Kevin Symonds, whose book on the composition of the Prayer to St Michael I recommended on this blog back in 2015, has written another careful, thorough, and sober study of a subject surrounded by conjecture: the 'Third Secret' of Fatima.
Get it from Amazon.co.uk
I've provided a publicity-blurb for it as follows:
Symonds has done a very thorough job in getting to the bottom–insofar as it is possible–of the various confusions and conspiracy theories on the subject of the Third Secret, making a compelling case that what the Vatican published in 2000 was the whole text of it as written by Sr Lucia. No doubt the debate will continue, but the clarity and intellectual honesty of Symonds’ work, with copious reference to the relevant sources in their original languages, will be of enormous assistance for scholars in the future who wish to understand this tangled affair. –Dr. Joseph Shaw
I hope my regular readers won't be put off the book by the fact that, after exhaustive investigation of how each claim has come to be made and how the evidence stacks up, Symonds concludes that the various conspiracy theories to the effect that the Third Secret was not really revealed by the Vatican when the vision of the martyrdom of the 'bishop dressed in white' was finally published, fail: that is, that the Vatican really did publish everything they had.
I have read various things in support of these theories which, at the time, I found convincing, but Symonds shows, with painstaking detail, that there is less to these than meets the eye. Whatever you may want to believe, this book really must be taken into consideration.
He doesn't address the question of whether the Consecration of Russia has been done.
All the stuff about the alleged length and physical shape and alarming contents of the letter sent by Sr Lucia with the secret in it are considered, and it gets rather complicated. There is a larger and more earthy question, however, which used to worry me: if the secret was as un-explosive as the Vatican revealed it to be, why was it not published earlier? Symonds gives the following answer. Since the vision of the 'bishop dressed in white' appears to be a prophecy of the assassination of a pope, to have published it much earlier would have been for the Vatican to say, in effect, that they expected such an event to take place. It would have been like putting a target on the Pope's back: a challenge to every nutcase and hostile government on the planet to kill the Holy Father. Only insofar as they were able to say that, with hindsight, the vision was about the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981, and more especially after the fall of Communism, could it be published without this kind of worry.
Get it from Amazon.co.uk
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ReplyDeleteSymonds theory that the Vatican waited to release vision of the murdered pope until after it allegedly occurred -- so as not to paint a prophetic target on the pope's back -- does nothing to resolve your question; namely, if the secret was as un-explosive as the Vatican revealed it to be, why was it not published earlier?
ReplyDeleteFirst the bleeding obvious: JP2 not being killed amidst a crowd of perfectly healthy people in a perfectly in tact St. Peter's square bears zero resemblance to the vision the Vatican purports to be the complete 3rd secret. Zero resemblance. Thus, to any honest semi-intelligent observer -- despite the Vatican's ridiculous claim -- it would remain perfectly evident that the prophecy of the murdered pope was not yet fulfilled, and would consequently still be putting a target on the pope.
2. And secondly, if the fulfillment of the prophecy really did take place in 1981, your question remains the same. If there was nothing more to it than that, why wait a further 20 YEARS to resolve the matter. It could have been settled with a month of JP2's non-murder.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of reasoning is not a very good sales pitch for Symonds works.
You seem to have stopped reading at a crucial point: 'and more especially after the fall of Communism'.
DeleteThe other aspect, which I didn't mention, is the mounting pressure to publish which preceded the publication. The default setting I think in Rome in dealing with hysteria-inducing private revelations is to let sleeping dogs lie. Only when *not* publishing was clearly producing more hysteria than publication would be likely to cause, did the decision to publish seem prudent, to that mind-set.
So the fall of Communism in Russia, notwithstanding the fact that it's errors – as Our Lady predicted – were nevertheless spreading around the world, somehow made the pope safe from nutcases and hostile governments? Not sure why that’s persuasive, especially when the event which was meant to assure us that the threat against the pope had already passed was so manifestly at odds with what the prophecy actually depicted. JP2’s non-murder, by a lone gunman, amidst an adoring crowd in a sunny St. Peter’s square = a pope’s death, by band of soldiers firing guns and bows & arrows, amidst a ruined city strewn with corpses? The dissimilitude between the two is so jarring that the Vatican, rather than quelling the demand for disclosure, only fomented it further.
DeleteI agree that the rising insistence of the faithful influenced the release of the vision, but at the end of the day, given the un-explosive nature of the secret, the question remains, why not release it earlier and avoid all the hysteria? It makes much more sense if there's something more to it, something explosive (consistent with all the varied reports that the secret involved of apostasy in the hierarchy) which the Vatican wanted to hide, and thought it could continue to hide by placating the masses with a partial disclosure.
You are confusing two quite different things. We don't have to agree with the putative reasoning of those people in Rome who made the decision to publish when they did. The question is whether, these being the kinds of people they are, such reasoning on their part is a plausible explanation of their decision.
DeletePray tell, are you the same "Brian Miles" from 1P5?
DeleteThe very same, anon!
ReplyDeleteGood, then you'll be happy to know that it was not Symonds' theory about the targeting of the Pope. He quotes Fr. Stanley Jaki to that effect.
DeleteDoesn't matter much to me who came up with it, but if Symonds puts it forward as a persuasive reason why the Vatican waited to release their nothing burger, that doesn't bode well for him. No one sits on a nothing burger; what they sit on is something damning. Hence if after a long time of sitting, all that comes out is a nothing burger - especially when informed people have let slip about all the fixings over the years - you can be sure that something damning still remains. Our job then is to demand the truth, not make excuses about why sitting on the nothing burger actually made a lot of sense.
DeleteOn the other issue you mention, you need to read the book.
DeleteI may do that. One question first: does he treat seriously or with skepticism the work of Carlos Evaristo?
DeleteI'm afraid I don't remember.
DeleteWhy do you ask about Evaristo?
ReplyDelete