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Fatima and the People's Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2024

Gerald Vann O. P.
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‘For I am thy servant and the son of thy handmaid, a weak man and of short time, and falling short of the understanding of judgement and laws.’ (Wisd. ix, 5.).

What do we mean by the ‘mind of the Church’? In the most obvious sense the Church is an autocracy : the life and the power and the wisdom are from above, from the Head which is Christ. But there is another sense in which the life of the Church has its democratic aspect: for the vitality and vigour of the Church, the degree in which the life and power and wisdom are used and expressed, this depends not least on the masses of the faithful, on their acceptance of and response to what is given. So the development of the Church’s dogma is a process which can be found to begin from below : first the gradual fermentation of the idea in the devout life of the layfolk, then its discussion and analysis in the controversies of theologians, then finally the decisive voice, the consecration, by the wisdom from above, of the truth in these new discernments and elucidations of ancient fact. Can there be a similar process in the realm of morals? We do well to remember the power of the Spirit in giving to the hearts of the simple and unlearned a sense of the right and the good. In two ways this connatural knowledge, as St. Thomas calls it, differs from the work of the theologian and may complement it: it goes straight to the conclusion, while the theologian, working in another medium, must first sift and test the premisses; it concerns the particular fact or type of fact, where theology is concerned primarily with the general principle.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 26 , Issue 303 , June 1945 , pp. 206 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © 1945 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 We owe a debt of gratitude to the Editor of ‘ The Catholic ‘Herald,’ for instance, for making discussion of this problem possible in his correspondence columns. The problem will not cease to be a problem after the war is over: there will be the question of the Sanctions at the disposal of international or supranational authority. The use of international sanctions was explicitly advocated by Benedict XV, but of course taking it for granted that they should not be immoral in themselves.

2 Need it be said that to regard a course of action as objectively wrong is not to be guilty of the arrogance and impertinence of judging the-doer of the action, or belittling a self-sacrifice or a heroism which may well be far beyond the capacity of the one who in his own conscience has to make the judgement?

3 The discomforts or hardships or sufferings which war brings can be made an expiatory sacrifice if they are turned into love; prayer itself can be an expiation; and if instead of trying to escape the thought of the immensity of the world's sufferings we on the contrary try to make it our own, and bear some part of it in our own hearts, our sorrow can be, within the passion of Christ, a redeeming sorrow, sharing with His in expiating the evil and healing the pain.

4 Our Lady appeared to three children near Fatima, Portugal six times in the year 1917 She appeared as our Lady of the Rosary, and her message was that, for the salvation of the world in general and of Russia in particular, God wished mankind to pay homage to her heart. After long enquiry the authenticity of the apparitions was recognised by the Bishop of Leiria in 1930, and Fatima has become a place of pilgrimage on the scale of Lourdes. On October 31st, 1942, Pope Pius XII, broadcasting at the close of the Jubilee celebrating the apparitions at Fatima, consecrated Russia and the whole world to the heart of Mary, and renewed this consecration on December 8th of the same year. All the dioceses of France were in the same way consecrated to her in 1943, and in England the devotion was advocated by the Archbishop of Westminster in a pastoral letter in the same year. The literature concerning Fatima includes a C.T.S. pamphlet by Archbishop Godfrey, the Apostolic Delegate, and Our Lady of Fatima, by Archbishop Ryan, O.P., published by Mown and Nolan, Dublin.

5 There are, of course, women who make excellent scientists, philosophers, economists, politicians, and so on, and who rightly therefore follow their vocation. What is in question is the very real danger that present conditions may succeed in stifling generally the wisdom which is most proper to women as such-a wisdom without which we cannot hope for a same and happy world.