The Mideast has long been filled with prophecy, to say the least. The Jews were people of prophecy by definition, just as the Muslims and Christians are today. Prophecy is a thing for the People of the Book, and it did not stop with Mohammed or Isaiah or Jesus, but spread with the religions into Europe and Asia and then into the entire world. Prophesy is not new – nearly every culture has a way to gauge the future – but the religions of the Mideast encompass such vast populations that a strongly believed prophecy among one could very well change the course of world history.
Enter Fatima. The visions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima, initiated through three children in 1917, are well known, as are the Three Prophecies given them by her, the third finally being revealed by the Vatican about 20 years ago. As I found last night (with some disappointment), none seem to have severe implications for our future, as their time has passed. Apparently, even the final prophecy was a reference to the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981. Fatima and future prophecy, then, seem done and gone - except for one fact that had passed me by like an elephant on parade: Fatima is the name for the favored daughter of Mohammed, the most revered of Muslim woman. Why, of all places, should the greatest human symbol of Christianity besides Jesus appear in a village named for the daughter of Mohammed?
Legend has it that as the Muslims were being expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, a task completed by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, a young nobleman fell in love with a Muslim woman named Fatima. After her conversion to Christianity, he married her and so renamed the town for his love. In 1952, Archbishop Fulton Sheen took this and the subsequent visions in 1917 to mean that God was offering a way for the Muslims to accept Christ, through the relationship of Christianity’s great lady (who is also held in high esteem by Muslims) and their own. In presenting this, Monsignor Charles Page adds (along with the view of Sheen) that this event might have been as much a prophecy as a bridge – that Our Lady of Fatima might be what The Virgin of Guadalupe was for the Aztecs: a miracle of great power and symbolism which both complemented and overpowered the previous religion of the believers. To be more specific, Our Lady of Fatima would then be both a sign and a power from heaven that will lead to the conversion to Christianity of the Muslims.
Let us take this in while we consider the situation in Europe today: millions of Muslims have been allowed, or have forced their way, into the EU and have remained culturally apart from native Europe. Native Europeans have only about one child per couple, while Muslims have about five. When the math is done, even with the present population of Muslims, Western Europe will be Muslim majority by 2100, a feat that 1400 years of military invasions by Muslims was not able accomplish. If immigration continues, the window of majority rule will be complete decades earlier. To make it easier for the Muslim faithful, Christianity is now practiced only by a minority of Europeans. The stage seems ripe for a Muslim takeover in both numbers, religion, and traditional politics (as religion and politics go together in the Muslim world). To say it succinctly, it appears that the people and culture of traditional Europe are doomed.
I have written before about this, and have held out two possibilities as to why Europe has allowed this: one, that the elite feel unconsciously that Europe has reached its end, and, as Freud would tell us, are trying to fulfill a cultural death wish; or two, that the rulers believe (also subconsciously) that Europe is so powerful that the new Muslim immigrants will become like them and lead the people from their original countries into the modern world, if not the Christian one.
I tend to believe the first of these, but Archbishop Sheen and Monsignor Page offer another possibility that I did not consider, as it seems impossible – that of large-scale conversion of Muslims to Christianity through the power of Christ. Given the strong element that Christian belief had in the downfall of the Soviet Union, however, perhaps this is not so impossible after all, although it certainly would call for divine intercession. In any case, it is a delicious prospect to ponder: modern atheistic and ‘New Age’ Europe hauls in a bunch of poor Muslims for, on the practical level, cheap labor. They do so because they pride themselves on being post-racist, post-ethnocentric, and most of all, post-religion (as well as pro-business). Then these very same alien immigrants convert and become fervent Christians, calling back the old cultural beliefs in Europe. You can bet that if the modern rulers of Europe thought this to be so, they would build a wall from the Carpathian Mountains to Gibraltar as fast as brick and cement and wire could be laid.
Sheen’s theory seems dubious, but it also seemed impossible that Christianity would cross the world, growing like a mustard tree from the tiniest and most insignificant of seeds. Islam had far more militant roots, but it also grew large from small beginnings. It just might be that Fatima holds one of the greatest of historical surprises, where the cosmic power raised one woman of spirit to be superimposed on another woman of spirit, both worshipped by two distinct but related religions. Divinity does nothing of this nature by chance – it always has something, or many things, in mind. Archbishop Sheen’s view may have been biased, but it was probably not off-base; it appears almost certain that the power of heaven has proposed to amend the age-old animosities of two religions on the brink of another dramatic collision. If this is so, no power on Earth could stop it.
Enter Fatima. The visions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima, initiated through three children in 1917, are well known, as are the Three Prophecies given them by her, the third finally being revealed by the Vatican about 20 years ago. As I found last night (with some disappointment), none seem to have severe implications for our future, as their time has passed. Apparently, even the final prophecy was a reference to the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981. Fatima and future prophecy, then, seem done and gone - except for one fact that had passed me by like an elephant on parade: Fatima is the name for the favored daughter of Mohammed, the most revered of Muslim woman. Why, of all places, should the greatest human symbol of Christianity besides Jesus appear in a village named for the daughter of Mohammed?
Legend has it that as the Muslims were being expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, a task completed by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, a young nobleman fell in love with a Muslim woman named Fatima. After her conversion to Christianity, he married her and so renamed the town for his love. In 1952, Archbishop Fulton Sheen took this and the subsequent visions in 1917 to mean that God was offering a way for the Muslims to accept Christ, through the relationship of Christianity’s great lady (who is also held in high esteem by Muslims) and their own. In presenting this, Monsignor Charles Page adds (along with the view of Sheen) that this event might have been as much a prophecy as a bridge – that Our Lady of Fatima might be what The Virgin of Guadalupe was for the Aztecs: a miracle of great power and symbolism which both complemented and overpowered the previous religion of the believers. To be more specific, Our Lady of Fatima would then be both a sign and a power from heaven that will lead to the conversion to Christianity of the Muslims.
Let us take this in while we consider the situation in Europe today: millions of Muslims have been allowed, or have forced their way, into the EU and have remained culturally apart from native Europe. Native Europeans have only about one child per couple, while Muslims have about five. When the math is done, even with the present population of Muslims, Western Europe will be Muslim majority by 2100, a feat that 1400 years of military invasions by Muslims was not able accomplish. If immigration continues, the window of majority rule will be complete decades earlier. To make it easier for the Muslim faithful, Christianity is now practiced only by a minority of Europeans. The stage seems ripe for a Muslim takeover in both numbers, religion, and traditional politics (as religion and politics go together in the Muslim world). To say it succinctly, it appears that the people and culture of traditional Europe are doomed.
I have written before about this, and have held out two possibilities as to why Europe has allowed this: one, that the elite feel unconsciously that Europe has reached its end, and, as Freud would tell us, are trying to fulfill a cultural death wish; or two, that the rulers believe (also subconsciously) that Europe is so powerful that the new Muslim immigrants will become like them and lead the people from their original countries into the modern world, if not the Christian one.
I tend to believe the first of these, but Archbishop Sheen and Monsignor Page offer another possibility that I did not consider, as it seems impossible – that of large-scale conversion of Muslims to Christianity through the power of Christ. Given the strong element that Christian belief had in the downfall of the Soviet Union, however, perhaps this is not so impossible after all, although it certainly would call for divine intercession. In any case, it is a delicious prospect to ponder: modern atheistic and ‘New Age’ Europe hauls in a bunch of poor Muslims for, on the practical level, cheap labor. They do so because they pride themselves on being post-racist, post-ethnocentric, and most of all, post-religion (as well as pro-business). Then these very same alien immigrants convert and become fervent Christians, calling back the old cultural beliefs in Europe. You can bet that if the modern rulers of Europe thought this to be so, they would build a wall from the Carpathian Mountains to Gibraltar as fast as brick and cement and wire could be laid.
Sheen’s theory seems dubious, but it also seemed impossible that Christianity would cross the world, growing like a mustard tree from the tiniest and most insignificant of seeds. Islam had far more militant roots, but it also grew large from small beginnings. It just might be that Fatima holds one of the greatest of historical surprises, where the cosmic power raised one woman of spirit to be superimposed on another woman of spirit, both worshipped by two distinct but related religions. Divinity does nothing of this nature by chance – it always has something, or many things, in mind. Archbishop Sheen’s view may have been biased, but it was probably not off-base; it appears almost certain that the power of heaven has proposed to amend the age-old animosities of two religions on the brink of another dramatic collision. If this is so, no power on Earth could stop it.
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