Bp. Eleganti’s commentary, sent to Per Mariam for publication, addresses the prohibitions placed on the Ad Petri Sedem pilgrimage by the Vatican last weekend. Details of the restrictions can be found here, with a response fro…

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As has been the annual tradition for the past 15 years, this last weekend in October saw devotees of the traditional Mass descend upon the Eternal City for a three-day pilgrimage of great significance for the traditional communities and lay faithful. The Ad Petri Sedem pilgrimage sees thousands of Catholics partake in a number of liturgies across the city, with a highlight normally being the procession to the Vatican and Mass inside the basilica of St. Peter’s.

This year, as Catholic Herald readers will have read, that did not happen. Permission for the Mass was refused, as also was permission for the procession to enter the Basilica of St. Peter’s. In the face of this stark contrast with the 2025 pilgrimage and the many before that, much discussion has proliferated online regarding the cause of the restrictions faced by the pilgrimage.

Restrictions faced by the pilgrimage did indeed include a ban on the procession entering the Vatican, such that a common walk was held through the streets but was stopped at the Vatican obelisk by Vatican security. Given that permission was also refused for Mass, the pilgrimage Mass was held in St Mary Major’s instead of St. Peter’s. … … …

The rest of this correspondent’s report, originally published on the Catholic Herald, is found at this link.

On October 19, Leo XIV appointed a new roster of members to the International Theological Commission (ITC) – which operates under the auspices of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – thus forming the body of theologians who will serve there until the duration of their five-year term concludes in 2031. The 24 new members of the ITC are very much demonstrative of the style of the Church today, coming from a wide variety of countries and being both clerical and lay, male and female.

So also is their theological orthodoxy similarly mixed: while some are heralded as respected and even esteemed theologians, others have a history of dissenting from Catholic teaching and of activism against said teaching.

The irony now is that some of the ITC’s new members directly contradict what the ITC and the DDF have taught.

One such figure is Sara Parvis, who currently serves as an associate professor at the University of Edinburgh’ School of Divinity. She has joined the activist cause for female deacons, arguing in favour of ordaining women to the diaconate – which thus contradicts the Church’s infallible teaching on Holy Orders.

Writing in the UK’s “The Tablet” in 2024, Parvis opined “that an office in the Church called ‘deacon’ was filled by women from earliest times is not in doubt.” Such is a commonly utilised argument by advocates of the female diaconate, who attest that the Church would not be breaking with tradition by ordaining women, but rather returning to the practices of the early Church.

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She added:

“Women deacons would strengthen the public witness of Catholic women, which in turn would strengthen the faith of other Christian women and men, and offer the light of faith in new ways to the world…

“The restoration of the diaconate to women would offer a new and particularly ecclesial vocation, whether or not it was coupled with the vocation to religious life.”

The Church teaches firmly and clearly that the three-fold sacrament of Holy Orders – bishop, priest, deacon – is reserved to men. In his 1994 Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II wrote, “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

Then in 2018, the prefect of the DDF, Cardinal Ladaria Ferrer S.J., defended the teaching of Ordinatio sacerdotalis as bearing the mark of “infallibility,” with John Paul II having “formally confirmed and made explicit, so as to remove all doubt, that which the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium has long considered throughout history as belonging to the deposit of faith.”

But even more than this, Parvis’ argument that the early Church had an ordained female diaconate has been firmly debunked by the very commission which she has just joined. In 2002, the International Theological Commission wrote after much study that:

The deaconesses mentioned in the tradition of the ancient Church – as evidenced by the rite of institution and the functions they exercised – were not purely and simply equivalent to the deacons;

The unity of the sacrament of Holy Orders, in the clear distinction between the ministries of the bishop and the priests on the one hand and the diaconal ministry on the other, is strongly underlined by ecclesial tradition, especially in the teaching of the Magisterium.

Parvis’ inclusion in the ITC for the next five years is theologically bizarre and self-contradictory. The ITC is not a large organisation where all schools of thought can be found by virtue of its sheer size. It is a carefully selected group of no more than 30 people, who are on-tap to advise the DDF on theological matters. As such, there can be no room in its membership for those who question Church teaching – and yet that is the reality the Church now faces.

But Parvis is not alone in her dissent. There are more figures in the new intake whose theological positions are of concern to long-time Vatican analysts.

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Claudia Leal Luna is a consulter at the DDF, and a professor at the Pontifical “John Paul II” Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences – which was famously gutted by Pope Francis, alongside the Pontifical Academy for Life, to undermine its pro-life and pro-family integrity. Luna will join Parvis at the ITC, despite her own record dissenting from documents which the DDF has published.

In March 2021, the DDF issued the famous Responsum which stated that the Church could not bless same-sex unions. The document caused an instant backlash among many of the more heterodox episcopal bodies, such as in Germany and Belgium, who had already broken with Church teaching on this point.

Luna was among the dissenters. The DDF’s text “has left a bitter taste in many people,” she said at the time.

Continuing her critique, Luna expressed the opinion that the Church’s moral theology must keep lockstep with society in order to remain relevant:

“The sexual morality of the Christian tradition needs to take some steps with philosophy, psychology, sociology, even with the biology of recent decades.

On the other hand, within institutions, there is always a core that protects the interpretation of the law and that tends to fight for a more exclusive interpretation.

What we as Catholics can demand is that we be told not only what is excluded, but also what is included. I have no doubt that the current sensitivity of Catholics in the world experiences an epistemological shock when reading this [the DDF’s Note prohibiting blessing of same-sex unions].”

Here, therefore, are two members of the ITC who directly contradict the teaching of the ITC and the DDF. (More could be named but these two are enough).

They have DDF prefect Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández to thank for their new position, since it is he who presents the names to the Pontiff for approval. It is not known how much knowledge Leo had of their personal theological opinions when he gave his permission for them to join the ITC. Yet their membership of the commission is emblematic of the theological rot which has been allowed to take heart at the core of the Church and of the Roman Curia, and which must be exposed if an authentic evangelisation is to be hoped for.

According to the Vatican, the Pope’s 90-minute surgery on Tuesday afternoon was successful and completed on schedule with no complications. He was then transferred back to his room after a period of observation, where he asked for some dinner.

After the brief initial update from the Vatican, full details arrived just before 10pm local time on Tuesday, with the signature of the lead surgeon Professor Stefano Margaritora.

Doctors removed the lower lobe of the Pope’s right lung using a video-assisted procedure.

Upon tests, the pre-op suspicion of lung cancer was confirmed, with doctors diagnosing the Pope with lung adenocarcinoma – the most common form of lung cancer.

Although the nodule was described as small, the doctors removed a large section of the lung in order to lessen the risk of leaving any potentially cancerous tissue in the body. This can be a common problem when removing cancerous tissue during operations.

However, the Vatican spokesman was clear to note he was not saying the Pope has been given a clean bill of health. The doctors’ expert advice is very much guiding the way in terms of the information which is distributed publicly.

All papal audiences have already been cancelled until October 20, and the Vatican had stated prior to the operation that the Pope would require a week of recovery.

Any decision on pursuing further treatment such as chemotherapy, or a determination on whether the cancer has spread more than originally thought, remains unclear at this early stage. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni was careful not to speculate or exceed the precise information he received from the doctors.

Some have speculated online that Leo knew for some time of his diagnosis. This would seem to contradict the official information, along with that shared by his older brother who told Newsmax on Tuesday that he had only learned of the Pope’s diagnosis after the Sunday Angelus announcement on October 11.

Leo has kept active and in good health, perhaps in part due to his own knowledge of his family’s history regarding cancer. Both his parents died of cancer and his older brother Louis was diagnosed with cancer in 2017: he is currently in hospital in Florida undergoing treatment.

For now, the Vatican will issue daily updates regarding the Pope’s health and take things very much one day at a time.

The surgery appears to have been successful and the Pope is responding well to it and in good humour, according to what those around him are saying.

Now the Vatican will watch and wait to see if the arduous South American voyage which begins on November 6 will be cancelled, amended, or just proceed as planned.

Some weeks pass by without note, yet others produce feverish activity, especially so in October. The favoured month for conferences and synods, this October proved no different for either Leo or the Vatican in general. As Catholic Herald readers will have already learned, the cardinal archpriest of St Peter’s Basilica was removed from his post last week, just as the Dispatch went live online. Cardinal Gambetti will now head to the Archdiocese of Chieti-Vasto, closing his much troubled tenure at the Vatican, with Archbishop Vittorio Viola named as his replacement as this week's Dispatch went live. More on that can be read here.

On Monday the Vatican’s publishing house announced that Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández has compiled the late pontiff’s diary entries and added some of his own notes next to them. Arriving on bookshelves in late November, the book spans a period of more than 30 years, from December 20, 1992, to August 18, 2024.

… … …

The rest of this correspondent’s report, originally published on the Catholic Herald, is found at this link.

Cardinal Müller makes a firm defence of Mary as Co-Redemptrix, while also defending t…

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Full updates from the conference can be found on Per Mariam here, with links to some of the talks published in full.

Father Thomas’ speech is found below, with grateful thanks to Father for allowing its publication.

In this talk, I shall begin by briefly looking at the origins of the Marian title ‘Destroyer of all heresies’ in the Latin liturgical tradition. I shall then look, briefly again, at some patristic passages that have a certain affinity with this liturgical tradition and which may possibly have influenced it. But the main part of my talk will be a theological meditation on this Marian title, in which I shall seek to understand both its suitability and its precise meaning.

1. Liturgical Origins

The assertion that the Blessed Virgin Mary has by herself destroyed all heresies throughout the world is one that has been made by the Catholic liturgy for over a thousand years. We find it present already in the oldest extant Latin office book. This is the antiphoner of Compiegne, or called the antiphoner of Charles the Bald; it was copied about the year 870. This assertion belongs not simply to one or other liturgical use, but rather to the common patrimony of the Roman rite. It is found in the office-books compiled by Humbert of Romans for the Dominican Order in the middle of the 13^th century. The antiphon for terce in the office of our Lady on Saturday in these books runs as follows: “Gaude maria virgo cunctas haereses sola interemisti in universo mundo” [‘Rejoice, O Virgin Mary, thou alone hast destroyed all heresies in all the world.’] The tract of the Mass for our Lady on Saturdays during Septuagesima uses much the same words. This assertion was maintained in the breviary and missal of the Dominican Order, as in the breviaries and missals of the other uses of the Roman rite, until the liturgical reform of the 1960’s, when this antiphon and this tract were suppressed.

I should respectfully claim that the removal from all modern missals and breviaries of the assertion that our Lady has by herself destroyed all heresies is much to be regretted. Needless to say, however, the tranquil presence of this assertion through the whole Roman rite for more than a thousand years is ample reason for us to continue to repeat it. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in an interview that he gave to the late Vittorio Messori, admitted that as a young theologian he had experienced problems both with the statement that our Lady has destroyed all heresies, and with the adage that forms the title of our colloquium, de Maria numquam satis. Later experience, as he ingenuously confessed, had worked within him a change of heart. He told Messori: “Now, in this confused period where truly every type of heretical aberration seems to be pressing upon the doors of the authentic faith – now I understand that it was not a matter of pious exaggerations, but of truths that today are more valid than ever.”

2. Patristic Roots

Although our phrase appears first in a liturgical context, it has roots in the writings of the Fathers of the Church. Speaking at the Council of Ephesus in the year 431, St Cyril of Alexandria declared that the title Theotokos, ‘Mother of God or God-bearer’, which the faithful had long been accustomed to give to our Lady, implied the true doctrine of the incarnation against Nestorius. In what has been described as the most famous Marian sermon of antiquity, St Cyril acclaimed Mary as ‘sceptre of orthodoxy or of right doctrine’, to skeeptron tees orthodoxias. “We salute thee, O Mary Mother of God”, said Cyril in the presence of the other bishops, “venerable treasure of the entire world, inextinguishable lamp, crown of virginity, sceptre of orthodoxy, imperishable temple, container of him who cannot be contained.”²

Another possible influence on the formation of our liturgical phrase is a letter of Pope Leo the Great to Flavian, archbishop of Constantinople. Having mentioned three of the principal points of Christian faith, namely belief in God the Father almighty, in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the birth of Christ from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, St Leo concludes: “By these three assertions, the schemes of almost all heretics are destroyed.”³ This letter was famously read at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, provoking the cry: “Peter has spoken through Leo!”

A third patristic author who might be mentioned in this connexion is St Epiphanius. The 17^th century Jesuit author Cristóbal de Vega, in his Theologia Mariana, refers us to Epiphanius’ Panarion or ‘medicine-chest’. In his description of the heresy of the so-called Antidicomarianites, ‘those who speak against Mary’, the bishop of Salamis quotes the phrase of the Apocalypse, Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah … has conquered, and he adds that if the Lord is called a lion, “then I should call the mother who bore him a lioness”.⁴ Vega appeals to this passage as part of his own explanation of the title ‘destroyer of heresies’: “Like a lioness”, he writes, “she bore that undefeated Lion of the tribe of Judah, the vanquisher of heretical wickedness.”⁵

As a final patristic reference, we may mention the well-known Akathist hymn in honour of the Blessed Virgin, sung especially during Lent by Eastern Christians. Traditionally dated to the year 626 but perhaps written earlier, this Akathist greets our Lady, among numerous other titles, as “thou who hast quenched the furnace of error”. To quote from the translation of the hymn made in 1934 by the English Dominican Fr Vincent McNabb:

“Hail! Mother of the unsetting Star./ Hail! Splendour of the Mystic Day./ Hail! thou who hast quenched the fire of error./ Hail! thou who enlightenest the initiates of the Triune.” ⁶

3. Theological Meditation

I. Suitability of the title

Having very briefly sketched this patristic background for the liturgical assertion that Mary has brought to nothing all heresies, I’d like for the rest of my talk to attempt a theological meditation on this theme. First of all, I shall say why it seems fitting that Mary should have such a role within the Christian economy; secondly, I’ll try to consider more precisely what this title means.

a. Mother of the Word

Our Lady’s unique office as Mother of God makes it fitting that she should have a unique role in the overthrow of heresy. She is the mother of the Word incarnate. But heresy is a rejection of the word of God. Therefore already by virtue of her maternity of the Word, Mary is opposed to heresy in her very being. One of the litanies used in the Order of Preachers since the Middle Ages boldly invokes her as Sancta Maria generans aeternum lumen, “Holy Mary, generating the eternal light”. Christ, as He Himself says in St John’s gospel, has come as light into the world. But heresy is the attempt to quench this light in the participated form in which it exists within the human mind as the virtue of theological faith. Mary, therefore, as the Mother of God the Son who is the eternal light, must necessarily be in enmity with the darkness of religious error.

b. Socia Christi

Yet our Lady’s office is to be not only mother of our Lord but also His associate. She calls herself His handmaid, δούλη. Since the Middle Ages, she has often been spoken of as Christ’s socia, or companion. This title is found, for example, in the 13^th century work called Mariale, formerly attributed to St Albert the Great. Mary therefore shares in her Son’s work, in the manner befitting a pure creature. But in the first epistle of St John we read that the Son of God appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil, and one of the principal works of the devil is the lie. Heresy is the most pernicious kind of lie, since it is directed against divine truth. The devil, after all, was the first heresiarch. You will not die, he told Eve concerning the forbidden fruit. Notice that in this conversation with our first mother, he did not explicitly deny all the truths that she had learned from God. It was sufficient for him to persuade her to disbelieve one such revealed truth, namely the truth that she would harm herself by eating of the forbidden tree. As St Thomas Aquinas explains, the heretic by disbelieving a single truth revealed by God thereby loses supernatural faith in all the articles of the creed, since he has rejected the formal object of this virtue, the veracity of God who speaks. Our Lady, then, as handmaid and socia of the Son of God will be united with Him as He destroys this terrible work of the devil which is heresy.

c. Faith of Mary

Commenting on the verse of Isaiah chapter 63, I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the Gentiles there is not a man with me, St Thomas observes that the prophet here deliberately uses the word for a male human being, vir, “on account of the blessed Virgin, in whom faith never failed”. This observation of the angelic doctor corresponds to the Hebrew text, which in this verse uses the word ’ish, a male human being. There was no man with our Lord in His great act of redemption, in the sense in which there was with Him a woman, an ’ishah. The fathers of the 2^nd Vatican Council agree with St Thomas: “The consent which she gave in faith at the Annunciation”, says Lumen Gentium, “[…] she sustained without wavering beneath the cross.”

On account, then, of this heroic faith, on account of her general participation in the work of her Son, and on account of her maternity of the Word, it was fitting that Mary should become the destroyer of all heresies throughout the world.

II. The meaning of the title

But how exactly does she accomplish this task? What is the proper meaning of this liturgical phrase? Like a diamond that gleams from various sides, the title ‘destroyer of all heresies’ has more than one sense. Allow me to mention three.

a. Mediatrix of all graces

First, and most generally, Mary has obtained and does obtain for us the graces that we ourselves need to combat heresy. As mediatrix of all graces, she has merited them for us in general by her charity on earth and she impetrates them for us individually by her prayer in heaven. Here we can think both of the graces that we need to resist the allure of some false doctrine that may appeal to our own pride or concupiscence, and also of the graces that we need to combat heresies that threaten the faith of others. Cristóbal de Vega in his explanation of the title ‘Destroyer of all heresies’ writes: “She assists the doctors and fathers strenuously and bravely rising up against heresies, giving help for the fight, as is clear in St Dominic battling the Albigensians.” But since it is not doctors and fathers alone, but all Catholics endowed with the sacrament of confirmation who must engage in such battles according to their competence and possibilities, she has a universal role in helping the Church on earth to resist false doctrine.

St Louis de Montfort, himself a Dominican tertiary, has expressed this idea with admirable clarity in his work True Devotion to the Mary. In paragraph 167, he writes as follows:

As it is Mary alone, says the Church (and the Holy Ghost, who guides the Church), who alone makes all heresies come to naught - Sola cunctas haereses interemisti in universo mundo - we may be sure that, however critics may grumble, no faithful client of Mary will ever fall into heresy or illusion, at least formal. He may very well err materially, take falsehood for truth, and the evil spirit for the good; and yet he will do even this with more difficulty than others. But sooner or later he will acknowledge his material fault and error; and when he knows it, he will not be in any way self-opinionated in believing and maintaining what he had once thought true.

That is, so to speak, a general office of the Blessed Virgin. But does she not also sometimes intervene in the Church’s doctrinal combats in a more direct, and even visible way? This brings me to the second of the three meanings which I see in this phrase, of our Lady as teacher within the Church.

b. Teacher in the Church

St Gregory of Caesarea, called Thaumaturgos or wonder-worker, was born around the year 213. His life was written by his namesake, Gregory of Nyssa. Nyssa records that on one occasion, while still a young man and shortly before his ordination to the priesthood, St Gregory of Caesarea was pondering at night-time over certain truths of the faith that were already being depraved by the heretics of his time, in particular the relations between the three divine Persons. Suddenly, he beheld in a vision the apostle St John and the mother of the Lord discussing the very subject which occupied his troubled thoughts. Astonished, he heard Mary requesting the evangelist to explain to the perplexed ordinand the truth that he was seeking, whereupon John recited a short creed, one not previously heard upon earth, beginning: “There is one God, the Father of the living Word, who is His subsistent wisdom and power and eternal image”. The whole of this profession of faith, which still exists, furnished Christians with a defence in advance against the Arianism that would break upon the Church, especially in the East, during the next century.

St John Henry Newman was deeply moved by Gregory of Nyssa’s narration of these events. He refers to them more than once in his works. Writing to his former co-religionist, the Anglican Edward Pusey, who had expressed an apparent distaste for the title ‘destroyer of all heresies’, Newman observes that in Gregory of Nyssa’s description, “our Lady is represented as rescuing a holy soul from intellectual error”.

I shall give a second example of what I mean by Mary intervening in a direct way in the Church’s doctrinal combats. Seventeen centuries after St Gregory the Wonderworker, there took place the events of Fatima. As we all know, our Lady taught the three shepherd children a new prayer and asked them to recite it at the end of each decade of the rosary. “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins; save us from the fires of hell; lead all souls into heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy.” Perhaps I am wrong, but I have often thought that if belief in the existence of hell persisted among Catholics in the second half of the 20^th century and to our own day, despite the doctrine being so rarely preached, this is due more than anything else to the recitation of that little prayer by countless faithful in parish churches across the world.

c. Divine antidote for each heresy

Yet even by such considerations as these we have not yet exhausted the significance contained in Mary’s title of ‘destroyer of all heresies’. From eternity, God sees all the heresies that are to trouble the Church down the centuries from the time of Simon Magus until the coming of antichrist. There must be heresies, observes St Paul, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you, and St Thomas notes that there never has been any age wholly free from them. Nevertheless, there will be a finite number of heresies in the history of the Church, though a number known to God alone. May we not therefore suppose that in His eternal idea of the Blessed Virgin, God willed in advance that each one of these heresies should find a direct refutation in some attribute or characteristic action of Mary? Thus, the Christian, by believing as he ought to believe about her, would inevitably and as it were instinctively reject each new error in the faith as it arose.

It seems to me that this is a hypothesis we can explore in an inductive way. So, please bear with me as, for the remainder of my talk, I briefly consider chronologically the main heresies that have arisen with the Church, and how the Blessed Trinity seems to have designed our Lady as not only a general but as even a specific antidote for each one.

i. Apostolic age

The first heresy, then, that we encounter in the history of the Church is simony: the belief that spiritual goods can be adequately paid for by temporal means. Mary’s divine maternity is already a rebuke to this false doctrine. No one, I think, could be mad enough to suppose that the payment of a sum of money would be sufficient to bring about the incarnation! She herself sings of the gratuity of God’s gift of His Son to the world: He hath regarded the humility of his handmaid… the rich he hath sent empty away.

St Paul records a second heresy that broke out during his life-time. In 1 Corinthians 15, we learn that some of those in the Church of Corinth were saying, in the middle of the 50s of the first century, that there is no resurrection of the dead. Writing to St Timothy, he notes that some have erred from the truth, saying, that the resurrection is past already. Presumably the heresy in question was one that spiritualised the resurrection of believers, saying that it consisted merely in the deliverance of the soul from sin, or perhaps, from matter. Against this error, the assumption of Mary into heaven, which must have taken place very close to the time when St Paul was writing to the Corinthians provides the perfect remedy. If she, the first of believers, has been taken into glory as to her body as well as to her soul, why should we not hope for a like resurrection?

Still within the apostolic age, we seem to find mention by St John of a third heresy. Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God, he writes. By implication, certain false teachers, later known as gnostics, were already denying the reality of the incarnation and making our Lord’s human nature illusory. It is obvious that the veneration of the Mother of the Lord is a sure defence against this error.

ii. Patristic age

If we turn from the New Testament to the patristic period, we encounter the Trinitarian and Christological debates that dominated the first ecumenical councils. Here too, we can find that our Lady has a unique role in aiding the Church’s struggle against heresy. Catholics were protected against Arius’s claim that the Son of God was simply the most exalted of creatures for as long as they remembered that that position was, so to speak, already occupied. It is the Mother and not the Son who is the greatest of the works of God’s hands. As Newman would write to Pusey about the state of Christendom in their own time, the 19^th century: “If we look through Europe, we shall find, on the whole, that just those nations and countries have lost their faith in the divinity of Christ, who have given up devotion to His Mother, and that those on the other hand, who had been foremost in her honour, have retained their orthodoxy.”

As for the other main Christological heresy, that of Nestorius, it is well-known how decisive was title Theotokos in breaking that error. While the doctrine of the incarnation could, abstractly speaking, be sufficiently defined simply by the use of terms such as ‘person’, ‘nature’, and ‘existence’, Nestorianism could not in practice have been expunged had the Council of Ephesus shrunk from defining the Theotokos. To be preserved in the truth, God’s people need a confession of faith that is not only theoretically incompatible with errors, but one that also confronts errors directly, in the form in which they actually exist in the world. For wars are fought not by ideas but by persons, and our Lady is victorious over heresies, not merely in the abstract, but in reality.

At the time that Nestorianism troubled the East, Pelagianism was disturbing the West. For Pelagius, man must achieve holiness by his own efforts, unaided by grace; and he can do so, for he is not fallen. Here too we find our Lady to be a providential protection against error. We believe in her Immaculate Conception; Mary was endowed with holiness, from the first moment of her existence; but not, therefore, through her own merits. At the same this grace has been defined by the Church as singularis, unique. The rest of us, contrary to Pelagius, are conceived in sin.

The last of the ecumenical councils of the patristic period was Nicaea II, called to deal with the iconoclasts. Here too, we can identify a unique role of the Blessed Virgin. It is not only that the Church was accustomed to venerate icons of our Lady, as well as of Christ and of the saints. There is also the fact that the legitimacy of iconodulia under the new covenant is itself a consequence of the incarnation. “I will not cease venerating matter”, wrote St John Damascene, “since matter has wrought my salvation.” While the faithful remember that the Son is made from the very matter of His mother – factus ex muliere, as St Paul says - they will not fear to venerate also the material things that represent Him. How fitting that Damascene, the great defender of the icons, should have benefitted, according to hagiographical and iconographical tradition, from a very material miracle worked through the intervention of Mary: the restoration of his severed hand.

iii. Mediaeval period

In the mediaeval period, I see three principal, new heresies: the denial of the Filioque, the denial of the real presence of our Lord in the Eucharist, and the denial of a visible hierarchy. The first of these, Photianism, or the denial of the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, emerges in the ninth century, even if we find hints of it earlier among the Nestorians. Among his other arguments in defence of the Filioque, St Thomas Aquinas affirms that without this eternal procession, the Church would not truly be Christ’s own. “Christ Himself, the Son of God,” he writes, “consecrates and seals the Church to Himself by the Holy Spirit as by His own character and seal.”⁷ May we not likewise say that the eternal procession is also necessary for us to understand how Mary, prototype of the Church, is also truly His own? Christ Himself, we may say, consecrates and seals Mary to Himself by the Holy Spirit as by His own character and seal.

Next comes the denial of the real presence, and Berengarius’s purely symbolic account of the Eucharist in the 11^th century. Pope St Gregory VII, in the profession of faith drawn up by the Synod of Rome in 1079 against this error, refers to the Blessed Virgin in defining the reality of our Lord’s presence in the sacrament: “After consecration, it is the true body of Christ that was born of the Virgin, and that, offered for the salvation of the world, hung upon the Cross.” The synod turns to Mary to emphasise the truth of Christ’s presence. Between the miracles of incarnation and transubstantiation there is so deep an analogy, as evoked by the custom of reciting the prologue to St John’s gospel at the end of the Roman Mass, that whoever believes whole-heartedly in the former will be as it were naturally inclined to believe in the latter too.

As for the recurring denials that troubled the end of the Middle Ages, of the very existence of a visible hierarchy in the Church, endowed with power from Christ independently of the merits of its occupants, we may perhaps refer to Mary’s spirit of obedience in submitting to the legal observances of the Old Testament, even when she was not strictly subject to them. Writing of Mary’s presenting herself before the priest on the fortieth day after Christ’s birth, St Thomas observes: “She wished to fulfil the observance of purification, not because she needed it, but on account of the precept of the Law”. Immaculate though she is, she submits herself to the priesthood of the Old Law. It is obvious that anyone who has meditated on her example will not be tempted to say, with the anarchist heresies, that authority and subjection within God’s people are determined by greater and lesser merits.

iv. Reformation period

We may turn now to the period since the end of the Middle Ages. What are the dominant heresies that the Master of the Household has permitted to grow among His wheat during these last centuries?

While the Reformation was in part a recrudescence of mediaeval errors, it was also surely the entrance within Christendom of some new spirit. How are we to characterise this spirit? It seems to me that the ‘specific difference’ of Protestantism, that which gives to it such unity as it possesses as well as a kind of tragic grandeur, is the attempt to deny true human causality in man’s relations with God. I say ‘the attempt’ to deny human causality, rather than the denial of it simpliciter, since it is clear that reality will constantly be forcing itself upon the Protestant theoretician, making it impossible for him to go all the way to the end in his denial. Thus, Luther himself had to allow to the human act of so-called fiducial faith a role in man’s justification.

Nevertheless, to this basic tendency, of denying human causality in man’s relations to God, we may, I think, trace classic Protestantism’s apparently disparate errors: justification without love (man does not have to detest his sins and turn to God with charity in order to be made right), double predestination (men are doomed to beatitude or woe independently of their own initiative), and sola scriptura (the whole of God’s word is to be found in texts that lie outside of us).

Here too, I should argue that our Lady is the antidote to a grave error. No one, after Jesus Himself, ever humbled himself more than Mary humbles herself before God. Yet no one shows more wonderfully than her how a pure creature does indeed co-operate with God. Ecce ancilla Domini … et Verbum caro factum est. Mary gave both her will and her substance to the Son of God. Some of the earliest versions of the Apostles’ Creed make this co-operation particularly striking by using the same preposition of both our Lady and of the Holy Ghost. The Son of God, they say, was born ex Spiritu Sancto et ex Maria Virgine. Again, one who meditates on this truth will be as it were immunised in advance against the Reformation spirit.

v. Modern times

We are approaching now more closely to our own times. What are the heresies that have troubled God’s people since Protestantism began to lose its spiritual momentum? Once again, I see three principal errors: rationalism, materialism, and modernism.

Rationalism denies that the Christian religion contains mysteries in the proper sense. In the famous phrase of Immanuel Kant, it seeks to confine “religion within the limits of reason alone”. Entering within the Church, rationalism sought to establish Catholic dogmas as necessary consequences of what reason can know about ‘spirit’ and ‘nature’. In this way, of course, faith loses its proper dignity, which is to be an assent, based simply on the truthfulness of God, to whatever God has revealed, and not to be the acceptance of the conclusions of a philosophical system.

Now, the rationalist theologian might think, albeit mistakenly, that he could prove by pure reason such dogmas as the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Fall, and the Redemption. He might even succeed in convincing his disciples that he had done so. But he could hardly suppose that he could demonstrate by a priori proofs that God had come into the world by a woman, indeed, by a mother. To quote St John Henry Newman once more:

If you would bring out distinctly and beyond mistake and evasion, the simple idea of the Catholic Church that God is man, could you do it better than by laying down in St. John’s words that “God became man”?; and again could you express this more emphatically and unequivocally than by declaring that He was born a man, or that He had a Mother? The world allows that God is man; the admission costs it little, for God is everywhere, and (as it may say) is everything; but it shrinks from confessing that God is the Son of Mary. It shrinks, for it is at once confronted with a severe fact, which violates and shatters its own unbelieving view of things; the revealed doctrine forthwith takes its true shape, and receives an historical reality; and the Almighty is introduced into His own world at a certain time and in a definite way.⁸

In other words the divine maternity, as it overthrew Nestorianism in the fifth century, must overthrow rationalism in the nineteenth. This is what Newman’s contemporary, the English Catholic poet Coventry Patmore, doubtless had in mind when he called Mary “our only Saviour from an abstract Christ”.⁹

So much for rationalism. Materialism, however, has wrought more havoc within mankind and therefore within the Church. We may say that the imaginations of men in the 19^th and early 20^th century were haunted by the fear that all reality could be explained as matter in motion, governed by inexorable laws. If I am not mistaken, we can find the echo of such fears even in the ‘dark night’ of Therese of Lisieux. Taking pity on weak human minds, our Lord placed His mother, like a sign in the heavens, to be a remedy against this confusion too. For the period of materialism was also the period of the multiplication of Marian apparitions: of La Salette, Lourdes, and Fatima. But if Mary can pass from heaven to earth and back again, as simply as we may walk into a room, why should we fear that our scientific instruments show us all that exists? And who will feel imprisoned by the inexorable laws of nature, who hears or reads about the miracle of the Sun?

In particular, as Pope St Pius X pointed out in his encyclical letter of 1904, Ad diem illum laetissimum, the Blessed Virgin overthrows the materialists’ account of human origins. The pope notes that “the enemies of religion” tend to begin their attack on Christianity by denying the perfection of our first parents when they came from the hand of God, and hence by denying, like Pelagius though for very different reasons, the fall and original sin:

All this rejected [writes the pope], it is easy to understand that no place is left for Christ, for the Church, for grace or for anything that is above and beyond nature; in one word the whole edifice of faith is entirely undermined. But let the nations believe and confess that the Virgin Mary has been from the first moment of her conception preserved from all stain; and it is straightway necessary that they should admit both original sin and the rehabilitation of the human race by Jesus Christ.

He adds that by this doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, “rationalism and materialism are torn up by the roots and destroyed.”

I should add that our custom of calling Mary ‘the new Eve’ also helps Catholics to continue to believe in the reality of our two first parents, while belief in her virginity helps to preserve belief in their special creation. Thus, echoing a common patristic theme, St Thomas Aquinas writes in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, that as Adam was formed from the earth without intercourse, so was the body of Christ from the Virgin.¹⁰

The mention of St Pius X brings us to our final heresy: modernism. While this error, like Protestantism, has much in common with errors that came before, it seems also, like Protestantism, to have introduced a new spirit within what remained of Christendom. How shall we characterise this spirit? It is, I think, the rejection of the very idea of faith itself as the acceptance of propositions communicated to us by God. Whereas the Catholic accepts that faith is, in the words of the anti-modernist oath, “a real assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source, [an assent] by which we believe to be true that which has been said, attested to and revealed by a personal God”, the modernist, says Pius X, makes faith into, “a blind sense of religion, bursting up from the hidden places of the subconscious”: what today we might call “an experience of transcendence”. On this view, dogmas are only an attempt, worthy perhaps but inevitably flawed, to record such experiences and to evoke them again in ourselves and in other people.

It is not hard to see why in his encyclical letter Pascendi, the same pope referred to modernism as a synthesis of all heresies. Even if the dogmas remain externally intact, the modernist voids them of all definite content. It is as if all the bottles in St Epiphanius’s medicine chest had been secretly filled with unknown liquids, while retaining the same labels as before.

How is our Lady a remedy for this heresy? She is the archetype of all who receive divine revelation from without. When she first appears in the gospel, it is as one who hears the word of God from an external source, that is, from St Gabriel, and who responds to it in faith. She believes all the propositions communicated to her by God through His angelic messenger, and therefore, as St Elizabeth says, she is blessed.

It is not surprising, finally, that the pope who first spoke of this synthesis of all heresies should also be the pope who, to my knowledge, first invoked our Lady in a letter written to all the bishops as destroyer of all heresies. At the end of Pascendi, he prays thus for his brethren in the episcopate: “May Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, be with you by His power; and may the Immaculate Virgin, the destroyer of all heresies, cunctarum haeresum interemptrix, be with you by her prayers and aid”.

1. Quoted in Manfred Hauke, Introduction to Mariology (CUA, 2021), 4-5.

2. PG 77:992

3. Letter 28, PL 54:757.

4. Panarion 78.12.5

5. Theologia Mariana 1122.https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mz3ygRnoyjUC&pg=PA467&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

6. https://isidore.co/CalibreLibrary/McNabb,%20Vincent,%20O.P_/Akathist_%20An%20Ancient%20Hymn%20to%20Our%20Lady%20(10289)/

7. Contra errores Graecorum, 2.32.

8. ‘The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son’, discourse 17 in Discourses to Mixed Congregations.

9. The Child’s Purchase’, in Songs of the Unknown Eros.

10. Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, cap. 5, lect. 4.

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Introduction

It is a source of profound joy for me to deliver the opening address at this important International Conference on the theme “The Most Blessed Virgin Mary in Dogma and Devotion: Theological and Historical Contributions.” Together with you, I express my deep gratitude to those who organized the conference and to those who made it possible. To begin the conference, I would like to offer a reflection on the theme: “Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Kingdom of Christ the King: The Mission of the Co-Redemptrix and the Co-Redeemers.”

Right at the beginning of her first apparition to Saint Juan Diego, Our Lady of Guadalupe identified herself with these words: “Know, my little and most beloved son, that I am the most perfect and ever-Virgin Holy Mary, the Mother of the most true and only God, of Him who is the author of life, the Creator of mankind, of Him in whom all things subsist, the Lord of heaven, and the Master of the earth” (1).

Her apparitions to Saint Juan Diego, from December 9 to 12, 1531, can be described as the manifestation of Christ, her Divine Son, as King of Heaven and Earth, the One who restores the right order and peace, through whom and for whom God created the world and, above all, humankind—male and female.

In her miraculously created and preserved image, Our Lady of Guadalupe is the “woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head” (2) whom Saint John, the Apostle and Evangelist, saw in his vision of Our Lord’s definitive victory over sin and death. Our Lady of Guadalupe is pregnant with the “male child” (3) who is truly the King of Heaven and Earth, the One who conquers Satan and his hosts, so that, despite their fierce and wicked rebellion, they may never prevail over the Church or over the souls of those who live in Christ. (4) The vocation and mission of every Christian therefore consist, according to the words of St. Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians, in “bringing all things—those in heaven and those on earth—back to Christ, the one Head”. (5) Our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son made flesh, is the one and only Redeemer; but God the Father, in sending His only-begotten Son in human flesh to redeem the world, willed the collaboration of humanity in the work of redemption, beginning with the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, participated in a wholly unique way in the Mystery of faith, in the Mystery of the redemptive Incarnation, and is rightly called Co-Redemptrix.

In the same way, to the extent that we unite our hearts, together with her Immaculate Heart, to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, we participate in Christ’s salvific mission. And we can rightly be called co-redeemers. In the words of Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist, we are called to be “co-workers for the truth” in Christ. (6) Our Lord Himself clarifies the intimacy of our relationship with Him when He declares: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” (7)

In addressing this International Conference on the Blessed Virgin Mary in Dogma and Devotion, I wish to present the unique participation in the mission of Christ the King—the mission of the Redemptive Incarnation—that belongs to the Virgin Mother of God as Co-Redemptrix, and our participation in that same mission as co-redeemers.The apparitions of the Virgin Mother of God on the hill of Tepeyac, in what is now Mexico City, help us, in a special way, to understand her mission and our corresponding one. In fact, the children of Our Lady of Mexico—the guadalupanos and guadalupanas—have always understood their mission in the world as service to Christ the King under the maternal care of His Mother, whom He gave us as our Mother as He died on the cross for our eternal salvation. (8)

Blessed Miguel Pro wrote two short prayers on the wall of the prison where he was held before being martyred on November 23, 1927, by a firing squad during the bloody persecution of the Church in Mexico: “¡Viva Cristo Rey! Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!” (Long live Christ the King! Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!). (9) Saint José Sánchez del Río, too, while being cruelly tortured and killed by a firing squad on February 10, 1928, repeatedly exclaimed: “Long live Christ the King! Long live Saint Mary of Guadalupe!” (Long live Christ the King! Long live Saint Mary of Guadalupe!). (10)

Just as the Virgin Mother of God, at the wedding at Cana, led the servants to her divine Son to remedy their great distress, telling them, “Do whatever he tells you”, (11) so she accompanied these heroes of the faith as they offered their lives in fulfillment of God’s will. In the same way, she draws our hearts to her Immaculate Heart, leading us to give them totally to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, even to the point of shedding our blood together with Him for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

The Doctrine of Co-Redemption

The Virgin Mary’s collaboration in Christ’s work of redemption has two aspects that, over time, theologians have elucidated by distinguishing between objective and subjective redemption. Monsignor Arthur B. Calkins, author of numerous in-depth writings on the title of “Co-Redemptrix,” explains this distinction:

“Traditionally, theologians have distinguished between Mary’s unique collaboration in redemption, which took place in actu primo, and the application of the graces of redemption to individual persons, which takes place in actu secundo. Redemption in actu primo, or ‘objective redemption’—that is, the ascending phase of redemption—can be defined as the acquisition of universal salvation through the sacrifice willed by God to reconcile the world to Himself. Redemption in actu secundo, also called ‘subjective redemption,’ or the descending phase of redemption, or even the mediation of grace, can be defined as the application of the fruits of redemption to individual persons through the mediation willed by God. It has consistently been held that the Blessed Virgin Mary participates in both of these phases of the work of redemption, whereas all other Christians can participate in the application of the graces of redemption to specific persons and situations. Therefore, we can all be co-redeemers in actu secundo. (12)

Holiness of life, in fact, is participation in the salvific work of Christ, who alone is our salvation. St. Paul affirms the truth of our participation in Christ’s redemptive work in his Letter to the Colossians. Speaking of his own sufferings, he understands that they must be united to the Passion and Death of Christ: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church. Of this I have become a minister, according to the commission God has given me for you, to fulfill the word of God—the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints”. (13)

It is not that anything is lacking in Christ’s sufferings for our eternal salvation, but his life within us—the life of grace—must reach maturity in us, especially through the union of our sufferings with his Passion and Death.

In recent decades, a debate has taken place within the Church regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary’s active collaboration in the work of Redemption. The question is: in what sense is the Blessed Virgin Mary the New Eve, the companion of Jesus, the New Adam (cf. Rom 5:12–21; 1 Cor 15:22, 45)? For over five hundred years, the term “Co-Redemptrix” has been used to express the idea that Mary, while not equal to Jesus—but rather a creature totally dependent on Him, secondary and subordinate to Him—nevertheless united herself with Him and joined Him in offering Him to the Father for our salvation on Calvary.

The appropriateness of this title was the subject of heated debate during the drafting of the eighth chapter of Lumen Gentium, which contains the Second Vatican Council’s fundamental teaching on the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the end, the Council clearly taught Mary’s active collaboration in the work of Redemption in nos. 56–58 and 60–62 of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, but did not use the term “Co-Redemptrix” for fear that it might be misunderstood by non-Catholics.

Our Lady’s mediation of grace derives from her role as Co-Redemptrix. The term “Mediatrix” was used only once in no. 62 of Lumen Gentium, with the appropriate clarification that “this, however, must be understood in such a way that nothing is detracted from or added to the dignity and efficacy of Christ, the one Mediator”. (14) She is a Mediator together with her divine Son, the Mediator, as had been taught in very clear terms by the popes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as by the post-conciliar popes. Part of the difficulty lies in the meaning that the term “Co-Redemptrix” can take on when translated into certain modern languages. The English term “Co-Redemptrix” can refer to a joint actor, but it can also mean someone who collaborates in a work that is primarily and essentially that of another. Monsignor Arthur Burton Calkins addresses the potential confusion regarding the meaning of “Co-Redemptrix,” clearly stating that “[i]n the Latin language, from which the term ‘Co-Redemptrix’ derives, the meaning is nevertheless always that Mary’s cooperation or collaboration in redemption is secondary, subordinate, and dependent on that of Christ—and yet, despite all this, something that God ‘freely chose to accept… as a non-essential, yet wonderfully welcome part of that one great price’ paid by His Son for the redemption of the world”. (15)

In his General Audience on October 25, 1995, Pope Saint John Paul II described how, throughout history, the Church has expressed ever more clearly the truth regarding the participation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in Christ’s work of redemption:

“1. By stating that ‘the Virgin Mary is recognized and honored as the true Mother of God, Mother of the Redeemer’ (Lumen Gentium, 53), the Council draws attention to the connection between Mary’s motherhood and redemption. After becoming aware of Mary’s maternal role—venerated in the doctrine and worship of the early centuries as the virginal Mother of Jesus Christ and therefore Mother of God—the Church’s piety and theological reflection in the Middle Ages delved deeper into her collaboration in the Savior’s work.

This delay can be explained by the fact that the efforts of the Church Fathers and the early ecumenical councils, centered as they were on the mystery of Christ’s identity, necessarily left other aspects of the dogma in the shadows. It was only gradually that revealed truth could be articulated in all its richness. Over the centuries, Mariology would always be guided by Christology. Mary’s very divine motherhood was proclaimed at the Council of Ephesus primarily to affirm the personal unity of Christ. The same is true of the deepening understanding of Mary’s presence in the history of salvation.

2. At the end of the second century, Saint Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, already highlighted Mary’s contribution to the work of salvation. He understood the significance of Mary’s consent at the moment of the Annunciation, recognizing in the obedience and faith of the Virgin of Nazareth toward the angel’s message the perfect antithesis to Eve’s disobedience and unbelief, with a beneficial effect on the destiny of humanity.

In fact, just as Eve brought about death, so Mary, through her “yes,” became the “cause of salvation” for herself and for all humanity (cf. Haer Adv. 3. 22, 4; SC 211, 441). However, this assertion was not systematically or consistently developed by the other Church Fathers.This doctrine, however, was systematically elaborated for the first time at the end of the tenth century in the “Life of Mary” by a Byzantine monk, John the Geometer. Here, Mary is united to Christ in the entire work of redemption, participating—according to the divine plan—in the Cross and suffering for our salvation. She remained united to her Son “in every action, attitude, and will” (Life of Mary, Bol. 196, f. 122v.)

Mary’s association with Jesus’ salvific work takes place through her motherly love—a love animated by grace, which grants her a superior strength: the one most free from passion proves to be the most compassionate (cf. Life of Mary, Bol. 196, f. 123 v.).3. In the West, St. Bernard, who died in 1153, addressing Mary, comments on the presentation of Jesus in the temple as follows: “Offer your Son, most holy Virgin, and present to the Lord the fruit of your womb. For our reconciliation with all, offer the holy sacrifice, pleasing to God” (Sermo 3 in Purif., 2, PL 183, 370).

A disciple and friend of St. Bernard, Arnold of Chartres, highlights in particular Mary’s offering in the sacrifice of Calvary. He distinguishes on the Cross “two altars: one in Mary’s heart, the other in Christ’s body. “Christ offered up his flesh; Mary, her soul.” Mary offers herself spiritually in profound communion with Christ and intercedes for the salvation of the world: “What the Mother asks, the Son approves; the Father grants” (De septem verbis Domini in cruce, 3: PL 189, 1694).From this time onward, other authors expounded the doctrine of Mary’s special cooperation in the redemptive sacrifice”. (16)

As Saint Pope John Paul II explains, the use of the term “Co-Redemptrix” adds nothing new to the Church’s teaching, but rather coherently develops the expression of what the Church has always taught.In recent years, there has been a strong movement in favor of recognizing Mary’s role as Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate through a solemn papal definition. On the occasion of the Mariological and Marian Congresses held in Częstochowa, Poland, in August 1996, a commission was convened for a brief period to advise the Holy See on this matter. One of its recommendations was that further studies were necessary. (17) Such studies continue to be conducted by numerous competent theologians.Our Lady’s role as Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of all graces derives from her nature as our spiritual mother, to whom we consecrate ourselves in order to belong ever more fully to Jesus.

Two of the greatest modern masters of Marian consecration, St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673–1716) and St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe (1894–1941), base their teaching on consecration to Mary explicitly on the mediation of the graces of Redemption that Mary exercises on our behalf. Living in union with Mary is a fundamental key to growing in knowledge and love of Jesus. She never draws us to herself for her own sake, but always to bring us ever closer to Jesus. This is how St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort prayed: Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Præbe mihi cor tuum, Maria—“I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours; I receive you as my all. O Mary, give me your heart.” (18) His prayer inspired the motto on St. John Paul II’s papal coat of arms.

Mary, Co-Redemptrix, in Sacred Scripture

The truth of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s unique participation in the work of Redemption is foreshadowed in the first promise of salvation made by the Lord at the time of our first parents’ sin. Addressing the serpent that had succeeded in tempting Eve, Our Lord declared: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers; she will crush your head, and you will strike her heel”. (19)

The Protoevangelium, the first Gospel, as it is rightly called, highlights that the work of salvation will involve a woman whose offspring will crush the head of the serpent, of Satan, and of his hosts. In other words, a woman will cooperate in the work of salvation in a singular—indeed, unique—way. Our Lord renewed the promise of salvation through the words of the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel”. (20)

Commenting on the texts of the Protoevangelium and the prophet Isaiah, the Second Vatican Council declared:

“The books of the Old and New Testaments and the venerable tradition show ever more clearly the role of the Savior’s mother in the economy of salvation and, so to speak, present her to our contemplation. The books of the Old Testament describe the history of salvation, in which the coming of Christ into the world is gradually being prepared. These early documents, as they are read in the Church and understood in the light of the subsequent and full revelation, gradually bring into ever clearer focus the figure of a woman: the Mother of the Redeemer. In this light, she is already prophetically foreshadowed in the promise made to our first parents, who had fallen into sin, concerning the victory over the serpent (cf. Gen 3:15) .

Likewise, it is she, the Virgin, who will conceive and give birth to a Son, whose name will be Emmanuel (cf. Is 7:14; Mt 1:22–23). She stands out among the humble and the poor of the Lord who trustingly await and receive salvation from him. And finally, with her—the daughter of Zion par excellence—after the long wait for the promise, the fullness of time is realized and the new “economy” is established, when the Son of God assumed human nature from her to free humanity from sin through the mysteries of his flesh. (21)

The liberation of humanity from sin is accomplished by God, the Son incarnate through the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Virgin Mary cooperates in a wholly singular—indeed, unique—way in the work of Redemption, according to God’s plan.

We find the full expression of the Virgin Mary’s identity in the work of the redemptive Incarnation. Father Ignace de la Potterie illustrates the mediation of the Virgin Mother of God in the work of Redemption by analyzing the Prologue of the Gospel according to Saint John and the account of the Annunciation in the Gospel according to Saint Luke. (22)

Mary’s Heart was, according to God’s eternal plan, conceived without the stain of original sin, so that her womb might be the worthy tabernacle in which God the Son would come to dwell and from which He would be born into the family of Mary and Joseph, her true spouse and the virginal father of Jesus. Her Immaculate Heart remains forever ready to lead people, with maternal love, to the Heart of her Divine Son with that instruction she first gave at the wedding at Cana: “Whatever he tells you, do it”. (23)

In his Letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul expresses the truth of Mary’s unique cooperation in the Mystery of the redemptive Incarnation in relation to our own call to be “co-workers [with Christ] in the truth” (24): “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And that you are sons is proven by the fact that God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, who cries out, ‘Abba! Father!’”. (25)

It is through the mediation of the Virgin Mary—her co-redemptive mission in the redemptive Incarnation of her Son—that we are heirs to eternal life, called to the high dignity of following Christ on the way of the Cross. (26)

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Co-Redemptrix

The apparitions and message of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the hill of Tepeyac, in present-day Mexico City, from December 9 to 12, 1531, are a powerful expression of her singular—indeed, unique—participation in the redemptive Incarnation, in actu primo — that is, in the work by which God the Son, incarnate, accomplished our salvation through His Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension — and in actu secundo — that is, in the realization of His salvific work in the souls of many, in every time and place, who come to life in Him through Baptism and live in Him in the Church, His mystical Body.

It can be said, in fact, that all the apparitions of the Virgin Mother of God are a manifestation of her unique relationship with God the Son, her Divine Son, through whom she became Co-Redemptrix, as well as an expression of her mission as Co-Redemptrix in every time and place until the end of time. Every Marian apparition is the work of Christ, assisted—as she has been since the moment of her virginal conception—by his Mother.

Mary declares her identity as Co-Redemptrix in actu primo from the very first moment of her apparitions to Saint Juan Diego. On December 9, 1531, Saint Juan Diego was on his way to Tlatelolco to receive catechetical instruction from the Franciscan friars when, on the hill of Tepeyac, he had an otherworldly, heavenly experience: from the singing of the birds to the glorious apparition of Our Lady, amid stones and plants transformed so as to resemble precious jewels.

The account of the apparition contained in the Nican Mopohua — written by Juan Diego’s good and learned friend, Antonio Valeriano, based on Juan Diego’s firsthand account — indicates that Juan Diego recognized the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God. The Virgin Mary addressed Juan Diego in an extremely affectionate and maternal manner, asking him where he was going, and he replied: “My most beloved Lady and Queen, I wish to go to your little house in México Tlatilolco to receive the religious instruction given to us there by our priests, who are the living image of Our Lord”. (27)

The Virgin Mary then declared: “Know, my beloved little son, that I am the perfect and ever-Virgin Holy Mary, the Mother of the most true and only God, of Him who is the author of life, the Creator of mankind, of Him in whom all things subsist, the Lord of heaven, the Master of the earth”. (28) These words wonderfully express the mystery of Our Lady’s perpetual Virginity and divine Motherhood, through which she participates, in a wholly singular, indeed unique, way, in the redemptive work of her divine Son. Our Lady identifies herself both as the ever-Virgin and as the Mother of God the Son. She declares her participation in the work of Redemption in actu primo.

In other words, she makes clear that our relationship with God the Father, who has redeemed us through the Incarnation of God the Son, places us in a filial relationship with her, the Mother of God the Son made flesh. We are adopted sons and daughters of God in his only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore we share his Mother with him, just as he said to Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist, as he was dying on the cross. (29)

Saint John, the Apostle and Evangelist, represented the Apostles and the entire flock that Christ had entrusted to the pastoral care of the Apostles—to his own pastoral care. Our relationship with Our Lady originates precisely in the very act of our Redemption through Christ’s death on the Cross.Our Lady, after identifying herself as Co-Redemptrix in actu primo before Saint Juan Diego, then expresses her mission as Co-Redemptrix in actu secundo.

Thus she clarifies the reason for her apparition:

“I ardently desire that my little sacred house be built in this place, that a temple be erected for me, in which I wish to reveal Him, make Him manifest, and give Him to the people through my love, my compassion, my help, and my protection; for, in truth, I am your merciful Mother: yours, of all who dwell on this earth, and of all those who love me, invoke me, seek me, and place all their trust in me. Here I will hear your weeping and your lamentations. I will take to heart and heal all your many sorrows, your miseries, and your pains to provide a remedy for them. And so that what my merciful love desires may be fulfilled, go to the bishop’s palace in Mexico City and tell him that I am sending you to reveal to him what I desire—namely, that he provide me with a home here, erecting a temple for me at the foot of this hill. You will tell him everything you have seen and marveled at, and everything you have heard. Be assured that I will be very grateful to you and will reward you; for this I will enrich you and glorify you. Your efforts and the service you render to me by going to plead my cause will be worthily rewarded. Now that you have heard my word, my beloved little son, go and carry out this mission!.” (30)

Our Lady’s words reveal her unique and irreplaceable role in the work of our salvation, according to God’s plan.In the second act, the Blessed Virgin Mary continues to be the privileged instrument of divine grace in the Church, just as she was the first tabernacle in which God the Son came to dwell, when He united our human nature to His divine nature in her womb through the work of the Holy Spirit.

On the hill of Tepeyac, she appeared to Saint Juan Diego to reveal the love and mercy of God toward all people, to reveal the inviolable dignity of human life—created in the image and likeness of God and saved from sin and death through the redemptive Incarnation of God the Son. In the words she addressed to Saint Juan Diego—when he feared for the life of his uncle Juan Bernardino and postponed the his appointment with Our Lady so that he could bring a priest to hear his uncle’s confession before he died, Our Lady expressed her constant presence among us in the Church as the Virgin Mother of God—who is also the Mother of divine grace, our Mother—drawing us ever more intimately into communion with her divine Son.

She said to Saint Juan Diego:

“Listen, my son, take this to heart. Do not be afraid or distressed. Let not your heart be troubled, and do not worry about this or any other illness. Am I not here, I who am your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the fold of my mantle, in the embrace of my arms? What more do you want? Nothing should distress or trouble you. Do not worry about your uncle’s illness, for he will not die for now. Know with certainty, rather, that he is already perfectly healed”. (31)

Our Lady’s words are not mere figures of speech. On the contrary, they reflect her ongoing mission in the Church—a unique mission in which she asked Saint Juan Diego to participate.The miraculous imprint of her image on the tilma, St. Juan Diego’s cloak, is a marvelous sign of her participation in the work of Redemption, accomplished by her divine Son. In confirming his mission to the bishop through the sign of the miraculous blooming of roses in the middle of winter, on a rocky hill where only grass and thorny bushes grew, God gave further confirmation that He has not granted in any other apparition of Our Lady.

Let us listen once more to the account of St. Juan Diego’s presentation of the sign of the roses to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga:

“Then he opened his white ayate, in which the gathered flowers were placed, and as soon as they scattered onto the ground, the beloved Image of the most perfect Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the form and figure in which we see her today, just as she is preserved in her beloved home, in the temple erected at the foot of Tepeyac and which we invoke under the title of Guadalupe. Upon seeing this, the bishop and all those present fell to their knees, deeply astonished and filled with awe. Then they rose to get a better look at her, and their faces were filled with sadness and grief. They gazed upon her not out of curiosity, but with sincere hearts... The bishop, with tears in his eyes and a heavy heart, prayed to her and asked her forgiveness for not having been quick to accept her message and carry out her will. Remaining on his feet, he approached Juan Diego, removed the tilma from his neck—on which the Image of the Heavenly Lady had been imprinted—and immediately went to place it in his chapel. Juan Diego spent another day at the bishop’s house, where he was kept as a guest. The next day, the bishop said to him: ‘Let us go and see the place where the Heavenly Lady wishes a temple to be built for her.’ Meanwhile, they immediately began to gather people to erect it” (32).

In a very short time, the chapel was built, and Bishop Juan de Zumárraga kept the sacred tilma there. The Nican Mopohua concludes with these words: “The bishop, meanwhile, carried the beloved Image of the Heavenly Lady to the cathedral. He then removed it from its private chapel, where it had been kept, so that all the people might admire and venerate it. Absolutely everyone in the city was deeply moved when they went to admire and pray before the precious Image. They recognized its supernatural origin. They presented their supplications to her. They were amazed at the miraculous way in which it had appeared; indeed, the precious Image was not painted by any man on earth”. (33)

The constant presence of the Mother of God, the Mother of Divine Grace, to those who went on pilgrimage to the holy site where the sacred tilma was kept, was and still is of indescribable efficacy.

The Virgin of Guadalupe has brought so many souls back to life in Christ through baptism and has guided so many baptized people to abandon their sinful ways and follow the way of Christ, who alone is our salvation. Mary, the Co-Redemptrix, always instructs us, drawing us to participate in the work of the Redemptive Incarnation in actu secundo, according to our vocation in life and the talents God has given us.

As Co-Redemptrix, she is first among the disciples of her divine Son; she participates in His salvific work in actu primo et in actu secundo, but she teaches all those who are God’s adopted sons and daughters in His only-begotten Son through baptism that they, too, must do everything in their power to serve Christ, to be His “co-workers in the truth”. (34)

When Saint Juan Diego doubted his own ability to serve as Our Lady’s messenger, suggesting that she choose someone more noble and capable, Our Lady replied:

“Listen, my beloved little son. There are many of my faithful servants to whom I could entrust the task of carrying my message. But it is absolutely necessary that you, and no one else, go, and that through your mediation my desire be fulfilled and my will be carried out. Therefore, I earnestly beg you, my beloved little son—indeed, I command you—to present yourself again tomorrow to the bishop. You will let him know once more what I desire, so that he may build for me the temple I am asking for, and repeat to him that it is I myself, the ever-Virgin Holy Mary, the Mother of God, who am sending you”. (35)

Every time we come on pilgrimage to the holy site of Our Lady of Guadalupe, she confirms us in our mission as her messengers, heralds, and instruments of God’s saving love and mercy. She unites our hearts more fully to her Immaculate Heart, so that they may rest ever more firmly and fully in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, where they are purified of sin and set ablaze with divine love. She speaks to us as she spoke to Saint Juan Diego: “Am I not here, I who am your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the fold of my mantle, in the embrace of my arms? What more do you want?”. (36)

Especially in these troubled and unsettling times we are experiencing in the Church, we need to turn to our heavenly Mother and be strengthened in our fidelity to her divine Son, so that we may remain with him in the Church, caring for every part of his Kingdom—whether small or great—with all our heart, a heart united to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and thus belonging entirely to his Sacred Heart.

I hope this brief presentation has shown you how the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the hill of Tepeyac in 1531 is one of the most beautiful and eloquent manifestations and expressions of the truth of her singular—indeed, unique—participation in the salvific work of her Divine Son, and of the truth of the doctrine of her title as Co-Redemptrix, when correctly understood.

At the same time, I hope it has reminded all of us of our call to be, together with the Virgin of Guadalupe, participants in the work of the redemptive Incarnation. May we, too, say with Saint Paul to our brothers and sisters in the Church: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, which is the Church”. (37)

Conclusion

Although the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council did not formulate a dogmatic definition, it certainly taught, in some way, the truth of Coredemption, as I have indicated. In this regard, we should be careful that the hesitation arising from a misunderstanding of the term “Co-Redemptrix” does not lead to a weakening of the teaching on Co-Redemption, which applies, in a unique way, to the Blessed Virgin Mary and, in a common way, to all the baptized. I hope that my exposition has clarified the importance of the teaching on Co-Redemption for our daily life in Christ.

I conclude with a reflection by Father Jean Galot, S.J., taken from an article he wrote on the controversies and doctrinal issues related to the title of Co-Redemptrix:

“Some have accused the Marian privileges of creating a divide between the Mother of Jesus and us; in reality, those privileges are intended, in the divine plan, to bring Mary closer to humanity in order to foster the outpouring of more abundant grace. Although unique in character and unparalleled in degree, Mary’s cooperation in redemption invites us to become more keenly aware of our mission and our responsibility in a world in need of salvation. If Mary could not be called Co-Redemptrix, then Christians, too, could not be considered co-redeemers. “The condition of the entire Church in its co-redemptive mission is illuminated by the condition of Mary, the first model of all redemption”. (38)

Thank you for your kind attention. May God bless you, and may Our Lady of Guadalupe always keep you in her maternal care.

Notes:

1 “Know this, be certain of this, my son, my youngest son, that I am truly the perfect and ever-Virgin Holy Mary, who has the honor of being the Mother of the most true God through whom we live, the Creator of all people, the Lord of closeness and immediacy, the Lord of heaven, the Lord of the earth.” Carl A. Anderson and Eduardo Chávez, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Mother of the Civilization of Love, Random House Mondadori, Mexico City 2010, p. 214, n. 26.

2 Rev 12:1.

3 Rev 12:5.

4 Cf. Mt 16:18.

5 Eph 1:10.

6 3 Jn 8.

7 Lk 9:23. Cf. Mt 16:24; Mk 8:34.

8 Cf. Jn 19:26–27.

9 Cf. Antonio Dragón, Vida íntima del Padre Pro, trans. Rafael Martínez del Campo, 6th ed., Obra Nacional de la Buena Prensa, A.C., Mexico City 1993, p. 234.

10 Cf. Fidel González Fernández, José Sánchez del Río: The Young Martyr Who Gave His Life for the Faith, ed. Federica Picchi Roncali, Dominus Production Edizioni, Florence 2016, pp. 129–133.

11 Jn 2:5.

12 Arthur Burton Calkins, “The Mystery of Mary Coredemptrix in the Papal Magisterium,” in Mary Co-Redemptrix: Doctrinal Issues Today, Queenship Publishing Company, Goleta, CA 2002, p. 45.

13 Col 1:24–26.

14 “…so that nothing may be detracted from or added to the dignity and efficacy of Christ, the one Mediator.” Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 57 (1965) 63, n. 62.

15 Calkins, p. 30.

16 https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/audiences/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_19951025.html

17 Cf. L’Osservatore Romano, June 4, 1997, 10–11.

18 Cf. Karol Wojtyła—John Paul II, Gift and Mystery: Diary of a Priest, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City 2011, p. 44.

19 Gen 3:15.

20 Isa 7:14.

21 “The Sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and the venerable Tradition increasingly and more clearly reveal the role of the Mother of the Savior in the economy of salvation and present it for our contemplation. The books of the Old Testament, indeed, describe the history of salvation, through which Christ’s coming into the world is gradually prepared. These early writings, when read within the Church and understood in the light of the later and full revelation, bring to light, step by step, the figure of the woman, the Mother of the Redeemer. In this light, she is already prophetically foreshadowed in the promise—given to our first parents after they had fallen into sin—of victory over the serpent (cf. Gen. 3:15). Likewise, she is the Virgin who will conceive and give birth to a Son, whose name will be called Emmanuel (cf. Isa. 7:14; cf. Micah 5: 2–3. — Matt. 1:22–23). She excels among the humble and poor of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from Him. When she, the exalted Daughter of Zion, after a long wait for the promise, the fullness of time comes and a new economy is established, when the Son of God assumed human nature from her, so that through the mysteries of His flesh He might free humanity from sin” LG, 55.

22 Cf. Ignace de la Potterie, “The Mediation of the Mother of Jesus at the Incarnation: An Exegetical Study,” trans. Salwa Hamati, in Mary Coredemptrix Mediatrix Advocate, Theological Foundations: Towards a Papal Definition?, edited by Mark I. Miravalle, Queenship Publishing, Santa Barbara, CA 1995, pp. 173–190.

23 Jn 2:5.

24 3 Jn 8.

25 Gal 4:4–7.

26 Cf. Lk 9:23.

27 “My Lady, my Queen, my Little Girl, I will arrive there, at your venerable house in Tlatelolco, Mexico, to follow the things of God that are given to us and taught to us by those who are the images of the Lord, Our Lord, our priests.” “Appendix A, El Nican Mopohua,” Carl A. Anderson and Eduardo Chávez, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love, trans. Gerardo Hernández Clark, Random House Mondadori, Mexico City 2010, p. 214, n. 24 [NM]. Italian translation, *https://www.latheotokos.it/programmi/guadalupe/nican_mopohua.htm*.

28 “Know this, be certain of this, my son, my youngest son, that I am truly the perfect, ever-Virgin Holy Mary, who has the honor of being the Mother of the most true God through whom we live, the Creator of all people, the Lord of nearness and immediacy, the Lord of heaven, the Lord of earth.” Ibid., p. 214, n. 26.

29 Jn 19:25–27.

30 “I very much want, I very much desire, that they build my little sacred house here, where I will reveal Him, exalt Him by making Him known, and offer Him to the people with all my personal love—Him who is my compassionate gaze, Him who is my help, Him who is my salvation. For, truly, I take pride in being your compassionate mother—yours and that of all people who live together on this earth, and also of all other diverse lineages of people—those who love me; those who call upon me; those who seek me; those who trust in me. For there, truly, I will hear their cries, their sorrow, to remedy and heal all their various sorrows, their miseries, and their pains. And to carry out what my compassionate and merciful gaze intends, go to the palace of the Bishop of Mexico, and tell him that I am sending you, so that you may reveal to him how much I desire that he provide me with a home here and erect my temple on the plain; you will tell him everything—all that you have seen and admired, and all that you have heard. And rest assured that I will be very grateful and will repay you; for this, in truth, I will enrich you and glorify you; and you will deserve much from me in return for your toil and your service as you go to request the matter for which I am sending you. You have already heard, my youngest son, my encouragement, my word; go, do what is required of you.” NM, p. 214, nos. 26–37.

31 “Listen, take this to heart, my youngest son: what frightened you, what afflicted you, is nothing; let not your face or your heart be troubled; do not fear this illness or any other illness, nor anything painful or distressing. Am I not here, I who have the honor of being your mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the fold of my cloak, in the crook of my arms? Do you perhaps need anything else? Let nothing else afflict you or trouble you; let your uncle’s illness not distress you, for he will not die from it for now—be assured that he has already been healed.” NM, p. 220, nos. 118–120.

32 “And then she spread out her white tilma, in the fold of which were the flowers. And as all the varied flowers—like those of Castile—fell to the ground, there on her tilma a sign appeared: the Beloved Image of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the form and figure in which she now appears, where she is now preserved in her beloved little house, in her sacred little house on Tepeyácac, which is called Guadalupe. And as soon as the Governing Bishop and all those present beheld her, they knelt down, admired her greatly, stood up to look at her, were deeply moved, and their hearts were troubled, as if their hearts and thoughts were lifted up. And the Governing Bishop, with tears and sorrow, implored her, asking her forgiveness for not having carried out her venerable will, her venerable counsel, her venerable word. And the Bishop rose, untied from his neck the garment—Juan Diego’s tilma—in which she had appeared, where the Heavenly Queen had become a venerable sign. And then he took it there and placed it in his oratory. And Juan Diego spent an entire day there in the Bishop’s house, as the Bishop had asked him to stay. And the next day, he said to him: ‘Come, let us go so that you may show where the venerable will of the Queen of Heaven is for her temple to be built.’ Immediately, orders were given to do so, to build it.” NM, pp. 223–224, nos. 181–193.

33 “And after the Bishop had kept it for some time, he transferred the precious, revered Image of the beloved Heavenly Maiden to the Main Church. He had it brought out of his palace, from the oratory where it was kept, so that everyone might see it and marvel at its beautiful Image. And absolutely everyone—the entire city, without a single person missing—was moved to the core when they went to contemplate and admire her precious image. They came to recognize her as something divine. They came to offer her their prayers. They marveled greatly at the miraculous way in which she had appeared, since absolutely no man on earth had painted her beloved image.” . NM, p. 225, nos. 212–218.

34 John 8.

35 “Listen, you, the least of my children: be assured that my servants and messengers are not few—those whom I charge to carry my breath, my word, so that they may carry out my will; but it is necessary that you, personally, go and plead, so that through your intercession my desire, my will, may be fulfilled and carried out. And I earnestly beg you, my youngest son, and I strictly command you, to go again tomorrow to see the bishop. And on my behalf, let him know—let him hear my will—so that he may build the sacred house I am asking of him. And so, tell him once more how I, personally, the Ever-Virgin Holy Mary—I, who am the Mother of God—am sending you as my messenger.” NM, p. 216, nos. 58–62.

36 “Am I not here, I who have the honor of being your mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the fold of my mantle, in the crook of my arms? Do you perhaps need anything else?” NM, p. 220, no. 119.

37 Col 1:24.

38 Jean Galot, Mary Co-Redemptrix: Controversies and Doctrinal Issues, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” Year 145 (1994), nos. 3459/3460, p. 216.

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The Pontiff landed in Paris early on Friday morning for a brief trip which will conclude on Monday evening. Its very existence points to the importance he placed on making the voyage. Leo’s diary was already too full and it was Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline – president of the French bishops’ conference – who lobbied the papal household to squeeze it into an already packed autumn calendar. Leo agreed and thus the trip began to take shape.

But it comes at a notably awkward time, just weeks after France legalised assisted suicide and euthanasia. Papal visits are normally timed to avoid the appearance of siding with any individual politician, such as just before or after an election. Such visits would also normally not take place so soon after the passing of legislation so directly aimed at attacking the Church’s moral teaching.

The visit was announced in May, prior to the bill being passed: but Leo had already raised the matter with President Emmanuel Macron during their private audience at the Vatican in April. Cdl. Aveline revealed recently that Leo’s arguments against the bill fell on deaf ears during that meeting.

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This set the tone for the trip. It was always to be a celebration of French Catholicism and an act of homage to two great centres for European Catholicism – Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Shrine of Lourdes. Now, in the context of the end of life bill, the papal voyage has had to also operate under the shadow of this direct attack by the state on the Church’s teaching.

So far, Leo has exceeded expectations on this front. The Holy See was polite but firm in refusing any offers by Macron for extra one-on-one time with the Pope, thus ensuring that Macron was not treated with any extra warmth than was strictly necessary for the visit. To do otherwise would have given the impression that the Church was not bothered by the bill’s legalisation. In response, Macron declared he would not attend any of the papal liturgies.

The first day of the French voyage would see Leo tested on the entire purpose of the trip, as he would meet privately with Macron, then address Macron and the full assembly of politicians, before soon meeting with the Catholic community in Notre-Dame. It was the day in which his role as Pope would be under scrutiny: both in the ‘external’ stance he presented to the world and the inward facing countenance on display for the Church.

Naturally, no details were given of the private encounter between Leo and Macron at the Elysée Palace. But his speech directly after their 50-minute conversation was forthright. As often happens during Leo’s foreign travels thus far, the speech to politicians was poignant, striking and largely well written.

The Pope praised France for its great history, and linked its prowess to the work of individual Catholics and the Church over centuries. France is great only insofar as it stays true to the spirit and ideals which made it that way, he said – namely Catholicism and the principle “that the world may have life.”

Indeed this phrase was repeated many times throughout his first speech of the trip, leaving the politicians in no doubt as to the Pope’s real message. Nor would Leo’s words have been lost on Macron, who sat on the same stage. In no uncertain terms, Leo emphasised the importance of protecting the sanctity of life at all ages, particularly in latter years: “I firmly reiterate that the protection of the right to life constitutes the indispensable foundation of every other human right.”

He further cautioned that technological advancements can aid man only when at the service of the good – another dig at the materialist society which pushes euthanasia and assisted suicide as the swift solution to troublesome old age.

The Pontiff also schooled Macron about the proper relationship between Church and state by using the president’s own words from a prior speech. The smartly dressed members of parliament leaving the glistening halls of the Elysée Palace were thus firmly informed that French Catholics are a blessing to the state, and that the nation itself is only great when it adheres to the Catholic values which made it that way.

Even stronger themes were employed by Leo when he addressed the UNESCO headquarters shortly afterwards. In a swift summary of certain elements of Catholic social teaching, he based everything in the ultimate meaning of a human being and the purpose of human life. From this premise, Leo discoursed on the importance of protecting life and the manner of building a just society around this principle.

“The touchstone by which we can assess our commitment is the care we show for the littlest and for the poor: children in their mothers’ wombs and in the various theatres of war, persons with physical and intellectual disabilities, the elderly, migrants, refugees, and all those arrogantly excluded as unproductive,” he said.

Pope Leo’s discourses to the political bodies is markedly different to those which have been heard coming from the pontiff in recent years: there is once again Catholic content in such addresses, rather than simply being speeches which any UN secretarial staff member could have drawn up. The ‘external’ side of the trip was decidedly in defence of the sanctity of human life and for the re-Christianisation of society.

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Having thus considered the characteristics of Our Lady’s dolours, we must now pass to a peculiarity of them, which it is necessary always to bear in mind, namely, their union with the intensest joy.

That her dolours were accompanied throughout with floods of heavenly joy, she herself revealed to St. Bridget. But indeed it could not be otherwise. Can we suppose it possible that a sinless rational creature can ever be otherwise than bathed in joy?

Beatitude is the life of God, and it is out of that life that torrents of gladness inundate His whole creation. It is sin only that brings sorrow, and if the sins of others can make the sinless grieve, they can never interfere with that abiding gladness deep down, which union with God must of necessity produce. Moreover there is no merit where there is no love.

If Our Lady’s dolours had not risen out of her love and been animated by it, they would not have been meritorious. But in truth love was the very cause of them. Out of the excess of love came the excess of sorrow. Now it is undeniable that love cannot exist without delectation. Love is of itself essentially a joy; and in proportion to the eminence of our Mother’s love must also be the eminence of her celestial joy. To sorrow and rejoice at once is possible even for us, whose inward life sin has distracted, and made irregular and uncompact.

We have all of us done so, even though our sensitive nature is a battle-field where the struggles are quickly over, and one or other of the contending passions is left master of the field. But it is in Jesus and Mary that this perfect union of the uttermost of joy and sorrow has taken place, and been an abiding, lifelong, normal state. It is one of the most remarkable phenomena of the Incarnation, and has seemed, in our Lord’s lower Nature, to be a sort of adumbration of His union of Two Natures in one Person.

It is also one of His characteristics in which He has given His Mother largely to participate. In His Passion He restrained His Divinity, and would not let it sensibly penetrate His Human Nature with its light and glory. Nay, He even laid His hand upon that Beatific Vision, which was due to His Sacred Humanity, and which was uncloudedly before His Soul from the first moment of His Incarnation, and would not allow it to include within its sphere of gladness His sensitive nature, lest it should blunt His suffering: and quench the fire of His great agony.

So, in her measure, our Blessed Lady in the depths of her soul was filled with gladness because of her intimate union with God, and yet the gladness had a sphere of its own, and was not allowed to break out with its vast world of light, so at least as to banish all sorrow from the heart. As was said before, her joy, so far from alleviating her sufferings, probably made her suffer more.

But once again we must remember it was not with her as with the martyrs. They sang among the fires and exulted among the panthers, because their soul was all whole and joyous, while their flesh was torn and their bones broken. But with her the soul was the chief sufferer ; and joy and sorrow divided it against itself. This was nearer to a mystery. Indeed it was a true participation in the characteristics of Jesus, a cleaving asunder of the soul without disturbing its simplicity, a division without sedition, a wound which was a new life, a battle while all was harmony and peace.

O Mother! we cannot tell how it was, only that so it wasl Thou wert all joy, and being so near God, how couldst thou help but be so? Thou wert all sorrow, and what else couldst thou be in those dark abysses of the Passion? And thy sorrow had no power over thy joy; but thy joy had power over thy sorrow, and gave it a brisker acid, a more volatile and pervasive bitterness ! Glad creature I sorrow crushed thee, and then a joy, like that of heaven, sat upon thy burden, and made it tenfold more hard to bear.

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Yet we are hardly doing justice to her sorrows, when we say that they had no influence upon her joys. Doubtless they increased them, and were to her the fountains of new joys which she had never had before, or of new degrees of old accustomed joys. It is not as if her joy and sorrow were two oceans in her soul, which had no mutual inlets, and did not commingle with each other, or ebb and flow in sympathy.

So far from that, there is a sense in which we might say that her sorrow and her joy were almost identical; for her joys were sorrows, and her sorrows joys. They might be the one or the other, according to the double life that was in them. Truly in her sorrows were many reasons for joy, such as the grandest and happiest archangel of heaven has not in himself. If we look long at the darkness of Calvary, a beautiful light breaks out of its gloomiest centre.

What is it all but a magnificent reparation of the Divine Honour? Not Michael, when flushed with triumphant sanctity he drove usurping Lucifer out of heaven, so rejoiced in the honour of God, as Mary did. She, who had been allowed to fathom sin so deeply, and who in the spirit of Gethsernane had tasted somewhat of the Father’s anger, could exult in the satisfaction of His justice, as neither angel nor saint could do. She, who had lived thirty-three years with Jesus and had caught from Him His passionate yearning for His Father’s honour, could find depths of blissful congratulation in the restoring of that honour, which not all creatures together could discover. Sometimes there has been a minutest drop of that joy in our hearts, and we know what it was like, but could not tell even if we would. O for that land, where it will be an unchecked, eternal habit!

There was joy too through all the immense wisdom with which God had endowed her, because of the divine wisdom which was apparent to her in the whole scheme of our redemption. There was not a cavern of shame, but it was illuminated by several of the divine perfections, shedding over it a perfect blaze of beautiful splendour. There was not a physical horror in the Passion, from which an unloving faith shrinks back in vulgar fastidiousness, but was clothed with a strange loveliness out of the treasures of the divine mind and will.

The science of the Incarnation never came out, even to her, in such amazing, fascinating clearness as it did in her Compassion, with all its reasons, possibilities, adaptations, and conveniences. The sight she saw would have been enough to feed the worship of the nine choirs of angels for ever.

“Of Mary, one can never say enough” is the phrase attributed to St Bernard of Clairvaux and which is the title given to a two-day event held in the shadow of the Vatican in a few …

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