In Our Lady's apparition at Fatima she said that Portugal would not lose the faith and yet they now allow abortion, isn't that a sign of losing the faith?

Marsha

Good point.  What a government does is not always what the people want.

Marsha

Marsha, please pardon if I am hijacking your thread, but it is titled "Fatima Question" and I have one.  
I understand that we are not obligated to believe in apparitions, even those sanctioned by the Church.
However, there are Catholics who question the legitimacy of Fatima.  
Can someone post a link, or briefly explain their argument?  

I have the same question?  Why didn't any of the Popes have the consecration take place?  I wonder and have another question to that?  For a consecration to take place, does the person, Pope, need to be in sanctifying grace?  I am of the understanding, that  a person not in sanctifying grace is in Mortal sin and  that takes away the merit of all good works.  Without Sanctifying Grace, the soul is Without God.  All their good works do not help.  (Page 44 of "My Catholic Faith")

A couple of things that I noticed here, on passing by:-

I am of the understanding, that a person not in sanctifying grace is in mortal sin and that takes away the merit of all good works. Without Sanctifying Grace, the soul is Without God. All their good works do not help.

I have read somewhere (although I cannot immediately give references) that a person in mortal sin loses the merit of a good act, but the benefit to another of that good act is not itself lost. Thus, the spiritual benefit of a Mass offered by a priest who is in mortal sin, is not lost to those who hear the Mass in a state of grace, albeit that the value of the benefit might be diminished somewhat.

However, if world events seem to go against what Our Lady has told us, then it means that God allowed for Our Lady's words to be overriden due to our extremely sinful nature.

I consider the suggestion, that God would allow Our Lady's words to be over-ridden, to be most offensive to Her high calling. Patience, I  say!  Did She not say: IN THE END My Immaculate Heart will triumph. Do not those words “in the end”, imply that before the triumph, there will yet be a trauma?

I understand that we are not obligated to believe in apparitions, even those sanctioned by the Church.

However, there are Catholics who question the legitimacy of Fatima.

It is true: it is not binding on pain of sin to pay heed to the message of Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima, as it is private revelation.

However, neither is it sinful to omit the Holy Rosary "every now and then" but it is no reason to do so, especially when it is self-serving sloth that motivates such disedifying "minimalism." As spiritual directors and the experience of many may testify, such an attitude ultimately and ineluctably leads to tepidity and even to a total abandoning of the cultivation of the interior life of grace and prayer.

Though the messages of Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima constitute private revelation, the contents thereof are a wondrous epitome of the depositum fidei and, by benign dispensation of Divine Providence, they were given particularly for the sake of those interior souls living in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and who, despite the aberrations and disorder of the present age, would aspire to the heights of prayer and penance, especially and particularly by means of true devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I personally believe the message of Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima is the spiritual doctrine of St. Louis-Marie de Montfort applied to the predicament of interior souls in the present ages. Fatima ultimately leads to total Consecration to Eternal Wisdom through Mary Most Holy, and this constitutes the most perfect renewal of our Baptismal vows. This would compel a soul earnestly endeavoring to cultivate the interior life to pay heed to Our Lady's message at Fatima.

The miracles at Fatima also oblige an interior soul to cease questioning the messages of Our Lady. Together with the miracle of the terpsichorean Sun, the most remarkable thing of Fatima (at least to me) is the manner in which sublime truths of dogmatic and moral theology are given in a celestial simplicity readily understood even by children, akin to the manner in which the sacred Evangelists recorded the life and words of Our Lord in the holy Gospel. Such a thing, impossible to imitate or artificialize, is (at least to me) one of the signs that Fatima is indeed beyond question.

This is why the faithful deem it rash, perilous, offensive to pious ears, and to the detriment of the spiritual maternity and mediation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to question Fatima in a spirit of either minimalism or cynicism or rationalism; or consigning it to "the past" and "irrelevant" to us now.