FLASHBACK: Man Hijacks Plane, Demands Vatican Publish Third Secret of Fatima

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Inside the Hijacked Plane

No, I'm not recommending this.

But it does make one feel nostalgic for 1981.

Remember when plane hijackings were not all about Muslims bent on killing as many infidels as possible?

Remember when you could douse yourself with gasoline in an airplane bathroom and then just stroll into the cockpit flicking a lighter?

Remember when you could bring gasoline onto an airplane?  

Remember when, before it had been released by the Vatican, some thought that the Third Secret of Fatima--the climactic revelation of the most famous and spectacular Marian apparition in history--might be a prediction about World War III?

(Now that the Secret has been revealed and the text features a "bishop in white" walking through a "big city, half in ruins" while blessing corpses, we know that it's largely about a future pope being shot without result by a mentally unbalanced Turk.)

Curiously, the hijacking--the only such incident ever recorded on an Aer Lingus flight--happened only eleven days before Mehmet Ali Ağca attempted to kill John Paul II.

From The Irish Echo, eighteen years after the fact, but still two years before the Third Secret would be "released":

DUBLIN — The obsession of an ex-Trappist monk with the so-called third secret of Fatima led him to stage Ireland’s first plane hijack nearly 18 years ago when he threatened to set himself on fire and took over an Aer Lingus flight to London. 

Australian-born Laurence James Downey, now 72, disclosed in an RTE TV documentary aired Monday what drove him to terrorize 113 passengers and force the plane to divert to France. 

He brandished a lighter and pretended he was a gas-soaked firebomb. 

It was Downey’s fixation with the Fatima secret that led him to abandon his new life in the Shannon area in 1981 and stage the hijack, for which he served five years in a French prison. He believed it would force the Vatican to reveal the secret. 

Downey is penitent today about the trauma he caused — but he still wants the world to know the secret. 

Since the age of 8 he believed he had a sense of destiny. During his novitiate in France and his five years as a monk in Rome he became obsessed with apparitions and visions. 

In particular, Downey was fascinated by stories surrounding the happenings near Fatima, in Portugal, 82 years ago. Three girls, ages 7 to 10, were minding sheep when they said the Virgin Mary appeared to them. They claimed they were given messages and warnings or secrets. The apparitions happened on the 13th day of six consecutive months. 

By the time of the last appearance word had spread. About 70,000 people were gathered and strange paranormal events were reported. 

Fatima has since developed into a major Marian pilgrimage site, with millions of pilgrims visiting the shrine every year. There have been many claims of miracle cures. 

Over the years there has been global fascination with the secrets. Two were revealed involving a vision of hell and the conversion of godless Russia and the banishment of communism. 

The third prophecy remains secret, apparently only known to 91-year-old nun Sister Lucia — the only surviving member of the trio who claimed to have the visions — and the pope. 

The third secret has been the subject of speculation since it’s claimed existence in a sealed envelope was first revealed in Time Magazine in the late 1940s. Various theories have predicted it involves the end of the world, nuclear holocaust or a variety of other apocalyptic events. 

Downey, who now lives in Perth Australia, was convinced he could be the instrument to force a Vatican disclosure. As the Dublin flight approached London on May 2, 1981 he doused his hands in gasoline and poured water on his clothes to give the impression that they were flammable. 

He ordered the pilot to land at Heathrow, but instead it touched down at the quiet Le Touquet airport in Northern France. At first rumors spread that an Iranian had hijacked the plane and wanted to be flown to Teheran. The real reason emerged when former Taoiseach and then Transport Minister Albert Reynolds was interviewed during the eight-hour hijack. He explained Downey wanted publication of the third secret of Fatima. 

On Flight EI 164, Downey carried a briefcase containing a text he believes may be the third secret. It predicts devil-inspired catastrophes and damnation. 

"The third secret of Fatima is many things," Downey said. "Basically, it concerns the third millennium and the second coming of Christ." 

His text says a "great chastisement" will fall on humanity in the second part of this century the like of which has not been seen since the deluge. 

It reveals, he says, that Satan infiltrate the top of the church. The great and the powerful will perish with the little and the weak. The Catholic Church will split and the corrupt in Rome will fall. Millions and millions will perish by the hour and those still living will envy those who are dead.

The internet is silent as to whether Downey is still alive in 2016. Does anyone know?

I couldn't even find a picture of him. Talk about not getting your fifteen minutes of fame.

A 1981 New York Times article claimed that Downey "had been expelled from a Trappist monastery for punching a superior in the nose." Then he married and had at least five children.

I sincerely hope he found peace.

Teen Vogue Muslima is (Surprise!) a Big Fan of Hitler and the Holocaust

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A Muslim woman recently took some selfies in front of an anti-Islam protest in Belgium. She "confronted" and then "charmed" the "haters." The whole thing went viral on social media. Here's the title blurb for a rhapsodic piece that Teen Vogue wrote two days ago:

Yeah. She's a total badass, alright. Social media sleuths soon found that she was a foul-mouthed anti-semite who approvingly tweeted about Hitler and the Holocaust.

There was more on other sites. Zakia Belkhiri has since scrubbed all her social media accounts, telling the BBC that "she didn’t want to look like a girl who seeks attention." But two days ago she tastefully tweeted a different view:

By the way, Sarah Harvard of Teen Vogue is a tireless author of Islamist agitprop:

Does the Holocaust count as one of the "real issues of racism"? Or is that one of the things she won't say sorry for?

Read more about Belkhiri at Pamela Geller and Breitbart.

Pope Implies Jesus Tolerated Divorce for the Sake of Mercy

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This morning Pope Francis gave a homily at Casa Santa Marta where he appeared to claim that Jesus approved of the Mosaic Law on divorce on the grounds of mercy. Or, as Francis put it, Jesus enunciated the "official" truth while then going above it or beyond it in order to engage in accompaniment, integration and discernment.

This is of course the very opposite of what is described in Matthew 19 and Mark 10. It is the Pharisees who attempt to use the Mosaic Law to justify divorce. And it is Jesus who rebukes them for it.

The Pope is fond of accusing his enemies of "casuistry" but it is he who consistently engages in it. This twisting of one of the most famous exchanges in the New Testament is striking in its attempt to mislead.

From the homily:

“But Jesus,” Pope Francis continued, “so merciful, He is so great, that he never, never, never, closes the door to sinners.” And so He does not limit Himself to proclaiming the truth of God, but goes on to ask the Pharisees what Moses had established in the Law. And when the Pharisees responded that Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce, Jesus replied that this was permitted “because of the hardness of your hearts.” That is, the Pope explained, Jesus always distinguished between the truth and “human weakness” without “twisting words.” 

In the world in which we live, with this culture of the provisional, this reality of sin is so strong. But Jesus, recalling Moses, tells us: “But there is hardness of heart, there is sin, something can be done: forgiveness, understanding, accompaniment, integration, discernment of these cases… But always… But the truth is never sold. And Jesus is capable of stating this very great truth, and at the same time being so understanding with sinners, with the weak.

That Chesterton Misquote: a Detective Story

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Old School Renaissance

In a post a few days ago, I made a quasi-defense of allowing our four-year-old son to read the 1981 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Fiend Folio. In my Google+ and Facebook intro blurbs for the link, I paraphrased an alleged G.K. Chesterton quote. The paraphrase went like this:

Fairy tales do not tell children that monsters exist. Children already know that monsters exist. Fairy tales tell children that monsters can be killed.

Now my "paraphrase" was actually a direct word for word copy of an actually existing rectangular Chesterton quote thingy--the sort of picture people post and repost on Facebook and other social media (though note the wonky punctuation):

But I thought (though I honestly don't remember why I thought) that that itself was probably a paraphrase of something where Chesterton was actually referring to dragons not monsters. I used "monsters" (while acknowledging that it was probably a paraphrase) because it squared better with my post--I was talking about monsters in general, such as the monsters in the Fiend Folio, not dragons specifically. Here's one of the rectangular quote thingies on the Chesterton dragon version:

And here's another:

And here are three more:

I've posted five of these because they all differ. The major differences are the substitution of "Fairy tales are more than true-" for "Fairy tales do not tell children dragons exist," and "beaten" for "killed." But minor differences include "don't" for "do not," "that dragons" for "the dragons," "the children" for "children" and the insertion of "that" in-between "us" and "dragons."

This is, of course, annoying. If Chesterton really said it, you would think someone would simply look at exactly what he said in Collected Essays Volume XXVII or whatever and just quote it. Is it "don't" or "do not"? Well, what did he actually say?

Okay. Now it gets even more annoying. Hold onto your hats and wait for it . . .

The quote has also been ascribed to Neil Gaiman:

And now, instead of "killed" versus "beaten," we have "beaten" versus "defeated."

Enough.

What was the original quote and who actually said it?

In fact it was Neil Gaiman quoting Chesterton in the epigraph to his 2002 Coraline, p. 7:

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten. 

- G.K. Chesterton

But the story is not over. As Gaiman later admitted, he misquoted Chesterton--and this was in the epigraph!

How did he misquote Chesterton? Why did he misquote Chesterton?

Well, Gaiman may have had his memory filtered through an earlier misquotation from a third source. Hold onto your hats again. That source is . . . 

Terry Pratchett.

In When the Children Read Fantasy, published in SF2 Concatenation (1994), which obviously preceded Coraline, Pratchett wrote:

One of the great popular novelists of the early part of this century was G.K. Chesterton. Writing at a time when fairy tales were under attack for pretty much the same reason as books can now be covertly banned in some schools because they have the word ‘witch’ in the title, he said: “The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.” 

Now, do not misunderstand what I'm doing here. I'm not being critical of Gaiman. Indeed, we have Gaiman to thank for admitting his mistake.

Gaiman himself realized that he had misquoted Chesterton and attempted to unravel what had happened:

It’s my fault. When I started writing Coraline, I wrote my version of the quote [from Chesterton's] Tremendous Trifles, meaning to go back later and find the actual quote, as I didn’t own the book, and this was before the Internet. And then ten years went by before I finished the book, and in the meantime I had completely forgotten that the Chesterton quote was mine and not his.

(See this Tumblr post by "MJS.")

So what was the original quote? it's from "The Red Angel," Chapter XVII of Chesterton's Tremendous Trifles (1909):

The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it--because it is a fact. Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

Of course, in classic Chestertonian fashion, Chesterton restates essentially the same idea at least three more times in the chapter. Here's another version in the very next paragraph (warning: one of the terms used is now considered politically incorrect):

Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear. When I was a child I have stared at the darkness until the whole black bulk of it turned into one negro giant taller than heaven. If there was one star in the sky it only made him a Cyclops. But fairy tales restored my mental health, for next day I read an authentic account of how a negro giant with one eye, of quite equal dimensions, had been baffled by a little boy like myself (of similar inexperience and even lower social status) by means of a sword, some bad riddles, and a brave heart. Sometimes the sea at night seemed as dreadful as any dragon. But then I was acquainted with many youngest sons and little sailors to whom a dragon or two was as simple as the sea.

So, what does this all mean? Well, obviously, quotes on the internet are often very unreliable, at least if one is a stickler for accuracy. Then again, I do not think anyone can deny that the basic spirit of what Chesterton originally said was preserved through the various permutations, even though technically he was misquoted again and again. And while I obviously like reading actual Chesterton, I think the best version of the quote is that first "monsters" one. It's simple, stark and clear. But I would have preferred that its origins hadn't been misdescribed.

[Crossposted at Save Versus All Wands]

Text of Anti-Erdogan Poem BANNED in Germany

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Jan Böhmermann

I don't want to spend time explaining the whole Böhmermann affair. But, as many of you know, German comedian Jan Böhmermann got into legal trouble by reading on television an expletive laced satirical poem about Turkish President Recep Erdoğan. Many believe Angela Merkel authorized the pending possible prosecution of Boehmermann as a sort of additional payment to Erdoğan for pretending to regulate the entrance of thousands of Muslim soldiers into Europe or whatever--a payment in addition to the billions of Euros he's already receiving.

Today, a German court in Hamburg banned the public recitation of the poem. Or rather, it declared that only six lines of the twenty-four line poem could be recited. 

I'm going to reproduce the poem below. But if it's okay, I'm going to take out the really dirty  words and in the style of Lenny Bruce, replace them with "blah" or some variation thereof. Purists can find the actual text here. And you can see the television clip where the poem was recited here.

Vituperative Criticism (Smear Poem)

Dumb as a bag, cowardly and uptight

that’s what Erdoğan the President is.
His blahs reek awfully of döner kebab,
even a pig blah smells nicer.
He’s the man who beats up girls
while he’s wearing rubber masks.
Most of all he likes blahing goats
and oppressing minorities,
kicking Kurds, whacking Christians
while watching child porn.
And even in the evenings, instead of sleep,
it’s all about blah with a hundred sheep.
Yes, Erdoğan is totally
a President with a small blah.
Every Turk is heard to warble,
that stupid blah has got wrinkled blahs.
From Ankara to Istanbul
everyone knows, that man is gay,
perverted, lice-ridden and a zoophile,
Recep Fritzl Přiklopil.
His head as empty as his blah,
the star at every gangbang party
until his blah burns while blahing.
That’s Recep Erdoğan, the Turkish President.

I assume the permissible abridged version reads as follows: 

that’s what Erdoğan the President is.

And even in the evenings, instead of sleep,
Yes, Erdoğan is totally
Every Turk is heard to warble,
From Ankara to Istanbul
That’s Recep Erdoğan, the Turkish President.

The really silly part about the whole affair is that while the poem is certainly disgusting and offensive, the most disgusting and offensive parts are obviously false. Only a portion of one sentence--"oppressing minorities, kicking Kurds, whacking Christians"--could possibly have any connection to reality, and even the effect of that is largely muted by the "while watching child porn" at the end.

So part of the point was not to offend Erdoğan per se, but to do something for the sake of doing it merely because one wasn't supposed to. That is a standard part of the comedian's repertoire. In this case at least, the audience seemed to think it was funny.

Böhmermann would later confirm that he might also have had a political motive--to test the limits of freedom of expression in Europe amidst (as I would put it) the current climate of fear, intimidation and censorship inspired by a rising Islam.

The results of the test are in. Not only can you not criticize Muslim despots, you cannot even joke about not criticizing Muslim despots.

Wikipedia reports the comedian's reaction even before yesterday's ruling: 

In an interview with Die Zeit on 3 May, Böhmermann sharply criticized Angela Merkel. "The chancellor must not waver when it comes to freedom and human rights", he said. "But instead she filleted me, served me a neurotic despot for tea and made me become a German Ai Weiwei. (the Chinese dissident) " His "belief" was shaken, "that every person in Germany has a non-negotiable, inalienable right to exercise certain basic rights: the freedom of art and the freedom of expression." Merkel did "obviously not think for a moment" about the poem, which he said was only an illustration of an insult: "It was much too dumb for me to insult Erdogan. I think, anyone can see this from the stupid smear poem."

Four weeks ago, Böhmermann was put under police protection and he temporarily suspended all of his radio and television activities. I am unclear as to whether they have resumed.

New Fatima Report Raises More Questions than it Answers

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Why?

The recent article by Maike Hickson at OnePeterFive is another fascinating piece from one one of the premier Catholic websites. The above post title is not a criticism of Dr. Hickson or the site, obviously. Rather, they deserve nothing but thanks for continuing to break important stories. But that doesn't make things any less . . . frustrating.

Here is the heart of the piece:    

Today, on the Feast of Pentecost, I called Fr. Ingo Dollinger, a German priest and former professor of theology in Brasil, who is now quite elderly and physically weak. He has been a personal friend of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI for many years. Father Dollinger unexpectedly confirmed over the phone the following facts: 

Not long after the June 2000 publication of the Third Secret of Fatima by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told Fr. Dollinger during an in-person conversation that there is still a part of the Third Secret that they have not published! “There is more than what we published,” Ratzinger said. He also told Dollinger that the published part of the Secret is authentic and that the unpublished part of the Secret speaks about “a bad council and a bad Mass” that was to come in the near future. 

Father Dollinger gave me permission to publish these facts on this High Feast of the Holy Ghost and he gave me his blessing.

Read the rest, including important commentary and further context here.

Fatima conspiracy people (and I guess I'm one of them) believe that the Church has been infiltrated by . . . let's call them the bad guys. Now of course all knowledgeable and faithful Catholics would agree with this to some extent. The Church has always contained bad guys. The only question is how pervasive it is and how far up it goes. Fatima people believe it goes all the way to the "top"--although what even that means is debated.

Though the implications of this are horrific, it doesn't in and of itself raise any logical questions. Bad guys will be . . . bad guys. Obviously they will have an interest in undermining the Church, in suppressing the truth about Our Lady's words and in (forgive me) screwing with people's faith.

But what of the good guys? Pope Benedict is one of them, or at least we would hope so. And the above would seem to confirm that. If you believe that the above is true or at least partly true, then Benedict would seem to have at least some interest in making the truth known. After all, he allegedly told Fr. Dollinger about it.

The question I would want to ask Dollinger is why he didn't ask Ratzinger/Benedict at the time why such important information wasn't revealed publicly? Why only reveal it in private? It seems like such an obvious question. And I can imagine possible answers that would be reasonable. But I have not seen any answers.

Why did Ratzinger/Benedict not publicly reveal what he knew? Given the awfulness in the current Church--which must have seemed even worse to him given what he knew about the unrevealed secret--why did he then step down? Or putting that aside, why doesn't he reveal the rest of the secret now? Why doesn't the Pope Emeritus announce a press conference and just do it? I am of course not being critical of Benedict per se; only noting the obvious incongruity. It's as if there's a fourth secret (or a fifth) that asks the good guys in the know to act their parts in a sort of play, biding their time. Why? Until when? And of course everyone seems to be following some sort of tacit agreement to not go public (though it seems okay to give the occasional hint to old friends or card-carrying Fatima conspiracy authors or whomever). 

I do not think I will ever become a sede or go back to being a non-practicing quasi-agnostic, but this almost seems calculated to make me throw up my hands and do so. Is it some sort of test of faith? And what of the countless souls lost in the interim?

Yes, I know mortal men are not supposed to know everything. God never promised that we would or should. But He did promise that we would be given enough information. Didn't He?

The New Pope Video is an Anti-Catholic Attack on Motherhood and the Family

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Tell me about it. We have four pre-school age children and a smaller kitchen.

Yeah. It is.

(Just so there's no confusion, I'm referring to Respect for Women, the May "Pope Video" released two weeks ago.)

It's true that Pope Francis first claims that

the contribution of women in all areas of human activity is undeniable, beginning with the family.

Except that the video doesn't begin with the family. It begins first with what looks to be a female professor drawing a chemical formula on a classroom glassboard and then shifts to a female doctor looking at an x-ray. 

Then there is a mother helping her daughter paint a ball. Or I assume it's a mother and daughter since the words "beginning with the family" first appear here. Then again, the fact that they appear to be sitting in a classroom is odd.

Finally, there is a mother making sandwiches for her two (count them, two!) children. We know this because there are two kids backpacks on the counter. Notably, she looks tired, depressed and even slightly bitter. She's probably thinking, "What? I gave up a promising career as an x-ray technician for this?" 

Then, twenty or so seconds later comes the take away: 

We must . . . remove the barriers that prevent [women's] full integration into social, political and economic life.

These days, of course, I would argue that those "barriers" are largely nonexistent for most women--with the notable exception of women in Muslim communities (not that Francis cares about them). And since virtually no one is against the basic proposition that women and men should be treated as equals in general or per se, then either that "barriers" statement is of no effect, or else it means something different than what it seems.

I think it's the latter.

The familiar call for a sort of permanent revolution (I say permanent because whatever is actually done, they say we're not there yet and we thus have to redouble our efforts) to solve a problem that isn't very real anyway is of course merely a stalking horse for the belief that women can and should get their primary satisfaction in life from jobs and careers--or to put it another way, from things other than being a mother. Women must be, you know, fully integrated. And if we see that anyone--male or female--disagrees with this, then we should just keep pushing. Disagreement (so goes the view) is a barrier in itself.

And by the way, if you're a woman and you don't agree, then you're no doubt repressed and suffering from false consciousness. Or you're wedded to the old ways and don't hear the Holy Spirit whispering "100 K plus benefits."

If you're a man and you don't agree, then you're just one step below rapist. You're certainly not a supportive husband or father. Nor are you going along with the fresh winds of change (that have been freshly blowing for the last fifty years). Oh, and if they catch you writing about it on your Facebook page, say goodbye to your 100 K plus benefits.

This is, of course, the greater part of the the modern feminist message. 

And it's a lie--a deeply anti-Christian and anti-Catholic lie that continues to inflict massive damage on women, children, motherhood and the family.

And no, I'm not going to waste any space defending myself against the charges that I'm a sexist or chauvinist or that I'm exaggerating the Pope's innocuous plea for fairness or whatever. And of course, calling the video Respect for Women is part of the lie.

What's going on is clear to anyone with eyes to see.

Francis wants to be loved by the world. This is more important to him than standing up for Christ, His Church or faithful Catholics in general. Then again, I cannot say for certain whether the Pope still even believes in Christ or the Church. Or rather, I do not think that he does.

These videos are insidious. They are poisonous. They are evil.

In their cloying liberal secularism they are anti-Christian and anti-Catholic,

And they were made by someone who is called Pope.