Vatican News Removes "Rapenik" Weird Art: Maria Mater Ecclesiae

Today is the great feast of Pentecost Monday: Mary, Mother of the Church. The institution of this feast was twist of God’s providence. As the Prophet declares: He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them: and the Lord shall deride them (Ps. ii. 4). When the wickedness of men raise their evil against Him, He laughs.

We too must laugh with him.

The Drama of the Council

At Vatican II, the heretics wanted to diminish Our Lady’s intercession and glory in order to appease the Protestants. But as we discuss in the manifesto of our apostolate, there was a distinction between the Roman-Strict party at the Council (the Coetus Internationalis Patrum) and the Greco-Moderates (who would later become the “Communio” school of thought).

The Roman-Strict party was concerned about the traditional titles of Our Lady like “Mediatrix of all Graces” (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange promoting this title before the Council) and the glories of Mary and her prerogatives for all the faithful. The Assumption of Mary Dogmatisation in 1950 was a victory for this party against the heretics. The Strict party was concerned with preserving all the traditional devotions and feasts of Our Lady and glorifying her yet more (as all good sons of Our Lady desire!) but they began to promote a new cause at the Council: the glorification of Mary by means of a new title, “Mater Ecclesiae,” Mother of the Church.

For this reason the Coetus Internationalis Patrum (co-led by Archbishop Lefebvre) circulated a petition to Pope (St.) Paul VI with these words: “At the fourth coming third session, may the blessed Virgin Mary be proclaimed Mother of the Church by the council, that is, by Your Holiness, as head, together with the fathers, as members.”[1]

This angered the heretics who opposed this as giving greater glory to Our Lady, whom they hated, as all heretics do ultimately hate Mary, revealing the work of the devil among them (“Why Heretics Hate Mary and We Should Love Her More”). But the good Poles and Spaniards also petitioned the Holy Father for the same title to be proclaimed.

What did the Greco-Moderate party do? The tragedy of the Council is that this party allied with the heretics against the Strict, due to the historical factors at play, forming the short-lived “European Alliance” which was a “dialogue with the Devil,” which predictably failed to prevent the heretics from having their way at and after the Council.

Nevertheless the Greco-Moderate Fathers were indeed recovering the Patristic notion of Marian Ecclesiology (promoted by Hugo Rahner, the orthodox brother of Karl Rahner, who was suspect of heresy). The Marian Ecclesiology is what brings together the concern of the Strict and the Moderate into the one Patristic exegesis of the mystical passage from Revelation 11:19-12:18, which shows the Assumption and Coronation of Mary. These final mysteries of the Latin and Russian Rosary then lead the faithful in the spiritual life to join the Church Triumphant. As Lumen Gentium would later say: “But while in the most holy Virgin the Church has already reached that perfection whereby she is without spot or wrinkle, the followers of Christ still strive to increase in holiness by conquering sin” (65).

Yet what did Pope Paul VI do? He sided with the traditionalists and proclaimed Mary as Mater Ecclesiae on November 21 (feast of the Presentation of Mary) in 1964.[2] This made the heretics gnash their teeth and call that whole week of the Council “Black Week.”[3]

It was indeed “black” for heretics who live in the darkness of the devil.

Enter Pope Francis

So by means of Mary, Lefebvre and the traditionalists won the title they strove for. And then, as one of the “13 Good Things Pope Francis Did,” Pope Francis officially instituted this feast day today with an office and Mass. The Gospel is especially powerful as it shows the “birth pains” of Mary, mystically signified in Revelation 12 (which says that Mary had birth pains), as the birth of the Church at the Cross, in which Our Lady’s Sorrowful heart participates, giving birth to the Church finally at the Blood and Water, in a mystery beyond human words.

(Mary had no birth pains but when she gave birth to Christ but experienced a miraculous birthgiving, and Vatican II confirms this traditional dogma.[4])

(Concerning the quaestiones disputatae in Mariology, the Council preserved the existing theological notes on all sententiae.[5])

Pope Leo in his homily today mentions the fruitfulness of these birth pains of the Sorrowful Heart of Mary: “All of the fruitfulness of the Church and of the Holy See depends on the Cross of Christ. Otherwise it is just appearances, if not something worse." Indeed, something worse is not only the “New Pagans” in the Church that Ratzinger condemned before the Council in 1958, but the demonic self-worship of the Pharisee, and indeed Fr. Rupnik, but we will return to this below.

It certainly feels to my heart that this particular title is the one we need very much today in the crisis within and without the Church. As the Russian icon of the Theotokos of Fatima is called: “In Thee Unity.”

The Mass instituted by Pope Francis includes the Marian-Pentecostal Introit: “All these were persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren” (Acts i. 14).

The Collect asks for the conversion of the world to Jesus and His Church through Mary:

O God, Father of mercies, whose Only Begotten Son, as he hung upon the Cross, chose the Blessed Virgin Mary, his Mother, to be our Mother also, grant, we pray, that with her loving help your Church may be more fruitful day by day and, exulting in the holiness of her children, may draw to her embrace all the families of the peoples. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

This collect crushes the head of every heresy promoted under the pontificate of Pope Francis. God laughs in heaven, and crushes the head of the devil by means of His Handmaid. He hath shown the strength of His arm, and scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

“Rapenik” Art Removed

It was with a heavy heart that I wrote an article a while back called “Rapenik” Gets a Parish, Strickland Gets Removed: the Francis Pontificate.” The crimes of Fr. Rupnik were a scourge on the faithful, since Pope Francis’s corrupt Vatican seemed to promote him and his weird art everywhere, including on the official Vatican News website.

Now after Pope Leo, we have this great news:

I can’t help but think that Mary did this through Pope Leo. May she also bring the soul of Rupnik to true penance and save him from the eternal fires of hell. Say an Ave Maria for his soul!

Glory to God for all things!

Timothy

[1] Ralph Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber (Augustine Publishing Company, 1978), 240.

[2] Side note, this feast was suppressed by the Great Pope St. Pius V, but Pope Sixtus V quickly corrected this grave error with a subsequent edition of the Tridentine Missal.

[3] Ibid., 234-246.

[4] “This union is manifest also at the birth of Our Lord, who did not diminish His mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it” (Lumen Gentium, 57). The Council adds these citations: Cfr. Conc. Lateranense anni 649, Can. 3: Mansi 10, 1151. S. Leo M., Epist. ad Flav.: PL S4, 7S9. - Conc. Chalcedonense: Mansi 7, 462. - S. Ambrosius, De inst. virg.: PL 16, 320.

[5] “Wherefore this Holy Synod, in expounding the doctrine on the Church, in which the divine Redeemer works salvation, intends to describe with diligence both the role of the Blessed Virgin in the mystery of the Incarnate Word and the Mystical Body, and the duties of redeemed mankind toward the Mother of God, who is mother of Christ and mother of men, particularly of the faithful. It does not, however, have it in mind to give a complete doctrine on Mary, nor does it wish to decide those questions which the work of theologians has not yet fully clarified. Those opinions therefore may be lawfully retained which are propounded in Catholic schools concerning her, who occupies a place in the Church which is the highest after Christ and yet very close to us” (Lumen Gentium, 54) citing a recent allocution from Paul VI.