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KARL KEATING'S E-LETTER
TOPICS:
THE THIRD SECRET REINTERPRETED
USHERING IN UNSAFE SKIES?
CALL TO ACTION'S SENESCENCE
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
Today is the seventh anniversary of the death of Fr. Earl La Riviere, long-time friend of mine and chaplain to Catholic Answers.
He was an exemplary priest, at once devout, learned, plain-spoken, and tough-minded.
How I wish his kind were the rule rather than the exception!
I ask that you say a prayer for the repose of his soul, though I suspect he no longer needs such supplications for himself and will arrange to have them applied to others.
OH, _THAT_ BISHOP DRESSED IN WHITE ...
A few years ago the Vatican released the text of the Third Secret of Fatima.
You may remember the cover story we ran in "This Rock."
The Third Secret concerns an attack on a "bishop dressed in white," and the Vatican said the image referred to the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.
Some Traditionalist groups, which have acted as though Fatima were their own wholly-owned subsidiary, objected to the Vatican's interpretation.
They went so far as to claim that the Third Secret, as given by the Vatican, was bogus and that the real Third Secret has yet to be released.
Without quite saying it, they implied that the Holy Father and the prelates involved in the release of the Third Secret were liars inasmuch as they passed off as genuine a story that was quite false.
Now there is a new twist.
Other Traditionalists are saying that the Third Secret, as given, is basically correct, but the "bishop dressed in white" is not to be understood as the Pope.
That bishop really was Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of St. Pius X.
(Lefebvre was excommunicated in 1988 when he consecrated four bishops without papal approval.
He was not reconciled before his death.)
The people who are proposing this new interpretation say it explains why the Third Secret was kept secret for so long.
Rome was embarrassed by Lefebvre's opposition to Vatican II and would have felt in an awkward position if it became known that Fatima, the Pope's favorite private revelation, gave an imprimatur to a prelate who was in opposition to the Pope.
Interesting idea, but it doesn't wash.
The Third Secret was given long before Vatican II and long before Marcel Lefebvre was known to anyone outside of the African see that he administered.
If this Traditionalist interpretation were correct, the Third Secret would have been considered innocuous--almost meaningless--in, say, 1960, and there would have been no reason for Pope John XXIII to have kept it secret after he was presented with the text.
But the Third Secret was kept secret for another forty years, which suggests that he and his successors understood it to have a clear meaning, one which, for whatever reasons, they thought should be withheld from public consumption.
I appreciate the Lefebvrists' devotion to their leader, but they do their cause no favor by trying to shoehorn him into the Fatima revelation.
In fact, they make their cause look a little ridiculous when they offer up their interpretation.
Still, I give them credit for cheekiness.
I wonder whether someone at the other end of the spectrum will take a cue from them and will propose that the "bishop dressed in white" really was Joseph Bernardin.
UP, UP, BUT NOT QUITE AWAY
Allow me to give public congratulations to my colleague Jerry Usher, host of "Catholic Answers Live."
Jerry has been taking flying lessons, and on Saturday he soloed.
His instructor and I stood together on the ramp by the terminal building and watched him make three excellent landings.
The first big step is over, and in a few months (weather and Jerry's schedule cooperating) will come the flight with the Designated Examiner.
When he passes that test--which he will, since he already has demonstrated good pilot skills--Jerry will be free to take you up for an aerial tour of San Diego, should you happen to be in the area.
By the way, this may seem silly, but I want to clarify a term: "Solo" means not just that the pilot is the only one manipulating the plane's controls but that he is the only one in the plane.
For some reason, many people (including even some pilots!) think you can "solo" a plane with people occupying the other seats, so long as they keep their hands off the stick or yoke and their feet off the rudder pedals.
Not so.
"Solo" means "without a companion: alone," according to Webster.
Catholic Answers now has three pilots on its staff: Jerry, a student pilot; Frank Norris, our director of development, a private pilot ASEL (Airplane Single-Engine Land); and myself, a private pilot ASEL and Glider.
THE WAVE OF THE PAST
We just got our invitation to Call to Action's national conference, which will be held in November in Milwaukee (but not on Church property).
The conference theme is "Called to Be Peacemakers: Prophetic Leadership for World & Church."
The irony is that, while there is "prophetic leadership" in the Church, one will not find it in Call to Action, which is becoming increasingly moribund as its members get ever grayer and as its ideology seems ever less intriguing.
What might have been thought avant garde twenty years ago seems old-fashioned today, on the principle that whoever marries the spirit of one age will become a widow in the next.
Consider CTA's pleas for increased "diversity":
"We are very much aware that the membership and leadership of Call to Action fall short on ethnic diversity."
After all these years, this "progressive" organization has not been able to meet its self-imposed quota of non-white faces.
It sedulously has employed its own forms of affirmative action, but still it can't find enough blacks, Hispanics, Eskimos, and others for its membership rolls.
I take this as a hopeful sign:
Such Catholics may be getting fed up with being thought of only in ethnic terms and may be tired of being used to assuage liberal guilt.
I do not worry much about CTA's influence on the Church in the U.S.
Its time has passed.
The organization will continue to exist for many more years, but each year it will have less to say and will be less listened to.
The big names associated with it are no longer young and soon will be gone: Charles Curran, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Bernard Cooke, Bob McClory, Edwina Gateley, Rosemary Ruether, Anthony Padovano.
There is no evident line of succession.
There was a time when CTA was successful in its own way, but now it is just another one of those crabbed organizations that is slowly drying up in the spiritual drought that is religious liberalism.
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