Fátima: Local Sagrado ou Festival Religioso. Por Uncle Monty.

Fátima:
Local Sagrado ou Festival Religioso.
Por Uncle Monty.
Fátima:
Sacred Shrine or Religious Roadshow?
By Uncle Monty.
Fátima Photography By Alex Albion.
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During his great and illustrious papacy, Pope
John Paul II personally visited the Nossa
Senhora do Rosário da Fátima or The Holy
Catholic Shrine of Fátima at Portugal. He
visited there at least three times during
his priestly and papal lifetime.
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As the Holy Father of the billion-plus faithful of the
Holy Roman Catholic Church, John Paul also brought
with him to Fátima the gun wounds from his assassin
who thankfully failed to kill him. And so to mark both
the first and tenth anniversaries of his God-given
survival against his assassin’s bullets, John Paul
came to Fátima twice more to pray and to give
much thanks for his spared life at where I
myself, just only two weeks ago and as an
avid Anglican, humbly stood in his wonderful
and forgiving footsteps. No wonder I saw
pilgrims crying - along with many others simply
kissing, hugging or touching - at the impressive
statue of the pre-eminent John Paul II
at Holy Fátima.
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At Holy Fátima, 2oo9.
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John Paul represents Holy Fátima at its
best and most worthy, but sadly today the
sacred and the secular fight for space and the
attention from the millions of Catholic people
who flock annually to Portugal’s world re-
nowned Holy Shrine of Fátima.
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The lines between the sacred and the secular
seem to me to be getting more blurred by
the day as one is confronted with what I call
a “religious roadshow” vs. a “sacred shrine.”
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This is evidenced by all the hundreds of tacky
trinket shops, the secular overkill of profiteering
from the sacred, the blantant commercialism,
the street hawkers shoving their restaurant
menus in your face only moments upon one's
first arrival at Holy Fátima, and the rip-off
prices for hotels (that can house upto 10,000
pilgrims per day) and shoddy food; and the local
shopping centres that are also on tasteless
overload of mass-produced “religious” and
tourist souvenirs and gifts that adds to the
sense of a "religious roadshow" above and
beyond the core essence to preserve Fátima
as a Holy place and as a foremost sacred
shrine of Global Catholicism.
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Just one of the umpteen trinket shops.
How many crucifixes does one need to pick?

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My good and dear Italian Catholic friend
Ida Negri, who has worked for 30 years
at London’s Royal Masonic Lodge as the
housekeeper there, told me that if I thought
Fátima was full of commercial bad taste, then
France's shrine at Lourdes was even worse.
As a devout Roman Catholic, Ida seems to
have visited just about every Catholic shrine
in the book. She says she was perturbed, and
at times disgusted, by what she saw as the
over commericalisation and the sense of
desecration at such shrines like Fátima and
Lourdes. Ida Negri added that fifteen years
or so ago, those same shrines were mostly
free of such commercial junk that now
grossly clutters such sacred places.
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In sharp contrast, however, was my visit
three years ago to the English Anglican-
Catholic shrine of Our Lady of Walshingham
with my dear Contessa Maria at where such
"non-sacred" junk is shunned and at where
the small shops there are small in number
with their tasteful selection of religious items
and gifts that are suitably and sensibly pre-
sented for pilgrims to choose from to pur-
chase without any kind of overkill or ill-
mannered hawking like I sadly saw at
Portugal's Holy Fátima. Walsingham is
presented in its proper sacred proportion,
while Fátima is presented in its commercial
disproportion, it seems to me as a plain old
Anglican. I simply reject overt commercial-
ism and over-retailing, no matter what,
in all its crude forms from London's £1.7
billion Westfield Mall to the masses of
junky Hong Kong imports of The French
Market at New Orleans. I admanently
reject such even more so at sacred and
holy shrines of whatever kind they
may be called.
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The "Three Little Seers of Fátima"
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I went first to Fátima with the intention of
spending some time in religious retreat, but
when I got there I quickly changed my mind
and realised I was not fully prepared emotion-
ally and spiritually to undergo such a three-
day retreat that I had planned. One reason
why, was that I could not find the “sacred
spirit” at Holy Fátima. After all, I first went
there to hopefully find symbols and traces
of sacredness and spiritual peace and quiet
prayer, but I found instead a tasteless and
tacky religious roadshow that should not be
there in the first place. There seemed to me
to be an hollowness of prayer and earnest
supplication all around me at what is billed
as "Holy" Fátima. There was no religious
fervour or flavour that excited me or in-
duced a sense of added religiosity to my own
Anglican faith that I had hoped I would find
and see at Fátima with its overwhelming
roots and history of Traditional Christianity.
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And it was hard, frankly, to get worked up
about anything to do with the world shrine of
Fátima save for its secular and commercial ob-
scenity that surely spoils the memory of those
three “Little Seers of Fátima,” who witnessed
astounding apparitions, so we're told, of
the BVM back in 1917. In that same year
of 1917, the birth of John F. Kennedy took
place in America and the rise of the bloody
Bolshevik Revolution took place behind the
Iron Curtain of Soviet Russia and her Red
Army. The British captured Baghdad and
Jerusalem. Also, The Balfour Declaration
proclaimed British support for a Jewish
national homeland in Palestine and at what
many now believe was at the tragic expense
of innocent Palestinian blood of then and of
today. Israel's vicious 2oo8 Christmas mili-
tary attack on Gaza speaks of that blood.
Now the selection of old-hand and ultra-
rightwing Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's
new Prime Minister will most likely drain
even more innocent blood out of the opp-
ressed and occupied Palestinian people.
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Fátima Statue of Controversial Pius XII.

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Back then in 1917, Fátima wasn’t even on the map other than being a Portuguese hamlet of no religious, social, political, commercial, national or international significance of any kind. But the "Three Little Seers of Fátima" dramatically and forever changed all of that.

Of the "Three Little Seers of Fátima," the two youngest ones - The Marto Cousins - at then ages 7 and 9 died within less than three years of seeing their apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM). They were then told they would die shortly, so Ida Negri informed me upon my return from Fátima. In the meantime, the oldest of the three seers Lucia lived to the ripe old age of over 90 years old and who visited the Fátima Shrine at least three times to then describe the apparitions she profoundly experienced for the depiction of planned oil paintings at the Holy Shrine.

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On entering the grounds of the Fátima Shrine, here are at least 12 things that you cannot do and they are prominently posted for the pilgrims and public to see and to adhere to: 1. Play no musical instruments; 2. No riding bicycles at the shrine; 3. No smoking; 3. No begging. 4. No use of cellphones or radio or MP3's; 6. No walking dogs; 7. No drinking; 8. No swearing; 9. No parking car; 10. No vandalism; 11. No shouting, and 12. NO PREACHING. Woooooooow. No preaching? How strange!!

At Fátima's Late Winter Saturday Evening, 2oo9.

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Above: Delicate bottles of Holy Water from Holy
Fátima that I gave as gifts back in England.
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Below: Uncle Monty at The Steps
of the Fátima Basilica.

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Holy Fátima is created by human minds and hands and is therefore imperfect with all its sad faults and human shortcomings. What surprised me abit about the shrine was the lack of seeing hardly a priest walking on the streets, except for perhaps a dozen or so nuns or religious sisters heading to their respective convents or secular residence for some of them. It was off-season, too, during my stay at Fátima and so the shrine was relatively quiet and free of the usual masses of pilgrims at times like Eastertide and Christmastide. Also, got alot of rain to help dampen things abit. I think a day or a day and half is plenty of time to see pretty much of everything that is Holy Fátima. You can walk pretty much the whole town from north, south, east and west, without the use of transportation. English is widely spoken at Holy Fátima. It takes about 1½ hours to get there directly from the Portuguese capital of Lisboa either by car or coach.
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I was glad I visited the world renowned shrine of Fátima, despite my anxiety and vexation of having to critically deal with the obvious and pressing issue of "Local Sagrado ou Festival Religisos" or "Sacred Shrine or Religious Roadshow?" My open criticism of Fátima, so it should be clearly understood, is not intended in anyway to slight or denigrate those of the Catholic faith. Far from it. I am by nature always a protester by being a Protestant by birth and rearing no matter how hard I try not to protest. When friends of mine tell me that they must be "Protestant" to stay Catholic, I always wonder why they stay Catholic instead of Protestant!?!? Someone recently stated that Protestants don't understand Catholic Shrines. But I myself do sometimes wonder why apparitions occur among the Catholic faithful, but not among the Protestants or other non-Catholic adherents? To me, apparitions and Catholicism are synonymous. Much like, I think, it is also seen with the rise of the Physical Phenomena of Stigmata, Christian religious sainthood and marked martyrs.

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In the end though, it all comes down to the faith of the individual of whatever kind one may or may not hold. Holy Shrines are bright beacons to those who hunger to express and excerise their Catholic faith, but they also sometimes beckon other Christians like me who are Anglican from head to toe and who make no apology whatsoever to anybody for being of such faith and belief. At Fátima, I could and did hold my head up high as equally as any other pilgrim or visitor from any where else in the world of living Christianity. I shall always remember my short stay at Holy Fátima for it is, of course, not the kind of earthly Christian setting one visits and sees everyday. Its rarity should never become commonplace nor run like a "religious roadshow" over the sacred and of those apparitions of the BVM by those "Three Little Seers of Fátima" at more than 90 years ago at was then, and still very much is, rural and pleasant Portugal. Amen. Again, amen!!

Faithfully, Uncle Monty. +Ash Wednesday, 2oo9. The First Day of Lent.

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My next story in this series on Portugal is called "Some of My Photos I Took of Lisboa." And after that story, I present a selection of the wonderful "Ceramic Tiles of Fátima and Lisboa."

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Uncle Monty... Fatima is what you make it, dear... I was there two years ago... I thought it was not that bad... Gift shops are there because tourists and religious people want to buy things from Fatima... I am a Methodist from Canada!! I did like your report... The photographs are nice to see...
Betty Larsen... Victoria... British Columbia...