You sound like you've been given the answer by Chrostopher67 and decided it wasn't what you wanted to hear, you wanted someone to second your exact thoughts.
Far from it. It is rather you who misunderstand my question. Of course the Miracle of the Sun occured in public, there is not question about it, but that is not what I was asking about. I'm asking not about your opinion, but Church teaching on that subject - let me rephrase the question:
1. Does the official teaching of the Catholic Church regarding revelation oblige Catholics to believe in Fatima with certainty of faith?
2. Is Salza correct in saying that denial of Fatima message incurs anathema of Vatican I?
If the answer to the above is affirmative it means that majority of both Novus Ordites and Traditionalists are wrong claiming that belief in Fatima is not binding.
Yours is a very common question. The late Fr. Gruner encountered this all over the world and he developed a calm, reasoned reply to it.
The Catholic Church teaches a third category of doctrine regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary that applies to her alone. To God we render adoration, or
latria in Latin. We do not worship the saints, but we do appeal to them for their intercession before God, like asking a good friend to put in a good word for us to someone with power to whom we are in a weaker state of direct influence somehow. This veneration of the saints is called
dulia in Latin.
But in regards to the Holy Mother of God there is a third category, called
hyperdulia in Latin, for it is above the veneration we give to the saints, but it is less than the adoration that we render to God alone. This highest form of veneration is reserved for the one saint in all of human history whose influence with God exceeds all the influence that all the rest of the saints combined could ever be.
Thinking about this third category, it makes sense that there should be a second category of private revelation too, considering that it entails a message from that one saint whose power with God is incomparable to all other saints.
Furthermore, we are at a time in human history when God has already given us the Sacred Heart of His Son, through the apparitions of
Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 17th century, and we have seen first hand (or our ancestors did) what happens when the King of France ignored those entreaties, and neglected to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and did not put its emblem on the French flag (which really looks great, by the way). What happened was the French Revolution (Freemasons pretty much destroying Catholicism in France, the Eldest Daughter of the Church), and with that the public execution of King Loius XVI (pronounced "LOO-ee") by guillotine. His regal authority had been stripped from him on the very day that was 100 years exactly from the date that Our Lord gave the message to St. Margaret Mary.
Keeping all that in mind, your question of whether belief in the Fatima message demands the full assent of Faith for Catholics is one that overlooks the existence and importance of this third category. In this time of history, God has sent His Holy Mother as a last resort, as it were, giving us the chance to listen to her and thereby avoid the consequences tied to not listening to her.
Protestants oversimplify things and say that "Catholics worship Mary." Well, it's not too hard to see that's a half truth and don't forget that a half truth is a whole lie. We do not worship Mary. But neither do we ignore her as if she is mundane and unimportant as Protestants do, for along with that goes errors such as "she had other children too" and "she has no power with God because she's DEAD." Protestants ought to know they are listening to тαℓмυdic Jєωs when they say those things.
Oh lily of the valley, O mystic rose, what tree
No flower e'en the fairest was half so fair as thee
O let me, though so lowly, recite my Mother's fame
When wicked men blaspheme thee, I'll love and bless thy name.
Does everyone who blasphemes the name of Mary go to hell? I don't know about you, but I'd rather not find out the hard way. Appreciation is something you can't force from someone; they have to give it freely and from their own volition, not because you demand it. God cannot force us to love Him, and He can't force us to love His Mother. But how can we love God and NOT love His Mother too?? How can man love God but despise whom God loves? This is not an emotional question, but one of simple, right reason and intellectual honesty.
I caution you against going to Traditio in matters of the Blessed Virgin Mary because the author(s?) of that website retain a tinge of Jansenism regarding her, giving the impression that it is somehow unholy to render Our Lady a special category of veneration. And this is not a Catholic outlook for it would seem to deny the fact of hyperdulia in Catholic teaching. On a personal note, I know a man who is an avid Traditio fan who believes that he is a prophet and that Mary ought to CHECK WITH HIM before she goes and tells things to people like Sister Lucia of Fatima!
You can decide for yourself whether the anathema of Vatican I is the question to consider for someone who places himself above the power of the Mother of God.There are some things that we can know for sure by what the Church teaches and there are other things that we can deduce from what the Church teaches. For example, does the message of Fatima incur some manner of incredulity because it did not specifically explain its own theological perspective? That is to say, are we "not required to believe in the Fatima message" because the Fatima message
per se did not literally give us the John Salza interpretation of the Fatima message?
John Salza had Father Gruner for a friend and they worked together at several Fatima conferences. I think Salza paid close attention to Fr's instruction, but now that Father is gone, perhaps Salza has taken off a bit on his own, going to something of an extreme on this. Father Gruner was a gift to our age, a humble and soft-spoken priest who gave his life for the fervent and pure veneration of Our Lady in all of her works throughout the ages, which includes the true message of Fatima (there are a lot of false versions afoot). We do not live in the age of St. Maximilian Kolbe or St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, but knowing Fr. Gruner makes these other great Marian saints much more comprehensible and real to us, just as knowing all the saints makes the reality of knowing the Apostles and Our Lord not such an enormous enigma. I had the great honor of knowing Fr. personally and his memory touches me positively for the rest of my life, I'm sure. But I am not a lawyer like Salza and I don't have a lawyer's outlook on everything. Remember that Salza came from Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ and I wouldn't put it beyond reasonable that Fr. Gruner may have told him something personally to SHAKE HIM UP so as to free him from the grips of his erstwhile state of unfaith. But that doesn't mean he would have told the general public the same thing! Sometimes lawyers need a kick in the rear.
IMHO we should not leap to the ultimate consequence saying that Fatima demands of Catholics divine and maximum assent of Faith, but at the same time that does not mean that Catholics can utterly ignore Fatima without any concern for what God wants of us as Catholics. I think we should recognize the true message of Fatima for what is namely, God's act of mercy for us, such that we might avoid tremendous suffering consequent to ignoring Our Lady's offer of her intercession. It is an intercession or help that only she can give us, and in fact, she said that literally: "Only I can help you."
O Mary, destroyer of all heresies, come to our aid!
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