For many years, the Vatican kept a lid on the three so-called secrets of Fatima, the messages three Portuguese children said they had received from an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1917.
Some speculated that Catholicism’s top echelon did not want the Fatima messages, which talked of persecution of the church, to be manipulated for political purposes. Others have suggested that the church kept quiet for fear that the whole prophecy would be misconstrued as something more central to the faith than it is.
Now, from the man who sent two 9 mm bullets tearing into Pope John Paul II’s vital organs in a 1981 assassination attempt, comes a new and grotesque way the Fatima visions can be misused.
Last month the pope revealed that the third secret of Fatima–the last to be made public–is a message that he believes foretold the 1981 shooting. For the pope, this was a further reason to give thanks to the Virgin Mary for saving his life.
For Mehmet Ali Agca, the would-be papal assassin who remains in an Italian prison, the revelation was an occasion for gleeful self-vindication.
The shooting, Agca told a wire service reporter this week, was God’s fault. Only Agca said it so much more lyrically:
“We simply have cameo roles in the mysterious project of God, who is eternal and omnipotent.”
Agca claims that he converted to Christianity in 1983. He has sought and received the pope’s forgiveness.
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If he is ever released from prison–a cause Agca has noisily and persistently pursued over the years–he says he wants to become a man of the cloth.
“I would modestly become a preacher and diffuse the message of Fatima,” Agca said. “The pope is not the only one who makes sacrifices and dedicates his life to humanity. I can dedicate my life to poverty and chastity.”
According to those who have spoken with Agca, he is smart and articulate. Certainly this week, as he gently slid himself off the hook, the would-be assassin spoke with a glib confidence.
“It is clear. I was predestined,” Agca said. “I never wanted to be remembered. This history was imposed on me. I wanted to be an ordinary, anonymous citizen.”
The danger here is not that world opinion will suddenly swing in favor of Agca, deciding him to be a wonderful guy whom God put in a tough spot.
The danger is to the language of faith itself, cheapened a little further by this jailhouse celebrity.
After all, there is a legitimate Christian doctrine known as predestination. It is a complex set of ideas, with myriad variations. The gist, for most theologians, is that human beings do not earn their salvation by themselves, chalking up good deeds like green stamps to be turned in on Judgment Day. Instead, God plays the determinative role, offering people a grace they do not merit.
There is not a theologian in the world, however, who would say that Agca did not have a choice in pulling the trigger. Free will is another central Christian doctrine, and that includes the freedom to choose the plain evil of violence, even murder.
Christians do, as Agca said, believe God is eternal and omnipotent. And most believe there are mysteries that human minds cannot quite grasp. But however neat his turn of phrase about “cameo roles in the mysterious project of God,” there is nothing in the religious concept of mystery that absolves people of their responsibilities to themselves, to fellow humans and to God.
How much damage can a convicted gunman do to long-held beliefs and concepts of God? Not much, perhaps.
But in a time when much of the population has only a shaky hold on what religions do and do not stand for, Agca is far from the only one who knows enough–and cares little enough–to use other people’s beliefs in a game of self-justification.
Take the panreligious idea of forgiveness. Before and after his impeachment, while his political fate still hung in the balance, President Clinton trotted out Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptural references to forgiveness on an almost daily basis, even as he refused to admit what he had done.
(One can almost imagine, were Clinton a Catholic, how he might begin his confession: “Forgive me, Father, for what a conspiracy of enemies says I did … “)
Eventually his flip manipulation of religious language outraged a group of religious scholars–who had no discernible political goal–so much that they drafted a statement demanding he stop. They were not concerned that Clinton would fool the American people about Clinton. But they were concerned that if he muddied the waters of belief enough, some people would stop looking for the larger truth.
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