The Rise, Fall and Future of Catholicism in the U.S.

May 10, 2013

An interview with Russell Shaw, author of American Church.

CWR Staff


Left: Cardinal James Gibbons (1834-1921), Archbishop of Baltimore. Right: Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803–1876).

Author and journalist Russell Shaw has written over twenty books, including To Hunt, To Shoot, To Entertain: Clericalism and the Catholic Laity and Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication, and Communion in the Catholic Church. For 18 years, Shaw directed media relations for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference. From 1987 to 1997 he oversaw media relations for the Knights of Columbus. Since resigning from that position, he has worked full time as a freelance writer. His most recent book, American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America (Ignatius Press, 2013), has been widely praised as an incisive examination of the recent history of the Catholic Church in the United States. “If you want to understand the Church in the United States and the challenges she now faces,” states Abp. Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Philadelphia, “American Church should be on the short list of books you need to read.” Shaw recently answered some questions from CWR about his book and the past, present, and future of Catholicism in the United States.



CWR: How and why was James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore such a key figure in the story of the Catholic Church in the U.S.?

Shaw: Cardinal Gibbons was Archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 until his death in 1921. That's 44 crucial years in American Catholic history during which he was the leader of the American hierarchy, recognized as such by Rome and by his episcopal colleagues. He also was leader of the Americanizing bishops—the members of the hierarchy who advocated rapid and total integration of immigrant Catholics into American culture.

The group included some who were more flamboyant, like Archbishop John Ireland of Saint Paul, and others who were more intellectual, like Bishop John Lancaster Spalding of Peoria, but the patient, prudent, diplomatic Gibbons was the most effective of them all, trusted by the Holy See and widely respected at home. By the time of his death, he was one of the most admired public figures in the country, and his policy of Americanization was the policy of the Church in the United States. I have no hesitation saying his impact on American Catholicism was greater than that of any bishop before or since..

CWR: You describe Orestes Brownson as "the most distinguished (and very nearly only) American Catholic public intellectual of his day." How did Brownson's view of the relationship between Catholicism and the American experiment change or develop? How accurate was his mostly negative assessment of that relationship?

Shaw: Brownson, who lived from 1803 to 1876, was a self-taught genius and convert to Catholicism as well as a prominent writer and social critic. He also was a friend and colleague of Father Isaac Hecker, another convert, who founded the Paulist Fathers, and for a time shared Hecker's dream of Catholic integration into American culture in order to evangelize and ultimately convert Protestant America.

Over time, though, Brownson soured on the Hecker project and came to see it as a terrible mistake. He and Hecker set out their views in a remarkable exchange of correspondence in 1870 that I include in my book. Brownson's position was that there was something fundamental to the American character—we'd call it individualism today—that made it not merely inhospitable but dangerous to Catholicism. Let me quote: "Catholics as well as others imbibe the spirit of the country, imbibe from infancy the spirit of independence, freedom from all restraint, unbounded license….I think the Church has never encountered a social & political order so hostile to her."

Was Brownson right? For a long time, you'd have had to say no. But ever since the 1960s it's begun to look as if he was onto something—something Catholics need to take very seriously now.

CWR: What were the essential points of contention between Brownson and Hecker? What insights into the situation today can be gleaned from their argument?

Shaw: The differences boil down to three things. First, whether Catholicism and American secular culture were or weren't compatible. Hecker said yes, Brownson said no. Second, whether there was a real possibility of converting American Protestants as a group to Catholicism. Again, it was Hecker yes and Brownson no. And third, whether the Catholic Church did or didn't have a congenial home in the United States. Same thing again—Hecker yes, Brownson no.

These three questions remain central to any serious attempt to evaluate the current situation and future prospects of Catholicism in America today.

CWR: You point to the year 1950 and the novel The Cardinal when gauging the high water mark of Catholic influence and success. What are some reasons for doing so?

Shaw: Quite simply, everything was coming up roses for American Catholicism around 1950. Priestly and religious vocations were booming, Catholic schools were overflowing, the whole Catholic enterprise was dynamic and growing. Suddenly it was downright fashionable to be Catholic. A couple of years earlier, the influential Protestant magazineChristian Century ran a series with the title, "Can Catholicism Win America?" Its answer: yes. And many Catholics agreed.

The Cardinal captures the Catholic mood of that time exceptionally well. Henry Morton Robinson's page-turner was a hugely successful bestseller in its day. It's a fictionalized, romanticized version of the career of Cardinal Spellman of New York whose triumphalistic message is that Catholics had come into their own just in time—in the early years of the cold war, that is—to save the nation and indeed all Christendom from the threat of atheistic communism. Catholics ate it up because it expressed their own self-image, as well as their aspirations and anxieties, with remarkable insight.

CWR: It seems that a substantial number of Catholics today believe that the Church in the U.S. prior to the Council was one of two extremes: an insulated, reactionary ghetto that was closing in on itself, or a robust, faithful communion of believers that was largely successful in living the faith in a mainly Protestant nation. How much truth is there to either of these presentations of the Church in 1950s?

Shaw: There's a certain amount of truth in both. But Catholicism of that era was in fact rapidly shedding its ghetto status and bursting out into the larger culture. Summing up, the historian Charles Morris concludes that Catholicism in the 1950s was well on its way to becoming "the dominant cultural institution in the country." Some ghetto! If only we could have combined the real strength of American Catholicism then with a successful implementation of the reforms of Vatican II, who knows how bright the future might have been? Alas, that's hardly what happened.

CWR: What is the "Americanization of American Catholicism"? What have been its fruits over the past few decades?

Shaw: The expression refers to the process of cultural assimilation by which American Catholics entered the mainstream of American secular culture, became part of it, and bought into many of its values and attitudes. On the plus side, the result has been acceptance, upward socio-economic mobility, and much professional and material success.

But it has come at a high price. Buying into American secular values has time and again meant buying into a toxic value system in radical conflict with Catholic and Christian convictions on many fronts. And that has meant an ongoing loss of religious identity and commitment to the Church on the part of millions of nominal Catholics—to say nothing of the 22 million ex-Catholics in the United States.

CWR: How did John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech in Houston, given to a group of Protestant ministers, further the privatizing of religion and shape the approach taken to belief and the public square by other Catholic politicians?

Shaw: In September 1960 Kennedy was facing an upsurge of anti-Catholicism that threatened his chances of winning the White House. That famous speech was his answer. He assured his audience of ministers that if he were elected president, he wouldn't let Catholic faith and values get in the way of doing what the job required. It was effective—after all, he won.

But in winning Kennedy paved the way for Catholic politicians like Mario Cuomo and Ted Kennedy and many others who came to handle the abortion issue by saying they were "personally opposed” but wouldn't dream of imposing their views. Now we've reached the point where many prominent political Catholics don't even bother with "personally opposed" on things like abortion and gay marriage—they just support them and shrug their shoulders at the Church's opposition. Things would be very different today if Kennedy and his successors had stood with the Church instead of throwing in the towel. That would have been a real profile in courage.

CWR: In what ways was the year 1976 "the all-time low point" for the Church in America up to now?

Shaw: You could cite quite a few ways—and I do in my book. Let me cite mention just two.

One was the bishops' involvement in the Ford-Carter presidential campaign and the reaction this touched off. Remember, this was soon after the Supreme Court decision inRoe v. Wade, and the bishops were actively seeking a constitutional amendment to restore protection to the unborn.

Under the leadership of Archbishop Bernardin, then president of the bishops' conference, a delegation of bishops met with Jimmy Carter and pressed him on the issue. After the meeting, the Archbishop said the bishops were "disappointed" by Carter's refusal to support an amendment. A couple of weeks later, the same group of bishops met with President Ford, and Archbishop Bernardin told the White House press corps they were "encouraged" by Ford's willingness to support some sort of amendment. This ignited a huge firestorm of criticism and a lot of backstage maneuvering within the Church. The administrative committee of the bishops' conference met in mid-September and insisted that Archbishop Bernardin back down—which he did in an extremely painful press conference. It was a huge setback to the bishops' prolife effort and open evidence of the serious divisions in their ranks.

October brought the Call To Action Conference in Detroit. The planners at the bishops' conference intended this as the centerpiece of the American Catholic contribution to U.S. Bicentennial of 1976. It turned out to be an overpublicized forum for Catholic dissent.

Once again the bishops were embarrassed, furious, and split. That's the kind of year it was.

CWR: What are some of the basic things that must be done so that a healthy, vibrant culture—or subculture, as you describe it—be created, supported, and nourished?

Shaw: You can't just decide to create a subculture and then go ahead and do it. It's something that has to grow spontaneously out of people's lived experience. But you can create what social scientists call a “plausibility structure”—a network of institutions, organizations, and programs embodying the shared values of a particular group. A successful plausibility structure is the backbone of a healthy subculture. That's what the Church urgently needs today to build up and sustain the religious identity of American Catholics.

In fact, it's been happening for some years. You can see it in the emergence of new, proudly orthodox Catholic colleges and universities and the revival of Catholic identity in some existing ones, in new media ventures of all sorts, in new movements and groups committed to a strong, orthodox idea of what it means to be Catholic.

It's extremely important, though, that this new plausibility structure not adopt a defensive, insular mentality—not be an exercise in circling the wagons against a hostile secular culture. Yes, the secular culture is largely hostile to the faith of Catholics. But instead of fleeing secular America in reaction against it, well-formed, highly motivated Catholics must undertake a serious program for its evangelization.

This new subculture should be a school of Catholic identity and an agent for the formation of Catholics as evangelizers. That's a large order, and time is short. But the future of the Church in the United States depends on it.

• Editor's note: Also see, "Accommodation and Americanism, Yesterday and Today", an essay by historian Kevin Schmiesing on Shaw’s book.

The Nuns Not on the Bus

By Mark Oppenheimer | October 26, 2012




(AP Photo/John Russell)

Last April, the Vatican issued an 8-page document addressed to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the major association of American nuns. The “doctrinal assessment” accused the nuns of “radical feminism,” of agitating for women’s ordination, and of remaining silent in “the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States.” As a remedy, the Vatican ordered a five-year rehabilitation, during which the nuns would be supervised by a committee of three bishops. The nuns were not well pleased; they fought back. In June, five nuns from Network, a progressive Catholic lobby criticized in the Vatican assessment, launched the “Nuns on the Bus” tour, traveling through nine states from Iowa to Washington, D.C. The nuns attended Masses, held press conferences, and protested at the offices of conservative congressmen, like John Boehner; all the while they attacked the Paul Ryan budget for hurting struggling Americans. Their leader, Simone Campbell, spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August. In September, they gathered two hundred sisters to ride the Staten Island Ferry for a “Nuns on a Ferry” rally. They are currently organizing protest bus tours around the country, from Missouri to Ohio.

The Vatican, under the current conservative pope, is not irrational to fear these nuns and their progressive ways. Among its many reforms, the Second Vatican Council, which ran from 1962 to 1965 and celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, gave more autonomy to nuns. After it ended, many nuns doffed their habits and resumed their given names. They developed activist ministries, focused on war or poverty. Today, many nuns are feminists who prefer Catholic teaching on social justice to its teaching about sexual morality; they spend less time in communal prayer and more in the neighborhood.

If the stereotypical nun was once the parochial-school teacher in a wimple, today it might be the elderly woman in a well-worn sweater, running a job-training program and reading liberal theology at night. They have moved far to the left of the male Catholic hierarchy in Rome. Their disloyalty is not imaginary, not entirely.

But this fight is about more than the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. About 20 percent of American nuns belong to a rival organization, the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, which split off in 1992. These sisters still wear habits, and many take new names in the convent. They are more loyal to the church hierarchy. In general, they are more interested in stopping abortion than in bringing the troops home from Afghanistan, and they worry more about Obamacare’s health insurance mandate than about the Ryan budget’s cuts to Medicaid.

The conservative convents are not getting more new members than their liberal counterparts: each wing of American sisterhood counts about 500 women in the multi-year process of becoming nuns. But sisters joining liberal convents are much older, often second-career types, sometimes with a marriage and children in their past. By contrast, a majority of women joining convents in the conservative splinter group are in their twenties. Some traditionalist convents are getting ten or twenty new postulants (first-year nuns) a year. And this is significant: In 2010, there were only 56,000 nuns in the United States, less than a third of their 1965 total. The average age of nuns is rising quickly, and many convents are becoming nursing homes for their members.

The small renaissance of American nuns is occurring among sisters who look like nuns from 1960 and, in their deference to the church, act like nuns from 1960. That model is compelling to a young generation of devout women who are more interested in purity than in the messy intellectual complexity, and frequent dissent, that their elders embraced. The Vatican is doubling down on this old-fashioned model of sisterhood—no matter the offense taken by thousands of older nuns who have spent their lives poor, single and childless, all for love of God, if not always the church.


FIFTY YEARS AGO, the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, based in Nashville, was lucky to get four or five postulants a year. But in the past 20 years its population has doubled, from 145 sisters in 1990 to 284 sisters today. And the newbies are overwhelmingly young: this summer, 21 postulants entered the community, ranging in age from 19 to 32.

In July, I visited this congregation, which belongs to the conservative Conference of Major Superiors of Women Religious. I was met at the airport by two young women in white robes and black veils, standing beside a sedan in the short-term parking area. I got in beside Sister Anna, and our conversation, which began on the drive back, continued in a stately sitting room at the convent, where we drank iced tea as Pope Benedict XVI looked down from the wall. Sister Anna was 32 years old and grew up in the wealthy New York suburb of New Canaan, Connecticut. She was fair, with a few blond hairs escaping her veil. She looked like about six girls from my prep school’s lacrosse team. I asked why she became a nun.

“I went to public school, so I wasn’t taught by nuns,” Sister Anna said. “I was raised Catholic, but I wasn’t by any definition zealous. I was raised as a cultural Catholic.” After graduating from New Canaan High School, Andrea Wray — as she was then known — attended Catholic University, in Washington, D.C. There, she happened one day upon a Dominican friar in his robes. “I followed him to ask who are you and why are you wearing that.” They talked, and she began attending Mass at the Dominican House near campus. Under the Dominicans’ tutelage, she got the instruction in doctrine and piety missing from her childhood Catholicism. “It was the Lord giving me what I needed when I was ready to receive it,” she said. “I would have spit it back as an adolescent.”

As a collegian, Wray drank it down. The Dominican monks directed her to the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, a teaching congregation that sends sisters to work in 34 primary and secondary schools, from Nashville to Australia. It felt right. Immediately after graduation, in 2002, she moved to Nashville to become a postulant.

Sister Anna had recently finished three years teaching at a nearby Dominican high school, per the decision of her superior, and she was about to return to Catholic University to finish a master’s degree — also per her superior’s orders. She may visit her family only once a year; they stay in touch by mail. She and the other sisters eat breakfast and dinner in silence, although one sister reads to the rest: sometimes the Vatican newspaper, often a biography of St. Dominic. Sister Anna is chatty and gregarious, very not-contemplative-seeming — she would be the captain of that lacrosse team — but she insists that all this structure liberates her.

“When we talk about sacrifices, we are talking about things that make us more free,” Sister Anna said. “We are not radically independent,” she said. “We’re not 280 women who happen to be living together. We live a common life. As the world becomes more and more focused on the individual, on self-sufficiency, on being an expert in your own field, that can bring down a community.” The Dominicans make a countercultural statement: against individualism, against modernity.

Afterward, Sister Catherine Marie, who was the vocation director from 1990 to 2005, and so oversaw the congregation’s boom, gave me a tour of the Motherhouse, or convent, a large 1862 brick building that originally operated as a boarding school for girls. “There’s no recruiting,” Sister Catherine Marie told me. Curious women, including many college students, stay with the Dominicans for short retreats; otherwise, the sisters’ outreach is just existing, publicly. “It’s about being visible and available,” she said. “We usually get two master’s degrees, one in theology and one in the field of education. So we have a lot of contact with young people.”

After a sit-down lunch with three sisters, 32 women filed into our small private dining room, in the basement. Nineteen were novices and thirteen wore the garb of postulants. One had a guitar, another had a violin. They introduced themselves by name and hometown: Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Melbourne. Then they sang two songs: an original composition they had written about St. Cecilia, and “Prodigal Son,” by country star and Nashville resident Dirks Bentley. They were as exuberant as a collegiate a cappella group, if not quite as tuneful.

After lunch I sat in a living room and talked with about a dozen young sisters. They resisted my insinuation that they cared only about the church’s “conservative” positions. “If you don’t care about the dignity of the human person, it makes no sense to talk about education or war in Iraq,” said Sister Hannah, an African-American woman who majored in philosophy at Notre Dame. “So pro-life is foundational that way. But we do care about other issues.”

They got animated when I asked about the habit. “At the hospital, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been approached,” said Sister Catherine Marie. “A woman once asked me, ‘My mother just died. Will you pray over her body?’ They unzipped the body bag right there. If I weren’t wearing the habit, that wouldn’t happen.”

But what of their cloistered existence, their regimented prayer life, their periods of mandatory silence, their jobs chosen for them?

“Kids today have a thousand friends on Facebook, and they feel totally isolated,” said Sister Ann Dominic, who was completing her second, or novice, year, a year spent of no interaction with outsiders. “I’ve been cloistered all year, and I’ve never felt freer.”


THE SAME WEEK I WENT to Nashville, I visited the Sisters of St. Joseph, in Holyoke, Mass., a congregation that belongs to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. They had arranged for me a program almost identical to the Dominican treatment: a tour, lunch, casual chats. These women were as articulate as the Dominicans, as mirthful, as indifferent to worldly goods. Their simple, sensible-shoe, old-lady garb was, in its way, more modest than the bright white habits of the Dominicans. Many of these sisters were teachers, too, although they were permitted other careers, and some worked in parish houses, in charities, or as social workers. There are 257 Sisters of St. Joseph, about as many sisters as in Nashville.

But the Sisters of St. Joseph were old: they range in age from 53 to 100. This summer brought one new member, a once-divorced, once-widowed woman of 54. The halls of their home, Mont Marie, are filled with walkers, wheelchairs and canes, congregating in loose formation outside the chapel, the living rooms, the dining hall.

Over lunch, I talked with a group including Sister Maxine Snyder, the current president. She joined the congregation in 1960, right after graduating from a Sisters of St. Joseph high school in North Adams, Mass. Four years later, her twin sisters also joined — her parents gave all three of their daughters, and any hope of grandchildren, to the Sisters of St. Joseph.

When Sister Maxine talks about her decision to become a nun, she still sounds enraptured, just like the young Dominicans. It was the example of her high school teachers, she told me. “My mindset was, ‘I cannot imagine doing anything more meaningful, or more compelling, than what I’m choosing to do,” Sister Maxine said. “I’ve seen in people here this energy, this joy, this wide perspective.”

When Vatican II called on sisters worldwide to “renew” their religious lives, every congregation began internal evaluations to consider which traditions they should keep and which they might discard. These were arduous deliberations, taking years. Thousands of nuns left their orders. Some congregations emerged fairly unchanged, like the Nashville Dominicans. Others changed a lot, seizing what seemed an opportunity to become real citizens of the 1960s, with all that era promised. The Sisters of St. Joseph developed a consensus model of leadership; most of them began to dress in civilian clothes, identifying themselves only by a cross worn on the breast or around the neck; and many took jobs outside of education, their traditional field. They became more mobile, and prayer lives became less regular and less rigid. These changes allowed them, among other advantages, to move more easily among the people.

The Vatican’s doctrinal assessment, Sister Maxine noted, tells the nuns to spend more time fighting abortion even as it “contains nothing about the Gospels.” But if you read the Gospels, Sister Maxine said, “so many times Jesus Christ says the poor will always be with you, and there are so many stories about Jesus’ ministry to the poor.” Sister Maxine was implying, quite clearly, that the Vatican’s emphasis on certain hot-button political issues, at the expense of more general concern for the least among us, is a distortion of the Gospels.

That is also the view, I suspect, of Sister Jane Morrissey, a Sister of St. Joseph whom I met in her office at Homework House, several miles away in Holyoke. Sister Jane became a nun in 1964, and in 2005, she founded Homework House, an after-school program and summer camp for the mostly poor, mostly Puerto Rican kids of Holyoke. I asked her why young women were attracted to conservative congregations, rather than congregations like hers.

“For the same reason women were attracted to our order when it was like that!” Sister Jane said, then referred me to the Bible: “John says that it’s easier to love the God we do not see than the neighbor we do. I understand that. When I was young I wanted to go into a contemplative order. There was a kind of safety and solace in the silence…. It’s tougher to live in the North End of Springfield and be awakened by mopeds. I have no doubt that I was called to do this—but I wouldn’t have known that when I was 18.”

The freedoms of Vatican II permitted Sister Jane a more varied life than she could have predicted. Several years ago, she spent a summer as an intern at Shakespeare & Co., the famous theater in the Berkshires. The Dominican sisters tend to limit their reading to Catholic texts, I was told, but Sister Jane just finished Solzhenitsyn’s “Cancer Ward.” For fun she memorizes Emily Dickinson. In the small, cushion-filled room on the third floor of her group home in Springfield, where she and four other sisters pray every morning, I saw copies of “The Te of Piglet” and works by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Han, in addition to Francis of Assisi.

The Vatican looks at Sister Anna, the Dominican, and sees the future; it looks at Sister Jane, and her fellow Sisters of St. Joseph, and figures their only hope is to emulate the Dominicans. The Vatican is right, up to a point: the liberal, more elderly congregations are dying. But then again, so are the vast majority of conservative groups. Five or ten youthful, growing congregations will not reverse the geriatric, and ultimately mortal, trend. And forcing some liberal groups to become more conservative won’t necessarily increase the number of women interested in being nuns. Church conservatives “want to give you the sense that if all groups went back into the habit, they’d all have the success the Nashville Dominicans are having,” Patricia Wittberg, a nun who teaches sociology at Purdue University, in Indianapolis, told me. “Not true!” A few young women “would just all be flowing into more orders. It’s a very small pie.”

For the Dominicans, Catholicism functions as a boat, one with high walls that protects and carries you, while for the Sisters of St. Joseph, the church is a life jacket, something that travels easily and lets you look around. But although they use their religion in different ways, the nuns were all among the best people I had met in a long time. They were smart, cheerful, and authentic, not vain.

And brave. Sisters in both congregations told me their parents were shocked by their decisions—even those who became nuns back in 1960, when all good Catholics were supposed to want to give a daughter or a son to the church. At least for a middle-class girl from a proper New England town, whether Sister Jane or Sister Anna, it was always unusual to commit so much to the church. It was never an ordinary calling. Even those nuns who eschew left-wing politics are radicals indeed, for in our age it has always been a bit radical to be a nun.

Mark Oppenheimer writes the Beliefs column for The New York Times. He is the author of a new e-book about the life of sex columnist Dan Savage, available here. His website is markoppenheimer.com, and he can be followed on Twitter @markopp1.

An old-school confessional revives saying ‘I’m sorry’

Ann Marie Somma / Hartford Faith & Values | Apr 29, 2013

DERBY, Conn. (RNS) The Rev. Janusz Kukulka can’t say for sure that his parishioners are sinning more, but they sure are lining up at the new confessional booth to tell him about it.

The new confessional at St. Mary the Immaculate Conception Church in Derby, Conn. RNS photo by Ann Marie Somma/Hartford Faith & Values


For years, Kukulka, was content with absolving sins in a private room marked by an exit sign to the right of the altar St. Mary the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church.

But something happened during Lent this year. For the first time, Kukulka really noticed the two confessionals missing from the rear of his church. They’d been gone for four decades, ripped out during the 1970s to make room for air conditioning units during a renovation inspired by the Second Vatican Council.

They must have been a thing of beauty, Kukulka thought. He imagined their dark oak paneled doors and arched moldings to match the Gothic architecture of the church designed by renowned 19th-century architect Patrick Keely.

Their absence was striking, especially when the Archdiocese of Hartford had asked parishes to extend their confession hours during Lent, part of a public relations campaign to get Catholics to return to the sacrament of reconciliation.

So, one Sunday Kukulka announced his desire to the congregation. “I told them I wanted a visible confessional,” he said.

He got one within a week.

Parishioners Timothy Conlon and Patrick Knott moved quickly to fulfill their priest’s wish. They thought about building a confessional, but the cost was prohibitive for the cash-strapped parish. So, they turned to the Internet, where Conlon found an antique confessional for sale in Iowa on eBay.

Conlon flew out to Iowa and drove the confessional back to Derby. Knott’s wife, Elisa, donated the $1,100 cost of the confessional in honor of her parents, who were devoted church members. A plaque above the confessional bears their name.

“It’s a big hit,” Conlon said.

Patrick Knott, who had never confessed in the private room, said a long line formed in February when Kukulka held the first confession in the booth. He was the first to try it out.

“I got celebrity status,” he said. “It wasn’t bad.”

Kukulka said confessions have been up ever since at the church.

But Thomas Groome, professor of theology and religious education at Boston College, doubts that an old-school confessional will be enough to keep the momentum going.

Confessions among American Catholics have been on the decline for decades, a trend many theologians attribute to changes introduced by the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

In an attempt to make confession less about sin, many churches during Vatican II shuttered their confessional booths and opened “reconciliation rooms” where the faithful could sit face-to-face with a priest and talk about their sins in the context of self-improvement.


Elisa and Patrick Knott, and Tim Conlon helped obtain the new confessional at St. Mary the Immaculate Conception Church in Derby, Conn. RNS photo by Ann Marie Somma/Hartford Faith & Values

“The church was moving in a direction where priests were supposed to be counselors instead of judges,” Groome said. “The problem was that many priests didn’t have the counseling or spiritual skills, and people didn’t like the openness. They wanted the anonymity that comes behind the grill.”

When Monsignor Stephen DiGiovanni arrived at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Stamford, Conn., in 1998, he found two confessionals nailed shut during Vatican II.

He closed off the church’s reconciliation room that featured “two beat-up old chairs and a crummy little screen” and opened up the confessionals. In 2009, he told a New York Times reporter that more than 400 people partake in the confessional rite every Sunday.

That number continues to grow, and the church has added more confession times.

“When I began as a priest in 1977, it was about ‘I’m OK , you’re OK, we don’t have to confess anything,’” he said. “We shouldn’t be guilt-ridden Catholics, that’s all true, but we should be contrite.”

Kukulka couldn’t be happier with the new confessional.

There’s just one small problem: Voices inside the confessional echo through the sanctuary.

(Ann Marie Somma is the editor of Hartford Faith & Values.)

Blow-by-Blow: How Obama & Hillary Left Americans to Die

May 9, 2013 By Arnold Ahlert


Wednesday on Capitol Hill, three impeccable witnesses offered the clearest evidence to date that the Obama administration’s response to Benghazi before, during and after the terrorist attack that claimed the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, State Department employee Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen A. Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods, was a deadly combination of ineptitude, political calculations, and outright lying. Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant Secretary of State for counterterrorism; Greg Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya; and Eric Nordstrom, former regional security officer in Libya, offered unshakeable testimony, despite efforts by several Democratic lawmakers to protect both the current administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, their party’s most viable presidential candidate for 2016. What the witnesses averred reveals a grim web of deceit likely orchestrated by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to cover up the order to ground U.S. rescue teams that could have easily saved our besieged countrymen in Benghazi.

Some of the most compelling and emotional testimony was provided by Hicks, who offered the House Oversight and Government Reform committee a damning blow-by-blow account of the September 11, 2012 attack: In Tripoli at the time, Hicks recounted how he had spoken with Stevens early in the evening, and there was no sign of unusual activity. After relaxing for a while, he got an alert that Benghazi was under attack. When he checked his cell phone he saw two numbers, one of which he didn’t recognize. He called that number first and got Stevens on the phone. “Greg! We’re under attack!” said Stevens, according to Mr. Hicks.


Later, when it became clear that Stevens was missing, the first concern was that he had been taken by terrorists. “We began to hear also that the ambassador’s been taken to a hospital,” said Hicks. “We learn that it is in a hospital which is controlled by Ansar al-Shariah, the group that Twitter feeds had identified as leading the attack on the consulate.” As this information was coming in, a “response team” from Tripoli arrived at the Benghazi airport, one that Hicks thought might become involved in a “hostage rescue” operation, even as officials worried they were being “baited into a trap.”

Hicks then spoke of the mortars that landed on the compound shortly after a group of Americans fleeing the consulate arrived at the annex. The first mortar landed among a group of Libyans who had helped bring the Americans to safety. “The next was short,” he said. “The next three landed on the roof.”

Those were the mortars that killed Doherty and Woods.

Hicks was visibly choked up when he recounted learning about Stevens’ death from the Libyan prime minister. ”I think it’s the saddest phone call I’ve ever had in my life,” he said.

In one of the most stunning portions of the hearing, Hicks confirmed the chilling refusal of the Obama administration to send in readily available U.S. assets to stop the consulate slaughter. This order to “stand down” was given not once, but at least twice. Hicks also revealed that an explicit order from the chain of command prevented a four-man special forces rescue team in Tripoli from getting to the Americans trapped at the annex. He noted the order came from ”either AFRICOM or SOCAFRICA” and that the team was “furious” when they were told to stand down. “I will quote Lieutenant Colonel Gibson,” said Hicks, referring to the officer on the receiving end of that command. “He said, ‘This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more balls than somebody in the military.’” Hicks’ testimony on this point directly contradicts recent statements from the Obama-run Pentagon. “There was never any kind of stand-down order to anybody,” said Maj. Robert Furman, Pentagon spokesman, on Monday.

Yet Mark Thompson also testified that he tried to get a Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) comprised of special ops and intelligence personnel deployed, and he, too, was told to stand down. According to a source interviewed by Breitbart.com, only President Obama, or someone acting on his authority, could have given the stand down order. As we know from testimony provided by former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, President Obama met with the two officials on September 11 at 5 p.m. EDT for 30 minutes — less than an hour-and-a-half into the attack — and was supposedly never heard from him again for the rest of the evening. The very next day, Obama headed to a campaign fundraiser in Las Vegas.

The Obama administration undoubtedly understood that its decision to leave defenseless Americans, including our ambassador, to needlessly die at the hands of al-Qaeda-linked jihadists would not go over well for a commander-in-chief in the throes of a presidential election and a secretary of state angling for the Oval Office in 2016. Hicks’ testimony affirmed suspicions that administration officials conspired to conceal the nature of the attack by concocting an absolutely fictitious account of events involving a “spontaneous” attack prompted by an anti-Islam YouTube video. Hicks testified that he had personally told former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the Benghazi raid was a terrorist attack at 2 a.m. that same night. He recounted that ”everybody in the mission” believed it was an act of terror “from the get-go,” a reality echoed by Libyan President Mohammed al-Magariaf, who said his government had “no doubt that this was pre-planned, predetermined.” Magariaf made this assertion the very day before UN ambassador Susan Rice went out to peddle the lie that a “spontaneous demonstration” had gotten out of hand due to an Internet video.

When Hicks heard Rice, he was appalled. “My jaw dropped, and I was embarrassed,” he said.


In reality, Rice was a willing mouthpiece for the two biggest promoters of the Internet video lie: President Obama and Hillary Clinton. In fact, the State Department spent $70,000 to run advertisements in Pakistan featuring the two of them rejecting the contents of the video, and promoting tolerance for all religions. Even more remarkable, despite committee Democrats implying that a thorough investigation was conducted internally by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB), Hillary Clinton was never interviewed by the ARB.

Hillary’s entire take on the matter can be whittled down to the infamous statement she made during the U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing on May 8, 2013. After being questioned as to why the administration misled the American people, Clinton became indignant. “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans,” she said. “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?”

Eric Nordstrom, who became emotional when he described his friends and other personnel who lost their lives in the attack, provided an answer to that question. “It matters to me personally and it matters to my colleagues–to my colleagues at the Department of State,” he said, his voice breaking. “It matters to the American public for whom we serve. And, most importantly, it matters to the friends and family of Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods who were murdered on September 11, 2012.”

Nordstrom further testified in writing that Hillary Clinton waived security requirements for the Benghazi consulate despite high and critical threat levels in the six categories of security standards established under the Overseas Security Policy Board and the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999. The waiver can only be authorized by the Secretary of State, who cannot delegate that responsibility to someone else. ”If the Secretary of State did not waive these requirements, who did so by ordering occupancy of the facilities in Benghazi and Tripoli?” Nordstrom wrote.

Nordstrom also offered his take on the ARB. ”I found the ARB process that I was involved in to be professional and the unclassified recommendations reasonable and positive. However, it is not what is contained within the report that I take exception to but what is left unexamined,” Nordstrom wrote. “Specifically, I’m concerned with the ARB’s decision to focus its attention at the Assistant Secretary level and below, where the ARB felt that ‘the decision-making in fact takes place,’” he wrote.

Hicks testified that the State Department actively sought to intimidate witnesses in order to prevent facts surrounding the Benghazi attack from being leaked. He revealed that a top State Department official called him to demand a report from his meeting with a congressional delegation and expressed unhappiness that a State Department lawyer was not present for the session. “I was instructed not to allow the RSO, the acting deputy chief of mission–me–to be personally interviewed,” he said. Later in the hearing, Hicks noted that State seemed especially concerned with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who has done yeoman’s work tracking down the survivors of the attack, kept under wraps by the administration. ”We were not to be personally interviewed by Congressman Chaffetz,” said Hicks, who added that Cheryl Mills, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, ”demanded a report on the visit” that did take place.

The State Department was caught in another lie yesterday as well. While the hearings were getting underway, Republicans revealed that Ambassador Thomas Pickering, co-chairman of the ARB, refused to testify. State countered that Republicans refused to let him. Frederick Hill, spokesman for Committee chairman Darryl Issa (R-CA), produced a letter dated February 22 inviting Pickering to testify. “Ambassador Pickering initially told the Committee he was not available on that date,” Hill told ABC News. “When asked about a different date, he said he was not inclined to testify.”

The State Department isn’t the only entity interested in controlling the flow of information in this tragedy. House Democrats embarrassingly struggled to distract from the proceedings with absurd non sequiturs and personal attacks. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking Democratic at the Benghazi hearing, told one of the whistleblowers to “protect your fellow employees.” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) suggested it was unpatriotic to challenge the administration’s narrative. “I find it truly disturbing and very unfortunate that when Americans come under attack, the first thing some did in this country was attack Americans,” she said. “Attack the military; attack the president; attack the State Department; attack the former senator from the great state of New York, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.” Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) blamed Republicans and congressional budget cuts for the terror attack, even as he apparently remains oblivious to the reality that it was Democrats who insisted the lion’s share of the budget cuts induced by sequestration come from the military.

Media are also shamelessly entrenched in the campaign to suppress the facts surround the Benghazi attack. Politico reports that CBS News execs are getting “increasingly frustrated” with premiere investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s stories on Benghazi, which they consider “dangerously close to advocacy.”

Dangerously close to honesty is more like it, which is exactly what CBS is worried about. As Washington Post explains, “While other media, particularly Fox News, have been similarly skeptical about the official narrative about Benghazi, Attkisson and CBS might put the story in a different light,” the paper reports. “As a much-decorated reporter from a news outlet often derided by conservatives as a liberal beacon, Attkisson and her network flip the usual script on this highly politicized story. That is, it’s hard to peg her and her network as Republican sympathizers out to score political points against a Democratic president.” With Attkisson, a self-described “political agnostic,” questioning the administration, Bengahzi can no longer be dismissed by the left as a vast right-wing conspiracy. “People can say what they want about me, I don’t care,” Attkisson says. “I just want to get the information out there.”

Attkisson notwithstanding, it remains to be seen whether the remainder of the mainstream media will now demand answers from the Obama administration on why it chose to needlessly throw American servicemen to the wolves in Benghazi and why, exactly, it was necessary to contrive a totally false account of events. The Obama administration is fighting hard to distract from the severity of the scandal. White House press secretary Jay Carney claimed that continued scrutiny of Benghazi is nothing more than an attempt by Republicans to ”politicize” the issue. ”This is a subject that has from its beginning been subject to attempts to politicize it by Republicans, while in fact what happened in Benghazi was a tragedy,” he said, adding that the incident has been ”been looked at exhaustively.” Carney further noted that the ongoing pursuit is ”part of an effort to chase after what isn’t the substance here.” The entire substance, according to Carney, is the reality that the consulate was attacked, four Americans were killed, and the president will make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Carney saved his most ridiculous assertion for last, claiming the administration’s editing of the talking points, in which wholesale changes and rampant deletions were made, (the details of which can be seen here) were “stylistic and not substantive.” “We’ve been very clear about the specific edits that were made at the suggestion of the White House.”

That is an utter lie. Version one of the CIA report included references to an “attack,” “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qa’ida,” the involvement of Ansar al Sharia and the fact that “wide availability of weapons and experienced fighters in Libya contributed to the lethality of the attacks,” which were all completely removed. Furthermore, at no time did any of the versions mention an anti-Islamic Internet video as being the catalyst for the attack.

The Obama administration can try spin this debacle any way it likes, but it can’t spin away four dead Americans, two separate “stand down” orders and the State Department’s advanced knowledge of inadequate security. They can’t change the reality that no rescue was even attempted over the course of a seven-hour battle, that brave Americans were left to fend for themselves, or that the administration sat on the details of this story for eight months — two most crucial of which occurred prior to the 2012 election. Even now the administration continues to stonewall every effort to get to the truth.

But with the truth finally coming to the surface, the remaining question observers are left with is why the Obama administration abandoned Americans who were easily within reach. While the lies used to cover up this disaster are easy to explain, the rationale behind the unconscionable stand down orders must still be determined. As the facts stand now, the likely explanations do not bode well for President Obama. The circumstances suggest the decision was made by a callous and desperate president struggling with a re-election campaign, a central plank of which was that al-Qaeda had been decimated and was “on the run” — not something affirmed by news of al-Qaeda operatives’ murder of our ambassador and military personnel. Or perhaps our commander-in-chief was too busy being our campaigner-in-chief and simply didn’t care about the carnage unfolding on his watch, which he declined to prevent. In any case, it is incumbent on the Obama administration to provide a rationale for its disastrous decision. As persistent Americans have shown, the investigation will not cease until that occurs.

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About Arnold Ahlert

Arnold Ahlert is a former NY Post op-ed columnist currently contributing to JewishWorldReview.com, HumanEvents.com and CanadaFreePress.com. He may be reached at atahlert@comcast.net.

Gosnell trial revealed horrors of abortion, media silence

By Dan Gainor

Published May 14, 2013

FoxNews.com


Courtesy of ABC

Mengele. Kevorkian. Now Gosnell can be added to that awful list. Men who perverted the idea that medicine should indeed “first do no harm.”

Dr. Kermit Gosnell was on trial for his life for the first degree murder of four babies born as a result of a failed late-term abortion. The American media that had resisted covering the gruesome case were also on trial.

Both were found guilty.

Followers of the Philadelphia case weren’t surprised with either result.



The facts in the Gosnell case read more like a demon’s resume than a description of a man sworn to heal.



Gosnell is a monster. He was initially charged “with killing seven babies born alive," along with Karnamaya Mongar a newly-arrived, 41-year-old refugee from Bhutan.

Prosecutors say Gosnell's staff gave the 90-pound woman a lethal dose of anesthesia and painkillers during a 2009 abortion,” according to the Associated Press. Some charges were dropped and he was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and one count of third-degree murder, as well as “211 counts of failing to comply with a state law that requires a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion is performed.”

The facts read more like a demon’s resume than a description of a man sworn to heal. One former worker testified that she saw “a late-term baby who survived an abortion ‘swimming’ in a toilet and ‘trying to get out.’”

Another child reportedly was big enough “that Gosnell joked it could have walked to the bus.” Child after child had life ended as scissors snipped spinal cords, decapitating them.

Yet this “house of horrors” would never have seen the light of day if the American media had their way.

Major outlets ignored the story until conservative anger called them out. The Media Research Center (where I work), Kirsten Powers, Fox News Channel, some in Congress and an army of conservatives on Twitter provided part of the pressure.

Even then, news coverage was paltry – far less than outlets would devote to any story du jour from Manti Te’o and his invisible girlfriend to endless accounts of the Jodi Arias trial.

ABC was the worst. It took that network a couple years after the arrest and 56 straight days of trial to acknowledge Gosnell existed. ABC found more than three hours of air time for other court cases during that time, but waited until Gosnell was convicted before it ever admitted he was even on trial.

“Nightline” co-anchor Terry Moran inadvertently admitted the network’s failure during the May 13 “World News with Diane Sawyer” segment. “For two months, jurors heard often shocking, grisly testimony.” Yes, two months of “shocking, grisly testimony” and only one minute and 51 seconds of news coverage at the very end.

In short, if you rely on ABC for your news coverage, you are out of luck. It’s that kind of timely newsgathering that would have viewers expecting to see reports on the end of WWII or the sinking of the Titanic later this week.

The other two members of the Big Three didn’t impress either. NBC was bad and CBS only a little better. NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked Obama a question about Gosnell but didn’t even bother to follow it up. And when NBC finally gave an actual report on the case on May 1, it hid the awful nature of the case. The network that had reported on the smell of a decomposing body in the Casey Anthony trial called Gosnell’s crimes “too gruesome” to tell viewers.

Other outlets were just as averse to reporting the awful story of baby murder. The Washington Post committed to the story after health reporter Sarah Kliff defended her own failure to cover Gosnell because it was a “local crime” story.

But it wasn’t a local crime story. It was part of a national belief in infanticide coming directly from the pro-abortion movement. Just in the time of the Gosnell trial, we’ve seen a Planned Parenthood lobbyist and an abortion doctor both show support for baby murder after the child is born.

Abortion lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow told an astonished hearing that the life of a baby born after a botched abortion should be “left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”

The pro-life group Live Action caught a D.C. abortion doctor in an embarrassing admission of, you know, supporting baby murder. “One video features a D.C. doctor, Cesare Santangelo, who said that in the unlikely event that an abortion resulted in a live birth, ‘we would not help it,’” reported the Post. For that reveal, he said he considers the heroes of Live Action to be “terrorists.”

That is the world that Kermit Gosnell introduced to America. It’s a world where the liberal fantasies of “safe, available and rare” abortions have been twisted into a convenient rationale for taxpayer-funded baby murder, even after a child is born. It’s an image the abortion community won’t be able to erase.



Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture. He writes frequently about media for Fox News Opinion. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/05/14/gosnell-trial-revealed-horrors-abortion-media-silence/#ixzz2TMFW2Zv2

The Apparitions at Fatima

During World War I Pope Benedict XV made repeated but forlorn pleas for peace, and finally, in May 1917, made a direct appeal to Mary to intercede for peace in the world. The response was Mary's first appearance at Fatima just over a week later. At this time Fatima was just a small village about seventy miles north of Lisbon; the three children to whom she appeared were Lucia dos Santos, aged ten, and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, brother and sister, aged eight and seven respectively.

The Angel of Portugal

However, it was in the spring of the previous year, 1916, that the children had their first joint supernatural encounter as a means of preparing them for their meetings with Mary. As they were looking after the sheep one day they saw a dazzlingly beautiful young man, seemingly made of light, who told them he was the Angel of Peace; he invited them to pray with him.

Later on, in the summer, the Angel again appeared to the children and encouraged them to pray and make sacrifices, as a way of drawing down peace on the country.

In the autumn the children again saw the Angel as they were out looking after the sheep. He appeared before them holding a chalice in his hands, above which was suspended a host from which drops of blood were falling into the chalice. The Angel left the chalice suspended in the air and prostrated himself before it in prayer.

He then gave the host to Lucia to eat, and let Francisco and Jacinta drink from the chalice whilst saying: "Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Repair their crimes and console your God." Then he prostrated himself again in prayer before disappearing. The children did not tell anyone about these visits of the Angel, feeling an interior necessity of keeping quiet about these events.

13 May 1917

On 13 May 1917 the three children took their flocks out to pasture on the small area known as the Cova da Iria. After lunch and the rosary they suddenly saw a bright flash of something like lightning, followed quickly by another flash in the clear blue sky.

They looked up to see in Lucia's words, "a lady, clothed in white, brighter than the sun, radiating a light more clear and intense than a crystal cup filled with sparkling water, lit by burning sunlight." The children stood there amazed, bathed in the light that surrounded the apparition, as the Lady smiled and said: "Do not be afraid, I will not harm you." Lucia as the oldest asked her where she came from.

The Lady pointed to the sky and said: "I come from heaven." Lucia then asked her what she wanted: "I have come to ask you to come here for six months on the 13th day of the month, at this same hour. Later I shall say who I am and what I desire. And I shall return here yet a seventh time."

Lucia then asked if they would go to heaven and she was told yes, she and Jacinta would go to heaven, but Francisco would need to say many rosaries first. The Lady then said: "Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the conversion of sinners?" Lucia as spokesman for all three readily agreed: "Then you are going to have much to suffer, but the grace of God will be your comfort."

Lucia recounted that at the same moment as she said these words the Lady opened her hands and streamed a "light" on the children which allowed them to see themselves in God. The Lady finished with a request: "Say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and the end of the war." With that she began to rise into the air, moving towards the east until she disappeared.

The children got together and tried to think of ways they could make sacrifices, as the Lady had asked, resolving to go without lunch and to pray the full rosary. Francisco and Jacinta received more support from their parents than Lucia, but the attitude of the local inhabitants was sceptical and even derisory; the children had much to suffer, just as the Lady had told them.

13 June 1917

About fifty people turned up at the Cova da Iria on June 13, as the three children assembled near the holmoak tree where the Lady had appeared. The children then saw a flash of light followed immediately by the apparition of Mary, as she spoke to Lucia: "I want you to come on the 13th of next month, to pray the Rosary every day, and to learn to read. Later, I will tell you what I want."

Lucia asked Mary to take them to heaven and was reassured in this way: "I will take Jacinta and Francisco shortly; but you will stay here for some time to come. Jesus wants to use you to make Me known and loved. He wishes to establish the devotion to My Immaculate Heart throughout the world. I promise salvation to whoever embraces it; these souls will be dear to God, like flowers put by Me to adorn his throne." This last sentence is found in a letter written in 1927 by Sr. Lucia to her confessor.

Lucia was sad at the first part of this reply, saying: "Am I to stay here alone?" Mary replied: "No, my daughter. Are you suffering a great deal? Don't lose heart. I will never forsake you. My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God."

One of the witnesses to this apparition, Maria Carreira, described how Lucia then cried out and pointed as Mary departed. She herself heard a noise like, "a rocket, a long way off," and looked to see a small cloud a few inches over the tree, rise, and move slowly towards the east until it disappeared. The crowd of pilgrims then returned to Fatima where they reported the amazing things they had seen, thus ensuring that there were between two and three thousand people present for the July apparition.

13 July 1917

On 13 July the three children assembled at the Cova and again they saw the indescribably beautiful Lady over the holmoak. Lucia asked what she wanted, and Mary replied: "I want you to come here on the 13th of next month, to continue to pray the Rosary every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war, because only she can help you."

Lucia then asked her who she was and for a miracle so everyone would believe: "Continue to come here every month. In October, I will tell you who I am and what I want, and I will perform a miracle for all to see and believe."

Lucia made some requests for sick people, to which Mary replied that she would cure some but not others, and that all must say the rosary to obtain such graces, before continuing: "Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say many times, especially when you make some sacrifice: O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary."

The vision of hell

Lucia later revealed that as she spoke these words, Mary opened her hands and rays of light from them seemed to penetrate the earth so that they saw a terrifying vision of hell, full of demons and lost souls amidst indescribable horrors.

This vision of hell was the first part of the "secret" of Fatima, and was not revealed until much later. The children looked up to the sad face of the Blessed Virgin, who spoke to them kindly:

"You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.

"To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world."

At this point the second part of the secret of Fatima ends and the third part begins with the words, "In Portugal the dogma of the faith will always be preserved ... " The first two parts of the secret only became publicly known in 1942. The third part of the secret has only recently been publicly divulged, in June 2000.

Mary specifically told Lucia not to tell anyone about the secret at this stage, apart from Francisco, before continuing: "When you pray the Rosary, say after each mystery: O my Jesus, forgive us, save us from the fire of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are most in need." After assuring Lucia that there was nothing more, Mary disappeared off into the distance.

August 1917

As 13 August approached, the story of the apparitions had reached the anti-religious secular press, and while this ensured that the whole country knew about Fatima, it also meant that many biased and negative reports were circulating. The children were kidnapped on the morning of the 13th by the Mayor of Vila Nova de Ourem, Arturo Santos. They were interrogated about the secret; but despite his threats and promises of money, they refused to divulge it. In the afternoon they were moved to the local prison and threatened with death but determined that they would die rather than reveal the secret.

On August 19, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta were assembled at a place called Valinhos, near Fatima, late in the afternoon, when they again saw Mary, who spoke to Lucia: "Go again to the Cova da Iria on the 13th and continue to say the Rosary every day." Mary also said she would perform a miracle, so all would believe, and that if they had not been kidnapped it would have been even greater.

Looking very sad, Mary then said: "Pray, pray very much, and make sacrifices for sinners; for many souls go to hell, because there are none to sacrifice themselves and pray for them." With that she rose into the air and moved towards the east before disappearing.

By now the children had thoroughly absorbed Mary's plea for prayer and penance, and did everything they could to answer it. They prayed for hours while lying prostrate on the ground and went as long as they could without drinking, in the burning heat of the Portuguese summer. They also went without food, as a sacrifice for sinners, to save them from hell, the vision of which had so profoundly effected them. They even knotted some pieces of old rope around their waists as a form of mortification, not removing them day or night.

13 September 1917

On September 13 very large crowds began to converge on Fatima from all directions. Around noon the children then arrived, and after the customary flash of light, they saw Mary on the holmoak tree. She spoke to Lucia: "Continue to pray the Rosary in order to obtain the end of the war. In October Our Lord will come, as well as Our Lady of Dolours and Our Lady of Carmel. Saint Joseph will appear with the Child Jesus to bless the world. God is pleased with your sacrifices. He does not want you to sleep with the rope on, but only to wear it during the daytime."

Lucia then began to put forward the petitions for cures, to be told: "Yes, I will cure some, but not others. In October I will perform a miracle so that all may believe." With that she rose, moved to the east, and disappeared.

13 October 1917

The proclamation of a public miracle caused the most intense speculation throughout Portugal, and the journalist Avelino de Almeida, published a satirical article on the whole business in the anti-religious newspaper O Seculo. People from other parts of the country descended, in their tens of thousands, on the Cova, despite the terrible storm that lashed the mountain country around Fatima, on the eve of the 13th. Many pilgrims went barefooted, reciting the rosary as they went, all crowding into the area around the Cova, as by midmorning the weather again turned bad and heavy rain began to fall.

The children reached the holmoak around noon, and then saw the flash of light as Mary appeared before them. For the last time, Lucia asked what she wanted: "I want to tell you that a chapel is to be built here in my honour. I am the Lady of the Rosary. Continue always to pray the Rosary every day. The war is going to end, and the soldiers will soon return to their homes."

Again Lucia made her requests, being informed that people must amend their lives, and ask forgiveness of their sins, if they wanted healings or conversions. She reported too that Mary grew very sad and said: "Do not offend the Lord our God any more, because He is already so much offended." Then rising into the air and opening her hands towards the sun, growing more brilliant as she did, she disappeared, being replaced by various visions seen only by the children.

The Miracle of the Sun

At the same time the vast crowd saw a true miracle. The black clouds parted, and the sun became visible, looking like a dull grey disc that could be looked at directly quite easily. In O Seculo Avelino de Almeida would adopt a very different tone from his earlier satirical article on Fatima:

"...one could see the immense multitude turn towards the sun, which appeared free from clouds and at its zenith. It looked like a plaque of dull silver and it was possible to look at it without the least discomfort. It might have been an eclipse which was taking place. But at that moment a great shout went up and one could hear the spectators nearest at hand shouting: "A miracle! A miracle!" Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was Biblical as they stood bareheaded, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws - the sun "danced" according to the typical expression of the people. ...

"People then began to ask each other what they had seen. The great majority admitted to having seen the trembling and dancing of the sun; others affirmed that they saw the face of the Blessed Virgin; others, again, swore that the sun whirled on itself like a giant Catherine wheel and that it lowered itself to the earth as if to burn it with its rays. Some said they saw it change colours successively. ..."

Other witnesses too, such as Maria Carreira, testified to the terrifying nature of the solar miracle: "It turned everything different colours, yellow, blue, white, and it shook and trembled; it seemed like a wheel of fire which was going to fall on the people. They cried out: 'We shall all be killed, we shall all be killed!' ... At last the sun stopped moving and we all breathed a sigh of relief. We were still alive and the miracle which the children had foretold had taken place."

Other people witnessed the solar miracle from a distance thus ruling out the possibility of any type of collective hallucination. A final intriguing, and important, point was that the heat of the sun, as it descended on the people, also had the effect of drying their clothes and the ground, so that they went from being completely soaked to being dry in about ten minutes.

The deaths of Francisco and Jacinta

An influenza epidemic swept Europe in autumn of 1918, just as the War was finishing, and both Jacinta and Francisco fell ill. Francisco recovered somewhat and there were hopes that he might become well, but he realised that he was destined to die young, as Our Lady had foretold, and his condition worsened again. He offered up all his sufferings as a way of consoling God for the sinfulness and ingratitude of mankind, becoming so weak that eventually he could not even pray. He received his first Communion, and on the next day, 4 April 1919, he died.

Jacinta too was confined to her bed during the long winter months, and although she recovered was struck down with bronchial pneumonia, while also developing a painful abscess in her chest. She was moved to the hospital in Ourem in July 1919, where she underwent the painful treatment prescribed for her, but without much effect, returning home in August with an open wound in her side. It was decided that another attempt should be made to treat her, and so in January 1920 she was taken to Lisbon, where she was diagnosed as having purulent pleurisy and diseased ribs.

Eventually in February she was admitted into hospital, where she underwent another painful operation to remove two ribs; this left her with a large wound in her side that had to dressed daily, causing her agony. On the evening of 20 February the local priest was called and heard her Confession, but he insisted on waiting till the next day to bring her Communion, despite her protests that she felt worse, and as Mary had told her she died that night alone and far from her family. Her body was returned to Fatima and buried with that of Francisco, until both were later moved to the basilica built at the Cova da Iria.

Later apparitions to Sr. Lucia

The new bishop of the restored diocese of Leiria decided that it was best if Lucia was removed from Fatima, both to spare her from the continual questionings she had to endure, and to see what effect her absence would have on the numbers coming as pilgrims. Her mother agreed to her being sent away to school, and she left in May 1921, in great secrecy, for Porto, where a school run by the sisters of St. Dorothy was situated. Later she became a sister in this congregation, before joining the Carmelites.

On 10 December 1925, while at the convent in Pontevedra, Spain, Lucia saw another apparition, this time of Mary with the Child Jesus. Mary told Lucia to announce that she promised all the graces necessary for salvation to those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, confessed, received Holy Communion, recited five decades of the rosary, and meditated on the rosary for fifteen minutes, all with the intention of making reparation to her.

On 13 June 1929 Sr. Lucia, while at prayer in the convent chapel at Tuy, where she had moved, saw another apparition, this time a representation of the Trinity. She also heard Mary speak to her, asking that the Pope, in union with all the bishops of the world, make the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart that she had spoken of during the July 1917 apparition.

On 25 January 1938, a strange light filled the skies of northern Europe; it was described as a particularly brilliant display of the Aurora Borealis, but Sr. Lucia realised it was the "unknown light," also announced by Mary in the July apparition. It meant punishment for the world was close, principally through the Second World War, because it had not turned back to God.

Pope Pius XII consecrated the whole world to Mary's Immaculate Heart in 1942, and carried out a similar consecration of Russia in 1952, but neither of these fulfilled Mary's request at Fatima. This collegial consecration, in union with a "moral totality" of the world's bishops, was finally carried out by Pope John Paul II in 1984. Fatima received further Papal support when, on 13 May 1979, the Pope declared Jacinta and Francisco "venerable," the first stage in the process of their possible canonisation.

Pope John Paul has further emphasised the importance of Fatima by beatifying Jacinta and Francisco on 13 may 2000 during the Jubilee Year. At the same time he has announced that details of the third part of the Fatima secret will be revealed, while also entrusting the third millennium to Our Lady of Fatima.

The Bishop approves of Fatima

The Church, meanwhile, had maintained silence about the apparitions during the years from 1917, and it wasn't until May 1922 that Bishop Correia issued a pastoral letter on the subject, indicating that he would set up a commission of enquiry. In 1930 he issued another pastoral letter on the apparitions, which, after recounting the events at Fatima, contained the following brief but important statement.

"In virtue of considerations made known, and others which for reasons of brevity we omit; humbly invoking the Divine Spirit and placing ourselves under the protection of the most Holy Virgin, and after hearing the opinions of our Rev. Advisors in this diocese, we hereby: 1. Declare worthy of belief, the visions of the shepherd children in the Cova da Iria, parish of Fatima, in this diocese, from the 13th May to 13th October, 1917. 2. Permit officially the cult of Our Lady of Fatima."

Mary's words at Fatima

Sources: Kondor, Fatima in Lucia's own words, Fatima, 1976; De Marchi, Fatima from the beginning, Fatima, 1983; Martins & Fox, Documents on Fatima, Alexandria, 1992.