Problems With Roman Catholic Apparitions Of Mary

Fatima has been getting an unusual amount of attention lately, largely because of a recent debate on the subject between Ethan Muse and Sean Luke. The Zeitoun apparitions got a lot of attention last year. I don't know enough about Fatima to address it as much as I have Zeitoun. But I want to discuss some of the factors involved in evaluating Marian apparitions in general.

Fatima is affiliated with Catholicism, whereas Zeitoun is associated with Coptic Christianity. Those are rival belief systems, including in how they view Mary. And there's a lot of evidence that Zeitoun came from a source other than Mary, a source of a lower nature, who behaved differently than Mary would likely behave. So, Zeitoun provides some precedent for Marian apparitions that involve much of what Catholics appeal to in the context of their own apparitions (large crowds claiming to have witnessed paranormal phenomena, conversions, healings, etc.), yet seem to be non-Catholic and non-Marian.

You can find a collection of some of my posts on Zeitoun here. The principles I discussed in those threads have some application to Fatima.

There are major historical problems with the Catholic view of Mary. Any Marian apparition connected to Catholicism has a series of credibility problems accordingly. Similarly, if there were an apparition supposedly involving some other historical figure, and the apparition was associated with a series of claims about that figure that go contrary to a large amount of historical evidence we have about him, those problematic historical claims would be evidence against the credibility of the apparition.

You can find a collection of some of my posts on the relevant topics here. Or go here for an archive of our posts about Mary. (Keep clicking Older Posts in the lower right to see more.) Notice how numerous and diverse the problems with the Catholic Mary are. There's widespread Biblical and extrabiblical evidence against Mary's perpetual virginity, her sinlessness, her assumption, praying to her, and venerating images of her, for example. Even well into the medieval era, we find Popes and Catholic saints denying or being agnostic about certain aspects of the modern Catholic view of Mary. Those kinds of historical problems with Catholic Mariology are widely acknowledged by Catholic scholars, not just non-Catholics. The Biblical evidence against a Catholic view of Mary is significant and has to be addressed, but there's a large amount of extrabiblical evidence against the Catholic Mary as well.

I don't hold a demonic view of Zeitoun or Fatima. I've explained why I think Zeitoun is more likely a case of human psi. To the extent that something like healing claims affiliated with a case like Zeitoun are credible, I wouldn't attribute those to demons, but instead to healing through human psi, Divine healings to some extent, and so forth. Again, see my Zeitoun posts for more discussion of the subject. However, the demonic view of miracles like healings is less problematic than many Catholic critics have been suggesting. I discuss the subject in my Zeitoun posts. Even Catholic Saints have argued for demonic miracles, including healings (e.g., Caesarius of Arles, Mary Magdeleine Mueller, trans., St. Caesarius: Sermons, Volume I [1-80] [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004], Sermon 50:1, p. 254).

My Zeitoun posts also discuss the justification for viewing miracles like Jesus' resurrection and prophecy fulfillment as Divine while viewing some other miracles as non-Divine. All of us, including Catholics, have to address such issues and make such distinctions. This isn't something that only critics of a case like Fatima have to do.