I believe there can be group hypnosis or group hysteria but when it comes to a crowd of 70,ooo (that is an average of the crowd at Fatima; one reliable estimate was as high as 100,000), whoa. You don’t sway that kind of crowd without a speaker who can be heard. The three shepherd children Our Lady, in her humility had picked, had no amplifying sound system. And nobody could see what they said they saw.
Of course there were people there who wanted to see the whole thing fail and become a laughing stock. Apparently things turned out just the opposite. There are many, still, inexplicable things on this earth, leave alone in the universe, that perplex scientists and cognoscenti, but we’ve been able to take some of them as a challenge, and the Keeper of Secrets has been willing to let them go. (Quantum mechanics still mystifies and awes, while evolution is now recognized as God’s modus operandi.)
Our knowledge is still changing, and we have so much to be grateful for. My granddaughter has been urged by her fourth grade teacher to read, and read, and tonight she called up her grandmother to thank her for the books she’d been gifted. As John the Evangelist said, “God (and His knowledge) is Love.”
Civilization 