The film, Fatima (2020),
tells the story of the three Roman Catholic children in Fatima, Portugal, who
in 2017 claimed to see and hear the Virgin Mary periodically over a period of 6
months. The film centers around Lucia, the oldest of the three children, and,
moreover, the question of whether the children really encounter the Virgin, or are
lying, hypnotic, or even psychotic. In the film, as well as in “real life,” a
miracle is associated with the last visitation. In the story world of the film,
the visitation really happens, and the multitudes watching the children come to
believe this when the Virgin delivers on a miracle as promised. Historically,
believers as well as nonbelievers who were present at the event have testified
that the Sun moved around in the sky and even came closer. If this really
happened as witnesses have described, then the empirical “proof” in the story
world of the film is not the whole story, and the religious truth therein is
not limited to the faith narrative, but holds in an empirical, supernatural
sense. An implication is that Jesus not only resurrects in the Gospel stories,
but also as an empirical event in history. But, then, why have such
supernatural events been so rare since the “time” of Jesus? And, yet, witnesses as far as 40 km away from
the visitation of the Virgin reported seeing the miracle of the Sun.
Catholicism is not portrayed in
the film without blemish. Lucia’s mother, Maria, which is ironic, believes that
if she and Lucia suffer, then Manuel, Maria’s son, will return alive from
fighting in World War I. Maria’s assumption that God wants believers to suffer
ignores the point of Jesus’ suffering as a vicarious sacrifice to atone for
others’ sins and thus close the gap between God and humanity, or at least the
House of Israel. Neither the voluntary suffering of Lucia or her mother Maria
save souls. Furthermore, Maria’s flawed sense of causation—that if she suffers,
then her son will not be killed—demonstrates how superstition can take hold
when the human mind enters the religious domain of thought. So in the film,
Catholicism is hardly whitewashed. Moreover, the vulnerabilities of the human
mind in contemplating religious ideas are not dismissed.
So the need for psychological
testing of Lucia and the two other children is presented in the film as
reasonable, and indeed it is. The children pass the test, but they could still
be lying. So Lucia asks the Virgin to perform a miracle so the bystanders would
know that the visitation is real even though only the three children can see
the Virgin. The dramatic tension rises as the mayor goes so far as imprison the
three children so they would miss a monthly visitation by the Virgin. Lucia’s
mother, Maria, goes so far as to repeatedly hit Lucia for lying about the
visitations. That a person who presumes to know how to keep her son alive at
war—and indeed seems so “religious” in general—would then show her
true colors” in hitting her daughter for having a religious belief (i.e., in
the visitations) is not lost on the film’s viewers. And the child shall lead
them—not the bishop or the observable “devout.”
The esoteric messages of the
Virgin to the children, rather than to the judgmental multitude ruining the
family’s crop, the bishop, the mayor, and Lucia’s mother, is justified. “Some
people will never believe," the Virgin tells the children. The mayor in
particular is a good example. God is like the breeze passing by the mountain,
rather than a great fire or earthquake, and it takes a religious sensibility—a
sense of presence—to notice the passing of a breeze, metaphorically
speaking. It is because of the hostility of the detractors, those to whom
Jesus’ message and example of love and mercy has fallen like on hard stone, or
hardness of heart, that Lucia asks the Virgin for a miracle.
Like a quiet breeze, the message
of the Virgin, that people should stop insulting God by sinning without
repentance, should not be lost as the more sensationalistic miracle gains the
headlines, both in the film and after the historical event. The miracle is
merely a means by which to aid in the quiet message by giving confidence to
believers and convert others to not insulting God, which I contend is more
important than the Virgin’s admonition to pray more as that is merely a means
to the end, which is love. Even so, the miracle of the Sun, both in the film
and as a historical event, arguably has momentous significance. In the film,
the miracle means that the visitation was real, so Lucia and the two other
children are vindicated. Even Maria comes around, though tellingly the mayor
still does not. As a historical event, the movements of the Sun while the last
visitation was occurring means that religious truth, or meaning, in faith
narratives is not the whole story; those truths in faith narratives refer to
spiritual things outside of the story world, in the empirical, historical
world. It is thus extremely significant that believers and nonbelievers both
testified as witnesses in 1917 to the movements of the Sun. Mass hypnosis can
thus be eliminated as a possible explanation. The only alternative left is that
of coincidence, or else that the reports are erroneous—that the changed colors
and movements of the Sun were optical illusions after the heavy rain. The
veracity of religious truth in a faith narrative is not affected either way, so
I contend that such truth, like a light breeze, should be the object of faith
without raising questions of historicity one way or the other.
That is to say, the veracity of
religious truth in a faith narrative can be distinguished from, or even more
radically does not depend on, historical events or persons. Even so, the matter
of empirical events (e.g., the Resurrection) and persons (e.g., Moses, Jesus, and
the Buddha) is not inconsequential, and, if answered even more definitively
than either the film or the historical event of the Sun moving in the sky, then
the modern conception of religion, which disavows any faith narrative correspondence
with empirical or historical events and even persons, would be even more
severely uprooted. It may be that the miracle of the Sun has already done that,
and the film merely reminds or informs people of that, as well as the
possibility that, as the Virgin says in the film, some people will never
believe, even in the face of a miraculous empirical (i.e., supernatural) event.
Even so, many spurious miracles
have been claimed in the history of Christianity, and so perhaps a miracle less
subject to being reckoned as an optical illusion is needed before the question
of whether the events and characters in the Christian faith narratives
correspond to historical events and actual persons. Nothing in such narratives
can confirm such correspondences because a faith narrative is not a historical
account even if historical events are used (and modified to serve theological points).
Fortunately, the ways to enter the Kingdom of God as described and exemplified
in the Gospel faith-narratives do not depend on the question of historical
correspondences of events and even characters in those narratives.
The value of helping detractors, such
as Lucia tries to help her mother in the film, does not depend on whether Jesus
was a historical man or merely a character in the Gospels; the truth wherein
human nature is expanded, or turned on its head, does not so depend. Whether or
not the correspondence holds, a person applying the example and preaching in
the narratives will experience the spiritual dynamic. Faith is ultimately in
the value of that dynamic. In the Gospels, Jesus says that he came to preach
the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. The astute viewer of the film, Fatima,
transcends the sensationalistic leitmotifs of whether the visitations have a
reality outside of the children and whether the Sun really moves in the sky and
comes closer to discern the innocent faith of Lucia from the dogmatic, hypocritical
“faith” of her mother, who ironically has the name, Maria. Entering the Kingdom
of God in humility is like the innocent faith of a child. This esoteric message
of the film is, I submit, the most important thing about the film, and yet even
a believer could be excused for having a burning urge to know whether the
miracle (i.e., not of the laws of physics) of the Sun really happened. We are
merely human, after all, and so we have an instinctual urge for finality or
certainty even though the human mind can transcend the limits of cognition, perception,
and sensibility (i.e., emotions). One thing is certain; the religious sphere is
not an easy one for the human brain to inhabit.
On transcending even the ethical, see: Spiritual Leadership
