Is the Brown Scapular "Biblical"?

On its face, the question sounds ridiculous. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel knows that the small, woolen sacramental goes back to Carmelite St. Simon Stock’s vision of 1251 A.D. The earliest account, in the Carmelite Sanctoral, recorded how the Blessed Mother showed St. Simon the Scapular and made the promise that “He who dies in this will not suffer eternal fire.” (Some will liken the promise to magic or superstition, but the Church’s interpretation will be explained later.) I readily acknowledge that the Brown Scapular will not be found in the pages of the Old or New Testaments. What we do find in both, however, are its material and spiritual precursors – images that show us how its wearing today is in complete harmony with the written Word of God.

In the Law of Moses, Jewish men were commanded to attach tzitzit, or tassels, to the edge of their garments. “It shall be to you a tassel to look upon and remember all the commandments of the Lord, to do them, not to follow after your own heart” (Num 15:37-39). They acted as tactile and visual reminders directing hearts to the Lord. In the New Testament we read of these tassels on Jesus’s garments, recognizing that both the garments and tassels would have been woven by His Blessed Mother. Earlier in life, Mary would have done the same for Joseph, and later in life for the Apostle John. We read how the sick were healed simply by reaching out in faith to touch the tassels on Jesus’s garments (Mt 14:36; Lk 8:43-48).

In the Acts of the Apostles, we read how the Lord continued to evoke people’s faith for the purpose of healing, not through tzitzit but other articles worn by the apostles. “Handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from [Paul’s] body to the sick, and diseases left them and evil spirits came out of them” (Acts 19:11-12). The Church of today refers to such objects as sacramentals, explaining that they “do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church's prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it” (CCC 1670). They do this by evoking our faith in God’s power.

In the vision granted to St. Simon Stock, the Church received a new sacramental. The Brown Scapular, originally an addition to the Carmelite Order’s religious habit, has been extended by the popes for use by all of the faithful. Like the tzitzit created and sewn by Mary to Christ’s garments – the sacramental that evoked faith and brought healing to the sick of Palestine – so we, Christ’s mystical Body, are now clothed in another garment stitched, so to speak, by Mary’s hands. And the Scapular has never been understood by the Carmelites or the Church’s theologians to be a talisman guaranteeing eternal life. Rather, as a sacramental, its wearing is a concrete expression of faith that Jesus has entrusted the wearer to Mary’s heart. One cannot wear the Scapular and persist in sin, presuming upon God’s mercy (see Heb 6:4–9). Such a thought is abhorrent to the hearts of Jesus and Mary. A person, however, who wears the Scapular as a sign of his consecration to Jesus through the love and intercession of Mary’s immaculate heart—and perseveres in his discipleship, repenting when he falls—will receive the grace to die in the Lord’s friendship, and thus enter eternal life. Wearing the scapular serves the same purpose as the tzitzit; it is a biblically-grounded reminder to follow Jesus and Mary in placing the Father’s divine will before that of our own human hearts (Nm 15:39; Mt 26:39; Lk 1:38). This is why the young visionaries at Fatima saw Mary extend the Brown Scapular. Our goal is to realize the full life of heaven, to love Christ with the Immaculate Heart of His mother. “Blessed are the pure [or ‘immaculate’] in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8).

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Adapted from The Biblical Roots of Marian Consecration: Devotion to the Immaculate Heart in Light of Scripture (TAN Books, 2022).

The Apostolic Origin of Marian Consecration

When I first heard someone speak of being “consecrated to Mary,” warning bells went off in my head. The Holy Spirit had already moved me, over the course of a year, from a complete rejection of the Church’s Marian teaching to an acceptance of Mary’s connection to me in the communion of saints, her spiritual motherhood, intercession, immaculate conception, and assumption. I came to see how these truths were either taught in Scripture or coalesced with what I found there. The thought of being “consecrated” to Mary, however, seemed completely without basis. Whenever I had heard the term consecration, it was always in reference to something – such as the bread and wine brought forward at the offertory in Mass – being consecrated to God. Wasn’t Catholic belief supposed to be rooted in Scripture and Tradition? I could find no reference to the practice in Scripture or any writings from the first centuries of the Church. It appeared to be a moot point.

That was when the example and teaching of Pope St. John Paul II opened my eyes. The Pope’s pure devotion to Christ was undeniable, as was his love of the Blessed Mother. I knew that he wouldn’t lead me astray, so when I discovered that his papal moto, “Totus Tuus,” was drawn from the words of St. Louis de Montfort’s famous text on Marian Consecration (True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary) I was open to hearing the Pope’s thought. He shared how “This treatise by De Montfort can be a bit disconcerting, given its rather florid and baroque style, but the essential theological truths with it contains are undeniable.”[1] The Pope also used the word “entrustment” as a synonym for “consecration,” connecting the practice of entrusting ourselves to Mary’s motherhood with Christ’s entrustment of the John to Mary at the foot of the Cross.[2]

What I had failed to recognize in my naivete was that when spiritual writers such as De Montfort wrote of being “consecrated” to Mary, they spoke by way of analogy. Theologically–speaking, man can only consecrate himself to God.^[3] When we pray an act of “Marian” consecration, we entrust ourselves to her heart and motherly intercession and, united with her, renew and intentionally deepen our baptismal consecration to Jesus. Jesus, and not Mary, is the goal of our action. The Pope explained how De Montfort’s teaching showed him that “Mary does bring us closer to Christ; she does lead us to him, provided that we live her mystery in Christ.”[4]

This practice of entrusting ourselves to Mary, of entering into her own interior life with Jesus, has its origin at the foot of the Cross. It is there in Scripture and Sacred Tradition – in Jesus’ act of mutually entrusting John to Mary, and Mary to John. The Apostle accepted that entrustment; “from that hour the disciple took her into idia [literally ‘his own’]” (Jn 19:26-27). John took Mary into all that was uniquely his – his home, heart, prayer, life as an apostle, etc. John already had a relationship with Jesus, but his entrustment to Mary brought him to an even deeper understanding of and surrender to the Master. You and I continually reap the fruits of John’s entrustment when we read his Gospel, his penetration into the mystery of Christ’s Person. His deep relationship with Mary did not lead John to make an idol of her; rather, their shared life was a catalyst opening his heart to understand and communicate Christ’s life and teaching in an utterly unique and profound way. This is the apostolic origin of Marian Consecration.

John’s shared life with Mary – an extension of Christ’s shared life with her – is accessible to each of us in the mystical Body of her Son. Mary is a spiritual mother who is very much alive, joined to us in the communion of saints, and acting on our behalf (see Rom 12:4-5; Heb 12:1, 22-24; Rev 5:8). Like John, our goal in entrusting our lives as disciples to Mary’s heart is to come to share her total receptivity to God – to let Christ be formed in the womb of our hearts and be born into the world through our words and actions.

Adapted from The Biblical Roots of Marian Consecration: Devotion to the Immaculate Heart in Light of Scripture (TAN Books, 2022).

 

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[1] Gift and Mystery (New York: Doubleday, 1996), 29.

[2] See Arthur Burton Calkins’ insightful study, Totus Tuus: John Paul II’s Program of Marian Consecration and Entrustment (New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Immaculate, 1992).

[3] John F. Murphy, Mary’s Immaculate Heart: The Meaning of Devotion to the Immaculate Heart (Milwaukee: Bruce Pub. Co., 1951), 100-1.

[4] Gift and Mystery, 29.

First Saturday Devotion: Sharing Jesus and Mary’s Sabbath

In the third apparition at Fatima, the Blessed Mother told the little seers that, to save souls and avert war, she came to request not just the praying of the Rosary and consecration to her Immaculate Heart, but a “Communion of reparation” on the first Saturdays of the month. In 1925, in a later vision to the surviving visionary, Sr. Lucia, Mary asked that her children console her Immaculate Heart, grieved by men’s blasphemies and ingratitude, by committing to the following on the first Saturday of five consecutive months: going to Confession, receiving Holy Communion, reciting five decades of the Rosary, and keeping her company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to her.[1] Sister Lucia later explained that the Five First Saturday devotion was requested by Jesus to make reparation for the five kinds of offenses and blasphemies uttered against His mother: (1) blasphemies against her Immaculate Conception, (2) her perpetual virginity, (3) her divine maternity and identity as the mother of men, (4) the desecration of images of her, and (5) those who seek to plant scorn, indifference, or hate of Mary in the heart of others.[2]

While the element of five consecutive Saturdays was new, the recognition of Saturday as a day specially devoted to Mary had a long history in the Church. In the tenth century we hear of Saturday Masses being celebrated in her honor in churches in Italy, France, and Germany. The Franciscans and Benedictines spread the devotion, and by the seventeenth century the Dominicans had started the practice of honoring Mary with special acts of devotion on the fifteen consecutive Saturdays preceding the feast of the Holy Rosary. The popes attached an indulgence to the Fifteen Saturdays for anyone who: (1) went to Confession, (2) received Holy Communion, and (3) prayed five decades of the Rosary. Also in the seventeenth century, St. John Eudes and Ven. John J. Olier began to speak to their spiritual sons of the first Saturday of the month as a day of reparation for blasphemies against the Blessed Mother.[3]

It has been suggested that Saturday became a day of devotion to the Blessed Mother in memory of the desolation she suffered on Holy Saturday. While not denying this impulse, I wish to suggest another reason for the practice – the Saturday Sabbaths shared between Mary and Jesus. As Christians we look to Sunday, the first day of the week, as the day to worship and renew our consecration to the Lord in the celebration of the Eucharist (Acts 20:7; Rev 1:8; CCC 2190). But Saturday was the day that, by divine command, Jesus and Mary set apart to the Lord (Ex 20:8-11; Dt 5:12-15). “This is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD sanctify you [mekoddishkem, ‘consecrate you’]” (Ex 31:13). Saturday was the day that no work was done. The Sabbath dinner, the finest meal of the week, was prepared by Mary in advance. She and Jesus attended the synagogue where they prayed and meditated upon Scripture, and then returned home to spend the rest of the day enjoying one another’s company as they prayed and discussed God’s revelation and their daily lives.

After Jesus’s ascension Mary shared the Saturday Sabbath with the Apostle John, marking Saturday as the day when the Church experienced her maternal care in a special way. And for Mary, those Saturdays continued to be the day that her Son showered her with His affections – communicated to her through John. When we today undertake the Five First Saturdays, what we ultimately seek through its practices is the intimacy shared between Jesus and Mary on those days. It is a sign, and its various practices a means of deepening, our total consecration, in union with the Immaculate Heart, to Jesus. It is also a means for the Sacred Heart to express, through us, His love for His mother and soothe the wounds inflicted upon her heart.

Adapted The Biblical Roots of Marian Consecration: Devotion to the Immaculate Heart in Light of Scripture (TAN Books, 2022).

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Marriage as an Analogy for Marian Consecration

The idea of “consecrating” oneself to Mary, meaning to entrust one’s life and success as a disciple of Christ to Mary’s love and intercession, may seem strange to many within the Catholic Church, not to mention our large number of separated brothers and sisters. Why would God want to unite our hearts with Mary’s? Why not deal with us solely as individuals? My response is that this is the way Scripture shows God working throughout salvation history and that the New Testament’s teaching on the shared life of Christian husbands and wives offers an effective analogy for understanding the spirituality of Marian Consecration.

Let us begin, however, by looking at what St. Paul wrote about marriages between Christians and unbelievers. It is stunning:

If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is consecrated through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is consecrated through her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner desires to separate, let it be so; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound. For God has called us to peace. Wife, how do you know whether you will save your husband? Husband, how do you know whether you will save your wife? (1 Cor 7:13–16)

Paul knew full well that it is Christ alone Who saves; but in His hands, believing wives and husbands can become instrumental causes in the salvation, the consecration, of their spouses and children (see also 1 Pet 3:1-2). If the Lord can use one spouse to bring the other and their children to the waters of Baptism, then think of how He uses the sacramental marriage of two Christians to deepen their consecration to Him throughout their shared years.

Paul wrote of the purpose of Christian husbands’ and wives’ mutual submission to each other – it manifests the great mystery of love between Christ and the Church (Eph 5:21, 32)! Husbands image the Lord in loving their wives “as their own bodies” and wives are to be subject to their husbands “as to the Lord” (Eph 5:28, 24–25). Christ loves the Church in this way so that “she might be holy and without blemish” (5:27). This is the mission of Christian spouses: By the grace of God, husbands and wives vow their love and entrust one another with their property, bodies, and hearts for the purpose of growing in Christ’s love and helping the other pass through the Cross to the glory of the Resurrection. Such entrustment does not hinder a soul’s union with the Lord but furthers it! A wife is not an obstacle to a husband’s union with Jesus. No, the spousal relationship is a God-given means for husbands and wives to appropriate graces meant to propel us toward final salvation, of making their “call and election firm” (2 Pt 1:10). This is also true, and to an eminent degree, of our relationship with Mary. Our spiritual mother is very much alive and joined to us in the communion of saints, acting on our behalf (see Rom 12:4-5; Heb 12:1, 22-24; Rev 5:8)

Billions of people have walked the earth, but there is only one to whom the Father entrusted the life of His only begotten Son. Mary was predestined for her role and consecrated to God’s work at the moment of her conception. She cooperated with God’s grace to give her fiat at the Annunciation, and by grace she remained faithful even at the foot of the Cross. It was there that Jesus formally extended Mary’s motherhood from Himself to His mystical Body. He made this entrustment in the person of John, one of the apostolic foundations of His Church. “When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her into idia [literally ‘his own’]” (Jn 19:26-27). John took Mary into all that was his – his home, heart, prayer, life as an apostle, etc. You and I continue to reap the fruits of this entrustment in John’s Gospel, his unique penetration into the mystery of Christ’s Person.

John’s life of union with Mary – not to mention t other apostles – did not hinder his union with Christ but facilitated it! The entrustment that Jesus made of John to Mary was part of Christ’s salvific work on the Cross (see Jn 19:28, “…after this, knowing that all was now finished…”). When we renew our baptismal consecration to Jesus, through Mary, we are asking to share her receptivity for receiving Christ into ourselves – both to dwell in our hearts and be born into the world through our words and actions. Just as the spousal union of hearts yields grace, so too our union with the Immaculate Heart. Mary is not the end, the goal of our devotion, anymore than a spouse – Jesus is, and through Him fullness of life in the Trinity.

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Adapted from The Biblical Roots of Marian Consecration: Devotion to the Immaculate Heart in Light of Scripture which is available from TAN Books.

Marian Consecration: It's All About Jesus

Like Mary, everything we have is by the grace of God; and in Mary, we see the fullness of life to which each of us is called. Her Immaculate Heart is truly the heart of the Church – simultaneously mother, disciple, and bride. It is completely fixed upon Jesus.  We now turn our attention to the means Jesus has given us so that, with Mary, we may reach this fullness. One, in truth, can only be “consecrated” to God. The term means to be dedicated to God, solely for His use. This first takes place in Baptism (1 Cor 6:11; Eph 5:25-27), but it is meant to be deepened throughout our lives (Rom 12:1; Heb 2:11). When we speak of being consecrated to Mary, we are speaking by way of analogy. We are trying to convey that we, like Jesus in His humanity, wish to be completely entrusted to Mary’s love and activity on our behalf. When we pray an act of “Marian” consecration, we entrust ourselves to her heart and motherly intercession as, united with her, we renew and intentionally deepen our baptismal consecration to Jesus.

The Church has never proposed devotion to Mary as an end in itself. Saint Louis Marie de Montfort, the great apostle of Marian Consecration, was quite blunt about Mary’s position in relation to God, “With the whole Church I acknowledge that Mary, being a mere creature fashioned by the hand of God is, compared to his infinite majesty, less than an atom, or rather simply nothing, since he alone can say, ‘I am he who is.’”[1] And yet, as De Montfort goes on to say, it was God’s free and sovereign choice to give “his only Son to the world only through Mary.”[2] Scripture portrays her as the Ark of the New Covenant (2 Sam 6:9-14; Lk 1:35, 39-43), the personification of Daughter Zion (Zeph 3:14-17; Lk 1:28), the New Eve (Gen 3:15; Jn 19:26-27; Rev 12:1-6), the ideal disciple and intercessor (Lk 1:38, 45; Jn 2:1-11), and a sharer in Christ’s passion (Lk 2:35) and glorification (Rev 11:19-12:5), who is enthroned beside Christ as Queen (1 Kgs 2:19-25; Lk 1:32-33, 43; Rev 12:1-2). She is the Church come to full stature in Christ, and this is the reason for Marian devotion. As De Montfort wrote, “Of all God’s creatures Mary is the most conformed to Jesus. It therefore follows that, of all devotions, devotion to her makes for the most effective consecration and conformity to him. The more one is consecrated to Mary, the more one is consecrated to Jesus.”[3] To be “devoted” to Mary means to love her as the mother of our Lord – to come to love her as Jesus loves her – and to emulate her discipleship, her love for Him. Christ Jesus is the alpha and omega of Marian devotion.

Such devotion recognizes that everything Jesus did at the Cross was ordered toward our salvation, including His entrustment of John to Mary (Jn 19:26-27). As an apostle, one of the foundation stones of Christ’s Church (Rev 21:14), this entrustment of John has a universal scope – a gift extended to the entire Church. All that is required is for individual souls to, like John, accept Christ’s gift: “from that hour the disciple took her into idia [literally ‘his own’]” (Jn 19:26-27). John took Mary into all that was uniquely his – his home, heart, prayer, life as an apostle, etc. You and I continue to reap the fruits of this entrustment in John’s Gospel, in his penetration into the mystery of Christ’s Person. His deep relationship with Mary did not lead John to make an idol of her; rather, their shared life was a catalyst opening his heart to understand and communicate Christ’s life and teaching in an utterly unique and profound way. John’s shared life with Mary – an extension of Christ’s shared life with her – is accessible to each of us in the mystical Body of her Son. She is a spiritual mother who is very much alive, joined to us in the communion of saints, and acting on our behalf (see Rom 12:4-5; Heb 12:1, 22-24; Rev 5:8). Like John, our goal in entrusting our lives as disciples to Mary’s heart is to come to share her total receptivity to God – to let Christ be formed in the womb of our hearts and be born into the world through our words and actions.

Adapted The Biblical Roots of Marian Consecration: Devotion to the Immaculate Heart in Light of Scripture (TAN Books, 2022).

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[1] Louis Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary (Bay Shore, NY: Montfort Publications, 1996), no. 14.

[2] Ibid.

[3] True Devotion, no. 120.

A Morning in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary

I'm honored to be partnering with the Institute of Catholic Humanism in St. Louis to celebrate the Memorial of the Immaculate Heart. Here is a flyer for the event, and you can register at THIS LINK.

The Mystery of the Visitation and Christ's Resurrection

Archbishop Sheen noted how the Cross cast its shadow backward over Our Blessed Lord’s entire life. I believe the same is true regarding the light of his Resurrection, and I would suggest that we see just such an instance in Jesus’ visitation to Mary and John (while within his mother’s womb). We find Jesus acting there, through the instrumentality of the Blessed Mother, the same way he will in his first post-Resurrection visit to the apostles; and these mirrored events are instructive regarding the Church’s prayer and celebration of the sacraments.

Let us begin with Jesus visitation of the apostles:

“On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit…’” (Jn 20:19-22)

Note the significant elements: Jesus’ arrival with a greeting of “Peace” (the standard Jewish greeting “Shalom”) and the imparting of the Spirit.

Don’t we find the same elements in Luke’s account of the Visitation?

“[Mary] entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! …Behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. (Lk 1:40-44)

There is of course a difference between the two events. In the visitation to Mary and John, Jesus’ bestowal of the Spirit was tied to his mother’s words. It was Christ acting for only he can impart the Spirit; but he did so from within Mary. It was as if Jesus granted a quasi-sacramental character to Mary’s greeting of “peace.” It points ahead to Jesus visit to the apostles and institution of the sacrament of reconciliation: “And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’” (Jn 20:22-23). There is a beautiful symmetry.  

But there’s another element we shouldn’t miss – and that is the reaction of Elizabeth, John, and Mary to being “filled with the Holy Spirit,” as well as the apostles’ reaction at Pentecost. John, while still in utero, “leaped for joy” and Elizabeth “exclaimed” God’s work “with a loud cry”; and the Blessed Mother sang her Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord,/ and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,/ …for he who is mighty has done great things for me,/ and holy is his name./ And his mercy is on those who fear him/ from generation to generation./ He has shown strength with his arm,/…He has helped his servant Israel,/ in remembrance of his mercy,/ as he spoke to our fathers,/ to Abraham and to his posterity for ever” (Lk 1:46-51, 54-55).

We see the same reaction when the apostles and Mary were “filled” with the Spirit at Pentecost. They “began to speak in other tongues,” of “the mighty works of God…as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4,11). All of this is the action of the Spirit upon the human heart. As Christ is the source of the Spirit, so is he the author of the Church’s prayer. He inspired Mary to cry out in the Magnificat and he inspires us to cry out in the Our Father, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (Gal 4:6).

The glory of the Resurrection and its life-changing affect upon the Church - it’s already foreshadowed Jesus' Marian visitation to Elizabeth and John.

Book Review: Cardinal Newman's "Meditations on Mary, Our Mother"

I jumped at the chance to review this book. Two decades ago, I read TAN Book’s Mary: The Second Eve, a compendium of Newman’s apologetic writings on the Blessed Mother and was mesmerized by the way he showed that the earliest post-apostolic writings simply made explicit what was already present in the text of Scripture. His knowledge of the Fathers was voluminous. This new work assembled by TAN’s editorial team casts its net wider to bring together key points from Newman’s apologetics with his devotional thought.

As with all of his works, Meditations on Mary, Our Mother reminds us that Newman was a master of the English language. When we turn from him to modern works, we are reminded of how far we've fallen:

"[The saints'] acts, callings, and relations below, are types and anticipations of their present mission above...The only question is whether the Blessed Virgin had a part, a real part, in the economy of grace, whether, when she was on earth, she secured by her deeds any claim on our memories? If she did, it is impossible we should put her away from us, merely because she has gone hence, and should not look at her still according to the nature of her earthly history, with gratitude and expectation." (p.41)

Yes, Newman would have been a thorn in the side of many a modern editor. "But John, you have to remember that most books are written at a fifth grade level!"

Like TAN's previous compilation, Meditations on Mary, Our Mother displays Newman's brilliance as an apologist. It does not, however, contain the lengthy quotations from the Fathers present in the earlier work. Instead, as the title of this new collection indicates, we are treated to Newman's devotional thoughts, his effusions of love in honor of Our Lady:

"We must not only pray with our lips, and fast, and do outward penance, and be chaste in our bodies; but we must be obedient, and pure in our minds. And so, as regards the Blessed Virgin, it was God's will that she should undertake willingly and with full understanding to be the Mother of Our Lord, and not to be a mere passive instrument whose maternity would have no merit and no reward. The higher our gifts, the higher our duties. It was no light lot to be so intimately near to the Redeemer of men, as she experienced afterwards when she suffered with Him." (p.23)

Newman's apologetic thought circles around Mary's identity as the New Eve. He finds it in both Scripture (Genesis 3, John 19, Revelation 12) and the Church Fathers:

"...the parallelism is the doctrine of the Fathers, from the earliest times; and, this being established, we are able, by the position and office of Eve in our fall, to determine the position and office of Mary in our restoration." (p.17)

Newman notes this identification in the works of Justin Martyr (150 A.D.), Irenaeus (180) and Tertullian (200), men from different geographic regions. From this, he carefully reasons that this understanding had to form part of the original apostolic deposit. And from it he deduces a host of important points:

"Eve made room for Adam's fall, so Mary made room for our Lord's reparation of it. Thus, whereas the free gift was not as the offence, but much greater, it follows that, as Eve co-operated in effecting a great evil, Mary co-operated in effecting a much greater good." (p.19) 

"I do not see how anyone who holds the Catholic doctrine of the supernatural endowments of our first parents has fair reason for doubting our doctrine about the [immaculate conception of the] Blessed Virgin Mary...I ask: Have you any intention to deny that Mary was as fully endowed as Eve? Is it any violent inference, that she, who was to co-operate in the redemption of the world, at least was not less endowed with power from on high, than she who, given as a help-mate to her husband, did in the event but cooperate with him for our ruin?....There was war between the woman and the Serpent. This is most emphatically fulfilled if she had nothing ot do with sin - for, so far as anyone sins, he has an alliance with the Evil One." (p.67, 65, 72)

I could go on and on, but it's far better to read this gem of a book for yourselves. Reading Meditations on Mary, Our Mother is akin to ascending a height via an upward, circular path. Themes are revisited and built upon as you progress through the meditations. It is spiritual reading appropriate to any time in the liturgical year.

Why the World Needs Fulton Sheen: An Interview with Peter Howard

It’s hard to spend ten minutes on Facebook without coming across at least two quotes from Archbishop Sheen:

“The devil may have his hour, but God will have His Day.” 

“There are not more than one hundred people in the world who truly hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they perceive to be the Catholic Church.”

You flip channels and there he is on EWTN. I hear him on local Catholic radio. My teen pulls him up on YouTube. With this kind of ongoing impact, the announcement of Sheen’s beatification was met with incredible excitement…that quickly gave way to frustration at news of a delay. To better understand this development, as well as Sheen’s ongoing impact upon the faithful, Catholic Exchange reached out to Dr. Peter Howard, one of the world’s foremost Sheen scholars and founder of the Fulton Sheen Institute.
  
Shane Kapler: Within a three week period we moved from the joyful announcement that Pope Francis had approved Archbishop Sheen’s beatification to the surprising announcement that the Diocese of Rochester had requested, and been granted, an indefinite delay of the beatification. Would you cast some light on the matter for CE’s readers and explain what will likely happen next?

Dr. Howard: First, we need Sheen now more than ever and this current saga over his beatification only confirms that he is the general the Church in America needs in this critical hour, and the devil does not want that. The facts of Sheen’s cause are the following: Sheen’s life has already undergone the most exhaustive investigation conducted by the highest levels of the Church in conjunction with the Diocese of Peoria. The conclusion: Fulton Sheen was declared to have lived a life of heroic virtue and worthy of the title “Venerable” (2012).

Since that time, the Congregation of Saints has approved a miracle that was obtained through Fulton Sheen’s intercession – a miracle authenticated by Pope Francis himself – which cleared the way for Sheen to be beatified (declared “Blessed”) by the Church. The liturgy (that was scheduled originally for Dec 21, 2019) was simply the occasion to proclaim what the Church has already declared as fact. That being the case, what followed afterward by the Diocese of Rochester and then by Rome is perplexing. Monsignor James Kruse, Vicar General of the Diocese of Peoria, has presented the facts and history surrounding Rome’s unprecedented decision to subordinate and surrender its own completed and adjudicated investigation of Sheen’s episcopal leadership to secular authorities. The history recounted by Kruse rather clearly points to certain US bishops sabotaging the cause of Fulton Sheen at every pivotal advance.

What will likely happen next? Rome will wait for the release of the NY AG report on the Diocese of Rochester and confirm what it already knew — that Sheen’s administrative record was clean; and the beatification will be rescheduled, provided Rochester doesn’t try another obstructionist stunt.

Kapler: Archbishop Sheen seems to have gained an incredible popularity among Catholics in their twenties and thirties, a generation who never heard him on radio or viewed his Life is Worth Living on ABC. To what do you attribute this phenomenon?

Dr. Howard: The young want to know how the Church and the world has arrived at what Sheen called this “apocalyptic” moment in history. The world has abandoned God and as a result has completely lost sense of reality. This younger generation is crying out: “Is there anyone out there who has clear answers to this ‘dark night’ of reason in the world and the vacuum of holiness and leadership that is in the Church?” Well, into this intellectually, morally and spiritually bankrupt civilization, God sends Sheen as a prophet for our times. Sheen provides a blueprint to lead the world—especially the Church in America—back to God and help this broken and wounded civilization discover anew what it means to be human made in the image of God.

The younger generations are searching for purpose and Sheen addresses them with clarity and in a language practically anyone can understand. He unfolds a path on which they will find their reason for living, starting with the most basic of questions: Why am I here? Should I believe in God? If so, which God? And how should that affect the way I live? What Sheen ultimately gives them is a complete itinerary of the Christian philosophy of life that will yield the fulfillment and happiness they seek.

When the young discover that the answers to their longings are found attractively in the life and teachings of Sheen, they choose him as their guide, their spiritual director, their spiritual father, their general. That is exactly what happened to me in my mid-twenties.

Kapler: Both the Church and the nation Sheen loved so dearly are passing through times of great strife and confusion. In a nutshell, what would be Sheen’s prescription for our malady?

Dr. Howard: Well, Sheen first had to diagnose the malady and it boils down to civilization rejecting God, Catholics progressively leaving their moral, spiritual and missionary Christian duties unfulfilled, and then trying to build a new and false humanity and world order in which man has sought to remake God in its own image. As a result, humanity has become completely disordered in body, mind, and spirit. And for America, in particular, Sheen emphasized it has a spiritual void over which today’s cultural battle is being fought. America must rediscover its soul, find its true heart and return to its true Christian roots, or its end is imminent.

Sheen’s prescription for rebuilding the Church and for America to find its soul is threefold. The first is anthropological: The Church and the nation must rediscover what it means to be made in the image of God. The second is philosophical: The Church and America must reject the atheism and materialism of Marxism in all its forms. (It has progressively permeated and contaminated all aspects of American society.) The third is spiritual: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution created a spiritual vacuum that had to be filled. The Catholic Church needed to step in and fill it, but did not really begin to do so until Fulton Sheen. Sheen was emphatic that the Church in America (priests and laity alike) needed to be rebuilt upon the spiritual foundations of adoration of Jesus in the Eucharist and a true devotion to Mary. Sheen lived these through his daily commitment to the Eucharistic holy hour, his lived consecration to Mary’s Immaculate Heart and daily recitation of the Holy Rosary.

Kapler: Your book, The Woman, is the most in-depth study of Sheen’s Mariology to date. With the Marian title of “co-redemptrix” recently in the news, how do Sheen’s insights serve the Church’s perennial desire to better understand Our Lady’s role in our lives?

Dr. Howard: Sheen’s understanding and teaching on the role of Our Blessed Mother is refreshing because it is profoundly biblical and intimately personal. The more we understand the Blessed

Mother in terms of her relationship to God, the more we understand about her relationship to us, and the more connected we find ourselves to her love and care of us. For example, “co-redemptrix” is a rich theological term which literally means “a woman who is a co-worker in God’s plan of redemption.” In other words, “a woman who co-redeems.” This is a loaded theological subject. However, it can be simply understood as Sheen explains it one of two ways: The first is in relation to what took place at the Annunciation. God asked Mary to give Him a human nature by which and through which He would suffer, die and redeem humanity. From that moment, Mary became inseparable to God’s plan of redeeming humanity’s and therefore God’s unique “coredemptrix”.

According to Sheen, the Church is the “mystical prolonging” of the mystery of the Incarnation in the life of every Christian. In other words, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we “re-live” the historical life of Christ, which began at the Annunciation, when He chose Mary to be His Mother and Mary said, “Fiat” to begin a new creation (as God’s first creation began with His word, “Fiat.”). From the moment the Word became Flesh in Mary, she raised and nurtured our Redeemer throughout His life. And when His earthly life was in its last moments on the Cross, He gave Mary to be the mother of all who would be “born again” (or “born from above”) and have Christ now live in and through them as He did when He first came, with, in and through Mary.

So, for Sheen, the second way to understand Mary’s role as co-redemptrix in the most personal terms is Mary’s maternal role as the “New Eve”. What Eve was to the original humanity, the mother of all living, Mary is to all who live in Christ. As Adam’s physical, generative powers to increase the human race were united inseparably to Eve, so are the Divine generative and redemptive powers of Christ, the New Adam, united completely and inseparably to Mary, the New Eve (Christ called her “woman” at the Cross to make this reality clear). At the Cross Mary mystically assumes her role as the Mother of all who partake in the “new humanity.” Christ’s historical life began when the Holy Spirit mystically united Himself to Mary at the Annunciation. We enter into Christ’s life at baptism, receiving Mary as our mother to form and nurture us with the Holy Spirit, so that Jesus can fully live in us. In short, as Mary was to Christ the Head during his earthly life, so she is to His Mystical Body, the Church, and every Christian in it.

Kapler: Part of your mission at the Fulton Sheen Institute is bringing the Archbishop’s wisdom and wit directly to the people. If a parish or conference wanted to schedule you to speak, how would they go about that, and what could they expect?

Dr. Howard: What Sheen prescribed to our wounded world as the three-fold path back to Jesus Christ, the Healer, is at the very heart, purpose and mission of the Fulton Sheen Institute. Through live speaking events, retreats, parish missions, podcasts, webinars, online mini-courses and live intensive course immersions, the Fulton Sheen Institute brings the wisdom of Fulton Sheen to this generation’s most pressing questions: What’s the purpose and meaning of life? What’s wrong with the world and how do we fix it? How can we rebuild our nation and our Church upon a culture of life, based on the full truth about God, man and creation? As Fulton Sheen put it, “In this error infested world, what we need is a church and an authority that’s right. Not right when the world is right. But one that is right when the world is wrong.”

This “saint for our times” is a saint for all the world, but right now the Fulton Sheen Institute is especially focused on the United States. It’s here that he was given his special mission, and Catholic Americans must understand why. I am very excited to announce that the key event offered by the Fulton Sheen Institute in 2020 is “Visions of Our Future: Fulton Sheen’s Plan for a Great America.” This event  is an engaging 3-hour event that goes right to the heart of the cultural war in America today… a war that Ven. Fulton Sheen prophesied over 80 years ago! In it we’ll discuss the enemy we’re up against, the true meaning of freedom, the choice we face in America today, the critical role the Eucharist must play in turning America back to God, and how America’s special relationship with Our Blessed Mother is our greatest hope. Through Sheen’s insights, dialed in to God’s wisdom, we’ll discover America’s true path to greatness, and the hope that our best years are still ahead.

During this most critical election year, I invite you to discover Fulton Sheen’s prophetic vision for a great America. Book now for our evening event “Visions of Our Future” at fultonsheen.institute/booking

Pentecost...It's All There!

Gerber baby, Ann Cook Turner at 91
https://wgntv.com/2017/11/21/the-original-gerber-baby-turns-91-years-old-today/

Pentecost is often spoken of as the "birth" of the Church. It's an apt metaphor: The Church, which had been growing en utero you could say, in the persons of Mary, the Twelve, and the small community of disciples, now emerges into the world. And when she does, we can already glimpse all of the distinguishing features by which she will be known as an adult.

The Church’s most obvious feature is that she is Charismatic – she has received the Gift, the Holy Spirit, and the manifold gifts He bestows, as evidenced by the charisms of tongues and preaching. Receiving the Holy Spirit as the common Gift of the Father and the Son (Acts 2:33-36) also immediately distinguishes her as Trinitarian. She is not a political body or social service but a living Tabernacle, making pilgrimage to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.

The Church that the Spirit rushed upon in tongues of fire is also Marian, Apostolic, and Petrine. We find her gathered in prayer with the Mother of Jesus – the Church's strong, silent backbone. Just as the Spirit overshadowed Mary and formed Christ within her womb, so He overshadowed the nascent community. birthing them as the Body of Christ into the world.

She is built upon the Twelve. The apostolic "office" left vacant by Judas' defection and death had to be filled before she began her mission to the world (Acts 1:15-26). And it was Peter, designated first among Christ’s apostles (Mt 10:2; 16:17-20), who lead the Church in this first act of apostolic succession. It was Peter who stood up “with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and address[ed]” the crowd (2:14).

And the sermon that Peter preached that first day, identifying how Jesus fulfilled the words of the Psalms and Prophets, established the Church as Scriptural – she constantly reflects upon and proclaims God’s written word. She is also Christocentric in her reading of Scripture; it all speaks of the Lord Jesus. But Peter’s preaching was not an end in itself. It led the crowd to cry out, “What shall we do?”; and Peter’s response that they must “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (2:37-39). The Church is not just Scriptural but Sacramental.

Even though all who received baptism that day were Jews, the fact that they had traveled to Jerusalem “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5), intimated the acceptance of the Gentiles. It was a Catholic Church.

After almost two thousand years, the Church has grown and matured; Even though all who received baptism that day were Jews, the fact that they had traveled to Jerusalem “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5), intimated the acceptance of the Gentiles. It was a Catholic Church.

After almost two thousand years, the Church has grown and matured. Her doctrine, liturgy, and works have continued to develop, to deepen; but for anyone who gazes closely at her “baby picture” –the Pentecost narrative – she is easy to recognize. The Catholic Church of today remains the Mystical Body of Christ, gestated throughout the earthly life of Mary and Jesus and born into the world on Pentecost.

The Eucharist, Mary, and Redemptive Suffering

"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" (Colossians 1:24).  

It is a mysterious but incredible reality:  the suffering God allows into our lives, when accepted and lived with trust in his Love, become an actual participation in the sufferings of the Crucified, allowing us to be formed more truly his image – the very goal of our Faith.  And, as Paul said above, because we are "members of one another" (Rom.12:5; Eph.4:25), this grace is of benefit not just to us, but to the entire Body.  This teaching, far from casting aspersions on the efficacy of Jesus’ sacrifice, proclaims its superabundance.  We believe that his sacrifice redeems us so profoundly that it transforms us from mere creatures of God into sons and daughters.  It transforms us into cells of Jesus’ Mystical Body, inserting us into the Life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the only Son. This reality is there in the theology of Paul, and unpacked for us in the teaching of the saints and doctors.  What I had never recognized before was how it was contained in Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist.

 "This is My Body …. This is My Blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many."  This Body and Blood — Jesus received them from his mother Mary.  He clothed himself with her flesh, her blood, and offered Himself to the Father "in" them.  That is the mystery of redemptive suffering that the Lord wants to continue in you and me — to clothe himself with our very persons and lift our sufferings up into his own, making them part of his eternal offering to the Father (Heb.9:14).  As with Mary, he requires our consent to bring about this supernatural reality, "I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38).

We see Mary, fully engaged in this Mystery, there at the foot of her Son’s Cross.  Which of us parents haven’t imagined looking up and seeing our own children hanging there in the sun — their bodies ripped, blood flowing down their limbs, suffocating under their own weight.  It is the most monstrous suffering imaginable, but God allowed it into the life of his beloved Mary.  Her Son was dying to redeem the world, and her heart was pierced right along with His (Jn.19:34; Lk.2:35). Jesus was suffering there before her eyes, in the flesh he took from her; but through the chords of grace he was suffering in and through her person, gazing up at him, as well.  Through it all, the Holy Spirit maintained Mary in her fiat, "let it be to me according to your word;" and Scripture tells us that he made her suffering fruitful for the Mystical Body, "[Mary,] a sword will pierce your own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed" (Lk.2:35).  The mystery of redemptive suffering spoken of by Paul in Colossians 1:24 is graphically manifested by Mary at the Cross.

I don’t see any romance in pain, and I don’t desire it; but part of reality is recognizing that God allows me to pass through it.  It is not an end in itself, but a potentially powerful means: "For Jesus’ sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (Phil.3:8-11).  So I need to call out for the grace to unite my sufferings to those of Jesus, to allow him to lift me up toward his Father, "This is My Body…This is My Blood."  I need to pray each day for the grace to persevere through suffering; Jesus told us the stakes are high, "Because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold.  But he who endures to the end will be saved" (Mt.24:12-13).

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I hope you enjoyed this excerpt from Through, With, and In Him.

Mary, Elizabeth, Infant Baptism & Immaculate Conception

If you were at Mass (or one of the many Protestant congregations that use the Church's cycle of readings) this Fourth Sunday of Advent, then you heard the story of Mary's visit to Elizabeth. It is an amazingly rich story, but here I wish to highlight what it has to say to us about Mary's immaculate conception and the practice of infant baptism.

Look at Elizabeth's words to Mary: "At the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy" (Luke 1:44). Let the implications of that verse sink in: The New Testament says that John the Baptist responded to grace at only six months of fetal development. John rejoiced, in utero, to be in the presence of Jesus (within the womb of Mary)! It is as the angel Gabriel had promised John's father, "He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb" (Luke 1:15).

You see, the Holy Spirit does not have to wait until a child reaches the "age of reason" to free him or her from original sin and impart supernatural life to the child's soul. This is the reason that Catholics, Orthodox, and the majority of Protestant Christians practice infant baptism. The fact that John was "filled with the Holy Spirit" and his soul able to react to Christ's presence shows us what God wants to do under the New Covenant. The only debate that you find in the early Church over infant baptism was whether, since baptism was the fulfillment of circumcision (Col. 2:11-12), infants had to wait until they were eight days old to receive it! The bishops - in perfect harmony with Luke's Gospel - said no, there was no reason to wait (Council of Carthage, 203 A.D.).

Now what, you might ask, does any of this have to do with Mary's immaculate conception? Well, this Catholic dogma states that, in lieu of Jesus's redemptive death and infinite merits, Mary was preserved, at the moment of her conception, from contracting the stain of original sin. We Catholics believe that, in baptism, both adults and infants are set free from original sin and filled with the Holy Spirit. Today's gospel reading tells us that God did this for John even before birth. The dogma of Mary's immaculate conception is absolutely consistent with all that we've seen thus far, continuing it back to the moment of conception. One may have qualms with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, but it clearly shouldn't be over God's ability to work redemption at the moment of conception!

That's how powerful our God is to save.

Exposing the Anti-Mary: Author Interview with Carrie Gress

In his first epistle, the Apostle John wrote, “as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come” (1 Jn. 2:19). St. Paul wrote of a final antichrist, “the man of lawlessness…the son of perdition” who will arise prior to Christ’s return (2 Thess. 2:3).The spirit of antichrist has been sowing its seeds in the world from the first century until now. In her fascinating new book, The Anti-Mary Exposed (TAN Books, 2019), Dr. Carrie Gress takes aim at a specific aspect of this anti-Christian spirit, one that, since the 1960s, has distorted the vision of authentic femininity found in Christian Revelation and enfleshed in the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Dr. Gress marshals a mass of scholarship, presented in easily-accessible language, to detail the cultural shift brought about by a small group of elite American women. They convinced an entire generation of women that they could not be “equal” to men, could not lead “fulfilling” lives until the relationship between mother and child was disrupted. In 2019, we live with the deadly fruits of this revolution: sixty million abortions, skyrocketing divorce rates, an increase in female depression, anxiety, STDs, and substance abuse.  Gress also boldly proclaims the answer to the culture of death: Christ, Truth incarnate, and Mary, his mother and partner in redemption. It is an incredibly book, and I was honored to interview Dr. Gress:

Shane Kapler: Dr. Gress, you pull back the curtain on the ideological roots of the modern feminist movement as well as the personal lives of many of its leaders. As I was reading these revelations - Marxism, childhood abuse, diagnosed mental illness, substance abuse, the occult and pagan liturgy - I remember thinking, "I have friends that I want to share this information with, but they are never going to believe me." What did you, personally, find most shocking?

Dr. Gress: I did this research over two years, so I can imagine the experience of reading all of this over a couple of days. I think what was most shocking to me was our ignorance of the brokenness of second wave feminists. Women like Betty Friedan, Kate Millet and Gloria Steinem are held up for us as role models. Why don’t know about the depth of their brokenness and what it was they were responding to? The reality of who they were has been shielded from us. They considered themselves “Lost Girls.” Almost to a one, they had deep issues with their mothers. They all had major emotional trauma that they struggled with; and yet, these are the women who have led us to what we understand femininity to be in our culture. The fact that this hasn’t been scrutinized, talked about, and even rejected – that was what was most surprising to me.

Kapler: In your book, you point out how, when an ideology fails to deliver on its promises, and people begin to point out its faults, its adherents claim that we simply haven’t gone far enough. They place the blame on the fact that the ideology hasn’t been embraced by everyone. Do you think this it part of our rejection of God, that rather than turning back to him in him in humility and repentance, we keep soldiering further down this road?

Carrie Gress, Ph.D.

Dr. Gress: I think it is part and parcel of an ideology. We saw this very clearly among the Soviets, “Things will just start working once there is more Marxism,” or “once we are more egalitarian.” There is this push, and it becomes so strong that people are almost spellbound by it. One of the things I’ve come to see, and around feminism in particular, is a realization that women approach the world with a certain set of presuppositions: “I need to be more assertive. I need to assert my individuality. I need to compete with men.” What happens actually is that women begin taking on certain vices – rage, aggression – and it ends up making things worse. People don’t want to be around a woman who is really angry.

This pattern is striking to me; and I hear it among Catholic women, too. “When I’m dealing with men I try to be more assertive and not let them think they have the upper hand.” We’ve bought into the ideology enough that we think we need to compete with men. These are not the things that make people want to have deeper relationships with us. What has happened with feminism is that we have created this shell around ourselves, and people don’t want to engage because it’s not kind, it’s not compassionate, it’s not other-centered. All of these great virtues that women have; we’ve kind of been told, “Put those away. You don’t need those.” Women are embracing these broken pieces of feminism and womanhood that they are being offered, without realizing how it has this effect of cutting their feet out from underneath them.

Kapler: What is authentic feminism today? What ways are women being authentically discriminated against today?

Dr. Gress: That’s a difficult question to answer, because victimhood has become such a popular status to have in our culture. It’s hard to see what authentic injustice is and what is a manipulation of people. But I think that, if we can step aside from those realities, the biggest injustice is how women have been convinced that the only way they can get ahead is by making their children and families the enemy, making anything that gets in the way of their career the enemy. If we are going to talk about an actual injustice to women, it is that lie. That lie – that our children are obstacles to our success -- has permeated our culture without anyone pointing out how radical an idea it is, and how it had never been introduced into human culture before.  We have embraced slogans like “Shout Your Abortion” wholeheartedly, and treat it like it is some sort of native human right, because without abortion a woman cannot have her career and be successful.

Kapler: How do you see the Christian acceptance of contraception paving the way for today’s “brave new world”?

Dr. Gress: The biggest problem with contraception is the fact that it sterilizes women. It denies our motherhood, denies our fertility; and as a result, it ends up opening the doors for us to only be thinking about sex as something that is physical pleasure. It is something between consenting adults; and it doesn’t have anything to do with children anymore. This of course also led to the opening of the door to the acceptance of homosexuality. Charles Rice, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, used to talk in his classes about the way contraception was going to lead to the normalization of homosexuality; and everyone used to think he was ridiculous. And yet, we are seeing it in spades. It’s one of those things where any kind of deviancy can be enmeshed into the ethos, because people think, “How is their sex life different from ours? We’re just trying to get sexual gratification, and so are they. There’s nothing else to consider.” I think that, at root, contraception lies behind all of the gender confusion that we are currently dealing with. Of course, Pope Paul VI was right about all of these things, which he predicted would happen with the onset of contraception. Among them is the relationship between men and women and their unifying force as a couple. Divorce rates have certainly spiked because of it, and it has not led to the emotional closeness it was supposed to usher in. All of these things happened because we tinkered with God’s design at a biological level and really disrupted the family.

Kapler: Following Vatican II, there seemed to be a lessening of Mary’s role in the devotional lives of many Catholics. We, of course, also saw this among our Protestant brothers and sisters over the past five centuries. Do you think this great cultural shift could have occurred if Mary's place in the Christian life had not first been diminished?

Dr. Gress: No, this would never have happened if Our Lady had been held at the center of culture. I think you are absolutely right to talk about the Protestant break first, and I have seen Protestants write about this: Protestantism hasn’t carved out any place for women to be women. Obviously, religious orders were eradicated, as was Mary as a role model, so there wasn’t any place for women to understand their role. As a result, men were put on a pedestal; and women are responding to this. The traditional avenues women had to have this close relationship to Christ were walled off from them. That’s one of the biggest issues to begin with.

If we look at what the Catholic Church has actually said about women – not that every Catholic has responding rightly toward women – but in terms of the way the Church upheld femininity, much of that was developed because of who our Lady was. The Church is way ahead on this. We hear this ridiculous line that “Well-behaved women never make history.” That’s not true at all. Historically, if we think about different women who made history, they were saints. They understood that they had to connect their will with God’s will, and then through that they were able to do things they could never do – things they could only do through God. I am thinking of women like St. Helen, St. Lucy, St. Monica, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Joan of Arc. All of these remarkable women had very different vocations. None of these women could be referred to as a doormat. This is what the Catholic Church has had going for it – this understanding of what happens with women when we become holy. Sadly, that was washed from our collective memory, as was Mary. So many women wanted to follow, culturally, what was happening with the trends of the culture: contraception, leaving home to build their own careers, and whatever else was happening culturally at the time. If so many women did not find it absurd to suggest Our Lady as a role model of womanhood, we would not be in this place where we are.

Kapler: Dr. Gress, thank you for your time. I know my readers have thoroughly enjoyed this glimpse into TheAnti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity.

Book Review: "The Radiance of Her Face" by Dom Xavier Perrin, O.S.B.

You wouldn't think that a book 93-pages in length would take me four weeks to finish, but The Radiance of Her Face: A Triptych in Honor of Mary Immaculate is a book of such beauty and depth that I was forced to proceed slowly. It was my companion during Adoration. Since finishing the book, I have allowed another eight weeks to elapse, in the futile hope that I would be able to say something meaningful about this book. I am announcing my surrender.

This is theology done on one's knees. With sincere, palpable love, Dom Perrin engages in the exegesis of Scripture, Tradition, papal encyclicals, and the lives of saints, to carry us to new heights in our contemplation of Christ's work in the Immaculate...and the work He wishes to accomplish in each of us. An example from Dom Perrin's contemplation of the Annunciation:

The angel, who habitually contemplates the face of God, immediately recognizes in Mary an outstanding resemblance to the One Who created them both. Is he, perhaps, taken aback, astonished to encounter among men a person so divine? Yet the most astonished one is Mary herself. She is troubled, greatly troubled, and, says the text: "she considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be." 

     On the one hand, thoroughly immersed in God, she is unaware of herself...she is hidden from her own eyes....She is entirely at the service of her neighbor, incapable of comparing herself with others, for she is totally incapable of turning in upon herself. She is completely humble, for she is perfectly placed, with regard to God, in free, glad and total dependence on Him. She is so humble that people do not notice her, do not offer her any compliments, do not think anything of her or look at her. She possesses something of God's own invisibility, which is the invisibility of Love in its pure state, inaccessible to the creature unless God lifts it up and transforms it in order to make it capable of loving as God loves, of knowing as He knows, of participating in His transcendent purity. (pp. 9-10)

This thought - that Mary's immaculate conception drew her gaze outward, transfixed upon the Beloved - will stay with me for the rest of my life.

In one section of the work, I recall Dom Perrin quoting from St. Maximilian Kolbe. He recognizes that the saint's theology, his "strong expressions," can prove "shocking" to some readers. I admit to feelings of apprehension when reading portions of St. Maximilian's theology, but it did nothing to diminish my awe of Dom Perrin's work. The Radiance of Her Face (Angelico Press, 2017) is a treasure, a book that deserves to be read for generations to come. It can be read profitably at any time of year, but it would make a perfect companion during Advent, and especially in the days leading up to the December 8th solemnity.

Why I'm "No" on the Rapture, But "Yes" on Mary's Assumption

In my last post I shared my reasons for giving up belief in the Rapture.  Introduced to it by author Hal Lindsey, and confirmed in it during my time in a non-denominational church, study brought me to the conclusion that it was not a legitimate element of Christian Faith. Despite its popularity among Christians in the U.S., not only did it have no basis in Scripture, but it directly contradicted what Christianity has always taught - that in the last days, the Church will share Christ's Passion in an intense way, and then at His return, His Resurrection.

The wild thing is, at the same time that I believed so whole-heartedly in the Rapture, I also argued against the Catholic belief that Mary was assumed into heaven.  Do you see the irony?  I was absolutely convinced that Jesus was going to raise the entire Church up into heaven, but totally opposed to the Catholic dogma that Jesus had already done so for His Mother!

My change of heart occurred long before I came to have a positive view of the Catholic Tradition regarding Mary's assumption.  My thought process went something like this:  

• The Bible does not say that Mary wasn't assumed into heaven.

• The Old Testament does speak of two other people having been assumed, Enoch (Gen. 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:11-12).If it was true for them, then couldn't it be true of Mary?

• Matthew's Gospel states that at the moment of Jesus' death, "The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. (Mt. 27:52-53).  Wasn't it reasonable to believe that after these appearances they too were assumed into heaven?  Again, if it was true for them, then why not for Mary?

• If the assumption occurred at the end of her life, then wouldn’t portions of the New Testament already have been written? Did the Bible have to explicitly say it for the event to have occurred?

• There are tons of things not explicitly recorded in the Bible; the Holy Spirit moved John to end his Gospel with that very thought, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written" (Jn. 21:25)

• The Assumption coincides with, dovetails into, Scripture; whereas a pre-Tribulation Rapture is in contradiction to the overall picture of the last days painted by the New Testament.

• Belief in Mary's assumption is witnessed to in writing prior to 400 A.D. (although it claims to go back to the apostles), while the Rapture does not make an appearance until 1850.  

• The Assumption squares with the Christian reality that glory follows suffering (Mary's share in Jesus' Resurrection came only after she shared in His suffering upon the Cross [Lk.2:35; Jn.19:25-37].)  The Rapture on the other hand, holds out a false expectation regarding freedom from suffering and persecution.

Catholics and Orthodox Christians have of course always said that the Christian Faith was not be limited to those things explicitly stated in Scripture.  (No legitimate point of belief could ever contradict Scripture, but there is not a requirement that it be explicitly stated in Scripture either.)   

If you, however, object to Mary's assumption because you are a "Bible-only" Christian, then you really ought to take a second look at John's vision in the Book of Revelation.  And as you read, please keep in mind how the Gospel of Luke's identified Mary with the Ark of the Covenant (compare Luke 1:39-45,56 with 2 Samuel 6:2-3,6-12,16) and how in the Gospel of John, Jesus always addressed His Mother as "Woman" (Jn.2:1-5; 19:25-27):

"Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake and heavy hail. And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold a great red dragon…the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne ... " (Revelation 11:19-12:5)

Something to consider. Catholics do not appeal to any particular verse of Scripture as a proof text for the dogma of the Assumption; but the above verses certainly do not hurt their case! As I looked more into the foundations of Catholic belief in the Assumption, I discovered that it had a much more ancient pedigree than whatone could find for the Rapture.Once Constantine became Emperor and Christianity was no longer a persecuted sect, Christians were able to erect churches over the sites sacred to them (such as the Holy Sepulchre in 336 A.D.). These sites had been preserved in the local church's memory throughout the centuries. One of the sites, close to Mount Zion where the first Christian community had lived, had always been reverenced as place of Mary's Dormition ("falling asleep). It was not the place where Mary's body resided however - only the place where it had temporarily rested before Mary was raised body and soul into heaven.   

Although different local churches could point to the tombs of the Apostles and martyrs and boast of having their relics (bodies), there was never any such claim made in regard to Mary.  Had their been a body, the early Church would have cherished it.  But instead of a body we have this memory, this witness, from the time of the apostles, ingrained within Christians in and around Jerusalem.  Just a little research on the web can provide early witnesses:

"If therefore it might come to pass before the power of your grace, it has appeared right to us your servants that, as you, having overcome death does reign in glory, so you should raise up the body of your mother and take her with you, rejoicing into heaven. Then said the Savior [Jesus]: 'Be it done according to your will" (Pseudo-Melito The Passing of the Virgin 16:2-17; 300 AD). 

"Therefore the Virgin is immortal to this day, seeing that he who had dwelt in her transported her to the regions of her assumption" (Timothy of Jerusalem Homily on Simeon and Anna; 400 AD).

"And from that time forth all knew that the spotless and precious body had been transferred to paradise" (John the Theologian, The Falling Asleep of Mary; 400 AD) 

"The Apostles took up her body on a bier and placed it in a tomb; and they guarded it, expecting the Lord to come. And behold, again the Lord stood by them; and the holy body having been received, He commanded that it be taken in a cloud into paradise: where now, rejoined to the soul, [Mary] rejoices with the Lord's chosen ones..." (Gregory of Tours, Eight Books of Miracles, 1:4; 575-593 A.D.)

 St. John Damascene, living in the desert outside Jerusalem in the early 700's, gave the same testimony:

"In the Holy and divinely-inspired Scriptures no mention is made of anything concerning the end of Mary the Holy Mother of God; but we have received from ancient and most truthful tradition ... the Apostles ... opened the coffin.  And they were unable anywhere to find her most lauded body ... Struck by the wonder of the mystery they could only think that He who had been pleased to become incarnate from her in His own Person and to become Man and to be born in the flesh, God the Word, the Lord of Glory ... was pleased even after her departure from life to honor her immaculate and undefiled body with incorruption and with translation prior to the common and universal resurrection." (Second Homily on the Dormition of Mary, c.715 A.D.)

The celebration of Mary's Dormition in the liturgy was first recorded in Palestine in the late 400's and was taken up throughout the Eastern Church and then the West throughout the 500's.  

In the end, I see the Assumption's credibility as standing head-and-shoulders above the Rapture's:

And thus, I was forced to change my tune.  Which is good because on top of everything I have already shared, in 1950 Pope Pius XII used the power of the keys to definitively state that Mary's assumption is a legitimate point of the Faith that has come to us from the Apostles.  To neglect it is forego knowledge of one of the "many other things" that Jesus did that were not written down in Scripture (Jn. 21:25), but have been preserved within the living memory of His Church.  And that Church is, in the words of Scripture, "the pillar and foundation of truth" (1 Tim. 3:15).