use strict and filehandles

[B McKee]

Hi All,
I'm having trouble understanding what use strict is trying to tell me.
If I have run this program

-CODE---------------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
# use warnings and turn on data tainting
use CGI qw(:standard);
$CGI::POST_MAX=1024 * 100;
$CGI::DISABLE_UPLOADS = 1;
use strict;
use diagnostics;
# Declare Variables
my ( $datafile, $page );
$datafile="message.txt";
# Open message file and read in the contents
open(MESSAGE, "$datafile") or die "Cannot open datafile: $!";
while (!eof(MESSAGE)) {
    $page = new CGI(MESSAGE);
    print $page->param('message'),
          $page->br,"\n",
          "Submitted by: ",
          $page->param('person'),
          $page->br,"\n",
          "On: ",
          $page->param('dateposted'),
          $page->br,"\n";
}
-ENDCODE------------------------------------------
I get this

-RESULTS------------------------------------------
Bareword "MESSAGE" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at 
./errorprog.pl
        line 16 (#1)

    (F) With "strict subs" in use, a bareword is only allowed as a
    subroutine identifier, in curly brackets or to the left of the "=>" 
symbol.
    Perhaps you need to predeclare a subroutine?

Execution of ./errorprog.pl aborted due to compilation errors (#2)

    (F) The final summary message when a Perl compilation fails.

Uncaught exception from user code:
        Execution of ./errorprog.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
-ENDRESULTS-----------------------------------------
My questions are:

1)  Why is it warning me at all?  Using a bare word in the filehandle 
is common
in my Perl manuals.  In this case a bare word does everything I need it 
to do.
What is this warning trying to prevent?

2)  If I replace MESSAGE with $filehandlename and add $filehandlename 
to the my () block
it doesn't complain.  If I do that I haven't assigned a value to 
$filehandlename.
Does that mean my filehandle is actually 'undef'?
That doesn't seem right somehow, especially if I have multiple files 
open in
a different circumstance.  What value should I assign to 
$filehandlename? MESSAGE?

All comments appreciated.
Brian
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