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| Bishop warns priests of ‘prosecution’ if they don’t enforce his rigid CV rule |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-09-2020, 08:22 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Spiritual]
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Ontario bishop warns priests of ‘prosecution’ if they don’t enforce his rigid mask, communion-in-hand rules
Bishop Ronald Fabbro of the Diocese of London admitted his new COVID protocols 'go beyond the requirements in most health unit orders and local by-laws.'
Bishop Ronald Fabbro in a June 2020 video. Diocese of London / Youtube
LONDON, Ontario, December 8, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – An Ontario bishop warned priests in his diocese that they may face “prosecution” along with the closure of their churches unless they strictly follow his COVID-19 protocols that include banning people who don’t wear masks from entering a church and forcing the faithful to receive Holy Communion on their “bare hand.”
Bishop Ronald Fabbro of the Diocese of London admitted in his Dec. 1 dictum that his new protocols “go beyond the requirements in most health unit orders and local by-laws.”
Ontario’s Ministry of Health states on its website on a page titled Face coverings and face masks (updated November 20) that people in the province when they go out of their homes “must use a face covering (non-medical mask, such as a cloth mask) in public indoor spaces and whenever physical distancing is a challenge.” The policy, however, states that citizens “do not need to wear a face covering” if they “have a medical condition that inhibits your ability to wear a face covering.” The policy makes it clear residents of Ontario “do not need medical documentation to support any of the exceptions.”
While Bishop Fabbro acknowledges in his new COVID protocols that there are exemptions for those who “have a medical condition and for children,” he goes beyond the provincial protocols by demanding that Catholics who claim an exemption from wearing a mask must present a signed document from a healthcare professional attesting to their condition.
“Those seeking an exemption from wearing a mask in our churches must bring their pastor, prior to 1 January 2021, evidence from their physician, nurse practitioner, social worker, psychologist or occupational/respiratory/physical therapist attesting to their condition,” he stated.
And, even despite having such an exemption, the bishop still requires such people to “wear a mask” while entering and exiting the church, thus opposing Ontario’s Ministry of Health’s directives that people who are medically exempt “do not need to wear a face covering.”
The bishop tells priests that those who persist in not wearing masks “should be informed by registered or ‘express’ mail that they will not be allowed into the church should they present themselves again.”
“It may be helpful to inform such people that their names will be made known to greeters at all Masses, so that their presence will be monitored. The greeters then need to be informed. This directive applies equally to those who remove masks once they are in their seats. After a polite request and refusal, they should be served with notice by mail.”
Fabbro states that his new protocols “help prevent people from taking advantage of the exemptions for personal reasons.”
Leading doctors and researchers claim that wearing a mask does little in stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
U.S. Dr. Simone Gold of American Frontline doctors stated in October that the “facts are not in dispute: masks are completely irrelevant to blocking the SARS-CoV-2 virus.” This is largely because the pores of most masks are simply too large to catch the microscopic virus. Some have pointed out that using a mask against the virus is like trying to stop mosquitoes with a chainlink fence.
The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in April by five doctors and scientists titled “Universal Masking in Hospitals in the Covid-19 Era.” The study stated the following: “We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.”
“What is clear, however,” the study states, “is that universal masking alone is not a panacea,” at which point the doctors worry that “focusing on universal masking alone may, paradoxically, lead to more transmission of Covid-19 if it diverts attention from implementing more fundamental infection-control measures.”
In their concluding paragraph, the doctors make the stunning statement that masks have become a “talisman” that may help increase healthcare workers’ perceived sense of safety, well-being, and trust in their hospitals, adding that “such reactions may not be strictly logical.”
“One might argue that fear and anxiety are better countered with data and education than with a marginally beneficial mask,” they conclude.
Sixteen scientists published peer-reviewed research in the Annals of Internal Medicine last month in which they found that wearing a face mask did not significantly reduce the spread of COVID-19. The study was titled Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers. They concluded, “The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50 percent in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use.”
Canadian Dr. Roger Hodkinson, a medical specialist in pathology and virology, a former chairman of the Examination Committee in General Pathology for the Royal College of Physicians of Canada, and current chairman of a biotechnology company in North Carolina selling COVID-19 tests, told Edmonton City Council in a meeting last month that using masks to prevent the spread of the virus is “utterly useless,” noting that “there is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever.”
“Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue-signaling. They’re not even worn effectively most of the time. It’s utterly ridiculous,” Hodkinson said.
Holy Communion in ‘bare hand’ only
Bishop Fabbro in his new protocols also stresses his previous rule that Catholics must receive Holy Communion “only in the hand.” The bishop cracks down on faithful Catholics who believe, following Catholic tradition, that only the priest’s consecrated hands should ever touch the sacred host.
“With the restriction of receiving Holy Communion only in the hand, some of the faithful are presenting themselves with pyxes in the Communion procession with the hope that a Host will be placed in the pyx for them, so that they can receive the Eucharist without touching it with their hands. In the Roman ritual, self-communicating is reserved only to priests and bishops. The faithful may not present themselves for Holy Communion with the intention of receiving the Eucharist from a pyx, a small cloth, gloves, or anything other than their bare hand. Therefore, this practice must stop where it has happened, and the faithful need to be catechized about due reverence when receiving the Eucharist,” the bishop states.
Many bishops have banned communion on the tongue on account of the coronavirus. The Catholic Church, however, teaches in her 2004 instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum that “each of the faithful always has the right to receive Holy Communion on the tongue.” The Church reaffirmed this teaching in the midst of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, making it clear that a pandemic did not negate this teaching.
Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, a Thomistic theologian and liturgical scholar, told LifeSiteNews in July that bishops who ban Holy Communion on the tongue are abusing their authority.
“Many bishops are abusing their authority right now because … they’re supposed to uphold Canon Law and Canon Law is really clear that the faithful have the right to receive communion on the tongue. That's it,” he said.
Retired Polish Archbishop Jan Pawel Lenga last March warned bishops and priests who insist on giving Communion in the hand that their actions put them in danger of “hell.”
“The coronavirus is being used to break people’s consciences,” Lenga said, noting that such priests and bishops do not respect that which is sacred while forcing others to violate their consciences. “I am calling on them to stop, or they’ll end up in hell for doing this,” he said.
Bishop Fabbro in his new protocols also suggested “best practices” for the hearing of confessions, including that “pieces of paper and pens/pencils are there for the penitent to write his/her name and phone number, which is then given to the priest for contact-tracing purposes.”
“The names will be sealed in an envelope and opened by the parish only if needed to trace possible exposure to a positive case,” the bishop states.
The Ontario bishop has previously justified denying the sacrament of Confession to Catholics due to the coronavirus outbreak. Last March, he stated that “all confessions are cancelled, except in the case of danger of death.” He elaborated in a further statement that month that all “‘drive-thru’ confessionals are simply not acceptable.”
Fabbro concluded his directives with a warning to priests of what could happen if they fail to comply.
“All pastors/administrators must be vigilant to maintain safe environments according to the diocesan protocols, and provincial and local laws. They have a responsibility to ensure that these provisions are put into practice in our parishes. Failure to comply could lead to prosecution and to the closure of specific churches or all churches in our diocese or province,” he states.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Mary Most Holy in Astana, Kazakhstan, criticized bishops in May as “fake shepherds” for their “anti-pastoral measures” against the faithful at a time when many bishops were closing church doors and banning all access to the sacraments.
“Instead of good shepherds, those bishops converted into rigid public officials,” stated Schneider.
“Those bishops revealed themselves to be imbued with a naturalistic view, to care only for the temporal and bodily life, forgetting their primary and irreplaceable task to care for the eternal and spiritual life. They forgot the warning of Our Lord: ‘For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?’ (Mt. 16:26). Bishops who not only did not care but directly prohibited their faithful access to the sacraments, especially to the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance, behaved themselves as fake shepherds, who seek their own advantage,” he added.
Ontario has seen about 130,000 cases of coronavirus in a population of about 14 million, according to Public Health Ontario. This means that less than 1 percent of the population has been infected. Of these, there have been 3,800 deaths, which is a little under 3 percent of those infected, an amount that equals the percentage of deaths caused yearly by the flu. Of the 130,000 cases, the vast majority (110,00, or about 85 percent) have fully recovered.
Contact information for respectful communications:
Most Rev. Ronald P. Fabbro, C.S.B.
Diocese of London
1070 Waterloo Street
London, Ontario N6A 3Y2, Canada
Phone for the office of the bishop: 519-433-0658
Use online contact form here.
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| January 7th - St. Lucian of Antioch |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-08-2020, 11:42 PM - Forum: January
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Saint Lucian of Antioch
Martyr
(† 312)
Saint Lucian was born at Samosata in Syria. Having lost his parents in his youth, he distributed to the poor all his worldly goods, of which he had inherited an abundant share, and withdrew to Edessa, to live near a holy man named Macarius, who imbued his mind with a knowledge of Holy Scripture and led him to the practice of the Christian virtues. Having become a priest, his time was divided between the external duties of his holy state, the performance of works of charity, and the study of sacred writings.
Saint Lucian revised the books of the Old and New Testaments, expunging the errors which had found their way into the text either through the negligence of copyists or the malice of heretics. His translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek was universally esteemed and was very useful to Saint Jerome, for whom he prepared the way. Soon afterwards the latter was to give to the world the Latin translation of the Bible known as the Vulgate.
Having been denounced as a Christian during the persecution of Maximin, Lucian was thrown into prison and condemned to torture, which was protracted for twelve whole days. A group of Christians visited him in prison on the feast of the Epiphany, and brought bread and wine to him; while bound and chained down on his back, he consecrated the divine mysteries upon his own breast, that the faithful who were present might receive Holy Communion. He finished his glorious career in prison, and died with the words, I am a Christian, on his lips.
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| January 6th - The Epiphany of Our Lord |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-08-2020, 11:40 PM - Forum: January
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The Epiphany of Our Lord
The word Epiphany means manifestation, and it has passed into general acceptance throughout the universal Church, from the fact that Jesus Christ manifested to the eyes of men His divine mission on this day first of all, when a miraculous star revealed His birth to the kings of the East. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy that a star would arise from Jacob. (Numbers 24:17) It was understood by these Wise Men that this star was announcing the Saviour-King, destined to be born of the Jews. And they, in spite of the difficulties and dangers of a long and tedious journey through deserts and mountains almost impassable, hastened at once to Bethlehem to adore Him. And there they offered Him mystical presents, as to the King of kings, to the God of heaven and earth, and to a Man whose human nature made Him mortal and subject to sufferings.
The second manifestation commemorated by this feast day occurred when He came forth from the waters of the Jordan after having received Baptism from the hands of Saint John, and the Holy Ghost descended on Him in the visible form of a dove. A voice from heaven was heard, saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
The third manifestation which the Church's liturgy recalls to us is that of the divine power of Jesus when, at the marriage-feast of Cana, by the first of His miracles He changed water into wine. And at the sight of this prodigy His disciples believed in His Divinity. These three great events, concurring to the same end, the Church has wished to celebrate in one and the same festival.
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| December 9th - St. Peter Fourier and St. Leocadia of Toledo |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-08-2020, 11:39 PM - Forum: December
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Saint Peter Fourier
Parish Priest of Mattaincourt,
Reformer of the Canons of Saint Augustine,
Founder of the Canonesses of Notre Dame
(1565-1640)
This priest of God was consecrated to Him before and at his birth by his pious parents, who destined their eldest son for the altars. His aptitude for study, his high stature and beauty added the gifts of nature to those of grace. The young man was noted in particular for his devotion to the Mother of God and his great modesty. It was a surprise to all when he chose to consecrate himself to God in a religious Order which at that time had degenerated from its original fervor, that of the Canons of Saint Augustine. He made application for entrance into the Abbey of Chaumouzey, founded in 1094, situated a short distance from his native village of Mirecourt in Lorraine. There he made the traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in 1587, and was ordained a priest in February of 1589.
Before saying his first Mass he passed several months of retreat in the exercises of prayer, penance and tears. He was then sent to complete his theological studies at the university of Pont-au-Mousson, also in Lorraine. There Father Jean Fourier, a relative who was Rector of that University, directed him admirably. His progress in virtue and the sacred sciences placed him high in the opinion of the Cardinal of Lorraine and Bishop of Metz, who desired to have him in his diocese; he offered him a parish where his talents would bring him advancement. But the young priest, wishing to flee all honors, declined, to return to his Abbey.
There hell instigated against him a persecution; he was the brunt of raillery, threats, and intrigues, and an effort was made to poison him, which did not succeed. For two years he lived in the midst of contradictions without complaining in any way to his abbot, who seemed unaware of what was happening; he increased in patience and kindness towards his persecutors. Eventually he was again offered a choice of three parishes, two of which would provide opportunity for advancement, while the third was in a village regarded as incorrigible and backward. It was the last one that he chose. The people there were prosperous but more than indifferent to religion. The Sacraments were neglected and the feast days profaned; the altars were bare and the church was deserted when he arrived.
He began by visiting families and assembling two or three of them to talk to them of the truths of the faith. He did not go to the banquets which followed funerals and weddings, save to offer the prayer of blessing or make a short exhortation. He did not accept a housekeeper, even when his own stepmother offered to assist him. He prayed for the greater part of every night, and never refused to go where he was called, at any time or in any season. So little did he need for himself that he was able to give alms and assistance to the poor. He prayed before Jesus on the altar: You are the principal parish priest, I am only Your vicar. And permit me to say to You, with all the humility of my heart, that You are under obligation to make succeed what I cannot.
He desired to remedy the evils of the times by forming children to virtue; and Providence soon brought to him several young women who offered themselves for the instruction of young girls. Within the space of only a few years, six schools were founded in the region, and before he died, about forty. Blessed Alice LeClerc was the first Sister and first Superior of the Canonesses of Notre Dame, dedicated to the education of young women. For this purpose Saint Peter was obliged to confide his parish to his vicar for a time, to journey and obtain the various permissions and assistance necessary; but it was God's work and all efforts succeeded.
His own parish was gradually being transformed into a model, and priests came to visit it. One of them reported to his bishop the marvels of devotion he had seen in Mattaincourt, and said he had asked the parish priest where he had studied; Saint Peter had answered that he had studied in the fourth — corresponding in America to about the ninth grade. Astonished, the visitor was yet more so when he learned that this modest priest had certainly studied in the fourth, as he had said, but out of horror for vainglory had wanted to dissimulate his years of higher studies.
The bishops were asking him to visit their parishes to preach missions where needed; the holy priest obeyed, amid his increasing tears and penance, as he perceived the vices and ignorance of the populations. He also was concerned to reestablish the discipline and fervor of his own Order, an effort which had failed several times. But in 1621 the Bishop of Toul, Monsignor de Porcelets, entrusted this work to Father Fourier. A house was found to begin the Reform, the vacant ancient Abbey of Saint Remi, and six excellent subjects were sent there under his direction. In four years, eight houses of the Order had adopted the Reform. A General Superior was named; for a time Father Fourier was able to avoid that office, but when the good Superior died, he was obliged to accept its functions. Attacked by the devil, his influence distorted by calumnies, Saint Peter's only response was to spread everywhere devotion to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. More than two centuries before the Miraculous Medal in 1830 and the proclamation of the dogma in 1854, he saw to the distribution of large quantities of a medal he had struck, on which were engraved the words: Mary was conceived without sin.
Saint Peter Fourier died in exile as an effect of the difficulties and political problems of the 1630's; he found shelter in a province which was at that time under the Spanish crown, and there he died in 1640. His spiritual sons, his spiritual daughters, the good people of Gray in Bourgogne, who had welcomed him and whom he had served admirably during an epidemic of the pestilence, all wanted the honor of possessing his mortal remains. But so did also the parish of Mattaincourt. To the reformed Order of Saint Augustine this privilege was granted officially, but the pious women of Mattaincourt, blocking the church door, would not permit the Canons to resume their journey with the coffin, after they had stopped in his former parish for a day or so. His heart had already been left to the parish of Gray. Miracles have abounded at his tomb, as they did during his lifetime, by his prayers. He was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1897.
Saint Leocadia of Toledo
Virgin and Martyr
(† 303)
Saint Leocadia was the fervent daughter of an illustrious Christian family of Toledo, apprehended and martyred in 303 by an order of Dacian, the cruel governor under Diocletian.
When Dacian arrived in Toledo, she was soon denounced. Summoned before his tribunal, she replied to his contemptuous words concerning the true religion that she considered herself infinitely happy to serve God and His Son Jesus Christ, and that nothing whatsoever would be able to make her renounce her religion. She was flogged until covered with blood, then imprisoned with threats. She went to the prison with joy, consoling the Christians along the route who deplored her condition, telling them to rejoice in the grace she received to suffer for her Lord and Spouse. It was in this prison that she heard of the incredibly cruel martyrdom inflicted on her compatriot, Saint Eulalia, and she was so grieved by these cruelties, and by the condition of the true servants of God in those days, that she prayed to be retired from this world. Her prayer was heard, and she expired peacefully there on December 9, 303, kissing a cross which the touch of her hand imprinted on the hard rock of the prison wall.
A church was built over her tomb, in which several archbishops of Toledo chose to be buried. Two other famous churches in Toledo bear her name, one built over the site of the prison, and the other at that of the paternal home. Saint Leocadia is honored as the principal patroness of the city. Her relics were kept in that church with great respect, until during the incursions of the Moors, they were conveyed to Oviedo, and again elsewhere, then they were eventually carried back to Toledo with great pomp, and placed in the great church there on the 26th of April, 1589.
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| New York Assemblywoman Introduces Bill for Mandatory COVID Vaccinations |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-08-2020, 11:39 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular]
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NY Assembly Bill A11179 Mandating Covid-19 Vaccine
Bearded Heretic | December 7, 2020
You know it’s about health & safety when “they” say: “IF PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICIALS DETERMINE THAT RESIDENTS OF THE STATE ARE NOT DEVELOPING SUFFICIENT IMMUNITY FROM COVID-19, THE DEPARTMENT SHALL MANDATE VACCINATION FOR ALL INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS OF INDIVIDUALS WHO, AS SHOWN BY CLINICAL DATA, ARE PROVEN TO BE SAFE TO RECEIVE SUCH VACCINE.”
Despite numerous polls showing that a majority of Americans and New Yorkers do not want to get a Covid-19 vaccine, and governors in Texas, Tennessee and Florida declaring that Covid-19 shots will be voluntary, New York Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal (D- Upper Westside) introduced Assembly Bill A11179 on Friday that would allow unspecified “public health officials” to decide if all New York residents should be forced to get Covid-19 vaccines. As of yet, the bill has no co-sponsors in the Assembly, or an identical “Same As” bill in the State Senate. To our knowledge, this is the first bill introduced in the United States that would mandate Covid-19 vaccines. Vague language is included that may allow for medical exemptions. No other exemptions would be allowed.
If passed, this bill would also create the universal vaccine mandate for the entire population of a state, a long-sought after marketing goal of the vaccine industry. Rosenthal’s bill would also ask her colleagues in the legislature to agree to an unprecedented surrender of decision-making power to “public health officials” over how and when a vaccine becomes compulsory, and does not even specify if those are local or state officials.
The “public health officials” could make this decision if following the launch of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Covid-19 vaccine distribution program the “residents of the state are not developing sufficient immunity from Covid-19.” But what is sufficient immunity? Who are these “public health officials” who make this decision for 20 million New Yorkers?
Please send messages of opposition to Rosenthal, Health Committee Chair Richard Gottfried, Speaker of the Assembly Carl Heastie, Governor Andrew Cuomo, as well as your own member of the Assembly. Call them at the numbers below and politely voice your opposition to this bill:
Assembly member Linda Rosenthal, (212) 873-6368, (518) 455-5802
https://www.facebook.com/LindaBRosenthal.UWS
Richard Gottfried, Assembly Health Committee Chair, (212) 807-7900, (518) 455-4941
Carl Heastie, Speaker of the Assembly, Carl Heastie, (518) 455-5459, (718) 654-6539
Rosenthal appears to be unaware of basic fact about Covid-19 vaccines. The bill assumes that the Covid-19 vaccine will provide immunity even though the manufacturers of the current leading Covid-19 vaccine contenders do not claim they will create immunity. Even Anthony Fauci has said that the vaccines will at best avoid symptoms, not create immunity or stop the transmission of the disease.
“Importantly, the initial COVID-19 vaccines will prevent symptoms in those who become infected with the coronavirus rather than kill the virus itself, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit on Monday.
‘The primary thing you want to do is that if people get infected, prevent them from getting sick, and if you prevent them from getting sick, you will ultimately prevent them from getting seriously ill,’ he said.”
So the logic behind Rosenthal’s bill is that if the vaccine does not provide “sufficient immunity,” even though no one even claims that it will provide any immunity, and we have no idea what “sufficient immunity” means, then the appropriate response is force everyone in the state to get the shot whether they want to or not. Which would accomplish what? Whatever happened to, “My body, My choice”?
Rosenthal completely ignores the extreme haste (Warp Speed) in developing the current batch of Covid-19 vaccines. The fact that animal trials were skipped. We have no idea how safe the vaccines are. There are completely new technologies used in the vaccines such as novel adjuvants and messenger RNA methods. We have no idea how these shots could potentially affect people’s reproductive capability. They do not produce immunity. We don’t even know if they will reduce disease more than doing nothing. Yet we are in a manufactured hysteria rush to force everyone to undergo an experimental medical procedure which is fool hardy beyond belief, and a gross violation of the Nuremberg Code that prohibits forced participation in medical experiments.
Rosenthal is not known to have any children herself, but she is enthusiastic about demanding that parents comply with her nostrums about vaccines. She was a co-sponsor of the bill that repealed the religious exemption from vaccine mandates to attend school, and she is also a co-sponsor of a bill (A973A) that would allow 9-year-olds to get HPV vaccines without parental consent. She is, however, a powerful advocate for cats, having authored 15 bills relating to cats in the current session alone!
Rosenthal is notorious for refusing to meet with constituents on vaccine issues. No representative of the Autism Action Network, or any constituent that we know of, and there have been dozens who have attempted over the years, have been successful in obtaining a face-to-face meeting with Rosenthal.
Please share this message with friends and family, and please share on social networks while we still can.
A11179 (ACTIVE) – SUMMARY
Requires a COVID-19 vaccine to be administered in accordance with the department of health’s COVID-19 vaccination administration program and mandates vaccination in certain situations.
A11179 (ACTIVE) – BILL TEXT DOWNLOAD PDF
STATE OF NEW YORK
11179
IN ASSEMBLY
December 4, 2020
Introduced by COMMITTEE ON RULES — (at request of M. of A. L. Rosenthal) — read once and referred to the Committee on Health
AN ACT to amend the public health law, in relation to administering a COVID-19 vaccine
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
1 Section 1. Article 21 of the public health law is amended by adding a
2 new title 8 to read as follows:
3 TITLE 8
4 COVID-19
5 Section 2178. COVID-19 vaccination.
6 § 2178. COVID-19 vaccination.
1. At the time a vaccination for COVID-19 is approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research vaccine product approval
process and the New York state clinical advisory task force, such vaccination shall be required to be safely and effectively distributed in accordance with the department’s COVID-19 vaccination administration program.
2. Once the United States Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research and the New York state clinical advisory task force have approved the safety and effectiveness of a COVID-19 vaccination and promotion and distribution plans of such vaccine have begun pursuant to the department’s COVID-19 vaccination administration
program, if public health officials determine that residents of the state are not developing sufficient immunity from COVID-19, the department shall mandate vaccination for all individuals or groups of individuals who, as shown by clinical data, are proven to be safe to receive such vaccine.
3. Any individual who has received a medical exemption from a licensed medical professional shall not be mandated to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and shall be excluded from the requirements of this section.
§ 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
EXPLANATION–Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[ ] is old law to be omitted.
LBD16430-02-0
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/A11179
[Emphasis mine.]
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| Archbp. Viganò: Under the “church” of Bergoglio, Christ has been uncrowned |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-08-2020, 08:16 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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Archbishop Viganò: Under Francis’s leadership, Christ the King has been uncrowned
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: 'the so-called “church” of Bergoglio...preaches the blasphemous cult of man and refuses the sovereign rights of God.'
December 7, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Editor’s note: The Italian version of this text can be read HERE.
[The Catacombs NB: The 'Uncrowning' of Our Lord Jesus Christ occurred firstly at the Second Vatican Council. As blasphemous and pernicious as the words and actions of Pope Francis have been, the root of them all can be found in that evil Council. Pope Francis himself often cites V-II as the foundation for many of his decisions. Let us continue to pray for Archbishop Viganò that he see the real cause of these errors, as Archbishop Lefebvre so clearly did! (cf. They Have Uncrowned Him by Archbishop Lefebvre)]
VIRGO POTENS
In preparation for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception
The rich man who feasted in the Gospel parable (Lk 16: 19-31), after being condemned to hell for not having helped the poor man Lazarus, asks Abraham to warn his five brothers about the torments to which he was subjected, in order to prevent them from falling into the same sin. Abraham answers him: “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead” (Lk 16:31).
Over the course of history, Our Lady has intervened as a loving Mother to warn us of the punishments that weigh upon the world because of its sins, in order to invite mankind to conversion and penance, and to fill her children with innumerable graces. Wherever the Word of God seems to be forgotten, there the voice of Mary Most Holy is heard, now to announce a particular devotion, now to ask for sacrifices and prayers to escape pestilences and scourges. In Quito, La Salette, Lourdes, Fatima, Rome, Akita, Civitavecchia, and in a thousand other places, the Mediatrix of all Graces has admonished us, recalling humanity, misled into rebellion against the Divine Law, to true repentance and the recitation of the Holy Rosary. Although the various times and circumstances of her apparitions change, She who deigns to show herself to us poor mortals is always the same, ever Merciful, ever our Advocate.
At Fatima the Lady who appeared to the shepherd children asked the Pope, in union with all the Bishops, to consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart: this appeal remains unheeded to this day, despite the disasters which the world would have to face if it did not heed the requests of the Most Holy Virgin. The militant atheism of Communism has spread everywhere, and the Church is persecuted by ruthless and cruel enemies, while she is also infested by corrupt clerics given over to vice. And yet, despite the recognition of the supernatural origin of the apparitions and the evidence of the calamities which afflict mankind, the Hierarchy refuses to obey the Blessed Mother. “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead,” Abraham says to the rich man in the parable. Is it possible that they do not even know how to listen to the voice of the Mother of God, who is also Our Mother? What oppresses their hearts, what obscures their minds to such an extent that they are deaf and blind, while the world sinks into the abyss and so many souls are damned?
In obedience to the Universal Lordship of Christ the King, we also accept venerating Mary Most Holy as our Queen. And when we address our Father with the words, “Thy will be done,” we know that this will coincides perfectly with the will of our Mother, the model of obedience and humility who merited to be chosen from the beginning of time to generate the King of Kings in her virginal womb. Every desire of the Mother of God is an order for us: it does not even need to be thought of as a command, because our response and our desire is – and must be – to please her and give her proof of our fidelity. And this is eminently true for the Sacred Ministers, who in the Sacrament of Holy Orders bear upon themselves the priestly anointing of the High Priest Jesus Christ: in each priest, Mary Most Holy sees Her Son, who mystically renews his own sacrifice upon the altar through their hands.
It causes pain therefore – a hollow and tearing pain – to see the indifference of so many consecrated souls and of so many bishops – too many – towards the Blessed Virgin Mary. It pains and tears the heart to hear Bergoglio himself speak with such a total lack of respect for Our Lady, and to learn that after he drastically reduced the papal liurgical celebrations for last Easter, he has now sought to take advantage of Covid to cancel part of the liturgical celebrations for Holy Christmas and to cancel the tradition by which each year on December 8 the Pope goes to Piazza di Spagna in Rome to venerate the monument of the Immaculate Virgin that was erected there in 1857. Thus another piece of Rome is thrown away, another pound of flesh that the cynical merchant claims from the life of the Roman people as proof of their fidelity to the health dictatorship.
The Church of Catholics, the Church that loves those who honor themselves with the name of Christian, is the Church that does not retreat before civil authority, thereby making herself an accomplice and courtesan of it, but rather the Church that endures persecution with courage and a supernatural gaze, knowing that it is better to die amidst the most atrocious torments than to offend the Most Blessed Virgin and Her Divine Son. She is the Church that does not remain silent when the tyrant defies the Majesty of God, afflicts her subjects, and betrays the justice and authority that legitimizes it. She is the Church that does not yield in the face of blackmail nor allow herself to be seduced by power or money. She is the Church that ascends Calvary, as the Mystical Body of Christ, in order to complete in her own members the sufferings of the Redeemer and to rise again triumphantly with Him. She is the Church who assists the weak and the oppressed with mercy and charity, while she stands fearless and terrible in the face of the arrogant and the proud. When the Pope of this Church used to speak, the flock of Christ heard the consoling voice of the Shepherd, in a long series of popes who were unanimous and in agreement in the profession of the one Faith.
Conversely, the so-called “church” of Bergoglio does not hesitate to close churches, arrogating to itself the wicked right to deny God public worship and to deprive the faithful of the grace of the Sacraments through a wretched connivance with civil power. This “church” humiliates the Most Holy Trinity, lowering it to the level of idols and demons with sacrilegious rituals of a neo-pagan religion. It snatches the crown and scepter away from Christ the King in the name of Masonic Globalism; it offends the Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix in order not to annoy the heretics, Her enemies. It betrays the duty of preaching the Gospel in the name of dialogue and tolerance. It silences and adulterates Sacred Scripture and the Commandments of God in order to please the spirit of the world. It tampers with the sublime and inviolable words of the Prayer which the Lord Himself taught us. It profanes the holiness of the Priesthood, cancelling the spirit of penance and mortification in clergy and religious and abandoning them to the seductions of the devil. It denies two thousand years of history, despising the glories of Christianity and the wise intervention of Divine Providence in earthly affairs. It zealously follows fashions and idelogies rather then molding souls to follow Christ. It makes itself a slave of the Prince of this world in order to preserve its prestige and power. It preaches the blasphemous cult of man and refuses the sovereign rights of God. And when Bergoglio speaks, the faithful are almost always scandalized and disoriented, because his words are the exact opposite of what they expect to hear from the Vicar of Christ. He asks for obedience to his own authority even as he uses it to destroy the Papacy and the Church, contradicting all of his Predecessors, none excluded.
We have the promise of Mary Most Holy: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.” Let us bow before that heart, which beats with the most pure Charity, so that the flame of that holy love may reflect on each one of us, so that the flame which burns in it may illuminate our minds and make them capable of grasping the signs of the times. And if our Shepherds are silent out of fear or complicity, the multitude of lay people and good souls have the opportunity to compensate for their betrayal and expiate their sins, invoking the Mercy of God who “has come to the help of his servant, Israel, remembering his mercy” (Lk 1:54).
Today the high priests of this modern Sanhedrin outrage Our Lord and His Most Holy Mother, complacent servants of the globalist élite who want to establish the kingdom of Satan; tomorrow they will retreat before the victory of the Virgo Potens, who will restore the Holy Church and will give peace and harmony to society, thanks to the prayers and sacrifices of so many of her humble and unknown children.
May this be our vow for the upcoming Feast of the Immaculate Conception, with which to honor Our Lady and Queen.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
1 December 2020
Feria III infra Hebdomadam I Adventus
Sancti Edmundi Campion, presbyteri et martyris
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| Ave Maris Stella |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-08-2020, 07:38 AM - Forum: Marian Hymns
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Ave maris stella
"Ave maris stella" (Latin for 'Hail, star of the sea') is a Marian hymn used at Vespers from about the eighth century. It was especially popular in the Middle Ages and has been used by many composers as the basis of other compositions.
The creation of the original hymn has been attributed to several people, including Bernard of Clairvaux (12th century), Saint Venantius Fortunatus (6th century) and Hermannus Contractus (11th century). The text is not found written by 9th-century hands, but as a tenth-century addition in two 9th-century manuscripts, one from Salzburg now in Vienna and the other still at the Abbey of Saint Gall. Its frequent occurrence in the Divine Office made it popular in the Middle Ages, many other hymns being founded upon it.[1] The "Ave maris stella" was highly influential in presenting Mary as a merciful and loving Mother. "Much of its charm is due to its simplicity". The title, "Star of the Sea" is one of the oldest and most widespread titles applied to Mary. The hymn is frequently used as a prayer for safe-conduct for travelers.
The melody is found in the Irish plainsong "Gabhaim Molta Bríde", a piece in praise of St. Brigid of Kildaire. [Source]
Latin
Ave, maris stella,
Dei mater alma,
atque semper virgo,
felix cœli porta.
Sumens illud «Ave»
Gabrielis ore,
funda nos in pace,
mutans Evæ[10] nomen.
Solve vincla reis,
profer lumen cæcis,
mala nostra pelle,
bona cuncta posce.
Monstra te esse matrem,
sumat per te precem [11]
qui pro nobis natus
tulit esse tuus.
Virgo singularis,
inter omnes mitis,
nos culpis solutos
mites fac et castos.
Vitam præsta puram,
iter para tutum,
ut videntes Jesum
semper collætemur.
Sit laus Deo Patri,
summo Christo decus,
Spiritui Sancto
tribus honor unus. Amen.
English
Hail, thou Star of ocean,
Portal of the sky !
Ever Virgin Mother
Of the Lord most high !
Oh ! by Gabriel's Ave,
Uttered long ago,
Eva's name reversing,
Establish peace below.
Break the captive's fetters ;
Light on blindness pour ;
All our ills expelling,
Every bliss implore.
Show thyself a Mother ;
Offer Him our sighs,
Who for us Incarnate
Did not thee despise.
Virgin of all virgins !
To thy shelter take us :
Gentlest of the gentle !
Chaste and gentle make us.
Still, as on we journey,
Help our weak endeavor ;
Till with thee and Jesus
We rejoice forever.
Through the highest heaven,
To the Almighty Three,
Father, Son, and Spirit,
One same glory be. Amen.
Quote:Promises to those who sing the Ave Maris Stella
During a riot at Rome, a mob came to the house where St. Bridget lived; a leader talked of burning Bridget alive. She prayed to Our Blessed Lord to know if she should flee to safety and He assured her to stay, saying: "It doesn't matter if they plot thy death. My power will break the malice of thy enemies: If mine crucified me, it is because I permitted it." The Blessed Virgin added:
"Sing as a group the Ave Maris Stella and I will guard you from every danger."
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| Fr. Maximilian Kolbe: Last Writings on the Immaculate Conception |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-08-2020, 07:21 AM - Forum: Our Lady
- No Replies
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Father Maximilian Maria Kolbe, OFM
On the Immaculate Conception
By Rev. Fr. H.M. Manteau-Bonamy, O.P.
I Am the Immaculate Conception
A few hours before his second and final arrest on February 17th, 1941, Fr. Kolbe had time to put on paper his thoughts about her, who for a quarter of a century had never ceased to occupy his priestly and apostolic mind and heart. This text is therefore, of the highest importance. He could not have written it during his captivity near Warsaw, or during his detention in the death camp at Auschwitz, although he delivered many heartfelt sermons on the Immaculata. In these lines we find the gist of his Marian doctrine. The words are based on several very rough sketches between 1939 - 41. This last writing from Fr. Kolbe constitutes his last spiritual testament:
Immaculate Conception! These words fell from the lips of the Immaculata herself. Hence, they must tell us in the most precise and essential manner who she really is.
Since human words are incapable of expressing Divine realities it follows that these words:
"Immaculate," and "Conception" must be understood in a much more profound, much more beautiful and sublime meaning than usual: A meaning beyond that which human reason at its most penetrating, commonly gives to them. However, we can and should reverently inquire into the mystery of the Immaculata and try to express it with words provided by our intelligence using its own proper powers.
Who then are you, O Immaculate Conception?
Not God, of course, because He has no beginning. Not an angel, created directly out of nothing. Not Adam, formed out of the dust of the earth. Not Eve, molded from Adam's rib. Not the Incarnate Word, Who exists before all ages; and of Whom we should use the word "conceived" rather than "conception." Humans do not exist before their conception, so we might call them created "conceptions."
But you, O Mary, are different from all other children of Eve. They are conceptions stained by Original Sin; whereas you are the unique Immaculate Conception. Everything which exists, outside of God Himself, exists since it is from God and depends on Him in every way; and it bears within itself some semblance to its Creator. There is nothing in any creature which does not betray this resemblance, because every created thing is an effect of the Primal Cause.
It is true that the words we use to speak of created realities express the Divine perfections only in a halting, limited and analogical manner. They are only a more or less distant echo, as are the created realities that they signify - of the properties of God himself. Would not "conception" be an exception to this rule? No, there is never any such exception.
The Father begets the Son; the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. These few words sum up the mystery of the life of the Most Blessed Trinity and of all the perfections in creatures which are nothing else but echoes - a hymn of praise of this primary and most wondrous of all mysteries. We must perforce use our vocabulary, since it is all we have; but we must never forget that our vocabulary is very inadequate.
Who is the Father? What is His personal life like? It consists in begetting, eternally because He begets His Son from the beginning and forever. Who is the Son? He is the Begotten-One; Who, from the beginning and for all eternity, is begotten by the Father. And Who is the Holy Ghost? The flowering of the love of the Father and the Son.
If the fruit of created is a created conception, then the fruit of Divine love, that prototype of all created love, is necessarily a Divine "conception." The Holy Ghost is, therefore, the "uncreated, eternal conception," the prototype of all the conceptions that multiply life throughout the whole universe.
The Father begets; the Son is begotten; the Spirit is the "conception" that springs from their love. There we have the intimate life of the Three Persons by which They can be distinguished from one another. But They are united in the Oneness of Their Nature, of Their Divine existence. The Spirit is, then, this thrice holy "conception," this infinitely holy Immaculate Conception.
The creature most completely filled with this love, filled with God Himself, was the Immaculata, who never contacted the slightest stain of sin, who never departed in the least from God's will. United to the Holy Ghost as His spouse, she is one with God in an incomparably more perfect way than can be predicated of any other creature.
What sort of Union is this? It is above all an interior union, a union of her essence with the "essence" of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost dwells in her; lives in her. This was true from the first instance of her existence. It was always true and it will always be true. And in what does this life of the Spirit in Mary consist?
He Himself is uncreated Love in her; the Love of the Father and of the Son, the Love by which God loves Himself, the very love of the Most Holy Trinity. He is a fruitful Love - a "Conception." Among creatures made in God's image, the union brought about by married love is the most intimate of all. In a much more precise, more interior, more essential manner, the Holy Ghost lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the depths of her very being. He makes her fruitful, from the very first instance of her existence, all during her life, and for all eternity.
This eternal "Immaculate Conception" [which is the Holy Ghost] produces in an immaculate manner Divine life itself in the womb or depths of Mary's soul, making her the Immaculate Conception - the human Immaculate Conception. And the virginal womb of Mary's body is kept sacred for Him; there He conceives in time the human life of the God-Man.
The path of creation goes from the Father through the Son and by the Holy Ghost; this return trail goes from the Spirit through the Son back to the Father. In other words - by the Spirit, the Son becomes incarnate in the womb of the Immaculata; and through this Son, love returns to the Father. And the Immaculata, grafted into the Love of the Blessed Trinity, becomes from the first moment of her existence and forever after, the "complement of the Blessed Trinity."
In the Holy Ghost’s union with Mary we observe more than the love of two beings; in this union is all the love of the Blessed Trinity; and all of creation's love. So it is - that in this union, Heaven and earth are joined! All of Heaven with the earth - the totality of eternal love with the totality of created love. It is truly the summit of love.
At Lourdes, our Blessed Lady did not say that she was conceived in an immaculate way - but as Saint Bernadette repeated it: "Que soy era Immaculata Councepiou" - I am the Immaculate Conception. Mary's affirmation that "I am the Immaculate Conception" refers not only to her spiritual I, but to her total and personal I - "I am."
To her body united to her soul as to its vital principle, both making up her personal reality. Our Heavenly Father is the source of all that is; everything comes from the Blessed Trinity. We cannot see God; but God the Son came to this earth as Christ Jesus; and through Him, God is known to us.
The Most Blessed Virgin is the one in whom we venerate the Holy Ghost - for she is His holy spouse. The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity never took flesh. Still, our human word for "spouse" is far too weak to express the reality of the relationship between the Immaculata and the Holy Ghost.
We can affirm that she is, in a certain sense - the "incarnation" of the Holy Ghost. It is the Holy Ghost that we love in her; and through her we know and love the Son.
+ + +
MILITIA IMMACULATAE
Founded by Seminarian Maximillian Kolbe - October, 1917
PRAYER:
O Mary Immaculate, you know the most perfect way to God; intercede for me with your Divine Son and use me as your instrument; by helping me to know and fulfill the plan the Father has established for me; because only then will I be truly pleasing God, and find true peace and happiness in this world and in the next.
O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee; and for all those who do not have recourse to thee; especially all Communists and Freemasons and other enemies of Holy Mother Church.
Source
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| Fr. Maximilian Kolbe: Last Writings on the Immaculate Conception |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-08-2020, 07:21 AM - Forum: The Saints
- No Replies
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Father Maximilian Maria Kolbe, OFM
On the Immaculate Conception
By Rev. Fr. H.M. Manteau-Bonamy, O.P.
I Am the Immaculate Conception
A few hours before his second and final arrest on February 17th, 1941, Fr. Kolbe had time to put on paper his thoughts about her, who for a quarter of a century had never ceased to occupy his priestly and apostolic mind and heart. This text is therefore, of the highest importance. He could not have written it during his captivity near Warsaw, or during his detention in the death camp at Auschwitz, although he delivered many heartfelt sermons on the Immaculata. In these lines we find the gist of his Marian doctrine. The words are based on several very rough sketches between 1939 - 41. This last writing from Fr. Kolbe constitutes his last spiritual testament:
Immaculate Conception! These words fell from the lips of the Immaculata herself. Hence, they must tell us in the most precise and essential manner who she really is.
Since human words are incapable of expressing Divine realities it follows that these words:
"Immaculate," and "Conception" must be understood in a much more profound, much more beautiful and sublime meaning than usual: A meaning beyond that which human reason at its most penetrating, commonly gives to them. However, we can and should reverently inquire into the mystery of the Immaculata and try to express it with words provided by our intelligence using its own proper powers.
Who then are you, O Immaculate Conception?
Not God, of course, because He has no beginning. Not an angel, created directly out of nothing. Not Adam, formed out of the dust of the earth. Not Eve, molded from Adam's rib. Not the Incarnate Word, Who exists before all ages; and of Whom we should use the word "conceived" rather than "conception." Humans do not exist before their conception, so we might call them created "conceptions."
But you, O Mary, are different from all other children of Eve. They are conceptions stained by Original Sin; whereas you are the unique Immaculate Conception. Everything which exists, outside of God Himself, exists since it is from God and depends on Him in every way; and it bears within itself some semblance to its Creator. There is nothing in any creature which does not betray this resemblance, because every created thing is an effect of the Primal Cause.
It is true that the words we use to speak of created realities express the Divine perfections only in a halting, limited and analogical manner. They are only a more or less distant echo, as are the created realities that they signify - of the properties of God himself. Would not "conception" be an exception to this rule? No, there is never any such exception.
The Father begets the Son; the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. These few words sum up the mystery of the life of the Most Blessed Trinity and of all the perfections in creatures which are nothing else but echoes - a hymn of praise of this primary and most wondrous of all mysteries. We must perforce use our vocabulary, since it is all we have; but we must never forget that our vocabulary is very inadequate.
Who is the Father? What is His personal life like? It consists in begetting, eternally because He begets His Son from the beginning and forever. Who is the Son? He is the Begotten-One; Who, from the beginning and for all eternity, is begotten by the Father. And Who is the Holy Ghost? The flowering of the love of the Father and the Son.
If the fruit of created is a created conception, then the fruit of Divine love, that prototype of all created love, is necessarily a Divine "conception." The Holy Ghost is, therefore, the "uncreated, eternal conception," the prototype of all the conceptions that multiply life throughout the whole universe.
The Father begets; the Son is begotten; the Spirit is the "conception" that springs from their love. There we have the intimate life of the Three Persons by which They can be distinguished from one another. But They are united in the Oneness of Their Nature, of Their Divine existence. The Spirit is, then, this thrice holy "conception," this infinitely holy Immaculate Conception.
The creature most completely filled with this love, filled with God Himself, was the Immaculata, who never contacted the slightest stain of sin, who never departed in the least from God's will. United to the Holy Ghost as His spouse, she is one with God in an incomparably more perfect way than can be predicated of any other creature.
What sort of Union is this? It is above all an interior union, a union of her essence with the "essence" of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost dwells in her; lives in her. This was true from the first instance of her existence. It was always true and it will always be true. And in what does this life of the Spirit in Mary consist?
He Himself is uncreated Love in her; the Love of the Father and of the Son, the Love by which God loves Himself, the very love of the Most Holy Trinity. He is a fruitful Love - a "Conception." Among creatures made in God's image, the union brought about by married love is the most intimate of all. In a much more precise, more interior, more essential manner, the Holy Ghost lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the depths of her very being. He makes her fruitful, from the very first instance of her existence, all during her life, and for all eternity.
This eternal "Immaculate Conception" [which is the Holy Ghost] produces in an immaculate manner Divine life itself in the womb or depths of Mary's soul, making her the Immaculate Conception - the human Immaculate Conception. And the virginal womb of Mary's body is kept sacred for Him; there He conceives in time the human life of the God-Man.
The path of creation goes from the Father through the Son and by the Holy Ghost; this return trail goes from the Spirit through the Son back to the Father. In other words - by the Spirit, the Son becomes incarnate in the womb of the Immaculata; and through this Son, love returns to the Father. And the Immaculata, grafted into the Love of the Blessed Trinity, becomes from the first moment of her existence and forever after, the "complement of the Blessed Trinity."
In the Holy Ghost’s union with Mary we observe more than the love of two beings; in this union is all the love of the Blessed Trinity; and all of creation's love. So it is - that in this union, Heaven and earth are joined! All of Heaven with the earth - the totality of eternal love with the totality of created love. It is truly the summit of love.
At Lourdes, our Blessed Lady did not say that she was conceived in an immaculate way - but as Saint Bernadette repeated it: "Que soy era Immaculata Councepiou" - I am the Immaculate Conception. Mary's affirmation that "I am the Immaculate Conception" refers not only to her spiritual I, but to her total and personal I - "I am."
To her body united to her soul as to its vital principle, both making up her personal reality. Our Heavenly Father is the source of all that is; everything comes from the Blessed Trinity. We cannot see God; but God the Son came to this earth as Christ Jesus; and through Him, God is known to us.
The Most Blessed Virgin is the one in whom we venerate the Holy Ghost - for she is His holy spouse. The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity never took flesh. Still, our human word for "spouse" is far too weak to express the reality of the relationship between the Immaculata and the Holy Ghost.
We can affirm that she is, in a certain sense - the "incarnation" of the Holy Ghost. It is the Holy Ghost that we love in her; and through her we know and love the Son.
+ + +
MILITIA IMMACULATAE
Founded by Seminarian Maximillian Kolbe - October, 1917
PRAYER:
O Mary Immaculate, you know the most perfect way to God; intercede for me with your Divine Son and use me as your instrument; by helping me to know and fulfill the plan the Father has established for me; because only then will I be truly pleasing God, and find true peace and happiness in this world and in the next.
O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee; and for all those who do not have recourse to thee; especially all Communists and Freemasons and other enemies of Holy Mother Church.
Source
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| The Sign of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-08-2020, 07:06 AM - Forum: Our Lady
- Replies (1)
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From the Archived Catacombs:
On July 16th, 1858, on the 18th and last apparition of Our Lady at Lourdes, She appeared to St. Bernadette, dressed as Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Likewise, on October 13th, 1917, Our Lady of Fatima appeared as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, holding the brown scapular in Her Hand, making Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta understand that She wants all of us to wear the Scapular. The wearing of the Brown Scapular, as Sr. Lucia stated, is consequently a sign of consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This consecration to Mary is a means of giving Her greater honour and love, and therefore a sign that God will grant us the grace of final perseverance. Pope Pius XII stared in 1950: "Let it (the Scapular) be your sign of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which we are particularly urging in these perfidious times".
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| St. Alphonsus Liguori: Our Lady's Chastity |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-08-2020, 07:00 AM - Forum: Our Lady
- No Replies
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Mary's Chastity: from the Glories of Mary
by Saint Alphonsus Liguori
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.skinnerinc.com%2...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.skinnerinc.com%2Ffull%2F873%2F598873.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
Since the fall of Adam, the senses being rebellious to reason, chastity is of all virtues the one that is the most difficult to practise. St. Augustine says: "Of all the combats in which we are engaged, the most severe are those of chastity; its battles are of daily occurrence, but victory is rare." May God be ever praised, however, Who in Mary has given us a great example of this virtue.
"With reason," says Blessed Albertus Magnus, "is Mary called the Virgin of virgins; for she, without the counselor example of others, was the first who offered her virginity to God." Thus did she bring all virgins who imitate her to God, as David had already foretold: After her shall virgins be brought ... into the temple of the King. [Ps. 44:15] Without counsel and without example. Yes; for St. Bernard says: "O Virgin, who taught thee to please God by virginity, and to lead an Angel's life on earth?" "Ah," replies St. Sophronius, "God chose this most pure virgin for His Mother, that she might be an example of chastity to all." Therefore does St. Ambrose call Mary "the standard-bearer of virginity."
By reason of her purity the Blessed Virgin was also declared by the Holy Ghost to be beautiful as the turtle dove: Thy cheeks are beautiful as the turtle-dove's. [Cant. 1:9] "Mary," says Aponius, "was a most pure turtle dove." For the same reason she was also called a lily: As the lily among the thorns, so is my love among the daughters. [Cant. 2:2] On this passage Denis the Carthusian remarks, that "Mary was compared to a lily amongst thorns, because all other virgins were thorns, either to themselves or to others; but that the Blessed Virgin was so neither to herself nor to others;" for she inspired all who looked at her with chaste thoughts. This is confirmed by St. Thomas, who says, that the beauty of the Blessed Virgin was an incentive to chastity in all who beheld her. St. Jerome declared that it was his opinion that St. Joseph remained a virgin by living with Mary; for, writing against the heretic Helvidius, who denied Mary's virginity, he says, "Thou sayest that Mary did not remain a virgin. I say that not only she remained a virgin, but even that Joseph preserved his virginity through Mary."
St. Gregory of Nyssa, says, that so much did the Blessed Virgin love this virtue, that, to preserve it, she would have been willing to renounce even the dignity of Mother of God. This we may conclude from her answer to the Archangel, How shall this be done, because I know not man? [Luke 1:34] and from the words she afterwards added, Be it done to me according to thy Word, [Ibid., 38] signifying that she gave her consent on the condition that as the Angel had assured her, she should become a Mother only by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost.
St. Ambrose says, that "whoever has preserved chastity is an Angel, and that he who has lost it is a devil." "Our Lord assures us that those who are chaste become Angels, They shall be as the Angels of God in Heaven. [Matt. 22:30] But the impure becomes as devils, hateful in the sight of God. St. Remigius used to say that the greater part of adults are lost by this vice. Seldom, as we have already said with St. Augustine, is a victory gained over this vice. But why? It is because the means by which it may be gained are seldom made use of.
These means are three, according to Bellarmine and the masters of a spiritual life: fasting, the avoidance of dangerous occasions, and prayer.
Quote:1. By fasting, is to be understood especially mortification of the eyes and of the appetite. Although our Blessed Lady was full of Divine grace, yet she was so mortified in her eyes, that, according to St. Epiphanius and St. John Damascene, she always kept them cast down, and never fixed them on anyone; and they say that from her very childhood her modesty was such, that it filled everyone who saw her with astonishment. Hence St. Luke remarks, that, in going to visit St. Elizabeth, she went with haste, that she might be less seen in public. Philibert relates, that, as to her food, it was revealed to a hermit named Felix, that when a baby she only took milk once a day. St. Gregory of Tours affirms that throughout her life she fasted; and St. Bonaventure adds, "that Mary would never have found so much grace, had she not been most moderate in her food; for grace and gluttony cannot subsist together." In fine, Mary was mortified in all, so that of her it was said my hands dropped with myrrh. [Cant. 5:5]
2, The second means is to fly the occasions of sin: He that is aware of the snares shall be secure. [Prov. 11:15] Hence St. Philip Neri says, that, "in the war of the senses, cowards conquer:" that is to say those who fly from dangerous occasions. Mary fled as much as possible from the sight of men; and therefore St. Luke remarks; that in going to visit St. Elizabeth, she went with haste into the hill country. An author observes, that the Blessed Virgin left St. Elizabeth before St. John was born, as we learn from the same Gospel, where it is said, that Mary abode with her about three months, and she returned to her own house. Now Elizabeth's full time of being delivered was come, and she brought forth a son. [Luke 1:56] And why did she not wait for this event? It was that she might avoid the conversations and visits which would accompany it.
3. The third means is prayer. And as I knew, said the wise man, that I could not otherwise be continent except God gave it ... I went to the Lord and besought Him. [Wisd. 8:21] The Blessed Virgin revealed to St. Elizabeth of Hungary, that she acquired no virtue without effort and continual prayer. St. John Damascene says, that Mary "is pure, and a lover of purity." Hence she cannot endure those who are unchaste. But whoever has recourse to her will certainly be delivered from this vice, if he only pronounces her name with confidence. The Venerable John d' Avila' used to say, "that many have conquered impure temptations by only having devotion to her Immaculate Conception."
O Mary, O most pure Dove, how many are now in Hell on account of this vice! Sovereign Lady, obtain us the grace always to have recourse to thee in our temptations, and always to invoke thee, saying, "Mary, Mary, help us." Amen.
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| Feast of the Immaculate Conception |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-08-2020, 06:34 AM - Forum: Our Lady
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Immaculate Conception
The doctrine
In the Constitution Ineffabilis Deus of 8 December, 1854, Pius IX pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary "in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin."
"The Blessed Virgin Mary..."
The subject of this immunity from original sin is the person of Mary at the moment of the creation of her soul and its infusion into her body.
"...in the first instance of her conception..."
The term conception does not mean the active or generative conception by her parents. Her body was formed in the womb of the mother, and the father had the usual share in its formation. The question does not concern the immaculateness of the generative activity of her parents. Neither does it concern the passive conception absolutely and simply (conceptio seminis carnis, inchoata), which, according to the order of nature, precedes the infusion of the rational soul. The person is truly conceived when the soul is created and infused into the body. Mary was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin at the first moment of her animation, and sanctifying grace was given to her before sin could have taken effect in her soul.
"...was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin..."
The formal active essence of original sin was not removed from her soul, as it is removed from others by baptism; it was excluded, it never was in her soul. Simultaneously with the exclusion of sin. The state of original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded. But she was not made exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam — from sorrow, bodily infirmities, and death.
"...by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race."
The immunity from original sin was given to Mary by a singular exemption from a universal law through the same merits of Christ, by which other men are cleansed from sin by baptism. Mary needed the redeeming Saviour to obtain this exemption, and to be delivered from the universal necessity and debt (debitum) of being subject to original sin. The person of Mary, in consequence of her origin from Adam, should have been subject to sin, but, being the new Eve who was to be the mother of the new Adam, she was, by the eternal counsel of God and by the merits of Christ, withdrawn from the general law of original sin. Her redemption was the very masterpiece of Christ's redeeming wisdom. He is a greater redeemer who pays the debt that it may not be incurred than he who pays after it has fallen on the debtor.
Such is the meaning of the term "Immaculate Conception."
Proof from Scripture
Genesis 3:15
No direct or categorical and stringent proof of the dogma can be brought forward from Scripture. But the first scriptural passage which contains the promise of the redemption, mentions also the Mother of the Redeemer. The sentence against the first parents was accompanied by the Earliest Gospel (Proto-evangelium), which put enmity between the serpent and the woman: "and I will put enmity between thee and the woman and her seed; she (he) shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her (his) heel" (Genesis 3:15). The translation "she" of the Vulgate is interpretative; it originated after the fourth century, and cannot be defended critically. The conqueror from the seed of the woman, who should crush the serpent's head, is Christ; the woman at enmity with the serpent is Mary. God puts enmity between her and Satan in the same manner and measure, as there is enmity between Christ and the seed of the serpent. Mary was ever to be in that exalted state of soul which the serpent had destroyed in man, i.e. in sanctifying grace. Only the continual union of Mary with grace explains sufficiently the enmity between her and Satan. The Proto-evangelium, therefore, in the original text contains a direct promise of the Redeemer, and in conjunction therewith the manifestation of the masterpiece of His Redemption, the perfect preservation of His virginal Mother from original sin.
Luke 1:28
The salutation of the angel Gabriel — chaire kecharitomene, Hail, full of grace (Luke 1:28) indicates a unique abundance of grace, a supernatural, godlike state of soul, which finds its explanation only in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. But the term kecharitomene (full of grace) serves only as an illustration, not as a proof of the dogma.
Other texts
From the texts Proverbs 8 and Ecclesiasticus 24 (which exalt the Wisdom of God and which in the liturgy are applied to Mary, the most beautiful work of God's Wisdom), or from the Canticle of Canticles (4:7, "Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee"), no theological conclusion can be drawn. These passages, applied to the Mother of God, may be readily understood by those who know the privilege of Mary, but do not avail to prove the doctrine dogmatically, and are therefore omitted from the Constitution "Ineffabilis Deus". For the theologian it is a matter of conscience not to take an extreme position by applying to a creature texts which might imply the prerogatives of God.
Proof from Tradition
In regard to the sinlessness of Mary the older Fathers are very cautious: some of them even seem to have been in error on this matter.
Origen, although he ascribed to Mary high spiritual prerogatives, thought that, at the time of Christ's passion, the sword of disbelief pierced Mary's soul; that she was struck by the poniard of doubt; and that for her sins also Christ died (Origen, "In Luc. hom. xvii").
In the same manner St. Basil writes in the fourth century: he sees in the sword, of which Simeon speaks, the doubt which pierced Mary's soul (Epistle 260).
St. Chrysostom accuses her of ambition, and of putting herself forward unduly when she sought to speak to Jesus at Capharnaum (Matthew 12:46; Chrysostom, Homily 44 on Matthew).
But these stray private opinions merely serve to show that theology is a progressive science. If we were to attempt to set forth the full doctrine of the Fathers on the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin, which includes particularly the implicit belief in the immaculateness of her conception, we should be forced to transcribe a multitude of passages. In the testimony of the Fathers two points are insisted upon: her absolute purity and her position as the second Eve (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:22).
Mary as the second Eve
This celebrated comparison between Eve, while yet immaculate and incorrupt — that is to say, not subject to original sin — and the Blessed Virgin is developed by:
Justin (Dialogue with Trypho 100),
Irenaeus (Against Heresies III.22.4),
Tertullian (On the Flesh of Christ 17),
Julius Firmicus Maternus (De errore profan. relig xxvi),
Cyril of Jerusalem (Catecheses 12.29),
Epiphanius (Hæres., lxxviii, 18),
Theodotus of Ancyra (Or. in S. Deip n. 11), and
Sedulius (Carmen paschale, II, 28).
The absolute purity of Mary
Patristic writings on Mary's purity abound.
The Fathers call Mary the tabernacle exempt from defilement and corruption (Hippolytus, "Ontt. in illud, Dominus pascit me");
- Origen calls her worthy of God, immaculate of the immaculate, most complete sanctity, perfect justice, neither deceived by the persuasion of the serpent, nor infected with his poisonous breathings ("Hom. i in diversa");
- Ambrose says she is incorrupt, a virgin immune through grace from every stain of sin ("Sermo xxii in Ps. cxviii);
- Maximus of Turin calls her adwelling fit for Christ, not because of her habit of body, but because of original grace ("Nom. viii de Natali Domini");
- Theodotus of Ancyra terms her a virgin innocent, without spot, void of culpability, holy in body and in soul, a lily springing among thorns, untaught the ills of Eve, nor was there any communion in her of light with darkness, and, when not yet born, she was consecrated to God ("Orat. in S. Dei Genitr.").
- In refuting Pelagius St. Augustine declares that all the just have truly known of sin "except the Holy Virgin Mary, of whom, for the honour of the Lord, I will have no question whatever where sin is concerned" (On Nature and Grace 36).
- Mary was pledged to Christ (Peter Chrysologus, "Sermo cxl de Annunt. B.M.V.");
- it is evident and notorious that she was pure from eternity, exempt from every defect (Typicon S. Sabae);
- she was created in a condition more sublime and glorious than all other natures (Theodorus of Jerusalem in Mansi, XII, 1140);
- when the Virgin Mother of God was to be born of Anne, nature did not dare to anticipate the germ of grace, but remained devoid of fruit (John Damascene, "Hom. i in B. V. Nativ.", ii).
The Syrian Fathers never tire of extolling the sinlessness of Mary. St. Ephraem considers no terms of eulogy too high to describe the excellence of Mary's grace and sanctity: "Most holy Lady, Mother of God, alone most pure in soul and body, alone exceeding all perfection of purity ...., alone made in thy entirety the home of all the graces of the Most Holy Spirit, and hence exceeding beyond all compare even the angelic virtues in purity and sanctity of soul and body . . . . my Lady most holy, all-pure, all-immaculate, all-stainless, all-undefiled, all-incorrupt, all-inviolate spotless robe of Him Who clothes Himself with light as with a garment . . . flower unfading, purple woven by God, alone most immaculate" ("Precationes ad Deiparam" in Opp. Graec. Lat., III, 524-37).
To St. Ephraem she was as innocent as Eve before her fall, a virgin most estranged from every stain of sin, more holy than the Seraphim, the sealed fountain of the Holy Ghost, the pure seed of God, ever in body and in mind intact and immaculate ("Carmina Nisibena").
Jacob of Sarug says that "the very fact that God has elected her proves that none was ever holier than Mary; if any stain had disfigured her soul, if any other virgin had been purer and holier, God would have selected her and rejected Mary". It seems, however, that Jacob of Sarug, if he had any clear idea of the doctrine of sin, held that Mary was perfectly pure from original sin ("the sentence against Adam and Eve") at the Annunciation.
St. John Damascene (Or. i Nativ. Deip., n. 2) esteems the supernatural influence of God at the generation of Mary to be so comprehensive that he extends it also to her parents. He says of them that, during the generation, they were filled and purified by the Holy Ghost, and freed from sexual concupiscence. Consequently according to the Damascene, even the human element of her origin, the material of which she was formed, was pure and holy. This opinion of an immaculate active generation and the sanctity of the "conceptio carnis" was taken up by some Western authors; it was put forward by Petrus Comestor in his treatise against St. Bernard and by others. Some writers even taught that Mary was born of a virgin and that she was conceived in a miraculous manner when Joachim and Anne met at the golden gate of the temple (Trombelli, "Mari SS. Vita", Sect. V, ii, 8; Summa aurea, II, 948. Cf. also the "Revelations" of Catherine Emmerich which contain the entire apocryphal legend of the miraculous conception of Mary.
From this summary it appears that the belief in Mary's immunity from sin in her conception was prevalent amongst the Fathers, especially those of the Greek Church. The rhetorical character, however, of many of these and similar passages prevents us from laying too much stress on them, and interpreting them in a strictly literal sense. The Greek Fathers never formally or explicitly discussed the question of the Immaculate Conception.
The conception of St. John the Baptist
A comparison with the conception of Christ and that of St. John may serve to light both on the dogma and on the reasons which led the Greeks to celebrate at an early date the Feast of the Conception of Mary.
- The conception of the Mother of God was beyond all comparison more noble than that of St. John the Baptist, whilst it was immeasurably beneath that of her Divine Son.
- The soul of the precursor was not preserved immaculate at its union with the body, but was sanctified either shortly after conception from a previous state of sin, or through the presence of Jesus at the Visitation.
- Our Lord, being conceived by the Holy Ghost, was, by virtue of his miraculous conception, ipso facto free from the taint of original sin.
Of these three conceptions the Church celebrates feasts. The Orientals have a Feast of the Conception of St. John the Baptist (23 September), which dates back to the fifth century; it is thus older than the Feast of the Conception of Mary, and, during the Middle Ages, was kept also by many Western dioceses on 24 September. The Conception of Mary is celebrated by the Latins on 8 December; by the Orientals on 9 December; the Conception of Christ has its feast in the universal calendar on 25 March.
In celebrating the feast of Mary's Conception the Greeks of old did not consider the theological distinction of the active and the passive conceptions, which was indeed unknown to them. They did not think it absurd to celebrate a conception which was not immaculate, as we see from the Feast of the Conception of St. John. They solemnized the Conception of Mary, perhaps because, according to the "Proto-evangelium" of St. James, it was preceded by miraculous events (the apparition of an angel to Joachim, etc.), similar to those which preceded the conception of St. John, and that of our Lord Himself.
Their object was less the purity of the conception than the holiness and heavenly mission of the person conceived. In the Office of 9 December, however, Mary, from the time of her conception, is called beautiful, pure, holy, just, etc., terms never used in the Office of 23 September (sc. of St. John the Baptist). The analogy of St. John's sanctification may have given rise to the Feast of the Conception of Mary. If it was necessary that the precursor of the Lord should be so pure and "filled with the Holy Ghost" even from his mother's womb, such a purity was assuredly not less befitting His Mother. The moment of St. John's sanctification is by later writers thought to be the Visitation ("the infant leaped in her womb"), but the angel's words (Luke 1:15) seem to indicate a sanctification at the conception. This would render the origin of Mary more similar to that of John. And if the Conception of John had its feast, why not that of Mary?
Proof from reason
There is an incongruity in the supposition that the flesh, from which the flesh of the Son of God was to be formed, should ever have belonged to one who was the slave of that arch-enemy, whose power He came on earth to destroy. Hence the axiom of Pseudo-Anselmus (Eadmer) developed by Duns Scotus, Decuit, potuit, ergo fecit, it was becoming that the Mother of the Redeemer should have been free from the power of sin and from the first moment of her existence; God could give her this privilege, therefore He gave it to her. Again it is remarked that a peculiar privilege was granted to the prophet Jeremiah and to St. John the Baptist. They were sanctified in their mother's womb, because by their preaching they had a special share in the work of preparing the way for Christ. Consequently some much higher prerogative is due to Mary. (A treatise of P. Marchant, claiming for St. Joseph also the privilege of St. John, was placed on the Index in 1633.) Scotus says that "the perfect Mediator must, in some one case, have done the work of mediation most perfectly, which would not be unless there was some one person at least, in whose regard the wrath of God was anticipated and not merely appeased."
The feast of the Immaculate Conception
The older feast of the Conception of Mary (Conception of St. Anne), which originated in the monasteries of Palestine at least as early as the seventh century, and the modern feast of the Immaculate Conception are not identical in their object.
Originally the Church celebrated only the Feast of the Conception of Mary, as she kept the Feast of St. John's conception, not discussing the sinlessness. This feast in the course of centuries became the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, as dogmatical argumentation brought about precise and correct ideas, and as the thesis of the theological schools regarding the preservation of Mary from all stain of original sin gained strength. Even after the dogma had been universally accepted in the Latin Church, and had gained authoritative support through diocesan decrees and papal decisions, the old term remained, and before 1854 the term "Immaculata Conceptio" is nowhere found in the liturgical books, except in the invitatorium of the Votive Office of the Conception. The Greeks, Syrians, etc. call it the Conception of St. Anne (Eullepsis tes hagias kai theoprometoros Annas, "the Conception of St. Anne, the ancestress of God").
Passaglia in his "De Immaculato Deiparae Conceptu," basing his opinion upon the "Typicon" of St. Sabas: which was substantially composed in the fifth century, believes that the reference to the feast forms part of the authentic original, and that consequently it was celebrated in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem in the fifth century (III, n. 1604). But the Typicon was interpolated by the Damascene, Sophronius, and others, and, from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, many new feasts and offices were added.
To determine the origin of this feast we must take into account the genuine documents we possess, the oldest of which is the canon of the feast, composed by St. Andrew of Crete, who wrote his liturgical hymns in the second half of the seventh century, when a monk at the monastery of St. Sabas near Jerusalem (d. Archbishop of Crete about 720). But the solemnity cannot then have been generally accepted throughout the Orient, for John, first monk and later bishop in the Isle of Euboea, about 750 in a sermon, speaking in favour of the propagation of this feast, says that it was not yet known to all the faithful (ei kai me para tois pasi gnorizetai; P.G., XCVI, 1499). But a century later George of Nicomedia, made metropolitan by Photius in 860, could say that the solemnity was not of recent origin (P.G., C, 1335). It is therefore, safe to affirm that the feast of the Conception of St. Anne appears in the Orient not earlier than the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century.
As in other cases of the same kind the feast originated in the monastic communities. The monks, who arranged the psalmody and composed the various poetical pieces for the office, also selected the date, 9 December, which was always retained in the Oriental calendars. Gradually the solemnity emerged from the cloister, entered into the cathedrals, was glorified by preachers and poets, and eventually became a fixed feast of the calendar, approved by Church and State.
It is registered in the calendar of Basil II (976-1025) and by the Constitution of Emperor Manuel I Comnenus on the days of the year which are half or entire holidays, promulgated in 1166, it is numbered among the days which have full sabbath rest. Up to the time of Basil II, Lower Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia still belonged to the Byzantine Empire; the city of Naples was not lost to the Greeks until 1127, when Roger II conquered the city. The influence of Constantinople was consequently strong in the Neapolitan Church, and, as early as the ninth century, the Feast of the Conception was doubtlessly kept there, as elsewhere in Lower Italy on 9 December, as indeed appears from the marble calendar found in 1742 in the Church of S. Giorgio Maggiore at Naples.
Today the Conception of St. Anne is in the Greek Church one of the minor feasts of the year. The lesson in Matins contains allusions to the apocryphal "Proto-evangelium" of St. James, which dates from the second half of the second century (see SAINT ANNE). To the Greek Orthodox of our days, however, the feast means very little; they continue to call it "Conception of St. Anne", indicating unintentionally, perhaps, the active conception which was certainly not immaculate. In the Menaea of 9 December this feast holds only the second place, the first canon being sung in commemoration of the dedication of the Church of the Resurrection at Constantinople. The Russian hagiographer Muraview and several other Orthodox authors even loudly declaimed against the dogma after its promulgation, although their own preachers formerly taught the Immaculate Conception in their writings long before the definition of 1854.
In the Western Church the feast appeared (8 December), when in the Orient its development had come to a standstill. The timid beginnings of the new feast in some Anglo-Saxon monasteries in the eleventh century, partly smothered by the Norman conquest, were followed by its reception in some chapters and dioceses by the Anglo-Norman clergy. But the attempts to introduce it officially provoked contradiction and theoretical discussion, bearing upon its legitimacy and its meaning, which were continued for centuries and were not definitively settled before 1854.
The "Martyrology of Tallaght" compiled about 790 and the "Feilire" of St. Aengus (800) register the Conception of Mary on 3 May. It is doubtful, however, if an actual feast corresponded to this rubric of the learned monk St. Aengus. This Irish feast certainly stands alone and outside the line of liturgical development. It is a mere isolated appearance, not a living germ. The Scholiast adds, in the lower margin of the "Feilire", that the conception (Inceptio) took place in February, since Mary was born after seven months — a singular notion found also in some Greek authors. The first definite and reliable knowledge of the feast in the West comes from England; it is found in a calendar of Old Minster, Winchester (Conceptio S'ce Dei Genetricis Mari), dating from about 1030, and in another calendar of New Minster, Winchester, written between 1035 and 1056; a pontifical of Exeter of the eleventh century (assigned to 1046-1072) contains a "benedictio in Conceptione S. Mariae"; a similar benediction is found in a Canterbury pontifical written probably in the first half of the eleventh century, certainly before the Conquest. These episcopal benedictions show that the feast not only commended itself to the devotion of individuals, but that it was recognized by authority and was observed by the Saxon monks with considerable solemnity. The existing evidence goes to show that the establishment of the feast in England was due to the monks of Winchester before the Conquest (1066).
The Normans on their arrival in England were disposed to treat in a contemptuous fashion English liturgical observances; to them this feast must have appeared specifically English, a product of insular simplicity and ignorance. Doubtless its public celebration was abolished at Winchester and Canterbury, but it did not die out of the hearts of individuals, and on the first favourable opportunity the feast was restored in the monasteries. At Canterbury however, it was not re-established before 1328. Several documents state that in Norman times it began at Ramsey, pursuant to a vision vouchsafed to Helsin or Æthelsige, Abbot of Ramsey on his journey back from Denmark, whither he had been sent by William I about 1070. An angel appeared to him during a severe gale and saved the ship after the abbot had promised to establish the Feast of the Conception in his monastery. However we may consider the supernatural feature of the legend, it must be admitted that the sending of Helsin to Denmark is an historical fact. The account of the vision has found its way into many breviaries, even into the Roman Breviary of 1473. The Council of Canterbury (1325) attributes the re-establishment of the feast in England to St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1109). But although this great doctor wrote a special treatise "De Conceptu virginali et originali peccato", by which he laid down the principles of the Immaculate Conception, it is certain that he did not introduce the feast anywhere. The letter ascribed to him, which contains the Helsin narrative, is spurious. The principal propagator of the feast after the Conquest was Anselm, the nephew of St. Anselm. He was educated at Canterbury where he may have known some Saxon monks who remembered the solemnity in former days; after 1109 he was for a time Abbot of St. Sabas at Rome, where the Divine Offices were celebrated according to the Greek calendar. When in 1121 he was appointed Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's he established the feast there; partly at least through his efforts other monasteries also adopted it, like Reading, St. Albans, Worcester, Gloucester, and Winchcombe.
But a number of others decried its observance as hitherto unheard of and absurd, the old Oriental feast being unknown to them. Two bishops, Roger of Salisbury and Bernard of St. Davids, declared that the festival was forbidden by a council, and that the observance must be stopped. And when, during the vacancy of the See of London, Osbert de Clare, Prior of Westminster, undertook to introduce the feast at Westminster (8 December, 1127), a number of monks arose against him in the choir and said that the feast must not be kept, for its establishment had not the authority of Rome (cf. Osbert's letter to Anselm in Bishop, p. 24). Whereupon the matter was brought before the Council of London in 1129. The synod decided in favour of the feast, and Bishop Gilbert of London adopted it for his diocese. Thereafter the feast spread in England, but for a time retained its private character, the Synod of Oxford (1222) having refused to raise it to the rank of a holiday of obligation.
In Normandy at the time of Bishop Rotric (1165-83) the Conception of Mary, in the Archdiocese of Rouen and its six suffragan dioceses, was a feast of precept equal in dignity to the Annunciation. At the same time the Norman students at the University of Paris chose it as their patronal feast. Owing to the close connection of Normandy with England, it may have been imported from the latter country into Normandy, or the Norman barons and clergy may have brought it home from their wars in Lower Italy, it was universally solemnised by the Greek inhabitants. During the Middle Ages the Feast of the Conception of Mary was commonly called the "Feast of the Norman nation", which shows that it was celebrated in Normandy with great splendour and that it spread from there over Western Europe. Passaglia contends (III, 1755) that the feast was celebrated in Spain in the seventh century. Bishop Ullathorne also (p. 161) finds this opinion acceptable. If this be true, it is difficult to understand why it should have entirely disappeared from Spain later on, for neither does the genuine Mozarabic Liturgy contain it, nor the tenth century calendar of Toledo edited by Morin. The two proofs given by Passaglia are futile: the life of St. Isidore, falsely attributed to St. Ildephonsus, which mentions the feast, is interpolated, while, in the Visigoth lawbook, the expression "Conceptio S. Mariae" is to be understood of the Annunciation.
The controversy
No controversy arose over the Immaculate Conception on the European continent before the twelfth century. The Norman clergy abolished the feast in some monasteries of England where it had been established by the Anglo-Saxon monks. But towards the end of the eleventh century, through the efforts of Anselm the Younger, it was taken up again in several Anglo-Norman establishments. That St. Anselm the Elder re-established the feast in England is highly improbable, although it was not new to him. He had been made familiar with it as well by the Saxon monks of Canterbury, as by the Greeks with whom he came in contact during exile in Campania and Apulin (1098-9). The treatise "De Conceptu virginali" usually ascribed to him, was composed by his friend and disciple, the Saxon monk Eadmer of Canterbury. When the canons of the cathedral of Lyons, who no doubt knew Anselm the Younger Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's, personally introduced the feast into their choir after the death of their bishop in 1240, St. Bernard deemed it his duty to publish a protest against this new way of honouring Mary. He addressed to the canons a vehement letter (Epist. 174), in which he reproved them for taking the step upon their own authority and before they had consulted the Holy See. Not knowing that the feast had been celebrated with the rich tradition of the Greek and Syrian Churches regarding the sinlessness of Mary, he asserted that the feast was foreign to the old tradition of the Church. Yet it is evident from the tenor of his language that he had in mind only the active conception or the formation of the flesh, and that the distinction between the active conception, the formation of the body, and its animation by the soul had not yet been drawn. No doubt, when the feast was introduced in England and Normandy, the axiom "decuit, potuit, ergo fecit", the childlike piety and enthusiasm of the simplices building upon revelations and apocryphal legends, had the upper hand. The object of the feast was not clearly determined, no positive theological reasons had been placed in evidence.
St. Bernard was perfectly justified when he demanded a careful inquiry into the reasons for observing the feast. Not adverting to the possibility of sanctification at the time of the infusion of the soul, he writes that there can be question only of sanctification after conception, which would render holy the nativity, not the conception itself (Scheeben, "Dogmatik", III, p. 550). Hence Albert the Great observes: "We say that the Blessed Virgin was not sanctified before animation, and the affirmative contrary to this is the heresy condemned by St. Bernard in his epistle to the canons of Lyons" (III Sent., dist. iii, p. I, ad 1, Q. i).
St. Bernard was at once answered in a treatise written by either Richard of St. Victor or Peter Comestor. In this treatise appeal is made to a feast which had been established to commemorate an insupportable tradition. It maintained that the flesh of Mary needed no purification; that it was sanctified before the conception. Some writers of those times entertained the fantastic idea that before Adam fell, a portion of his flesh had been reserved by God and transmitted from generation to generation, and that out of this flesh the body of Mary was formed (Scheeben, op. cit., III, 551), and this formation they commemorated by a feast. The letter of St. Bernard did not prevent the extension of the feast, for in 1154 it was observed all over France, until in 1275, through the efforts of the Paris University, it was abolished in Paris and other dioceses.
After the saint's death the controversy arose anew between Nicholas of St. Albans, an English monk who defended the festival as established in England, and Peter Cellensis, the celebrated Bishop of Chartres. Nicholas remarks that the soul of Mary was pierced twice by the sword, i.e. at the foot of the cross and when St. Bernard wrote his letter against her feast (Scheeben, III, 551). The point continued to be debated throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and illustrious names appeared on each side. St. Peter Damian, Peter the Lombard, Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, and Albert the Great are quoted as opposing it.
St. Thomas at first pronounced in favour of the doctrine in his treatise on the "Sentences" (in I. Sent. c. 44, q. I ad 3), yet in his "Summa Theologica" he concluded against it. Much discussion has arisen as to whether St. Thomas did or did not deny that the Blessed Virgin was immaculate at the instant of her animation, and learned books have been written to vindicate him from having actually drawn the negative conclusion. Yet it is hard to say that St. Thomas did not require an instant at least, after the animation of Mary, before her sanctification. His great difficulty appears to have arisen from the doubt as to how she could have been redeemed if she had not sinned. This difficulty he raised in no fewer than ten passages in his writings (see, e.g., Summa III:27:2, ad 2). But while St. Thomas thus held back from the essential point of the doctrine, he himself laid down the principles which, after they had been drawn together and worked out, enabled other minds to furnish the true solution of this difficulty from his own premises.
In the thirteenth century the opposition was largely due to a want of clear insight into the subject in dispute. The word "conception" was used in different senses, which had not been separated by careful definition. If St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and other theologians had known the doctrine in the sense of the definition of 1854, they would have been its strongest defenders instead of being its opponents.
We may formulate the question discussed by them in two propositions, both of which are against the sense of the dogma of 1854:
- the sanctification of Mary took place before the infusion of the soul into the flesh, so that the immunity of the soul was a consequence of the sanctification of the flesh and there was no liability on the part of the soul to contract original sin. This would approach the opinion of the Damascene concerning the holiness of the active conception.
- The sanctification took place after the infusion of the soul by redemption from the servitude of sin, into which the soul had been drawn by its union with the unsanctified flesh. This form of the thesis excluded an immaculate conception.
The theologians forgot that between sanctification before infusion, and sanctification after infusion, there was a medium: sanctification of the soul at the moment of its infusion. To them the idea seemed strange that what was subsequent in the order of nature could be simultaneous in point of time. Speculatively taken, the soul must be created before it can be infused and sanctified but in reality, the soul is created and sanctified at the very moment of its infusion into the body. Their principal difficulty was the declaration of St. Paul (Romans 5:12) that all men have sinned in Adam. The purpose of this Pauline declaration, however, is to insist on the need which all men have of redemption by Christ. Our Lady was no exception to this rule. A second difficulty was the silence of the earlier Fathers. But the divines of those times were distinguished not so much for their knowledge of the Fathers or of history, as for their exercise of the power of reasoning. They read the Western Fathers more than those of the Eastern Church, who exhibit in far greater completeness the tradition of the Immaculate Conception. And many works of the Fathers which had then been lost sight of have since been brought to light.
The famous Duns Scotus (d. 1308) at last (in III Sent., dist. iii, in both commentaries) laid the foundations of the true doctrine so solidly and dispelled the objections in a manner so satisfactory, that from that time onward the doctrine prevailed. He showed that the sanctification after animation — sanctificatio post animationem — demanded that it should follow in the order of nature (naturae) not of time (temporis); he removed the great difficulty of St. Thomas showing that, so far from being excluded from redemption, the Blessed Virgin obtained of her Divine Son the greatest of redemptions through the mystery of her preservation from all sin. He also brought forward, by way of illustration, the somewhat dangerous and doubtful argument of Eadmer (S. Anselm) "decuit, potuit, ergo fecit."
From the time of Scotus not only did the doctrine become the common opinion at the universities, but the feast spread widely to those countries where it had not been previously adopted. With the exception of the Dominicans, all or nearly all, of the religious orders took it up: The Franciscans at the general chapter at Pisa in 1263 adopted the Feast of the Conception of Mary for the entire order; this, however, does not mean that they professed at that time the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Following in the footsteps of their own Duns Scotus, the learned Petrus Aureolus and Franciscus de Mayronis became the most fervent champions of the doctrine, although their older teachers (St. Bonaventure included) had been opposed to it. The controversy continued, but the defenders of the opposing opinion were almost entirely confined to the members of the Dominican Order.
In 1439 the dispute was brought before the Council of Basle where the University of Paris, formerly opposed to the doctrine, proved to be its most ardent advocate, asking for a dogmatical definition. The two referees at the council were John of Segovia and John Turrecremata (Torquemada). After it had been discussed for the space of two years before that assemblage, the bishops declared the Immaculate Conception to be a doctrine which was pious, consonant with Catholic worship, Catholic faith, right reason, and Holy Scripture; nor, said they, was it henceforth allowable to preach or declare to the contrary (Mansi, XXXIX, 182). The Fathers of the Council say that the Church of Rome was celebrating the feast. This is true only in a certain sense. It was kept in a number of churches of Rome, especially in those of the religious orders, but it was not received in the official calendar. As the council at the time was not ecumenical, it could not pronounce with authority. The memorandum of the Dominican Torquemada formed the armoury for all attacks upon the doctrine made by St. Antoninus of Florence (d. 1459), and by the Dominicans Bandelli and Spina.
By a Decree of 28 February, 1476, Sixtus IV at last adopted the feast for the entire Latin Church and granted an indulgence to all who would assist at the Divine Offices of the solemnity (Denzinger, 734). The Office adopted by Sixtus IV was composed by Leonard de Nogarolis, whilst the Franciscans, since 1480, used a very beautiful Office from the pen of Bernardine dei Busti (Sicut Lilium), which was granted also to others (e.g. to Spain, 1761), and was chanted by the Franciscans up to the second half of the nineteenth century. As the public acknowledgment of the feast of Sixtus IV did not prove sufficient to appease the conflict, he published in 1483 a constitution in which he punished with excommunication all those of either opinion who charged the opposite opinion with heresy (Grave nimis, 4 Sept., 1483; Denzinger, 735).
In 1546 the Council of Trent, when the question was touched upon, declared that "it was not the intention of this Holy Synod to include in the decree which concerns original sin the Blessed and Immaculate Virgin Mary Mother of God" (Sess. V, De peccato originali, v, in Denzinger, 792). Since, however, this decree did not define the doctrine, the theological opponents of the mystery, though more and more reduced in numbers, did not yield. St. Pius V not only condemned proposition 73 of Baius that "no one but Christ was without original sin, and that therefore the Blessed Virgin had died because of the sin contracted in Adam, and had endured afilictions in this life, like the rest of the just, as punishment of actual and original sin" (Denzinger, 1073) but he also issued a constitution in which he forbade all public discussion of the subject. Finally he inserted a new and simplified Office of the Conception in the liturgical books ("Super speculam", Dec., 1570; "Superni omnipotentis", March, 1571; "Bullarium Marianum", pp. 72, 75).
Whilst these disputes went on, the great universities and almost all the great orders had become so many bulwarks for the defense of the dogma. In 1497 the University of Paris decreed that henceforward no one should be admitted a member of the university, who did not swear that he would do the utmost to defend and assert the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Toulouse followed the example; in Italy, Bologna and Naples; in the German Empire, Cologne, Maine, and Vienna; in Belgium, Louvain; in England before the Reformation. Oxford and Cambridge; in Spain Salamanca, Toledo, Seville, and Valencia; in Portugal, Coimbra and Evora; in America, Mexico and Lima. The Friars Minor confirmed in 1621 the election of the Immaculate Mother as patron of the order, and bound themselves by oath to teach the mystery in public and in private. The Dominicans, however, were under special obligation to follow the doctrines of St. Thomas, and the common conclusion was that St. Thomas was opposed to the Immaculate Conception. Therefore the Dominicans asserted that the doctrine was an error against faith (John of Montesono, 1373); although they adopted the feast, they termed it persistently "Sanctificatio B.M.V." not "Conceptio", until in 1622 Gregory XV abolished the term "sanctificatio".
Paul V (1617) decreed that no one should dare to teach publicly that Mary was conceived in original sin, and Gregory XV (1622) imposed absolute silence (in scriptis et sermonibus etiam privatis) upon the adversaries of the doctrine until the Holy See should define the question. To put an end to all further cavilling, Alexander VII promulgated on 8 December 1661, the famous constitution "Sollicitudo omnium Ecclesiarum", defining the true sense of the word conceptio, and forbidding all further discussion against the common and pious sentiment of the Church. He declared that the immunity of Mary from original sin in the first moment of the creation of her soul and its infusion into the body was the object of the feast (Denzinger, 1100).
Explicit universal acceptance
Since the time of Alexander VII, long before the final definition, there was no doubt on the part of theologians that the privilege was amongst the truths revealed by God. Wherefore Pius IX, surrounded by a splendid throng of cardinals and bishops, 8 December 1854, promulgated the dogma. A new Office was prescribed for the entire Latin Church by Pius IX (25 December, 1863), by which decree all the other Offices in use were abolished, including the old Office Sicut lilium of the Franciscans, and the Office composed by Passaglia (approved 2 Feb., 1849).
In 1904 the golden jubilee of the definition of the dogma was celebrated with great splendour (Pius X, Enc., 2 Feb., 1904). Clement IX added to the feast an octave for the dioceses within the temporal possessions of the pope (1667). Innocent XII (1693) raised it to a double of the second class with an octave for the universal Church, which rank had been already given to it in 1664 for Spain, in 1665 for Tuscany and Savoy, in 1667 for the Society of Jesus, the Hermits of St. Augustine, etc., Clement XI decreed on 6 Dec., 1708, that the feast should be a holiday of obligation throughout the entire Church. At last Leo XIII, 30 Nov 1879, raised the feast to a double of the first class with a vigil, a dignity which had long before been granted to Sicily (1739), to Spain (1760) and to the United States (1847). A Votive Office of the Conception of Mary, which is now recited in almost the entire Latin Church on free Saturdays, was granted first to the Benedictine nuns of St. Anne at Rome in 1603, to the Franciscans in 1609, to the Conventuals in 1612, etc. The Syrian and Chaldean Churches celebrate this feast with the Greeks on 9 December; in Armenia it is one of the few immovable feasts of the year (9 December); the schismatic Abyssinians and Copts keep it on 7 August whilst they celebrate the Nativity of Mary on 1 May; the Catholic Copts, however, have transferred the feast to 10 December (Nativity, 10 September). The Eastern Catholics have since 1854 changed the name of the feast in accordance with the dogma to the "Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary."
The Archdiocese of Palermo solemnizes a Commemoration of the Immaculate Conception on 1 September to give thanks for the preservation of the city on occasion of the earthquake, 1 September, 1726. A similar commemoration is held on 14 January at Catania (earthquake, 11 Jan., 1693); and by the Oblate Fathers on 17 Feb., because their rule was approved 17 Feb., 1826. Between 20 September 1839, and 7 May 1847, the privilege of adding to the Litany of Loretto the invocation, "Queen conceived without original sin", had been granted to 300 dioceses and religious communities. The Immaculate Conception was declared on 8 November, 1760, principal patron of all the possessions of the crown of Spain, including those in America. The decree of the First Council of Baltimore (1846) electing Mary in her Immaculate Conception principal Patron of the United States, was confirmed on 7 February, 1847.
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Posted by: Stone - 12-08-2020, 06:34 AM - Forum: December
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Immaculate Conception
The doctrine
In the Constitution Ineffabilis Deus of 8 December, 1854, Pius IX pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary "in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin."
"The Blessed Virgin Mary..."
The subject of this immunity from original sin is the person of Mary at the moment of the creation of her soul and its infusion into her body.
"...in the first instance of her conception..."
The term conception does not mean the active or generative conception by her parents. Her body was formed in the womb of the mother, and the father had the usual share in its formation. The question does not concern the immaculateness of the generative activity of her parents. Neither does it concern the passive conception absolutely and simply (conceptio seminis carnis, inchoata), which, according to the order of nature, precedes the infusion of the rational soul. The person is truly conceived when the soul is created and infused into the body. Mary was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin at the first moment of her animation, and sanctifying grace was given to her before sin could have taken effect in her soul.
"...was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin..."
The formal active essence of original sin was not removed from her soul, as it is removed from others by baptism; it was excluded, it never was in her soul. Simultaneously with the exclusion of sin. The state of original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded. But she was not made exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam — from sorrow, bodily infirmities, and death.
"...by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race."
The immunity from original sin was given to Mary by a singular exemption from a universal law through the same merits of Christ, by which other men are cleansed from sin by baptism. Mary needed the redeeming Saviour to obtain this exemption, and to be delivered from the universal necessity and debt (debitum) of being subject to original sin. The person of Mary, in consequence of her origin from Adam, should have been subject to sin, but, being the new Eve who was to be the mother of the new Adam, she was, by the eternal counsel of God and by the merits of Christ, withdrawn from the general law of original sin. Her redemption was the very masterpiece of Christ's redeeming wisdom. He is a greater redeemer who pays the debt that it may not be incurred than he who pays after it has fallen on the debtor.
Such is the meaning of the term "Immaculate Conception."
Proof from Scripture
Genesis 3:15
No direct or categorical and stringent proof of the dogma can be brought forward from Scripture. But the first scriptural passage which contains the promise of the redemption, mentions also the Mother of the Redeemer. The sentence against the first parents was accompanied by the Earliest Gospel (Proto-evangelium), which put enmity between the serpent and the woman: "and I will put enmity between thee and the woman and her seed; she (he) shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her (his) heel" (Genesis 3:15). The translation "she" of the Vulgate is interpretative; it originated after the fourth century, and cannot be defended critically. The conqueror from the seed of the woman, who should crush the serpent's head, is Christ; the woman at enmity with the serpent is Mary. God puts enmity between her and Satan in the same manner and measure, as there is enmity between Christ and the seed of the serpent. Mary was ever to be in that exalted state of soul which the serpent had destroyed in man, i.e. in sanctifying grace. Only the continual union of Mary with grace explains sufficiently the enmity between her and Satan. The Proto-evangelium, therefore, in the original text contains a direct promise of the Redeemer, and in conjunction therewith the manifestation of the masterpiece of His Redemption, the perfect preservation of His virginal Mother from original sin.
Luke 1:28
The salutation of the angel Gabriel — chaire kecharitomene, Hail, full of grace (Luke 1:28) indicates a unique abundance of grace, a supernatural, godlike state of soul, which finds its explanation only in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. But the term kecharitomene (full of grace) serves only as an illustration, not as a proof of the dogma.
Other texts
From the texts Proverbs 8 and Ecclesiasticus 24 (which exalt the Wisdom of God and which in the liturgy are applied to Mary, the most beautiful work of God's Wisdom), or from the Canticle of Canticles (4:7, "Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee"), no theological conclusion can be drawn. These passages, applied to the Mother of God, may be readily understood by those who know the privilege of Mary, but do not avail to prove the doctrine dogmatically, and are therefore omitted from the Constitution "Ineffabilis Deus". For the theologian it is a matter of conscience not to take an extreme position by applying to a creature texts which might imply the prerogatives of God.
Proof from Tradition
In regard to the sinlessness of Mary the older Fathers are very cautious: some of them even seem to have been in error on this matter.
Origen, although he ascribed to Mary high spiritual prerogatives, thought that, at the time of Christ's passion, the sword of disbelief pierced Mary's soul; that she was struck by the poniard of doubt; and that for her sins also Christ died (Origen, "In Luc. hom. xvii").
In the same manner St. Basil writes in the fourth century: he sees in the sword, of which Simeon speaks, the doubt which pierced Mary's soul (Epistle 260).
St. Chrysostom accuses her of ambition, and of putting herself forward unduly when she sought to speak to Jesus at Capharnaum (Matthew 12:46; Chrysostom, Homily 44 on Matthew).
But these stray private opinions merely serve to show that theology is a progressive science. If we were to attempt to set forth the full doctrine of the Fathers on the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin, which includes particularly the implicit belief in the immaculateness of her conception, we should be forced to transcribe a multitude of passages. In the testimony of the Fathers two points are insisted upon: her absolute purity and her position as the second Eve (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:22).
Mary as the second Eve
This celebrated comparison between Eve, while yet immaculate and incorrupt — that is to say, not subject to original sin — and the Blessed Virgin is developed by:
Justin (Dialogue with Trypho 100),
Irenaeus (Against Heresies III.22.4),
Tertullian (On the Flesh of Christ 17),
Julius Firmicus Maternus (De errore profan. relig xxvi),
Cyril of Jerusalem (Catecheses 12.29),
Epiphanius (Hæres., lxxviii, 18),
Theodotus of Ancyra (Or. in S. Deip n. 11), and
Sedulius (Carmen paschale, II, 28).
The absolute purity of Mary
Patristic writings on Mary's purity abound.
The Fathers call Mary the tabernacle exempt from defilement and corruption (Hippolytus, "Ontt. in illud, Dominus pascit me");
- Origen calls her worthy of God, immaculate of the immaculate, most complete sanctity, perfect justice, neither deceived by the persuasion of the serpent, nor infected with his poisonous breathings ("Hom. i in diversa");
- Ambrose says she is incorrupt, a virgin immune through grace from every stain of sin ("Sermo xxii in Ps. cxviii);
- Maximus of Turin calls her adwelling fit for Christ, not because of her habit of body, but because of original grace ("Nom. viii de Natali Domini");
- Theodotus of Ancyra terms her a virgin innocent, without spot, void of culpability, holy in body and in soul, a lily springing among thorns, untaught the ills of Eve, nor was there any communion in her of light with darkness, and, when not yet born, she was consecrated to God ("Orat. in S. Dei Genitr.").
- In refuting Pelagius St. Augustine declares that all the just have truly known of sin "except the Holy Virgin Mary, of whom, for the honour of the Lord, I will have no question whatever where sin is concerned" (On Nature and Grace 36).
- Mary was pledged to Christ (Peter Chrysologus, "Sermo cxl de Annunt. B.M.V.");
- it is evident and notorious that she was pure from eternity, exempt from every defect (Typicon S. Sabae);
- she was created in a condition more sublime and glorious than all other natures (Theodorus of Jerusalem in Mansi, XII, 1140);
- when the Virgin Mother of God was to be born of Anne, nature did not dare to anticipate the germ of grace, but remained devoid of fruit (John Damascene, "Hom. i in B. V. Nativ.", ii).
The Syrian Fathers never tire of extolling the sinlessness of Mary. St. Ephraem considers no terms of eulogy too high to describe the excellence of Mary's grace and sanctity: "Most holy Lady, Mother of God, alone most pure in soul and body, alone exceeding all perfection of purity ...., alone made in thy entirety the home of all the graces of the Most Holy Spirit, and hence exceeding beyond all compare even the angelic virtues in purity and sanctity of soul and body . . . . my Lady most holy, all-pure, all-immaculate, all-stainless, all-undefiled, all-incorrupt, all-inviolate spotless robe of Him Who clothes Himself with light as with a garment . . . flower unfading, purple woven by God, alone most immaculate" ("Precationes ad Deiparam" in Opp. Graec. Lat., III, 524-37).
To St. Ephraem she was as innocent as Eve before her fall, a virgin most estranged from every stain of sin, more holy than the Seraphim, the sealed fountain of the Holy Ghost, the pure seed of God, ever in body and in mind intact and immaculate ("Carmina Nisibena").
Jacob of Sarug says that "the very fact that God has elected her proves that none was ever holier than Mary; if any stain had disfigured her soul, if any other virgin had been purer and holier, God would have selected her and rejected Mary". It seems, however, that Jacob of Sarug, if he had any clear idea of the doctrine of sin, held that Mary was perfectly pure from original sin ("the sentence against Adam and Eve") at the Annunciation.
St. John Damascene (Or. i Nativ. Deip., n. 2) esteems the supernatural influence of God at the generation of Mary to be so comprehensive that he extends it also to her parents. He says of them that, during the generation, they were filled and purified by the Holy Ghost, and freed from sexual concupiscence. Consequently according to the Damascene, even the human element of her origin, the material of which she was formed, was pure and holy. This opinion of an immaculate active generation and the sanctity of the "conceptio carnis" was taken up by some Western authors; it was put forward by Petrus Comestor in his treatise against St. Bernard and by others. Some writers even taught that Mary was born of a virgin and that she was conceived in a miraculous manner when Joachim and Anne met at the golden gate of the temple (Trombelli, "Mari SS. Vita", Sect. V, ii, 8; Summa aurea, II, 948. Cf. also the "Revelations" of Catherine Emmerich which contain the entire apocryphal legend of the miraculous conception of Mary.
From this summary it appears that the belief in Mary's immunity from sin in her conception was prevalent amongst the Fathers, especially those of the Greek Church. The rhetorical character, however, of many of these and similar passages prevents us from laying too much stress on them, and interpreting them in a strictly literal sense. The Greek Fathers never formally or explicitly discussed the question of the Immaculate Conception.
The conception of St. John the Baptist
A comparison with the conception of Christ and that of St. John may serve to light both on the dogma and on the reasons which led the Greeks to celebrate at an early date the Feast of the Conception of Mary.
- The conception of the Mother of God was beyond all comparison more noble than that of St. John the Baptist, whilst it was immeasurably beneath that of her Divine Son.
- The soul of the precursor was not preserved immaculate at its union with the body, but was sanctified either shortly after conception from a previous state of sin, or through the presence of Jesus at the Visitation.
- Our Lord, being conceived by the Holy Ghost, was, by virtue of his miraculous conception, ipso facto free from the taint of original sin.
Of these three conceptions the Church celebrates feasts. The Orientals have a Feast of the Conception of St. John the Baptist (23 September), which dates back to the fifth century; it is thus older than the Feast of the Conception of Mary, and, during the Middle Ages, was kept also by many Western dioceses on 24 September. The Conception of Mary is celebrated by the Latins on 8 December; by the Orientals on 9 December; the Conception of Christ has its feast in the universal calendar on 25 March.
In celebrating the feast of Mary's Conception the Greeks of old did not consider the theological distinction of the active and the passive conceptions, which was indeed unknown to them. They did not think it absurd to celebrate a conception which was not immaculate, as we see from the Feast of the Conception of St. John. They solemnized the Conception of Mary, perhaps because, according to the "Proto-evangelium" of St. James, it was preceded by miraculous events (the apparition of an angel to Joachim, etc.), similar to those which preceded the conception of St. John, and that of our Lord Himself.
Their object was less the purity of the conception than the holiness and heavenly mission of the person conceived. In the Office of 9 December, however, Mary, from the time of her conception, is called beautiful, pure, holy, just, etc., terms never used in the Office of 23 September (sc. of St. John the Baptist). The analogy of St. John's sanctification may have given rise to the Feast of the Conception of Mary. If it was necessary that the precursor of the Lord should be so pure and "filled with the Holy Ghost" even from his mother's womb, such a purity was assuredly not less befitting His Mother. The moment of St. John's sanctification is by later writers thought to be the Visitation ("the infant leaped in her womb"), but the angel's words (Luke 1:15) seem to indicate a sanctification at the conception. This would render the origin of Mary more similar to that of John. And if the Conception of John had its feast, why not that of Mary?
Proof from reason
There is an incongruity in the supposition that the flesh, from which the flesh of the Son of God was to be formed, should ever have belonged to one who was the slave of that arch-enemy, whose power He came on earth to destroy. Hence the axiom of Pseudo-Anselmus (Eadmer) developed by Duns Scotus, Decuit, potuit, ergo fecit, it was becoming that the Mother of the Redeemer should have been free from the power of sin and from the first moment of her existence; God could give her this privilege, therefore He gave it to her. Again it is remarked that a peculiar privilege was granted to the prophet Jeremiah and to St. John the Baptist. They were sanctified in their mother's womb, because by their preaching they had a special share in the work of preparing the way for Christ. Consequently some much higher prerogative is due to Mary. (A treatise of P. Marchant, claiming for St. Joseph also the privilege of St. John, was placed on the Index in 1633.) Scotus says that "the perfect Mediator must, in some one case, have done the work of mediation most perfectly, which would not be unless there was some one person at least, in whose regard the wrath of God was anticipated and not merely appeased."
The feast of the Immaculate Conception
The older feast of the Conception of Mary (Conception of St. Anne), which originated in the monasteries of Palestine at least as early as the seventh century, and the modern feast of the Immaculate Conception are not identical in their object.
Originally the Church celebrated only the Feast of the Conception of Mary, as she kept the Feast of St. John's conception, not discussing the sinlessness. This feast in the course of centuries became the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, as dogmatical argumentation brought about precise and correct ideas, and as the thesis of the theological schools regarding the preservation of Mary from all stain of original sin gained strength. Even after the dogma had been universally accepted in the Latin Church, and had gained authoritative support through diocesan decrees and papal decisions, the old term remained, and before 1854 the term "Immaculata Conceptio" is nowhere found in the liturgical books, except in the invitatorium of the Votive Office of the Conception. The Greeks, Syrians, etc. call it the Conception of St. Anne (Eullepsis tes hagias kai theoprometoros Annas, "the Conception of St. Anne, the ancestress of God").
Passaglia in his "De Immaculato Deiparae Conceptu," basing his opinion upon the "Typicon" of St. Sabas: which was substantially composed in the fifth century, believes that the reference to the feast forms part of the authentic original, and that consequently it was celebrated in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem in the fifth century (III, n. 1604). But the Typicon was interpolated by the Damascene, Sophronius, and others, and, from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, many new feasts and offices were added.
To determine the origin of this feast we must take into account the genuine documents we possess, the oldest of which is the canon of the feast, composed by St. Andrew of Crete, who wrote his liturgical hymns in the second half of the seventh century, when a monk at the monastery of St. Sabas near Jerusalem (d. Archbishop of Crete about 720). But the solemnity cannot then have been generally accepted throughout the Orient, for John, first monk and later bishop in the Isle of Euboea, about 750 in a sermon, speaking in favour of the propagation of this feast, says that it was not yet known to all the faithful (ei kai me para tois pasi gnorizetai; P.G., XCVI, 1499). But a century later George of Nicomedia, made metropolitan by Photius in 860, could say that the solemnity was not of recent origin (P.G., C, 1335). It is therefore, safe to affirm that the feast of the Conception of St. Anne appears in the Orient not earlier than the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century.
As in other cases of the same kind the feast originated in the monastic communities. The monks, who arranged the psalmody and composed the various poetical pieces for the office, also selected the date, 9 December, which was always retained in the Oriental calendars. Gradually the solemnity emerged from the cloister, entered into the cathedrals, was glorified by preachers and poets, and eventually became a fixed feast of the calendar, approved by Church and State.
It is registered in the calendar of Basil II (976-1025) and by the Constitution of Emperor Manuel I Comnenus on the days of the year which are half or entire holidays, promulgated in 1166, it is numbered among the days which have full sabbath rest. Up to the time of Basil II, Lower Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia still belonged to the Byzantine Empire; the city of Naples was not lost to the Greeks until 1127, when Roger II conquered the city. The influence of Constantinople was consequently strong in the Neapolitan Church, and, as early as the ninth century, the Feast of the Conception was doubtlessly kept there, as elsewhere in Lower Italy on 9 December, as indeed appears from the marble calendar found in 1742 in the Church of S. Giorgio Maggiore at Naples.
Today the Conception of St. Anne is in the Greek Church one of the minor feasts of the year. The lesson in Matins contains allusions to the apocryphal "Proto-evangelium" of St. James, which dates from the second half of the second century (see SAINT ANNE). To the Greek Orthodox of our days, however, the feast means very little; they continue to call it "Conception of St. Anne", indicating unintentionally, perhaps, the active conception which was certainly not immaculate. In the Menaea of 9 December this feast holds only the second place, the first canon being sung in commemoration of the dedication of the Church of the Resurrection at Constantinople. The Russian hagiographer Muraview and several other Orthodox authors even loudly declaimed against the dogma after its promulgation, although their own preachers formerly taught the Immaculate Conception in their writings long before the definition of 1854.
In the Western Church the feast appeared (8 December), when in the Orient its development had come to a standstill. The timid beginnings of the new feast in some Anglo-Saxon monasteries in the eleventh century, partly smothered by the Norman conquest, were followed by its reception in some chapters and dioceses by the Anglo-Norman clergy. But the attempts to introduce it officially provoked contradiction and theoretical discussion, bearing upon its legitimacy and its meaning, which were continued for centuries and were not definitively settled before 1854.
The "Martyrology of Tallaght" compiled about 790 and the "Feilire" of St. Aengus (800) register the Conception of Mary on 3 May. It is doubtful, however, if an actual feast corresponded to this rubric of the learned monk St. Aengus. This Irish feast certainly stands alone and outside the line of liturgical development. It is a mere isolated appearance, not a living germ. The Scholiast adds, in the lower margin of the "Feilire", that the conception (Inceptio) took place in February, since Mary was born after seven months — a singular notion found also in some Greek authors. The first definite and reliable knowledge of the feast in the West comes from England; it is found in a calendar of Old Minster, Winchester (Conceptio S'ce Dei Genetricis Mari), dating from about 1030, and in another calendar of New Minster, Winchester, written between 1035 and 1056; a pontifical of Exeter of the eleventh century (assigned to 1046-1072) contains a "benedictio in Conceptione S. Mariae"; a similar benediction is found in a Canterbury pontifical written probably in the first half of the eleventh century, certainly before the Conquest. These episcopal benedictions show that the feast not only commended itself to the devotion of individuals, but that it was recognized by authority and was observed by the Saxon monks with considerable solemnity. The existing evidence goes to show that the establishment of the feast in England was due to the monks of Winchester before the Conquest (1066).
The Normans on their arrival in England were disposed to treat in a contemptuous fashion English liturgical observances; to them this feast must have appeared specifically English, a product of insular simplicity and ignorance. Doubtless its public celebration was abolished at Winchester and Canterbury, but it did not die out of the hearts of individuals, and on the first favourable opportunity the feast was restored in the monasteries. At Canterbury however, it was not re-established before 1328. Several documents state that in Norman times it began at Ramsey, pursuant to a vision vouchsafed to Helsin or Æthelsige, Abbot of Ramsey on his journey back from Denmark, whither he had been sent by William I about 1070. An angel appeared to him during a severe gale and saved the ship after the abbot had promised to establish the Feast of the Conception in his monastery. However we may consider the supernatural feature of the legend, it must be admitted that the sending of Helsin to Denmark is an historical fact. The account of the vision has found its way into many breviaries, even into the Roman Breviary of 1473. The Council of Canterbury (1325) attributes the re-establishment of the feast in England to St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1109). But although this great doctor wrote a special treatise "De Conceptu virginali et originali peccato", by which he laid down the principles of the Immaculate Conception, it is certain that he did not introduce the feast anywhere. The letter ascribed to him, which contains the Helsin narrative, is spurious. The principal propagator of the feast after the Conquest was Anselm, the nephew of St. Anselm. He was educated at Canterbury where he may have known some Saxon monks who remembered the solemnity in former days; after 1109 he was for a time Abbot of St. Sabas at Rome, where the Divine Offices were celebrated according to the Greek calendar. When in 1121 he was appointed Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's he established the feast there; partly at least through his efforts other monasteries also adopted it, like Reading, St. Albans, Worcester, Gloucester, and Winchcombe.
But a number of others decried its observance as hitherto unheard of and absurd, the old Oriental feast being unknown to them. Two bishops, Roger of Salisbury and Bernard of St. Davids, declared that the festival was forbidden by a council, and that the observance must be stopped. And when, during the vacancy of the See of London, Osbert de Clare, Prior of Westminster, undertook to introduce the feast at Westminster (8 December, 1127), a number of monks arose against him in the choir and said that the feast must not be kept, for its establishment had not the authority of Rome (cf. Osbert's letter to Anselm in Bishop, p. 24). Whereupon the matter was brought before the Council of London in 1129. The synod decided in favour of the feast, and Bishop Gilbert of London adopted it for his diocese. Thereafter the feast spread in England, but for a time retained its private character, the Synod of Oxford (1222) having refused to raise it to the rank of a holiday of obligation.
In Normandy at the time of Bishop Rotric (1165-83) the Conception of Mary, in the Archdiocese of Rouen and its six suffragan dioceses, was a feast of precept equal in dignity to the Annunciation. At the same time the Norman students at the University of Paris chose it as their patronal feast. Owing to the close connection of Normandy with England, it may have been imported from the latter country into Normandy, or the Norman barons and clergy may have brought it home from their wars in Lower Italy, it was universally solemnised by the Greek inhabitants. During the Middle Ages the Feast of the Conception of Mary was commonly called the "Feast of the Norman nation", which shows that it was celebrated in Normandy with great splendour and that it spread from there over Western Europe. Passaglia contends (III, 1755) that the feast was celebrated in Spain in the seventh century. Bishop Ullathorne also (p. 161) finds this opinion acceptable. If this be true, it is difficult to understand why it should have entirely disappeared from Spain later on, for neither does the genuine Mozarabic Liturgy contain it, nor the tenth century calendar of Toledo edited by Morin. The two proofs given by Passaglia are futile: the life of St. Isidore, falsely attributed to St. Ildephonsus, which mentions the feast, is interpolated, while, in the Visigoth lawbook, the expression "Conceptio S. Mariae" is to be understood of the Annunciation.
The controversy
No controversy arose over the Immaculate Conception on the European continent before the twelfth century. The Norman clergy abolished the feast in some monasteries of England where it had been established by the Anglo-Saxon monks. But towards the end of the eleventh century, through the efforts of Anselm the Younger, it was taken up again in several Anglo-Norman establishments. That St. Anselm the Elder re-established the feast in England is highly improbable, although it was not new to him. He had been made familiar with it as well by the Saxon monks of Canterbury, as by the Greeks with whom he came in contact during exile in Campania and Apulin (1098-9). The treatise "De Conceptu virginali" usually ascribed to him, was composed by his friend and disciple, the Saxon monk Eadmer of Canterbury. When the canons of the cathedral of Lyons, who no doubt knew Anselm the Younger Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's, personally introduced the feast into their choir after the death of their bishop in 1240, St. Bernard deemed it his duty to publish a protest against this new way of honouring Mary. He addressed to the canons a vehement letter (Epist. 174), in which he reproved them for taking the step upon their own authority and before they had consulted the Holy See. Not knowing that the feast had been celebrated with the rich tradition of the Greek and Syrian Churches regarding the sinlessness of Mary, he asserted that the feast was foreign to the old tradition of the Church. Yet it is evident from the tenor of his language that he had in mind only the active conception or the formation of the flesh, and that the distinction between the active conception, the formation of the body, and its animation by the soul had not yet been drawn. No doubt, when the feast was introduced in England and Normandy, the axiom "decuit, potuit, ergo fecit", the childlike piety and enthusiasm of the simplices building upon revelations and apocryphal legends, had the upper hand. The object of the feast was not clearly determined, no positive theological reasons had been placed in evidence.
St. Bernard was perfectly justified when he demanded a careful inquiry into the reasons for observing the feast. Not adverting to the possibility of sanctification at the time of the infusion of the soul, he writes that there can be question only of sanctification after conception, which would render holy the nativity, not the conception itself (Scheeben, "Dogmatik", III, p. 550). Hence Albert the Great observes: "We say that the Blessed Virgin was not sanctified before animation, and the affirmative contrary to this is the heresy condemned by St. Bernard in his epistle to the canons of Lyons" (III Sent., dist. iii, p. I, ad 1, Q. i).
St. Bernard was at once answered in a treatise written by either Richard of St. Victor or Peter Comestor. In this treatise appeal is made to a feast which had been established to commemorate an insupportable tradition. It maintained that the flesh of Mary needed no purification; that it was sanctified before the conception. Some writers of those times entertained the fantastic idea that before Adam fell, a portion of his flesh had been reserved by God and transmitted from generation to generation, and that out of this flesh the body of Mary was formed (Scheeben, op. cit., III, 551), and this formation they commemorated by a feast. The letter of St. Bernard did not prevent the extension of the feast, for in 1154 it was observed all over France, until in 1275, through the efforts of the Paris University, it was abolished in Paris and other dioceses.
After the saint's death the controversy arose anew between Nicholas of St. Albans, an English monk who defended the festival as established in England, and Peter Cellensis, the celebrated Bishop of Chartres. Nicholas remarks that the soul of Mary was pierced twice by the sword, i.e. at the foot of the cross and when St. Bernard wrote his letter against her feast (Scheeben, III, 551). The point continued to be debated throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and illustrious names appeared on each side. St. Peter Damian, Peter the Lombard, Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, and Albert the Great are quoted as opposing it.
St. Thomas at first pronounced in favour of the doctrine in his treatise on the "Sentences" (in I. Sent. c. 44, q. I ad 3), yet in his "Summa Theologica" he concluded against it. Much discussion has arisen as to whether St. Thomas did or did not deny that the Blessed Virgin was immaculate at the instant of her animation, and learned books have been written to vindicate him from having actually drawn the negative conclusion. Yet it is hard to say that St. Thomas did not require an instant at least, after the animation of Mary, before her sanctification. His great difficulty appears to have arisen from the doubt as to how she could have been redeemed if she had not sinned. This difficulty he raised in no fewer than ten passages in his writings (see, e.g., Summa III:27:2, ad 2). But while St. Thomas thus held back from the essential point of the doctrine, he himself laid down the principles which, after they had been drawn together and worked out, enabled other minds to furnish the true solution of this difficulty from his own premises.
In the thirteenth century the opposition was largely due to a want of clear insight into the subject in dispute. The word "conception" was used in different senses, which had not been separated by careful definition. If St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and other theologians had known the doctrine in the sense of the definition of 1854, they would have been its strongest defenders instead of being its opponents.
We may formulate the question discussed by them in two propositions, both of which are against the sense of the dogma of 1854:
- the sanctification of Mary took place before the infusion of the soul into the flesh, so that the immunity of the soul was a consequence of the sanctification of the flesh and there was no liability on the part of the soul to contract original sin. This would approach the opinion of the Damascene concerning the holiness of the active conception.
- The sanctification took place after the infusion of the soul by redemption from the servitude of sin, into which the soul had been drawn by its union with the unsanctified flesh. This form of the thesis excluded an immaculate conception.
The theologians forgot that between sanctification before infusion, and sanctification after infusion, there was a medium: sanctification of the soul at the moment of its infusion. To them the idea seemed strange that what was subsequent in the order of nature could be simultaneous in point of time. Speculatively taken, the soul must be created before it can be infused and sanctified but in reality, the soul is created and sanctified at the very moment of its infusion into the body. Their principal difficulty was the declaration of St. Paul (Romans 5:12) that all men have sinned in Adam. The purpose of this Pauline declaration, however, is to insist on the need which all men have of redemption by Christ. Our Lady was no exception to this rule. A second difficulty was the silence of the earlier Fathers. But the divines of those times were distinguished not so much for their knowledge of the Fathers or of history, as for their exercise of the power of reasoning. They read the Western Fathers more than those of the Eastern Church, who exhibit in far greater completeness the tradition of the Immaculate Conception. And many works of the Fathers which had then been lost sight of have since been brought to light.
The famous Duns Scotus (d. 1308) at last (in III Sent., dist. iii, in both commentaries) laid the foundations of the true doctrine so solidly and dispelled the objections in a manner so satisfactory, that from that time onward the doctrine prevailed. He showed that the sanctification after animation — sanctificatio post animationem — demanded that it should follow in the order of nature (naturae) not of time (temporis); he removed the great difficulty of St. Thomas showing that, so far from being excluded from redemption, the Blessed Virgin obtained of her Divine Son the greatest of redemptions through the mystery of her preservation from all sin. He also brought forward, by way of illustration, the somewhat dangerous and doubtful argument of Eadmer (S. Anselm) "decuit, potuit, ergo fecit."
From the time of Scotus not only did the doctrine become the common opinion at the universities, but the feast spread widely to those countries where it had not been previously adopted. With the exception of the Dominicans, all or nearly all, of the religious orders took it up: The Franciscans at the general chapter at Pisa in 1263 adopted the Feast of the Conception of Mary for the entire order; this, however, does not mean that they professed at that time the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Following in the footsteps of their own Duns Scotus, the learned Petrus Aureolus and Franciscus de Mayronis became the most fervent champions of the doctrine, although their older teachers (St. Bonaventure included) had been opposed to it. The controversy continued, but the defenders of the opposing opinion were almost entirely confined to the members of the Dominican Order.
In 1439 the dispute was brought before the Council of Basle where the University of Paris, formerly opposed to the doctrine, proved to be its most ardent advocate, asking for a dogmatical definition. The two referees at the council were John of Segovia and John Turrecremata (Torquemada). After it had been discussed for the space of two years before that assemblage, the bishops declared the Immaculate Conception to be a doctrine which was pious, consonant with Catholic worship, Catholic faith, right reason, and Holy Scripture; nor, said they, was it henceforth allowable to preach or declare to the contrary (Mansi, XXXIX, 182). The Fathers of the Council say that the Church of Rome was celebrating the feast. This is true only in a certain sense. It was kept in a number of churches of Rome, especially in those of the religious orders, but it was not received in the official calendar. As the council at the time was not ecumenical, it could not pronounce with authority. The memorandum of the Dominican Torquemada formed the armoury for all attacks upon the doctrine made by St. Antoninus of Florence (d. 1459), and by the Dominicans Bandelli and Spina.
By a Decree of 28 February, 1476, Sixtus IV at last adopted the feast for the entire Latin Church and granted an indulgence to all who would assist at the Divine Offices of the solemnity (Denzinger, 734). The Office adopted by Sixtus IV was composed by Leonard de Nogarolis, whilst the Franciscans, since 1480, used a very beautiful Office from the pen of Bernardine dei Busti (Sicut Lilium), which was granted also to others (e.g. to Spain, 1761), and was chanted by the Franciscans up to the second half of the nineteenth century. As the public acknowledgment of the feast of Sixtus IV did not prove sufficient to appease the conflict, he published in 1483 a constitution in which he punished with excommunication all those of either opinion who charged the opposite opinion with heresy (Grave nimis, 4 Sept., 1483; Denzinger, 735).
In 1546 the Council of Trent, when the question was touched upon, declared that "it was not the intention of this Holy Synod to include in the decree which concerns original sin the Blessed and Immaculate Virgin Mary Mother of God" (Sess. V, De peccato originali, v, in Denzinger, 792). Since, however, this decree did not define the doctrine, the theological opponents of the mystery, though more and more reduced in numbers, did not yield. St. Pius V not only condemned proposition 73 of Baius that "no one but Christ was without original sin, and that therefore the Blessed Virgin had died because of the sin contracted in Adam, and had endured afilictions in this life, like the rest of the just, as punishment of actual and original sin" (Denzinger, 1073) but he also issued a constitution in which he forbade all public discussion of the subject. Finally he inserted a new and simplified Office of the Conception in the liturgical books ("Super speculam", Dec., 1570; "Superni omnipotentis", March, 1571; "Bullarium Marianum", pp. 72, 75).
Whilst these disputes went on, the great universities and almost all the great orders had become so many bulwarks for the defense of the dogma. In 1497 the University of Paris decreed that henceforward no one should be admitted a member of the university, who did not swear that he would do the utmost to defend and assert the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Toulouse followed the example; in Italy, Bologna and Naples; in the German Empire, Cologne, Maine, and Vienna; in Belgium, Louvain; in England before the Reformation. Oxford and Cambridge; in Spain Salamanca, Toledo, Seville, and Valencia; in Portugal, Coimbra and Evora; in America, Mexico and Lima. The Friars Minor confirmed in 1621 the election of the Immaculate Mother as patron of the order, and bound themselves by oath to teach the mystery in public and in private. The Dominicans, however, were under special obligation to follow the doctrines of St. Thomas, and the common conclusion was that St. Thomas was opposed to the Immaculate Conception. Therefore the Dominicans asserted that the doctrine was an error against faith (John of Montesono, 1373); although they adopted the feast, they termed it persistently "Sanctificatio B.M.V." not "Conceptio", until in 1622 Gregory XV abolished the term "sanctificatio".
Paul V (1617) decreed that no one should dare to teach publicly that Mary was conceived in original sin, and Gregory XV (1622) imposed absolute silence (in scriptis et sermonibus etiam privatis) upon the adversaries of the doctrine until the Holy See should define the question. To put an end to all further cavilling, Alexander VII promulgated on 8 December 1661, the famous constitution "Sollicitudo omnium Ecclesiarum", defining the true sense of the word conceptio, and forbidding all further discussion against the common and pious sentiment of the Church. He declared that the immunity of Mary from original sin in the first moment of the creation of her soul and its infusion into the body was the object of the feast (Denzinger, 1100).
Explicit universal acceptance
Since the time of Alexander VII, long before the final definition, there was no doubt on the part of theologians that the privilege was amongst the truths revealed by God. Wherefore Pius IX, surrounded by a splendid throng of cardinals and bishops, 8 December 1854, promulgated the dogma. A new Office was prescribed for the entire Latin Church by Pius IX (25 December, 1863), by which decree all the other Offices in use were abolished, including the old Office Sicut lilium of the Franciscans, and the Office composed by Passaglia (approved 2 Feb., 1849).
In 1904 the golden jubilee of the definition of the dogma was celebrated with great splendour (Pius X, Enc., 2 Feb., 1904). Clement IX added to the feast an octave for the dioceses within the temporal possessions of the pope (1667). Innocent XII (1693) raised it to a double of the second class with an octave for the universal Church, which rank had been already given to it in 1664 for Spain, in 1665 for Tuscany and Savoy, in 1667 for the Society of Jesus, the Hermits of St. Augustine, etc., Clement XI decreed on 6 Dec., 1708, that the feast should be a holiday of obligation throughout the entire Church. At last Leo XIII, 30 Nov 1879, raised the feast to a double of the first class with a vigil, a dignity which had long before been granted to Sicily (1739), to Spain (1760) and to the United States (1847). A Votive Office of the Conception of Mary, which is now recited in almost the entire Latin Church on free Saturdays, was granted first to the Benedictine nuns of St. Anne at Rome in 1603, to the Franciscans in 1609, to the Conventuals in 1612, etc. The Syrian and Chaldean Churches celebrate this feast with the Greeks on 9 December; in Armenia it is one of the few immovable feasts of the year (9 December); the schismatic Abyssinians and Copts keep it on 7 August whilst they celebrate the Nativity of Mary on 1 May; the Catholic Copts, however, have transferred the feast to 10 December (Nativity, 10 September). The Eastern Catholics have since 1854 changed the name of the feast in accordance with the dogma to the "Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary."
The Archdiocese of Palermo solemnizes a Commemoration of the Immaculate Conception on 1 September to give thanks for the preservation of the city on occasion of the earthquake, 1 September, 1726. A similar commemoration is held on 14 January at Catania (earthquake, 11 Jan., 1693); and by the Oblate Fathers on 17 Feb., because their rule was approved 17 Feb., 1826. Between 20 September 1839, and 7 May 1847, the privilege of adding to the Litany of Loretto the invocation, "Queen conceived without original sin", had been granted to 300 dioceses and religious communities. The Immaculate Conception was declared on 8 November, 1760, principal patron of all the possessions of the crown of Spain, including those in America. The decree of the First Council of Baltimore (1846) electing Mary in her Immaculate Conception principal Patron of the United States, was confirmed on 7 February, 1847.
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| Fr. Roger Calmel: The Immaculate Heart of Mary and World Peace |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-08-2020, 06:32 AM - Forum: Our Lady
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The Angelus - March 2010
The Immaculate Heart of Mary and World Peace
Fr. Roger Calmel, O.P.
A reflection on the message of Fatima, the importance of devotion to our Lady, and the necessity of conversion.
We shall reflect on the words of the Blessed Virgin at Fatima. When it comes to commenting on the words of Our Lord, every Christian who is careful about what he says or writes cannot help feeling a certain reverential fear. Might not what he will say miss the divine truth? Or will he be able to penetrate however slightly into a pre-eminently mysterious word? This apprehension also seizes him when it comes to commenting on the words of Our Lady. Yet it is also as normal to comment on the divine word as to reflect and meditate upon it. While the silence of love may be the most worthy homage (awaiting the eternal morning of vision), it is impossible not to speak, not to employ our discursive faculty before divine truth. Such an attitude has always been encouraged by the Church, who is as profoundly a theologian as she is a mystic. So let confidence outweigh fear, and may our reflection attempt to penetrate into the message the Queen of the Rosary confided to her humble privileged souls: Jacinta and Francesco, and especially Lucy.
Peace: A Gift of God
One of the first ideas that occur to us upon reading this message is that world peace, political peace, is a gift of God and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. “Say [the rosary] with the intention of obtaining the end of the war.”1 Peace is thus suspended from the intercession of Our Lady and the omnipotence of Him whom we hail in Christmas Matins as Princeps Pacis. There is no doubt that this is true of supernatural peace, the peace that abides within the secret of the heart, which proceeds from the love of God, within the holy Church, which is the Beata Pacis visio. For how could peace of this order, of its nature heavenly, a peace of this quality, properly divine and supernatural, not be a gift of God and a fruit of the intercession of the Virgin redemptrix? On the other hand, a certain political naturalism would lead us to think that the peace “of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,” since it is a reality of a natural, perishable order, lies within the scope of nature abandoned to itself. There is no doubt but that some Christians have slipped on this slope. It is a slope of error. And this for two reasons: first of all, by virtue of the quite general principle that no good thing begins, continues, and comes to completion without the benevolence of the Almighty and unless God grants it His blessing; and secondly, for a very specific reason having to do with the essence of political peace.
It is, in effect, a fruit of justice–opus justitiae pax; now, there is no solid, integral justice without conversion of heart and thus without supernatural grace, that is, without a divine favor. Peace is the tranquility of a just order; but this just order cannot happen without the will of men. If the leaders and the people ordinarily abandon themselves to injustice, how can the tranquility of order be obtained? One may say perhaps: but isn’t it enough to have just institutions to be preserved from injustice, whatever form this may take: as, for example, to fail to recognize or to oppose the authority of the Church; to develop an unbridled economic imperialism; to oppress weaker nations? Certainly, appropriate institutions can and should remedy these crimes. But good institutions, while helping people to be good, are first of all created and supported by the justice of individuals. Now, this justice is quite weak and short-lived without God’s grace, in such a way that, without grace, the best of institutions are not enough to ensure peace.
To be sure, it would be grotesque to interpret the message of Fatima in the sense of a supernaturalism and to fail to recognize that world peace is a political effect partly linked to political causes. On the other hand, it is normal to interpret the message of Fatima as a reminder of the fundamental truth that politics is not enough, for the resulting political order is dependent on fallen and redeemed human beings. If individuals do not let themselves be healed by divine grace, the desired political effects will not follow. It is because the Church is deeply aware of this that she counts on the Lord first and foremost to obtain peace. Let us think rather of the commentary on the “Libera nos a malo” that the liturgy develops at the end of the Pater Noster before Communion; let us also think of the Good Friday prayers and the Exsultet of the Paschal Vigil. Peace is always presented to us as a gift of divine mercy. This lesson from the liturgy is also the first lesson of Fatima.
The second lesson is complementary: world peace is impossible without the conversion of Christians. This gift of God is not automatic, not only because it requires and fosters just politics, but at the same time because God cannot grant this gift without the conversion of wills:
Quote:“Do penance,” said the Blessed Virgin. “If my requests are granted, Russia will be converted and there will be peace in the world.”
Let us not be unrealistic. Let us not imagine that peace among nations and within nations will be obtained if all the Christians are not in the state of grace. But let us also understand that peace cannot be established if Christian people persist in lukewarmness: in other words, if they continue to make the comforts of technological progress the be all and end all of their lives.
The conversion called for by the Blessed Virgin and the peace of which she speaks are not ahistorical. They are specific to an era, to a precise period of human history, the time of the Communist Revolution in Russia and the worldwide expansion of Communist propaganda. World peace is not to be achieved in the state in which the world lay at the time of the Roman Emperors, when the nations as such had not been baptized and when the State had no notion of legislation enlightened by the Church or that took into account the coming on earth of the very Son of God and of His work of Redemption. The peace in question concerns a world in which a certain number of nations were baptized, and so it is of paramount importance that their subjects conduct their lives as baptized persons. Nor can peace in the modern world be achieved in the conditions prevailing at the time of the 16th century, when, in spite of the heretics and free-thinkers, no one envisaged that the State should be organized on the basis of materialism (and not just a doctrinal materialism to be preached, but dialectical materialism in the revolutionary activity that the State is compelled to adopt by means of perfidious cunning or under the pressure of terror!)
The conjuncture in which Our Lady called for conversion is assuredly very particular. It was at the time when Communism was spreading in one great land at one extremity of Europe that she appeared at the other extremity of the continent to urge our conversion. The war threatening the world was not a war like others, firstly because the methods of destruction have achieved incredible progress, but especially because dialectical materialism had insinuated its poison into the social fabric of the Russian State and was threatening to corrupt other States.
Quote:“If my demands are not met,” our Lady told us, “Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, provoking wars and persecution against the Church.”
It would be easy to capitulate at once and say, for example: “After all, does it really matter so much if a part of humanity is destroyed by nuclear weapons? The victims will not find themselves because of that in an absolute impossibility of saving their souls. Should we really fear worldwide domination by communism and the abolition of Christian nations so much? After all, the grace of God has no need of anything nor anyone, and those who desire it will still be able to save their souls.” Alas, these statements are not a fictitious objection that I’m addressing. This language of pre-emptive capitulation, which inspires indignation in every noble heart, has unfortunately been made by some Christians.
These are abject proposals that the instinct of natural generosity as well as the instinct of faith reject out of hand. This spontaneous refusal of the Christian heart which precedes its articulate justification might be explained this way: It is true that grace is strong enough and powerful enough to draw good from evil, to bring forth the holiness of the martyrs from the iniquity of tyrants and the cruelty of executioners. It remains that we ought not to do evil so that good may come of it and to do so is an abominable sin. It remains that we ought not to cooperate in evil by our complicity. We know that even during the apostasy and the general iniquity of the last times the power of God is still strong enough to save men. But we should do what we can to prevent injustice.
In some respects, it is true that Christian nations are not indispensable to the life of the Church. But since they exist we would be criminal to work towards their disappearance or to cooperate in their disappearance in any way. We ought not commit this injustice. It is very easy to say that the Church has no need of Christian civilization. This proposition is not understood correctly unless it is considered in light of the two following propositions: from the fact that she is a stranger on earth, the Church cannot avoid having an influence on terrestrial things that are in relation with the Faith; she cannot avoid affecting private and public morals and consequently she tends to form a Christian civilization.
The second truth is that Christian civilization constitutes for the Church a normal aid and support. We know the limits of Christian nations and how much they constantly need to be uplifted, corrected, and returned to the right path and that they are of another order than the Church. But to conclude from this that because these two orders are distinct they must therefore be separate is to fail, under pretext of purity, to take account of the fact that the Church develops on this earth.
The Church cannot be indifferent to the social conditions that foster respect for law, that is, a Christian social order. And it is such an order that God desires as support for His Church. When Christians commit the great injustice of allowing the abolition of this order, they know not what they are doing nor with what scandals they burden their consciences–for example, when, without any resistance, they allow private schools to be closed or allow state control of the economy. Although God can save souls through the worst of scandals, and even when the scandal has been codified and institutionalized, the Christians who favor or who at least do not prevent the scandal when they might have, are gravely culpable. Likewise, when Christians fancy that a Christian civilization can continue to exist without their conversion, they no longer understand what a Christian civilization is and the wrong they do to it.
To enable the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ to achieve its full stature and the number of the elect to be filled up, the social order is of no small importance. First, it is necessary for children to come into the world and for the human race not to be destroyed too soon; then it is necessary for men to be able to grow up in a society that accepts the Church at least partially, or, at any rate, accepts it enough so as not to become a perpetual and institutionalized incitement to apostasy, materialism, and the rejection of God.
Thus the spiritual kingdom posits a minimum of Christian social order; it helps such an order to be established, to endure, and to be renewed, but at the same time calls for it as a normal support.
If we consider the Incarnation from the angle where this mystery concerns the social order, we see immediately that the Blessed Virgin holds a unique and unequaled place. Whether it regards the coming of the Word of God in a passible and mortal flesh, or His birth at Bethlehem, or His preservation during the exile in Egypt, the education at Nazareth or the first miracle at the wedding feast of Cana, the Blessed Virgin was involved in the temporal aspects of the Incarnation as only the Mother of the Word Incarnate could be. One begins to comprehend that she now continues to watch over the social order of mankind in the measure that it is in relation with the Mystical Body of her Son Jesus Christ. One comprehends that she intervenes for the sake of a Christian social order; there is a profound affinity between her current role in the life of the Church2 and the role she played in the accomplishment and the unfolding of the Mystery of the Incarnation.
To be sure, it is foretold that the social order will culminate in the abomination of widespread apostasy,3 but until that time, and even at that time, the Blessed Virgin will be maternally watching to insure that the Church has that part of mankind and Christian civilization without which it could no longer exist on earth.
This explains why the heavenly Father wanted the apparition of the Blessed Virgin at Fatima to occur in 1917. While for the first time the nations of the world had just unleashed a war of total extermination, while a totally new revolution was developing that aimed less at regime change than at spreading throughout the world atheistic institutions and morals; in short, while Christian civilization, as imperfect as it may have been, was undergoing the most formidable assaults within and without, it was fitting that the heavenly Father should send to the world, for the purpose of helping it recover a Christian social order, the Immaculate Virgin whose consent had allowed the Incarnation of the Son of God and His temporal life. Now we can understand why the major apparitions of the Blessed Virgin, apparitions of global significance, only began after the unprecedented attack against Christian civilization by the great Revolution, and after the first organized attempt at integral secularism. From that moment the role of the Blessed Virgin for the salvation and renewal of a Christian social order became more urgent and appeared more clearly.
By our Lady’s intervention at Fatima to preserve us from communism, if we at least desire to be converted, she showed clearly that the peace she desires for us cannot have anything in common with communist peace, which is the tranquility of disorder maintained by means of technologically organized terror and a propaganda machine that does not shrink from any lie nor any violation of conscience. True peace is the tranquility of an order based on justice both public and personal, a justice moreover that cannot exist without love.
Communism speaks a great deal about peace, just as it speaks a great deal about freedom, liberation, and social justice. But since it has categorically and in principle rejected God and His Church, and since it reduces man to being nothing more than a certain variety of matter, its peace can only be a grimacing counterfeit. A peace that fundamentally contradicts the nature of man and society may indeed present an exterior of tranquility, but it is the tranquility of convicts condemned to the galley: they cannot leave their bench, and they work together because they live under the empire of terror and the whip. In the Communist galley the convicts still have the questionable privilege over the galley slaves of old of being able to listen to State radio broadcasts exalting the pleasures of their lot and the amenity of their guards while a hail of blows rains down without intermission on their skeletal carcasses.
There can be no communist peace, no more than there can be peace based on a comfortable, natural religion blessed by technological progress,4 or soft materialism, or revolutionary dialectical materialism, though the latter would otherwise be consistent and tyrannical.
The temptation to gain the whole world without fear of losing their souls threatens poor men more than ever. Technological progress offers them ever increasing opportunities to spend their lives without regard for eternity; to spend their lives without prayer, sacrifice, or love of God; to yield themselves without resistance to the plethora of anesthetics discovered daily by modern science. In the 17th century Racine bemoaned the vain pursuits of worldly people; his lamentation has become even more justified in our day than it was in the age of the stagecoach, the sailing ship, and strolling players. That is why the Blessed Virgin is urging Christians to be converted, that is to say, to awaken from the false peace of tranquil materialism under pain of becoming a prey to dialectical materialism and its intrinsically perverse order.
At Fatima the Blessed Virgin did not simply say that in the end she would triumph. She said:
Quote:“In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”
So saying, she wanted to remind us that her intervention in our unhappy history would be an additional proof of her love. Just as we need not look for any other cause than the love of the Mother of God in her Fiat mihi that allowed the Incarnation, or the silent offering of her co-redemptive Compassion, or her ardent prayer in the Cenacle that obtained the irrevocable effusion of the Holy Spirit, so also her unceasing, unseen supplication in heaven and her manifest intervention at certain desperate hours of the history of the Church and Christian civilization proceed uniquely from her love.
We have seen some Christians sneer when listening to talk about the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart; they justify their discreet mockery by theological reasons. It is enough to speak of Jesus and our Lady without making an explicit mention of their hearts, they explain; moreover, contemporary imagery, far from nourishing faith, encourages a suspect sentimentality. Whatever may be the case as regards often questionable imagery, the infallible Church officially promotes devotion to the Sacred Heart and to the Immaculate Heart, and in the apparitions of Fatima it is question not only of Our Lady or Queen of the Rosary, but also of the Immaculate Heart. If Christians who find fault with these expressions have really loved their parents or their friends, their spouse or their children, if they have not defiled the language of love, they know full well that there’s no speaking of love without speaking of the heart. Ever since there have been human beings who experience affection they invariably adopt the terms and phrases that remain no less valid for having often been profaned: “I give you my heart. I keep you in my heart.” Well then, since Mary loves us and since she has no other reason to take care of us than her ineffable love as Co-Redemptrix Mother of God, it is not surprising that she speaks to us of her heart.
Nor is it surprising that she adds, my Immaculate Heart. By that, she means us to understand how much she loves us purely, how much her love is attuned to the holiness of God; and it is impossible for her, the Immaculate Mother of her only Son, to desire for us anything else than the accomplishment of God’s will. Doubtless, neither can our brothers in heaven, the angels and saints, love us except in all purity nor in desiring for us anything but what God wants. But they do not have with God this absolutely unique bond, both physical and spiritual, which is the property of the Mother of God; consequently, in regard to God and in regard to us they lack the perfection and quality of love that belong to the Mother of God. The love of the angels and saints is certainly pure, but the love of the Immaculate Mother of God outstrips it extraordinarily in purity.
Knowing this, we understand better that she speaks to us of conversion and she makes peace contingent on conversion, that is, on fidelity to her Son and conformity to His Gospel. She cannot, in effect, desire peace for her children, namely, the first of all temporal goods, if it would make them forget conversion, if it would make them shirk the first of spiritual goods, namely, conformity to Jesus Christ by conversion, awaiting conformity to Jesus Christ by the blessed resurrection. Because the Blessed Virgin carries us in her Immaculate Heart, because she loves us with the love of an Immaculate Heart, she cannot obtain for us peace on earth without asking us for the conversion of our souls.
Similarly, she cannot obtain for us an earthly peace that would be tantamount to paradise on earth, one that would exempt us from having to suffer from the evil within us and around us, from having to fight against the devil and against all those who, for a time or for their whole life and with a more or less imperfect docility, do the devil’s work and play his game.
The peace that the Immaculate Heart wants to obtain for us does not fulfill the impure aspirations of political messianism: the messianism, abhorred by the true Messias, that refuses to take account of either the cross or the devil, or participation in the sacrifice of Jesus, or the unleashed malice of Satan. Since the human condition is marked by the Fall and Redemption, earthly peace cannot comprise the absolute suppression of every injustice because sin continues, and therefore peace cannot avoid being precarious and threatened. A word of the Blessed Virgin at Fatima gently reminds us of this truth without possibility of illusion: “…a time of peace will be given to the world,” she says. This restriction wrings our hearts: the peace will not be perpetual. And we may add: it will not be the unqualified triumph of perfect justice.
One might be inclined to be disappointed or to bewail our fate or to become angry. However, what is in conformity with the best aspirations of our nature as well as the divine inclinations of grace is to understand that this good, however imperfect it may be, is nonetheless of inestimable value; it means that we should continue working for peace on earth, everyone at his post and according to his talents, being vigilant especially as regards the conversion of our own heart; in short, working for peace with the Christian dispositions the Blessed Virgin came to remind us of.
The hatred, fury, and vigilant malice of Satan against the Church, of the Dragon against the Spouse, will perdure until the glorious return of the Lamb. The revelation of the Apocalypse does not leave us in any doubt about it. Likewise, the Apocalypse teaches us that the assaults of Hell will redouble with violence the closer the end draws near. The counter-Church will perfect its methods, the counter-Church which the Apocalypse reveals to us as nothing else than the political power, temporal society inasmuch as it sets itself up as an absolute power, becoming an idol and demanding everything from men, and by that very fact working unceasingly for the Church’s destruction.
For whoever reads the Apocalypse attentively, it seems that history does not repeat itself and that there is a development of the Two Cities. How then should we imagine the progress of the City of Evil? It seems to us to consist in this: progressively the devil will get hold of the fundamental conditions needed by the human will for acting rightly. To be sure, the devil has no direct power over our wills. But as human history develops, he works relentlessly to pervert the basic elements necessary for us to use our will correctly, such as the family, our profession, the work place, civil society, legislation, and morals both public and private. The devil deploys all his rage and cunning so that those things that should help us in doing good become for us a source of scandal, and not just in passing or occasionally, but permanently.
It is a first right of human nature to be helped to go to God by a decent family, an education in truth, an economy organized in accord with justice, and a society in conformity with the natural law. As history progresses, the devil shows himself increasingly stronger and more skillful at violating the true rights of man and arranging for him a life in which apostasy happens almost naturally. A society based on dialectical materialism represents an incontestable progress in his methods. Such a society is possessed by the devil since its institutions as a whole are organized in violation of natural law: it is institutionalized sin.
Conversion and the Rosary
At Fatima, even more than at Lourdes, the Blessed Virgin recommended saying the Rosary; she even gave herself the title, Our Lady of the Rosary. Is there a profound link between true conversion of heart, the conversion she asks of us, and this form of prayer that too often remains routine and superficial? The answer is affirmative, and we shall show why. However, at the very least this prayer must be a genuine prayer, that is, it must be made in spirit and in truth instead of being mechanically mumbled. The indignation expressed by Pascal in his ninth Provinciale and St. Louis de Montfort in Chapter 3 of his True Devotion over false devotees of our Lady still deserve our consideration, and after Fatima at least as much as in the 17th century.
For if the Blessed Virgin calls herself Our Lady of the Rosary and if she urges us to make use of our beads, it is not to authorize inattention, and still less Pharisaism, in prayer. This being said, it seems that the great advantage of the Rosary when it is said “in spirit and in truth,” is that it obliges us more than any other devotion (we are not speaking of the liturgy, which is of a different order) to become aware of the entire mystery of our Redemption: the life, passion, and glory of Christ the Savior. This prolonged awareness should obviously lead us to conform our sentiments and our morals to the subject of our meditation. The Rosary is a contemplative prayer; it makes us contemplate the Gospel, and this in the presence and with the aid of her who has penetrated furthest into the heart of the Gospel; how could it fail to be a wonderful source of evangelical life? How then can the Rosary fail to incite us to change our lives and to be converted? This is all the more true in that, if it is said as it should be said, the Rosary should lead us to a better frequentation of the Eucharist, the “mystery of Faith” and the great Eucharistic prayer, which are the privileged means of our transformation in Christ.
The Rosary well-said makes us enter mystically into the Mystery of Christ and makes us desire to participate in this mystery sacramentally so that our mystical participation becomes more continuous and profound. The efficacy of the Rosary for our conversion is better understood if we think of the vital link between the recitation of the mysteries and the sacramental frequentation of the Eucharistic mystery.
No less than being a contemplation, the Rosary is a petition, and a petition assuredly very pleasing in God’s eyes and very presentable to His infinite holiness since the suppliant, the poor sinner who implores, hides and loses himself in the prayer of her who prays perfectly, for she addresses the Father perfectly, praying in the name of her Son Jesus and in the Holy Spirit; it is with an accent of ineffable purity that she pronounces the “per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum,” being the Immaculate Mother of this Dominus.
These few reflections undoubtedly suffice to explain why the Blessed Virgin, not to mention the ordinary teaching of the Church, attaches such an importance to the Rosary. It is because the Rosary, to tell the truth, far from being a closed circle and dispensing with all the rest, is a very sure path to greater goods; far from exempting us from conversion, it prepares it; far from forgetting the liturgy and the sacraments, it leads to them and prolongs them. The poor usage that might be made of the Rosary does not prove anything against its worth any more than too often poor religious art proves something against the splendor of Christ and the Virgin.
It is especially when the fervor of the Christian people wanes, when scandal and sin abound, or when Christian civilization is on the brink of ruin; it is especially in these hours of extreme peril either for the Church or Christian nations that the popes adjure us to have recourse to the Rosary. Let us recall, for example, St. Pius V at the time of the Turkish invasion; of Pius XI during the Spanish revolution and on the eve of the Second World War; and finally of Pius XII while a third of the Church had become the Church of Silence. This confidence placed by the popes and Holy Mother Church in the Rosary for the Church’s triumph over the forces of hell in the hours of their most furious attacks can be explained naturally because the Rosary, being a holy meditation, sets us on the path of conversion; being a supplication through the intermediary of the Immaculate, it is a pure petition; finally, if it implores salvation and the renewal of a Christian social order, it implores it in the sense that God wants, since it is addressed to the Virgin of the Annunciation and of Calvary, who knows perfectly the worth and importance of the temporal order.
Three Classes of Christians
“Perpetual peace and especially perfect justice are not for here below; persecution will resume at the end of time, and even on the eve of the Second Coming the forces of Satan will be stronger than ever. Let’s confine ourselves to prayer and leave to their fate the deceitful things of civilization and Caesar.” Thus speak the Christians who take refuge in supernaturalism. They are wrong, of course. Even if they are dedicated to contemplation and devote their time to prayer, their prayer should not be indifferent to the justice or injustice of the things of Caesar; rather, it should imitate the great liturgical prayer that admirably translates the contemplation of the Spouse of Jesus Christ and never ceases to implore justice and peace in the kingdoms of this world. But if the Christians stricken with supernaturalism do not live in the cloister, if they are more or less involved in the things of Caesar, then their attitude of ostensible detachment becomes a kind of hypocrisy because they benefit from the temporal while they make a profession of taking no further interest in it.
“Let us organize the planet in a radically new way. Let us change not only the basic institutions of natural law, but even human nature itself, to see if we can establish perfect happiness and faultless justice here below.” Thus speak the fanatical prophets who reject God and let themselves be possessed by the devils of earthly messianism. By virtue of this proclamation, they apply themselves to “creative destruction,” and when they have yielded to the seduction of dialectical materialism, they make the corruption of consciences, the perversion of minds, and the overthrow of institutions go hand in hand.
True Christians, however, recognize the imperfection and frailty of the social order, even when it has been baptized; they also do not doubt that a just social order and a peace worthy of the name are God’s will. Above all, they know that man is made for God, and that peace and holiness are to be found in God alone in the bosom of Christ’s Church. They try to abide in God. Because of this indwelling in Him who desires justice they find the courage not to be resigned to injustice. Whether in their mental prayer, if they dwell in a monastery, or in their mental prayer and action if they are engaged in active life, they work for justice and for the establishment and renewal of a Christian social order without illusion as without discouragement for the simple reason that God wills it. This attitude, the only balanced one, presupposes that the soul is fixed in God, or at least that it sincerely aspires to this union of love that constitutes true conversion.
This is the attitude that the apparition of the Blessed Virgin at Fatima and consecration to her Immaculate Heart ought to inspire in us. Her Immaculate Heart, in effect, desires to obtain for us both a Christian peace and the conversion of our lives; but, she warns us, a Christian peace will not be granted unless we are resolved to amend our lives.
Fr. Roger-Thomas Calmel, O.P. (1914-75), was a prominent French Dominican and Thomist philosopher, who made an immense contribution to the fight for Catholic Tradition through his writings and conferences, notably as a regular contributor for 17 years to Jean Madiran’s Itinéraires. His most enduring influence is through the traditional Dominican Teaching Sisters of Fanjeaux and Brignole in France who operate 12 girls’ schools in France and the US.
1 Chanoine C. Barthas and Fr. G. Da Fonseca, S.J., Our Lady of Light (Dublin: Clonmore & Reynolds, Ltd., 1947), p. 28.
2 For what concerns the relation of Mary’s regency with civilization, cf. the articles of Fr. M.-J. Nicolas, O.P., on the Virgin Queen, Revue Thomiste, 1939, pp. 1-29, 207-231.
3 See Fr. M.-E. Boismard, O.P., Apocalypse (Paris: Cerf, 1953); see also Fr. Ernest-Bernard Allo, O.P., St. John: Apocalypse (Paris: Gabalda, 1921).
4 On the theme of the philosophy of technology, see the Christmas Message of Pius XII, “On Modern Technology and Peace” published by the National Catholic Welfare Conference (Washington, D.C., 1953).
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Fr. Roger Calmel: The Immaculate Heart of Mary and World Peace |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-08-2020, 06:32 AM - Forum: Fr. Roger Calmel
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The Angelus - March 2010
The Immaculate Heart of Mary and World Peace
Fr. Roger Calmel, O.P.
A reflection on the message of Fatima, the importance of devotion to our Lady, and the necessity of conversion.
We shall reflect on the words of the Blessed Virgin at Fatima. When it comes to commenting on the words of Our Lord, every Christian who is careful about what he says or writes cannot help feeling a certain reverential fear. Might not what he will say miss the divine truth? Or will he be able to penetrate however slightly into a pre-eminently mysterious word? This apprehension also seizes him when it comes to commenting on the words of Our Lady. Yet it is also as normal to comment on the divine word as to reflect and meditate upon it. While the silence of love may be the most worthy homage (awaiting the eternal morning of vision), it is impossible not to speak, not to employ our discursive faculty before divine truth. Such an attitude has always been encouraged by the Church, who is as profoundly a theologian as she is a mystic. So let confidence outweigh fear, and may our reflection attempt to penetrate into the message the Queen of the Rosary confided to her humble privileged souls: Jacinta and Francesco, and especially Lucy.
Peace: A Gift of God
One of the first ideas that occur to us upon reading this message is that world peace, political peace, is a gift of God and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. “Say [the rosary] with the intention of obtaining the end of the war.”1 Peace is thus suspended from the intercession of Our Lady and the omnipotence of Him whom we hail in Christmas Matins as Princeps Pacis. There is no doubt that this is true of supernatural peace, the peace that abides within the secret of the heart, which proceeds from the love of God, within the holy Church, which is the Beata Pacis visio. For how could peace of this order, of its nature heavenly, a peace of this quality, properly divine and supernatural, not be a gift of God and a fruit of the intercession of the Virgin redemptrix? On the other hand, a certain political naturalism would lead us to think that the peace “of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,” since it is a reality of a natural, perishable order, lies within the scope of nature abandoned to itself. There is no doubt but that some Christians have slipped on this slope. It is a slope of error. And this for two reasons: first of all, by virtue of the quite general principle that no good thing begins, continues, and comes to completion without the benevolence of the Almighty and unless God grants it His blessing; and secondly, for a very specific reason having to do with the essence of political peace.
It is, in effect, a fruit of justice–opus justitiae pax; now, there is no solid, integral justice without conversion of heart and thus without supernatural grace, that is, without a divine favor. Peace is the tranquility of a just order; but this just order cannot happen without the will of men. If the leaders and the people ordinarily abandon themselves to injustice, how can the tranquility of order be obtained? One may say perhaps: but isn’t it enough to have just institutions to be preserved from injustice, whatever form this may take: as, for example, to fail to recognize or to oppose the authority of the Church; to develop an unbridled economic imperialism; to oppress weaker nations? Certainly, appropriate institutions can and should remedy these crimes. But good institutions, while helping people to be good, are first of all created and supported by the justice of individuals. Now, this justice is quite weak and short-lived without God’s grace, in such a way that, without grace, the best of institutions are not enough to ensure peace.
To be sure, it would be grotesque to interpret the message of Fatima in the sense of a supernaturalism and to fail to recognize that world peace is a political effect partly linked to political causes. On the other hand, it is normal to interpret the message of Fatima as a reminder of the fundamental truth that politics is not enough, for the resulting political order is dependent on fallen and redeemed human beings. If individuals do not let themselves be healed by divine grace, the desired political effects will not follow. It is because the Church is deeply aware of this that she counts on the Lord first and foremost to obtain peace. Let us think rather of the commentary on the “Libera nos a malo” that the liturgy develops at the end of the Pater Noster before Communion; let us also think of the Good Friday prayers and the Exsultet of the Paschal Vigil. Peace is always presented to us as a gift of divine mercy. This lesson from the liturgy is also the first lesson of Fatima.
The second lesson is complementary: world peace is impossible without the conversion of Christians. This gift of God is not automatic, not only because it requires and fosters just politics, but at the same time because God cannot grant this gift without the conversion of wills:
Quote:“Do penance,” said the Blessed Virgin. “If my requests are granted, Russia will be converted and there will be peace in the world.”
Let us not be unrealistic. Let us not imagine that peace among nations and within nations will be obtained if all the Christians are not in the state of grace. But let us also understand that peace cannot be established if Christian people persist in lukewarmness: in other words, if they continue to make the comforts of technological progress the be all and end all of their lives.
The conversion called for by the Blessed Virgin and the peace of which she speaks are not ahistorical. They are specific to an era, to a precise period of human history, the time of the Communist Revolution in Russia and the worldwide expansion of Communist propaganda. World peace is not to be achieved in the state in which the world lay at the time of the Roman Emperors, when the nations as such had not been baptized and when the State had no notion of legislation enlightened by the Church or that took into account the coming on earth of the very Son of God and of His work of Redemption. The peace in question concerns a world in which a certain number of nations were baptized, and so it is of paramount importance that their subjects conduct their lives as baptized persons. Nor can peace in the modern world be achieved in the conditions prevailing at the time of the 16th century, when, in spite of the heretics and free-thinkers, no one envisaged that the State should be organized on the basis of materialism (and not just a doctrinal materialism to be preached, but dialectical materialism in the revolutionary activity that the State is compelled to adopt by means of perfidious cunning or under the pressure of terror!)
The conjuncture in which Our Lady called for conversion is assuredly very particular. It was at the time when Communism was spreading in one great land at one extremity of Europe that she appeared at the other extremity of the continent to urge our conversion. The war threatening the world was not a war like others, firstly because the methods of destruction have achieved incredible progress, but especially because dialectical materialism had insinuated its poison into the social fabric of the Russian State and was threatening to corrupt other States.
Quote:“If my demands are not met,” our Lady told us, “Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, provoking wars and persecution against the Church.”
It would be easy to capitulate at once and say, for example: “After all, does it really matter so much if a part of humanity is destroyed by nuclear weapons? The victims will not find themselves because of that in an absolute impossibility of saving their souls. Should we really fear worldwide domination by communism and the abolition of Christian nations so much? After all, the grace of God has no need of anything nor anyone, and those who desire it will still be able to save their souls.” Alas, these statements are not a fictitious objection that I’m addressing. This language of pre-emptive capitulation, which inspires indignation in every noble heart, has unfortunately been made by some Christians.
These are abject proposals that the instinct of natural generosity as well as the instinct of faith reject out of hand. This spontaneous refusal of the Christian heart which precedes its articulate justification might be explained this way: It is true that grace is strong enough and powerful enough to draw good from evil, to bring forth the holiness of the martyrs from the iniquity of tyrants and the cruelty of executioners. It remains that we ought not to do evil so that good may come of it and to do so is an abominable sin. It remains that we ought not to cooperate in evil by our complicity. We know that even during the apostasy and the general iniquity of the last times the power of God is still strong enough to save men. But we should do what we can to prevent injustice.
In some respects, it is true that Christian nations are not indispensable to the life of the Church. But since they exist we would be criminal to work towards their disappearance or to cooperate in their disappearance in any way. We ought not commit this injustice. It is very easy to say that the Church has no need of Christian civilization. This proposition is not understood correctly unless it is considered in light of the two following propositions: from the fact that she is a stranger on earth, the Church cannot avoid having an influence on terrestrial things that are in relation with the Faith; she cannot avoid affecting private and public morals and consequently she tends to form a Christian civilization.
The second truth is that Christian civilization constitutes for the Church a normal aid and support. We know the limits of Christian nations and how much they constantly need to be uplifted, corrected, and returned to the right path and that they are of another order than the Church. But to conclude from this that because these two orders are distinct they must therefore be separate is to fail, under pretext of purity, to take account of the fact that the Church develops on this earth.
The Church cannot be indifferent to the social conditions that foster respect for law, that is, a Christian social order. And it is such an order that God desires as support for His Church. When Christians commit the great injustice of allowing the abolition of this order, they know not what they are doing nor with what scandals they burden their consciences–for example, when, without any resistance, they allow private schools to be closed or allow state control of the economy. Although God can save souls through the worst of scandals, and even when the scandal has been codified and institutionalized, the Christians who favor or who at least do not prevent the scandal when they might have, are gravely culpable. Likewise, when Christians fancy that a Christian civilization can continue to exist without their conversion, they no longer understand what a Christian civilization is and the wrong they do to it.
To enable the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ to achieve its full stature and the number of the elect to be filled up, the social order is of no small importance. First, it is necessary for children to come into the world and for the human race not to be destroyed too soon; then it is necessary for men to be able to grow up in a society that accepts the Church at least partially, or, at any rate, accepts it enough so as not to become a perpetual and institutionalized incitement to apostasy, materialism, and the rejection of God.
Thus the spiritual kingdom posits a minimum of Christian social order; it helps such an order to be established, to endure, and to be renewed, but at the same time calls for it as a normal support.
If we consider the Incarnation from the angle where this mystery concerns the social order, we see immediately that the Blessed Virgin holds a unique and unequaled place. Whether it regards the coming of the Word of God in a passible and mortal flesh, or His birth at Bethlehem, or His preservation during the exile in Egypt, the education at Nazareth or the first miracle at the wedding feast of Cana, the Blessed Virgin was involved in the temporal aspects of the Incarnation as only the Mother of the Word Incarnate could be. One begins to comprehend that she now continues to watch over the social order of mankind in the measure that it is in relation with the Mystical Body of her Son Jesus Christ. One comprehends that she intervenes for the sake of a Christian social order; there is a profound affinity between her current role in the life of the Church2 and the role she played in the accomplishment and the unfolding of the Mystery of the Incarnation.
To be sure, it is foretold that the social order will culminate in the abomination of widespread apostasy,3 but until that time, and even at that time, the Blessed Virgin will be maternally watching to insure that the Church has that part of mankind and Christian civilization without which it could no longer exist on earth.
This explains why the heavenly Father wanted the apparition of the Blessed Virgin at Fatima to occur in 1917. While for the first time the nations of the world had just unleashed a war of total extermination, while a totally new revolution was developing that aimed less at regime change than at spreading throughout the world atheistic institutions and morals; in short, while Christian civilization, as imperfect as it may have been, was undergoing the most formidable assaults within and without, it was fitting that the heavenly Father should send to the world, for the purpose of helping it recover a Christian social order, the Immaculate Virgin whose consent had allowed the Incarnation of the Son of God and His temporal life. Now we can understand why the major apparitions of the Blessed Virgin, apparitions of global significance, only began after the unprecedented attack against Christian civilization by the great Revolution, and after the first organized attempt at integral secularism. From that moment the role of the Blessed Virgin for the salvation and renewal of a Christian social order became more urgent and appeared more clearly.
By our Lady’s intervention at Fatima to preserve us from communism, if we at least desire to be converted, she showed clearly that the peace she desires for us cannot have anything in common with communist peace, which is the tranquility of disorder maintained by means of technologically organized terror and a propaganda machine that does not shrink from any lie nor any violation of conscience. True peace is the tranquility of an order based on justice both public and personal, a justice moreover that cannot exist without love.
Communism speaks a great deal about peace, just as it speaks a great deal about freedom, liberation, and social justice. But since it has categorically and in principle rejected God and His Church, and since it reduces man to being nothing more than a certain variety of matter, its peace can only be a grimacing counterfeit. A peace that fundamentally contradicts the nature of man and society may indeed present an exterior of tranquility, but it is the tranquility of convicts condemned to the galley: they cannot leave their bench, and they work together because they live under the empire of terror and the whip. In the Communist galley the convicts still have the questionable privilege over the galley slaves of old of being able to listen to State radio broadcasts exalting the pleasures of their lot and the amenity of their guards while a hail of blows rains down without intermission on their skeletal carcasses.
There can be no communist peace, no more than there can be peace based on a comfortable, natural religion blessed by technological progress,4 or soft materialism, or revolutionary dialectical materialism, though the latter would otherwise be consistent and tyrannical.
The temptation to gain the whole world without fear of losing their souls threatens poor men more than ever. Technological progress offers them ever increasing opportunities to spend their lives without regard for eternity; to spend their lives without prayer, sacrifice, or love of God; to yield themselves without resistance to the plethora of anesthetics discovered daily by modern science. In the 17th century Racine bemoaned the vain pursuits of worldly people; his lamentation has become even more justified in our day than it was in the age of the stagecoach, the sailing ship, and strolling players. That is why the Blessed Virgin is urging Christians to be converted, that is to say, to awaken from the false peace of tranquil materialism under pain of becoming a prey to dialectical materialism and its intrinsically perverse order.
At Fatima the Blessed Virgin did not simply say that in the end she would triumph. She said:
Quote:“In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”
So saying, she wanted to remind us that her intervention in our unhappy history would be an additional proof of her love. Just as we need not look for any other cause than the love of the Mother of God in her Fiat mihi that allowed the Incarnation, or the silent offering of her co-redemptive Compassion, or her ardent prayer in the Cenacle that obtained the irrevocable effusion of the Holy Spirit, so also her unceasing, unseen supplication in heaven and her manifest intervention at certain desperate hours of the history of the Church and Christian civilization proceed uniquely from her love.
We have seen some Christians sneer when listening to talk about the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart; they justify their discreet mockery by theological reasons. It is enough to speak of Jesus and our Lady without making an explicit mention of their hearts, they explain; moreover, contemporary imagery, far from nourishing faith, encourages a suspect sentimentality. Whatever may be the case as regards often questionable imagery, the infallible Church officially promotes devotion to the Sacred Heart and to the Immaculate Heart, and in the apparitions of Fatima it is question not only of Our Lady or Queen of the Rosary, but also of the Immaculate Heart. If Christians who find fault with these expressions have really loved their parents or their friends, their spouse or their children, if they have not defiled the language of love, they know full well that there’s no speaking of love without speaking of the heart. Ever since there have been human beings who experience affection they invariably adopt the terms and phrases that remain no less valid for having often been profaned: “I give you my heart. I keep you in my heart.” Well then, since Mary loves us and since she has no other reason to take care of us than her ineffable love as Co-Redemptrix Mother of God, it is not surprising that she speaks to us of her heart.
Nor is it surprising that she adds, my Immaculate Heart. By that, she means us to understand how much she loves us purely, how much her love is attuned to the holiness of God; and it is impossible for her, the Immaculate Mother of her only Son, to desire for us anything else than the accomplishment of God’s will. Doubtless, neither can our brothers in heaven, the angels and saints, love us except in all purity nor in desiring for us anything but what God wants. But they do not have with God this absolutely unique bond, both physical and spiritual, which is the property of the Mother of God; consequently, in regard to God and in regard to us they lack the perfection and quality of love that belong to the Mother of God. The love of the angels and saints is certainly pure, but the love of the Immaculate Mother of God outstrips it extraordinarily in purity.
Knowing this, we understand better that she speaks to us of conversion and she makes peace contingent on conversion, that is, on fidelity to her Son and conformity to His Gospel. She cannot, in effect, desire peace for her children, namely, the first of all temporal goods, if it would make them forget conversion, if it would make them shirk the first of spiritual goods, namely, conformity to Jesus Christ by conversion, awaiting conformity to Jesus Christ by the blessed resurrection. Because the Blessed Virgin carries us in her Immaculate Heart, because she loves us with the love of an Immaculate Heart, she cannot obtain for us peace on earth without asking us for the conversion of our souls.
Similarly, she cannot obtain for us an earthly peace that would be tantamount to paradise on earth, one that would exempt us from having to suffer from the evil within us and around us, from having to fight against the devil and against all those who, for a time or for their whole life and with a more or less imperfect docility, do the devil’s work and play his game.
The peace that the Immaculate Heart wants to obtain for us does not fulfill the impure aspirations of political messianism: the messianism, abhorred by the true Messias, that refuses to take account of either the cross or the devil, or participation in the sacrifice of Jesus, or the unleashed malice of Satan. Since the human condition is marked by the Fall and Redemption, earthly peace cannot comprise the absolute suppression of every injustice because sin continues, and therefore peace cannot avoid being precarious and threatened. A word of the Blessed Virgin at Fatima gently reminds us of this truth without possibility of illusion: “…a time of peace will be given to the world,” she says. This restriction wrings our hearts: the peace will not be perpetual. And we may add: it will not be the unqualified triumph of perfect justice.
One might be inclined to be disappointed or to bewail our fate or to become angry. However, what is in conformity with the best aspirations of our nature as well as the divine inclinations of grace is to understand that this good, however imperfect it may be, is nonetheless of inestimable value; it means that we should continue working for peace on earth, everyone at his post and according to his talents, being vigilant especially as regards the conversion of our own heart; in short, working for peace with the Christian dispositions the Blessed Virgin came to remind us of.
The hatred, fury, and vigilant malice of Satan against the Church, of the Dragon against the Spouse, will perdure until the glorious return of the Lamb. The revelation of the Apocalypse does not leave us in any doubt about it. Likewise, the Apocalypse teaches us that the assaults of Hell will redouble with violence the closer the end draws near. The counter-Church will perfect its methods, the counter-Church which the Apocalypse reveals to us as nothing else than the political power, temporal society inasmuch as it sets itself up as an absolute power, becoming an idol and demanding everything from men, and by that very fact working unceasingly for the Church’s destruction.
For whoever reads the Apocalypse attentively, it seems that history does not repeat itself and that there is a development of the Two Cities. How then should we imagine the progress of the City of Evil? It seems to us to consist in this: progressively the devil will get hold of the fundamental conditions needed by the human will for acting rightly. To be sure, the devil has no direct power over our wills. But as human history develops, he works relentlessly to pervert the basic elements necessary for us to use our will correctly, such as the family, our profession, the work place, civil society, legislation, and morals both public and private. The devil deploys all his rage and cunning so that those things that should help us in doing good become for us a source of scandal, and not just in passing or occasionally, but permanently.
It is a first right of human nature to be helped to go to God by a decent family, an education in truth, an economy organized in accord with justice, and a society in conformity with the natural law. As history progresses, the devil shows himself increasingly stronger and more skillful at violating the true rights of man and arranging for him a life in which apostasy happens almost naturally. A society based on dialectical materialism represents an incontestable progress in his methods. Such a society is possessed by the devil since its institutions as a whole are organized in violation of natural law: it is institutionalized sin.
Conversion and the Rosary
At Fatima, even more than at Lourdes, the Blessed Virgin recommended saying the Rosary; she even gave herself the title, Our Lady of the Rosary. Is there a profound link between true conversion of heart, the conversion she asks of us, and this form of prayer that too often remains routine and superficial? The answer is affirmative, and we shall show why. However, at the very least this prayer must be a genuine prayer, that is, it must be made in spirit and in truth instead of being mechanically mumbled. The indignation expressed by Pascal in his ninth Provinciale and St. Louis de Montfort in Chapter 3 of his True Devotion over false devotees of our Lady still deserve our consideration, and after Fatima at least as much as in the 17th century.
For if the Blessed Virgin calls herself Our Lady of the Rosary and if she urges us to make use of our beads, it is not to authorize inattention, and still less Pharisaism, in prayer. This being said, it seems that the great advantage of the Rosary when it is said “in spirit and in truth,” is that it obliges us more than any other devotion (we are not speaking of the liturgy, which is of a different order) to become aware of the entire mystery of our Redemption: the life, passion, and glory of Christ the Savior. This prolonged awareness should obviously lead us to conform our sentiments and our morals to the subject of our meditation. The Rosary is a contemplative prayer; it makes us contemplate the Gospel, and this in the presence and with the aid of her who has penetrated furthest into the heart of the Gospel; how could it fail to be a wonderful source of evangelical life? How then can the Rosary fail to incite us to change our lives and to be converted? This is all the more true in that, if it is said as it should be said, the Rosary should lead us to a better frequentation of the Eucharist, the “mystery of Faith” and the great Eucharistic prayer, which are the privileged means of our transformation in Christ.
The Rosary well-said makes us enter mystically into the Mystery of Christ and makes us desire to participate in this mystery sacramentally so that our mystical participation becomes more continuous and profound. The efficacy of the Rosary for our conversion is better understood if we think of the vital link between the recitation of the mysteries and the sacramental frequentation of the Eucharistic mystery.
No less than being a contemplation, the Rosary is a petition, and a petition assuredly very pleasing in God’s eyes and very presentable to His infinite holiness since the suppliant, the poor sinner who implores, hides and loses himself in the prayer of her who prays perfectly, for she addresses the Father perfectly, praying in the name of her Son Jesus and in the Holy Spirit; it is with an accent of ineffable purity that she pronounces the “per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum,” being the Immaculate Mother of this Dominus.
These few reflections undoubtedly suffice to explain why the Blessed Virgin, not to mention the ordinary teaching of the Church, attaches such an importance to the Rosary. It is because the Rosary, to tell the truth, far from being a closed circle and dispensing with all the rest, is a very sure path to greater goods; far from exempting us from conversion, it prepares it; far from forgetting the liturgy and the sacraments, it leads to them and prolongs them. The poor usage that might be made of the Rosary does not prove anything against its worth any more than too often poor religious art proves something against the splendor of Christ and the Virgin.
It is especially when the fervor of the Christian people wanes, when scandal and sin abound, or when Christian civilization is on the brink of ruin; it is especially in these hours of extreme peril either for the Church or Christian nations that the popes adjure us to have recourse to the Rosary. Let us recall, for example, St. Pius V at the time of the Turkish invasion; of Pius XI during the Spanish revolution and on the eve of the Second World War; and finally of Pius XII while a third of the Church had become the Church of Silence. This confidence placed by the popes and Holy Mother Church in the Rosary for the Church’s triumph over the forces of hell in the hours of their most furious attacks can be explained naturally because the Rosary, being a holy meditation, sets us on the path of conversion; being a supplication through the intermediary of the Immaculate, it is a pure petition; finally, if it implores salvation and the renewal of a Christian social order, it implores it in the sense that God wants, since it is addressed to the Virgin of the Annunciation and of Calvary, who knows perfectly the worth and importance of the temporal order.
Three Classes of Christians
“Perpetual peace and especially perfect justice are not for here below; persecution will resume at the end of time, and even on the eve of the Second Coming the forces of Satan will be stronger than ever. Let’s confine ourselves to prayer and leave to their fate the deceitful things of civilization and Caesar.” Thus speak the Christians who take refuge in supernaturalism. They are wrong, of course. Even if they are dedicated to contemplation and devote their time to prayer, their prayer should not be indifferent to the justice or injustice of the things of Caesar; rather, it should imitate the great liturgical prayer that admirably translates the contemplation of the Spouse of Jesus Christ and never ceases to implore justice and peace in the kingdoms of this world. But if the Christians stricken with supernaturalism do not live in the cloister, if they are more or less involved in the things of Caesar, then their attitude of ostensible detachment becomes a kind of hypocrisy because they benefit from the temporal while they make a profession of taking no further interest in it.
“Let us organize the planet in a radically new way. Let us change not only the basic institutions of natural law, but even human nature itself, to see if we can establish perfect happiness and faultless justice here below.” Thus speak the fanatical prophets who reject God and let themselves be possessed by the devils of earthly messianism. By virtue of this proclamation, they apply themselves to “creative destruction,” and when they have yielded to the seduction of dialectical materialism, they make the corruption of consciences, the perversion of minds, and the overthrow of institutions go hand in hand.
True Christians, however, recognize the imperfection and frailty of the social order, even when it has been baptized; they also do not doubt that a just social order and a peace worthy of the name are God’s will. Above all, they know that man is made for God, and that peace and holiness are to be found in God alone in the bosom of Christ’s Church. They try to abide in God. Because of this indwelling in Him who desires justice they find the courage not to be resigned to injustice. Whether in their mental prayer, if they dwell in a monastery, or in their mental prayer and action if they are engaged in active life, they work for justice and for the establishment and renewal of a Christian social order without illusion as without discouragement for the simple reason that God wills it. This attitude, the only balanced one, presupposes that the soul is fixed in God, or at least that it sincerely aspires to this union of love that constitutes true conversion.
This is the attitude that the apparition of the Blessed Virgin at Fatima and consecration to her Immaculate Heart ought to inspire in us. Her Immaculate Heart, in effect, desires to obtain for us both a Christian peace and the conversion of our lives; but, she warns us, a Christian peace will not be granted unless we are resolved to amend our lives.
Fr. Roger-Thomas Calmel, O.P. (1914-75), was a prominent French Dominican and Thomist philosopher, who made an immense contribution to the fight for Catholic Tradition through his writings and conferences, notably as a regular contributor for 17 years to Jean Madiran’s Itinéraires. His most enduring influence is through the traditional Dominican Teaching Sisters of Fanjeaux and Brignole in France who operate 12 girls’ schools in France and the US.
1 Chanoine C. Barthas and Fr. G. Da Fonseca, S.J., Our Lady of Light (Dublin: Clonmore & Reynolds, Ltd., 1947), p. 28.
2 For what concerns the relation of Mary’s regency with civilization, cf. the articles of Fr. M.-J. Nicolas, O.P., on the Virgin Queen, Revue Thomiste, 1939, pp. 1-29, 207-231.
3 See Fr. M.-E. Boismard, O.P., Apocalypse (Paris: Cerf, 1953); see also Fr. Ernest-Bernard Allo, O.P., St. John: Apocalypse (Paris: Gabalda, 1921).
4 On the theme of the philosophy of technology, see the Christmas Message of Pius XII, “On Modern Technology and Peace” published by the National Catholic Welfare Conference (Washington, D.C., 1953).
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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