Applied Mariology

Exploring the Catholic theology of women

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“During that prayer in the Upper Room, in an attitude of deep communion with the Apostles, with some women and with Jesus’ “brethren”, the Mother of the Lord prays for the gift of the Spirit for herself and for the community. It was appropriate that the first out pouring of the Spirit upon her, which had happened in view of her divine motherhood, should be repeated and reinforced. Indeed, at the foot of the Cross Mary was entrusted with a new motherhood, which concerned Jesus’ disciples. It was precisely this mission that demanded a renewed gift of the Spirit. The Blessed Virgin therefore wanted it for the fruitfulness of her spiritual motherhood. While at the moment of the Incarnation the Holy Spirit had descended upon her as a person called to take part worthily in the great mystery, every thing is now accomplished for the sake of the Church, whose image, model and mother Mary is called to be. In the Church and for the Church, mindful of Jesus’ promise, she waits for Pentecost and implores a multiplicity of gifts for everyone, in accordance with each one’s personality and mission.”

— Pope St. John Paul II, General Audience (1997)

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Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira demonstrated how Marian devotion, not exterior and inconstant, but firm and perseverant, is the decisive factor, in the battle between the Revolution and the Counter-Revolution which will intensify increasingly in the dark times awaiting us. Mary, the Universal Mediatrix, is in fact the channel though which all graces pass and graces will rain down in abundance upon those who pray to Her and fight for Her. (Rivoluzione e Contro-Rivoluzione, ed. it. Sugarco, Milano 2009, pp. 319-332).

- Roberto de Mattei, An Easter That Will Go Down in History

[appliedmariology]

“As She suffers and almost dies with Her suffering and dying Son, so she renounced Her rights as Mother of this Son, for the salvation of men, immolating Him to placate the Divine justice, so that it can be said, rightly, that She redeemed mankind along with Christ. Manifestly, for this reason, all the different graces from the treasures of the Redemption are also distributed through the hands of Our Lady of Sorrows.”

- Pope Benedict XV, Apostolic Letter Inter sodalicia, March 22,  1918. (x)

[appliedmariology]

Mothers (both spiritual and biological) are a natural icon of Mary. A mother helps others know who Mary is by her generosity, kindness, patience, compassion, peace, intuition and ability to nurture souls. Mary’s love (and the love of mothers) offers one of the best images of what God’s love is like - unconditional, healing, safe, and deeply personal.

- Carrie Gress, The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity (TAN, 2019), p.11-12.

[appliedmariology]

If there is, indeed, an anti-Marian spirit, what might it look like? Well, a woman in its grip would not value children. She would be bawdy, vulgar, and angry. She would rage against the idea of anything resembling humble obedience or self-sacrifice for others. She would be petulant, shallow, catty, and overly sensuous. She would also be self-absorbed, manipulative, gossipy, anxious, and self-servingly ambitious. In short, she would be everything that Mary is not. She would bristle especially at the idea of being a virgin or mother.

- Carrie Gress, The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity (TAN, 2019), p.10.

[appliedmariology]

[We] celebrate the Annunciation, the day when Mary, a daughter of our human race, listened to the archangel Gabriel’s message, and answered, on her own behalf and on ours, too, the fiat that gave her to beget Jesus. St. Bernard exclaimed, as he contemplated this mystery:

“Answer the word, receive the Word. Utter thine, conceive the Divine. Speak the word that is transitory, and embrace the Word that is everlasting. Why dost thou tarry? Why art thou fearful ? Believe, confess, and receive.” (Homily Super Missus est, n. 4, § 8)

- Dom Jean Pateau, Abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault, 2020.

[appliedmariology]

Modesty should be her chief finery, her Christian protest against the vanities of the world, and her powerful defense against its dangers. The Catechism teaches: “Modesty protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden… Modesty is decency. It inspires one’s choice of clothing. It keeps silence or reserve where there is evident risk of unhealthy curiosity. It is discreet… Modesty inspires a way of life which makes it possible to resist the allurements of fashion and the pressure of prevailing ideologies.” 

Pope Pius XII once said: “There is nothing wrong in being fashionable. But, fashion can never be the supreme rule of conduct. There is a limit beyond which fashion can bring about the ruin of a soul.” 

And in another place, he taught: “modesty foresees threatening danger, forbids us to expose ourselves to risks, demands the avoidance of those occasions which the imprudent do not shun. It does not like impure or loose talk, it shrinks from the slightest immodesty, it carefully avoids suspect familiarity with persons of the other sex, since it brings the soul to show due reverence to the body, as being a member of Christ and the temple of the Holy Ghost. He who possesses the treasure of Christian modesty abominates every sin of impurity and instantly flees whenever he is tempted by its seductions” (Sacra Virginitas, no. 58).

- Duties of a Wife and Mother, via Regina Prophetarum, to be read by both spouses in conjunction with Duties of a Husband and Father

[appliedmariology]

As the praises of Solomon for the valiant woman in Proverbs indicates (cf. 31:10f.) a woman’s work in the home has immense economic value, although it is rarely remunerated monetarily or justly acknowledged. Nevertheless, none should ever belittle or degrade her work which is of vital importance for her family’s sustenance and economic viability. The virtuous woman will not lend an ear to worldly values and human respect, trusting that God Himself will repay her loving efforts a hundred-fold. Note too that society at large is better served when its citizens are raised at home by the loving care of a mother. Unless there is grave necessity, a mother ought not work outside the home. A mother who places greater value on a professional career and earning income over the duties of her family and home places her own soul and that those of her family in grave danger.

- Duties of a Wife and Mother, via Regina Prophetarum, to be read by both spouses in conjunction with Duties of a Husband and Father

[appliedmariology]

A mission of suffering. – The title of mother is the fruit of suffering; God has willed it so. The title of spiritual mother can be acquired only on Calvary at the side of the Virgin Mother of Sorrows. [...] The greater is her suffering and the more devoid she is of all natural consolation, the more a mother should rejoice in divine charity; for that is the sign that the hour of victory is at hand.

- Duties of a Wife and Mother, via Regina Prophetarum, to be read by both spouses in conjunction with Duties of a Husband and Father

[appliedmariology]

In serving her family, she is loving God and neighbor and growing in that love. The virtues of the mother are easily summed up in the practice of kindness and charity

- Duties of a Wife and Mother, via Regina Prophetarum, to be read by both spouses in conjunction with Duties of a Husband and Father

[appliedmariology]

The service of her family becomes the substance of her virtues when she recognizes that God has provided the grace and all that is required for the highest perfection in every state of life. When good works or pious desires interfere with the duties of one’s state, they are not in order, but rather distractions. A mother must then guard herself well against this temptation and never lose sight of the divine end, which the will of God has marked out for her. 

The Blessed Virgin Mary never overstepped the bounds of the simple and hidden vocation God had meant for her. She attended exclusively to her humble duties of spouse and mother, to the obscure labors of her poor condition, the simple and little virtues of everyday life. In this she pleased God. Blessed is the mother who knows how to find in her state occasions for the practice of every virtue and the exercise of divine love; she has discovered the kingdom of God on earth.

- Duties of a Wife and Mother, via Regina Prophetarum, to be read by both spouses in conjunction with Duties of a Husband and Father

[appliedmariology]

The Most Blessed Virgin is that faithful virgin who by her fidelity to God makes good the losses caused by the faithlessness of disloyal Eve; and for those who attach themselves to her she obtains fidelity to God and perseverance. That is why a Saint compares her to a firm anchor, which holds them fast and saves them from shipwreck in the raging sea of the world, where so many people perish for not being attached to this firm anchor. “We bind souls,” says he, “to thy hope, as to a firm anchor” (St. John Damascene, Sermo in Dormitione B.M.V.). 

- St. Louis de Montfort, The True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin (Baronius Press, 2018), Chapter 5: The motives which should recommend this devotion to us, Article VIII: This devotion is an admirable means of perseverance. Par. 175, Eighth Motive.

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“Without this free consent on Mary's part, God cannot become man. To be sure, Mary's Yes is wholly grace. The dogma of Mary's freedom from original sin is at bottom meant solely to show that it is not a human being who sets the redemption in motion by her own power; rather, her Yes is contained wholly within the primacy and priority of divine love, which already embraces her before she is born. "All is grace." Yet grace does not cancel freedom; it creates it. The entire mystery of redemption is present in this narrative and becomes concentrated in the figure of the Virgin Mary: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word" (Lk 1:38).”

- Pope Benedict XVI, “Et Incarnatus Est de Spiritu Sancto Ex Maria Virgine” in Mary: The Church at the Source by Pope Benedict XVI and Hans Urs von Balthasar (Ignatius, 2005), p. 89-90.

[by-grace-of-god]

Radical feminism fails women

“​The one antidote to radical feminism is Mary.”

Video: Pagan Feminist Turned Catholic

“What Pope John Paul showed in Mulieris Dignitatem was that we have nothing to learn from the feminism of our own day; we’ve always had an authentic feminism at the heart of the Catholic faith. It’s when you take Mary out of the equation—as first Protestantism and then modern secularism did—that the debased secular feminism of our own day inevitably arose. John Paul didn’t say that of course. He didn’t need to.”

John Paul II’s Definitive Answer to Secular Feminism

[appliedmariology]

This good Master did not disdain to shut Himself up in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, like a captive and a loving slave, and to be subject and obedient to her for thirty years. It is here, I repeat, that the human mind is lost, when it ponders seriously on this conduct of the Incarnate wisdom, Who, although He could have done so, willed to give Himself not directly to mankind, but rather through the Most Blessed Virgin; Who willed to come on this earth, not as a man at the flower of His age, completely independent, but as a poor little babe, dependent on the care and support of His Blessed Mother. 

This Infinite Wisdom, Who had a boundless desire to glorify God, His Father, and to save mankind, found no shorter or more perfect means to accomplish this than to submit Himself in all things to the most Blessed Virgin; not only during the first eight, ten, or fifteen years of His life, like other children, but for thirty years. He gave more glory to God His Father during all that time of submission and dependence on Our Blessed Lady, than He would have given Him, had He passed those thirty years in working miracles, in preaching to the whole world, in converting all men; had it been otherwise He would have done so. 

Oh! oh! how greatly do we glorify God, when, in imitation of Jesus, we submit ourselves to Mary! With such an evident and such a well-known example before us, are we so foolish as to believe that we can find a more perfect and a shorter means of glorifying God than submitting ourselves to Mary, after the example of her Son?

- St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, The True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, ch. 5: The motives which should recommend this devotion to us. Article II: By this devotion we imitate the example given to us by Jesus Christ and by God Himself; and we practice humility: par. 139: Second motive, which shows us that it is just in itself and advantageous to our souls to consecrate ourselves entirely to the Most Blessed Virgin by this practice, in order to belong more perfectly to Jesus Christ.

[appliedmariology]

How Protestants' Assault on Mary Dismantled Society

By removing the cult of Mary from Christian life, the Protestants were able to reintroduce the contest of power into the heart of every Christian family.

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With Humility, Women Uplift Themselves and Sanctify Men

The humility of the Blessed Mother wins over the hearts of women and men, and wives sanctify their husbands when they imitate her.

Excerpt:

This brings us to the more common vocation of every woman: wife and mother. In Heaven, Mary holds a place above St. Joseph, her spouse on Earth. Why is this? One reason is because according to the Gospel, humility is the measure of greatness. As the Lord says, he who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Mt. 23:12), and again, whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave (Mt. 20:27).

Thus we have the marital hierarchy: wives, submit to your husbands (Eph. 5:22), and the head of every woman is a man (I Cor. 11:3). To the Marxist-feminist, this subordinates a woman’s dignity. But since, in Christianity, unlike in the Marxist-feminist system, power is not the source of greatness, but humility, headship is a challenge to the Christian husband, since he must use his power with humility.

Therefore, the Christian husband, in order to lead his wife, must imitate Christ by giving up his life for his wife and children. That is why St. Paul’s injunction to couples is more strict for the man than the woman: husbands love your wives as Christ did the Church and gave up his life for her (Eph. 5:25). Since the man carries the burden of leadership, he can match the humility called for in his wife only by dying for her. The glory of Mary as Spouse of the Holy Ghost creates such holiness in marriage.

Thus, the Christian marriage is not a Marxist-feminist contest of power, but a contest of humility. This is the type of holy zeal that has characterized the holy families that reared the saints. The saint was raised seeing his mother and father strive for humility, not superiority.