Crusade Magazine asked author John Horvat II to make a connection between the Fatima message and the principles set forth in his book, Return to Order. We are pleased to provide you with his reply.
In making a connection between Our Lady of Fatima and an urgent need for a return to order, we need to look at the Fatima record.
Almost one hundred years have passed since the apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima in 1917. For those of us who are familiar with them, we cannot help but be impressed.
Everything Our Lady said would happen has indeed happened. We have seen world wars, conflicts, persecutions and the spreading of the errors of Russia throughout the world.
We can also look at the present and easily see how the Fatima message is relevant for our times, especially in describing the immoral fashions, blasphemies, and lack of Faith that are evident everywhere.
What About Our Fatima Future?
Past and present are easy to see. However, it is hard to envision the future foreseen at Fatima, which consists of the world’s conversion and the triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart—our Fatima future. This grand return to order is left to our imagination.
Given the Fatima record, there is no reason to doubt that there will be this great conversion and triumph. The question is not if, but when and how it will take place.
Indeed, such a triumph appears so far removed from the present world situation that it seems like a dream. We live in a world that is divorced from the supernatural. Our hi-tech secular society is insulated from the very idea of a Divine intervention—everything can be explained by science and technology. Governments are becoming increasingly hostile to Christianity and show no signs of changing. Worst of all, so many people, including family and friends, have left the Faith, live hardened in their ways and show no signs of conversion. All the world conspires against Our Lady and our Fatima future.
Imagining Our Fatima Future
The Fatima message itself is very vague and general when speaking about our Fatima future. It merely mentions Russia’s conversion and a “certain period of peace” as characteristics of Our Lady’s triumph. We are given very few concrete details to help us visualize this future.
…the Fatima message is relevant for our times, especially in describing the immoral fashions, blasphemies, and lack of Faith that are evident everywhere.
However, this visualization is precisely what is needed to help us reach our goal. When a person wishes to obtain any goal in life, the best thing to do is to visualize this goal and develop a passion for it.
Such a visualization is difficult because our modern society has strayed so far from the path of being truly Christian. In fact, our hostile society seems to glory in everything opposed to this order. The immorality of fashions and customs, for example, make it difficult to envision a moral society. Moreover, we have forgotten and neglected the core principles of a Christian society. Today’s generations have no connection and, thus, cannot readily identify with a Christian order.
A Book Pointing in the Right Direction
To reach our goal, we must overcome these obstacles and develop a vision of what we seek. A guiding vision of a truly Christian order is found in the book, Return to Order: From a Frenzied Economy to an Organic Christian Society—Where We’ve Been, How We Got Here, and Where We Need to Go.
The book is not specifically about Fatima, but it does provide insight into America’s Fatima future. It points us in the right direction by helping us understand better where we went wrong in our culture. It helps us better envision where we need to go—which is precisely our Fatima future.
The book recalls forgotten truths and principles found in the vast treasury of Church teachings. It shows that the path to Our Lady’s triumph is not only necessary but possible given the Church’s long history of dealing with sin and societies in crisis. More importantly, it encourages the faithful to work toward this goal in a practical and organic manner.
What We Want
We need to ask ourselves what we want for America’s future. So often, we know what we don’t want. We don’t want sin, abortion, same-sex “marriage,” socialism and so many other things the modern world offers.
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| America’s Fatima future must begin with a return to our guiding Christian principles. |
However, we spend so much time fighting the things we don’t want that we often neglect to imagine what we do want. We do not take the time to map out those guiding Christian principles that will show us the way forward.
Our situation is more or less like a doctor who fights diseases to such an extent that he loses a notion of what makes up a healthy body. Such a doctor will find it difficult to cure patients since he does not know the healthy end he and his patients seek.
Return to Order frames the Fatima message so that we might understand better our healthy Fatima future. It helps us visualize an organic Christian society as our goal. It serves to illuminate our way much like a lighthouse that in dark and stormy seas can help bring us to safe harbor.
There are three steps to reach any goal. To use the analogy of an illness, the first step is to be convinced of our state of grave illness and the need to look for solutions beyond the present measures. The second is to visualize what we must ardently desire—our healthy Fatima future. The final step is to summon up the courage to move with energy and purpose from our present state towards our goal. If we do this, we will make our Fatima future happen.
The Urgency of the Fatima Message
The first step, then, is to be convinced that we are ill. We need to be convinced that our society is not working as it once did. We urgently need to find other means of dealing with the present-day crisis.
Urgency has always been part of the Fatima message. Our Lady pointed out the sins and errors of the world in 1917. At that time, she asked that people urgently repent and amend their lives so as to avoid disaster. Her words were not heeded, and the world paid the consequences with more wars, persecution of the Church and calamities that made the twentieth century the bloodiest of all times.
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| Statue of the International Pilgrim Virgin of Fatima photographed in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1972 miraculously weeping real human tears. |
This crisis is far from over. Our Lady’s urgent warnings apply to our days of terrorism, uncertainty and murder of the innocent and unborn. If our problems are great today, it is largely because we have not heeded her message. With each passing year, the urgency of the message and volume of sins increase.
The situation takes on a special urgency because we are entering a new and radical stage in the breakdown of the structures of family, community and faith that is fast becoming self-destructive.
In addition to the obvious disasters, wars and calamities that ravage our times, there is also the promotion of frenzied lifestyles that lead us away from God. The book, Return to Order, refers to a spirit of “frenetic intemperance,” in which everyone insists upon having everything now, instantly and effortlessly. This intemperance is tearing our society and its economy apart, and eroding the faith of millions.
Reasons for Heeding the Fatima Message
As we approach the centennial of the Fatima apparitions, the urgency of the situation becomes increasingly evident as well as the need to move in the direction of Our Lady’s triumph. We need only consider these major evils:
• The proliferation of promiscuity, same-sex “marriage,” abortion and euthanasia is destroying the family and shredding the moral fiber of society.
• The hostility of governments toward Christian morals and beliefs is growing. Governments will soon be forcing people to take actions opposed to their beliefs and well-informed consciences.
• Civility, honor and respect are breaking down, making it increasingly difficult for people to live together in peace.
The great crisis inside the Church is reaching a point that leaves so many disoriented and confused. The salvation of the souls of millions is put in jeopardy.
Most importantly, the sins of humanity are overwhelming and legion. They weigh heavily upon us and offend God gravely. As Our Lady asked at Fatima, let us offend God no more.
All these ills should serve to compel us to move and look elsewhere for solutions. However, there are also more personal urgent reasons for moving in the direction of our Fatima future.
A General Unhappiness
Return to Order likens modern society to a cruise ship on a never-ending cruise. There are all sorts of entertainments and parties aboard. However, as time goes on, the constant festivities wear down upon those on board. Despite the outward appearance of great fun, pleasure and laughter, there is a terrible emptiness in people’s lives that haunts them.
This cruise ship metaphor helps one understand the emptiness in our society that manifests itself in a thousand ways. It is expressed in very cold, hard statistics of depression, addictions, suicides and sexually transmitted diseases. It is found in the abortions, divorces, same-sex “marriages,” pornography and all those lifestyles that gnaw at the very depths of people’s souls and create unhappiness.
Each one of these statistics represents a personal tragedy. These tragedies afflict and consume people’s lives and the lives of those around them. These statistics represent sins that gravely offend God.
All this should move us to desire that the sins and moral outrages stop. First of all because they offend God, but also because they destroy the lives of people—our children, our friends and our neighbors.
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| At Fatima, Our Lady offered a heavenly solution for today’s crisis. |
Return to Order seeks to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that this situation is not only serious, but untenable. The crisis is entering an urgent phase where things are irreparably breaking down. Unless people amend their lives and return to order, we are not going to see any kind of regeneration of our society. The only real solution lies with Our Lady’s promises.
Our Lady’s Solutions
The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary cannot be just a private religious rebirth. There must also be a social dimension to this triumph that will change families, communities, societies and nations.
At the same time, we cannot assume it is going to be a complete change, since God usually does not work in ways that completely change the nature of things or situations. He more often builds upon and perfects nature.
Thus, we must imagine the path to our Fatima future like that of a driver of a car who has taken the wrong road and now is headed toward disaster. As we travel down the road of our history, we must now question the course we have taken and ask if we need to turn back and find another road that we should have taken.
The Road Not Taken
Our Fatima future involves the road we should have taken. Getting there requires a return. This future calls us to be those Americans that God has always wanted us to be. It asks us to correspond to God’s designs upon us.
To find this Fatima future requires that we look back in our history to discern and reconnect with those qualities and virtues that have always served to unite and call us to God. Based on our past religiosity, for example, we might imagine a return which would put God back into the center of our lives.
We might return to be a covenant people strongly attached to a clear notion of the Ten Commandments and a renewed desire to practice them. Based on our past generosity, we might become again a courageous people, willing to serve and defend God and Our Lady with courage and dedication whenever called, wherever needed and whatever the cost.
Return to Order provides tools and elements to look to our past and discern our Fatima future. It invites us to imagine a society that might have been had we chosen the road not taken.
Making It Happen—Organically
It remains for us to look at the final part of the process, which is to discover the practical means that will make our Fatima future happen. The modern tendency is to look for instant “push-button” solutions to our crisis. Such proposals are imposed upon people as if they were machines.
The triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary cannot be just a private religious rebirth. There must also be a social dimension to this triumph that will change families, communities, societies and nations.
Fatima has always represented a solution outside social, political or economic machine-like boxes. Its message is unconventional and refreshingly original. Our Lady appeared not to politicians or even churchmen but to three innocent children who were tending their sheep.
The Fatima message is what can be called an organic solution, not a push-button proposal. It respects the nature of man, full of vivacity, spontaneity, and unpredictability. In times of crisis, organic solutions unexpectedly open the way for unimagined answers that surpass all expectations.
Organic solutions usually happen when a person or group of people have a problem and then collaborate together on a vision of where they need to go. From this perception, they start stumbling upon the means to reach that goal.
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| Just as the Prodigal Son in the Gospel, America desperately needs to return to the Father’s house. “The Prodigal Son In the Arms of His Father” by Gustave Doré. |
A Great Conversion
Conversions to the Faith, for example, usually are organic solutions that happen when a person is consumed by a love of God and the Church, touched by God’s grace, and inspired to take the practical steps to become Catholic. The end calls forth the means, which are different for each person.
In the same way, we must realize that our Fatima future will be a conversion process—a great return to a society with God and Our Lady at the center. If we are consumed by the idea of our Fatima future, then touched by God’s grace, we can find the means to carry out our great designs. If we are ardent souls inflamed by the love of Our Lady and a desire to see her triumph, we can, like the Fatima children, overcome obstacles that would have been deemed impossible before.
Organic Solutions Needed for Our Times
We are entering a period when exclusively human solutions have failed repeatedly. Humanity in its pride sought to build a world without God. Science, technology and massive government programs were supposed to have solved everything with rigid planning and machine-like precision. Instead of making things better, it has created a world of chaos, conflict and sin.
It is precisely in times like these that organic solutions give rise to leaders, institutions and societies to meet the needs of the day. Nothing was more improbable than the rise of the Church from the ruins of the powerful Roman Empire. The history of the Church is one of improbable saints and impossible situations that organically developed and gave rise to institutions, nations and civilizations that exceeded all expectations.
The history of the Church is one of improbable saints and impossible situations that organically developed and gave rise to institutions, nations and civilizations that exceeded all expectations.
Return to Order describes the characteristics of organic solutions and why they are so much a part of a true return to order. The book explains how organic society is something that conforms to the nature of man and part of our natural dynamism. Organic solutions are the natural result of people living in virtue and sensitive to Divine Providence. They are the means that will help make our Fatima future happen.
Yearnings for a Return to Order
A return to order is aided by the fact that many people are actually searching for something beyond the present system of things. A significant minority of people, for example, crave authenticity, honor and heroism. Amid the emptiness of the modern world, souls desire to fill the void with meaning and purpose of life. Others are searching directly for God amid our materialistic wasteland. Still others are already looking for and imagining a Christian order they sense once existed and may yet return.
Our role is to help prepare the ground for Our Lady’s triumph by: favoring every initiative that promotes a return to Christian order; making known the framework of principles undergirding this order; and fanning all yearning for it. We must further employ all organic solutions that arise out of our great desire for our Fatima future. This is all the more urgent as hard times are fast coming upon us.
As we approach the one hundredth anniversary of the Fatima apparitions, America is searching for her Fatima future. That future is found in Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart. We must do everything possible to prepare and hasten the hour of Our Lady’s triumph. With her help, we can then hope, pray and act for a return to order to make our Fatima future happen.