Editor’s Note: This is part two of the third article in a series of three critical reviews which The Fatima Center is posting regarding the new Fatima movie released earlier this year. A round-table discussion video, with Fr. Rodríguez, will also be posted at our website and YouTube channel.
PART II: AN OVER-EMPHASIS ON THE INDIVIDUAL AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY
All the gross deficiencies I’ve already mentioned (inaccuracies and omissions) pale in comparison to the mode the director chose by which to narrate his fictionalized historical drama. I dare say it is a diabolically-disoriented choice.
I was struck by how the script repeatedly asked of Lucia the question: “Why did God chose you for this special mission?” Her mother asks this, the priest asks this, the bishop asks it, the townspeople ask it, the atheist professor asks it, and even Lucia asks it of herself. Why this focus on a particular individual instead of on the content of Our Lady’s Message? On account of their humility and Catholic sensibility, those who see Our Lady always seek to remain hidden. Such saints flee the limelight. I am sure the real Sister Lucia would have been saddened by this emphasis and the consequential modern psychological focus which the movie places on Lucia’s personality.
It is a worldly perspective that obsesses with an angst-filled question of “why was I chosen.” In the film, Lucia’s father comforts her by stating that ‘our special gifts can get us in trouble because people often don’t understand them.’ This is the film’s best answer for the question it repeatedly raises. Note, however, that it is a natural explanation centered on the person with a subjective emphasis on the ‘gifts’ a person possesses. Catholic truth instead places the emphasis on God’s objective election, supernatural grace, and one’s own unworthiness. Receiving singular graces of a Marian apparition has little to do with ‘gifts’ that an individual possesses. And this grace is nothing that comes from ‘within’ oneself but rather comes from outside of one’s self – from God! The movie’s perspective is one prevalent today because it is born of modernism, what Pope St. Pius X called the synthesis of all heresies.
A key dramatic tension driving the movie is the conflict between Lucia and her mother. Though there may be a nominal basis for this in Lucia’s Memoirs, it is grossly misrepresented and exaggerated. This might have been excusable except for the fact that the film has Professor Nichols intimate that Lucia’s ‘terrible’ relationship with her mother is what prompted her to ‘make up’ the visions she had of the Blessed Mother. This is a modern way of explaining away the supernatural that smacks of Jungian psychology by claiming that a person’s subconscious compensates for deficiencies and by generating an alternate internal reality.
THE MODE OF STORYTELLING IS A TERRIBLE CHOICE
The film’s main story-telling technique is the flashback, which is common enough in literature and movies. The setting is a conversation between an atheist Professor Nichols and an aged Sister Lucia, behind the cloistered bars of her Carmelite monastery in Coimbra, Portugal in 1989. The back and forth repartee between these two characters sets the tone for the movie and drives the recurring flashbacks which narrate the supernatural events of 1917.
Naturally, I was offended by just about everything the atheist said, but this is to be expected. I think the director did a good job in accurately presenting an atheistic secular academic. However, I was terribly dismayed by the responses given to the atheist’s objections. At the very least I would say they were woefully weak and insufficient. Far more to the point, I would say the dialogue between these two was the kind of dialogue I would expect between an atheist and a modernist heretic. The modernist heretic thinks he professes the Catholic Faith but has been corrupted by the errors he holds. To my regret and chagrin, the movie gave Sister Lucia the role of the modernist heretic.
For example, faith is described as a “search for truth” and as “beginning at the edges of understanding.” No! Human reason is in absolute conformity with the faith, though faith does transcend reason. This quintessential modernist jargon is utterly foreign to the Catholic precision so well defined by St. Thomas Aquinas.[1] The movie presents “faith” as a highly subjective human experience and utterly fails to address the objective dimension of authentic Faith.
The alleged first healing ‘miracle’ presented is the healing of a lame boy (more creative license by the director) and it is presented as a highly subjective faith event, where a believer can think the circumstances of various events foster faith whereas a non-believer knows there was nothing miraculous. The message seems clear – miracles happen in the mind of believers and are the way these believers chose to interpret reality. Granted, the movie comes down on the side of this attitude as a ‘better way to live’ and to achieve ‘peace and unity,’ but this is precisely the kind of modernist poison that plagues our Church today – and which, ironically, Our Lady of Fatima came to dispel!
THE SAINTS ARE THE MOST SANE AMONGST US
Amidst these flashbacks, the movie often depicts Lucia as having visions (or very vivid day dreams). For example, she is tempted to deny that Our Lady has appeared to her when she envisions her brother back from the war and, amidst a joyous family reunion, he asks her to deny the whole thing happened. And again, it is while staring at a picture of hell hanging on the wall of the church that she sees visions of hell. None of these events have any basis in reality; yet they lead the viewer to believe that Lucia had a very vivid imagination, and that some of the Fatima prophecies may have welled up from within her own psychosis as opposed to having been revealed to her from a divine act of supernatural grace. At the very least, this confusion between reality and visions presents the young Lucia as somewhat imbalanced intellectually and emotionally tormented.
In my opinion, the hardest thing about making a movie about a saint is that you have to understand the saint to present his or her life accurately. Yet, few among us understand the saints because few of us share their sanctity.[2] So, instead, films about saints wind up depicting them according to the understanding of the director, natural goods, and worldly values. If the director – or at least his consultant(s) – is not guided by the truths of the Catholic Faith, is not imbued with a great spirit of piety and fear of the Lord, does not have tremendous appreciation for and sensitivity to the supernatural, and does not have the greatest respect for that which is sacred, then his movie will inevitably be a dismal failure. That is, he will not faithfully depict the life of the saint in a wholesome and inspiring manner.
THE END GOAL OF THIS MOVIE
The emphasis on the person of Sister Lucia and this defunct concept of faith point to what I perceive as the ultimate goal of the movie: to try to present the internal psychology of a visionary. The film’s conclusion seems to be that the believer (the seer) is filled with tension, often unbalanced, but ultimately trusting and hopeful. This, in turn, is the “personal victory” that faith brings to the believer and which can ultimately bring “peace, unity, and love” to our world. Does this sound like the Catholic Faith to you? It certainly does not to me. Rather, it sounds like the neo-gnostic, new age, modernist positive psychobabble so often spewed today from the pulpits of Catholic churches.
What is even more sinister, is that this sounds a great deal like the diabolical work of Fr. Edouard Dhanis. This Belgian Jesuit did tremendous damage to the true Message of Fatima. He was a modernist to the core and helped author the notorious “Dutch Catechism,” which is chock-full of heresy. At Vatican II, he was one of the leading periti voices who advocated de-emphasizing the role of Our Lady by opposing a document dedicated to Our Lady and relegating Her place to the last chapter of Lumen Gentium. He vociferously opposed the Marian dogmas of Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of all Graces. Sadly, he has been hailed by other modernist leaders within the Church as a ‘great Marian scholar.’
During the 1940s, he showed himself as one of the great doubters of Sister Lucia and sowed this doubt everywhere he went. His theory was that there were “two Fatimas.” According to Dhanis, “Fatima I” consisted of the apparitions of Our Lady in 1917 and Her message given at that time, which is basically reduced to praying the Rosary and working towards world peace. “Fatima II” consisted of all the things which he alleged the three seers, especially Lucia, invented in their own minds – including the subsequent apparitions that came after 1917. They were supposedly influenced by pictures they saw (like those of hell), acts of popular piety, and the catechism they learned as poor illiterate Portuguese peasants. In this manner, he was able to pick and choose what he liked about the Fatima Message. If he approved of it, it was part of Fatima I; but if it went against his modernist sensibilities, then it was part of Fatima II. He even psychoanalyzed Sister Lucia in his writings without ever meeting her or speaking to her![3]
Following the inadequate consecrations of Pope Pius XII, the silencing of Sister Lucia, the suppression of the Third Secret, and the Second Vatican Council with its New Mass and New Theology, many Catholic prelates adopted Dhanis’ position. It is probably the dominant understanding most bishops today have regarding Fatima. Naturally, this is why they largely ignore the Message of Fatima, don’t think it’s important to know the rest of the Third Secret, and think it is unnecessary to consecrate Russia according to the precise manner which Sister Lucia said Our Lady commanded. (“All that’s just part of the fabricated Fatima II anyway,” they rationalize.)
WHY I DON’T RECOMMEND THIS MOVIE
In my second viewing of Pontecorvo’s Fatima, I realized that the movie was in effect portraying Fr. Dhanis’ vision of Fatima on screen. It was almost as if Dhanis himself were directing the movie, or that Pontecorvo was using his notes or consulting “experts” who held Dhanis’ position. Given this understanding, dear Reader, you can understand why in conscience I would never recommend this movie to anyone, and why I hope you don’t either. The propagation of this movie will inevitably further the false understanding of Fatima promoted by Fr. Dhanis.
There are various Catholic groups that promote Fatima in general, but they fail to present the Message in all its integrity. There is much literature on Fatima, but much of it is inadequate and fails to relay all the truth about Our Lady’s heavenly solution. Many of these resources actually do great damage to the Message, because people who believe them generally think that Our Lady’s Message was mostly about praying the Rosary, that Russia has already been consecrated, and that Fatima is largely relegated to the past. They further believe that those who promote the true and full Message of Fatima are in error. Some even accuse such faithful Catholics who truly love Our Lady of being disobedient and opposed to the Catholic Magisterium. Nothing can be further from the truth.
This movie is simply one more addition to the long list of ‘False Friends of Fatima’ and inadequate resources. These are what compelled Sister Lucia to state in 1957 that neither the good nor the bad had sufficiently heeded Our Lady’s Message.
The Fatima Center is an apostolate that has and will always promote the full Message of Fatima, even those truths which many people wish to ignore, whitewash, or deny. Our founder, Father Nicholas Gruner, spent his entire priestly life making every effort so that the true and full message of Fatima would reach every human being and that Russia would soon be consecrated correctly. We know that this is the only way for the Immaculate Heart of Mary to reign in a period of world peace when the Catholic Church will flourish as never before. Let us never stop praying and doing penance for this goal.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
READ OUR OTHER CRITICAL REVIEWS OF THIS MOVIE:
– An Expensive Step Backward by James Hanisch
– Exposé of the Apparitions Depicted in the Movie, “Fatima” by Andrew Cesanek
– Why I don’t Recommend the New Fatima Movie (Part 1) by David Rodríguez
[1] St. Thomas deals with the issue of Faith in the Second Part of the Second Part of his Summa Theologiæ, Questions 1-7 (that can be read online here).
[2] I once heard a priest state that it is the saint who sees the world correctly (right-side up) whereas the rest of us see world upside down, convoluted and backwards. But of course most people think the saint has it all wrong on account of their skewed perspective. This reminds me too of Plato’s famous analogy of The Cave.
[3] You can read more about Fr. Dhanis’ destruction of the Fatima Message in a Fatima Center article, “June 26, 2000 Hoax,” and in Frere Michel’s chapter “The Modernist Solution of Father Dhanis” in The Whole Truth About Fatima.