A Study of Dom Prosper Gueranger's Detailed Defense of The Mystical City of God, part one

The holy, penitential season of Lent is one in which we are called upon by Holy Mother Church to use our time properly as we withdraw from the world and meditate upon the Sacred Mysteries of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection in which His Most Blessed Mother cooperated fully as our Mediatrix, Co-Redemptrix, and Advocate.

There are many good sources from which Catholics can deepen their understanding of the events of our salvation and to be more fully prepared to enter into Passiontide and the Paschal Triduum with a spirit filled with gratitude for all that Our Lord and Our Lady endured for our salvation and with a heart consumed with grief at what we caused Our Lord to suffer once in time during His Passion Death as He paid back with His own Sacred Humanity the debt of our sin that was owed to Him in His Sacred Divinity and that wound His Mystical Body, Holy Mother Church, today.

Among those sources are Father Maurice Meschler’s The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, The Son of God, in Meditations, Volume II, Father Peter Gallwey’s The Watches of the Passion, Father Frederick William Faber’s The Precious Blood and The Foot of the Cross, Dom Prosper Gueranger’s The Liturgical Year, Archbishop Alban Goodier’s The Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, The Sermons of Saint Robert Bellarmine as found in  Sermons of St. Robert Bellarmine, S.J., Part I: From Advent to Passion Sunday and Part II: From Easter to the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost, Father Francis X. Weninger’s Lives of the Saints : Compiled from Authentic Sources with a Practical Instruction on the Life of Each Saint, for Every Day in the Year and Original, Short and Practical Sermons for Every Sunday of the Ecclesiastical Year, Saint Alphonsus di Liguori’s Victories of the Martyrs, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s The Life of Christ, and among so many others, John Henry Cardinal Newman’s long meditations and shorter meditations on the Way of the Cross.

Many believing Catholics are also very familiar with the meditations of Saint Bridget of Sweden, the private revelations given to the Venerable Anne Katherine Emmerich, and those given to Mother Maria de Jesus de Agreda, to whom Our Lady spoke about the entirety of the mysteries of salvation which she, Venerable Mary of Agreda, wrote under obedience to her spiritual director, and which were immediately accepted in her native Spain with great joy and gratitude.

With all that is going in the world and within the counterfeit church of conciliarism, therefore, how very said it is that there are those Catholics who believe that it is a profitable use of their good Catholic time to attack as “condemned” The Mystical City of God, which has been defended the likes of popes, eminent theologians and holy priests, such as Father Solanus Casey, and scholars, such as the late Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M. S.T.D. (see  Simply Holy: Father Solanus Casey, O.F.M., Cap.). An entire issue of the Age of Mary magazine in 1958 defended The Mystical City of God against the attacks leveled by Jansenists at the Sorbonne in the Seventeenth Century who were trying to accommodate Catholicisim in France to the spirit of Protestant rationalism and who even wanted to make the liturgy “simpler” in order to “appeal” to the Protestants.

As explained in Simply Holy: Father Solanus Casey, O.F.M., Cap., Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., the Abbot of Solesmes, from 1845 to the time of his death in 1875 and the author of The Liturgical Year and master scholar who was always ready to defend the sublime privileges Our Lady against the attacks of Protestants and their kith and kin who adhered to Jansenism, wrote a series of twenty-eight articles in L’Univers between May 23, 1858, and November 8, 1859. The subjects of those articles were summarized in thumbnail sketches in the Age of Mary issue dedicated to defending The Mystical City of God, but the actual text existed only in the French language until Mr. Timothy A. Duff, the editor of The New English Translation of The Mystical City of God, took it upon himself to run the text through a DeepL.com translation program, which was then reviewed by a French-speaking seminarian.

Mr. Duff explained the nature of Dom Prosper Gueranger’s scholarly inquiries and why they should put to rest all objections to The Mystical City of God based on the condemnation of a single group of French scholars at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, even though the book had received the highest approbations in the Venerable Mary of Agreda’s home country of Spain and had received the commendations of the theologians at Louvain University in Brussels and Toulouse, France, at the same time the Sorbonne condemnation was issued:

In these 28 Articles, published in French in L’Univers (Paris: 1858-1859), Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B. (1805-1875), Abbot of Solesmes, and eminent Catholic theologian, historian, liturgist, and author of the monumental Liturgical Year, defends private revelation in general, and specifically the Mystical City of God by Ven. Mary of Jesus of Ágreda (1602-1665). He examines the only Magisterial source regarding this book and its author, the 510-page dossier The Cause for the Beatification of the Venerable Mary of Jesus of Ágreda, the original of which is in the archives of the Sacred Congregation of Rites in Rome. He gives public testimony that, according to various Papal pronouncements, the Mystical City is allowed free circulation and may be read by all the faithful. His integrity, scholarship, prudence, and source material are unimpeachable. Roma locuta; causa finita.

Corroborating testimony was given by Fr. Peter Mary Rookey, OSM, Consultor General of the Servite order, who examined the original dossier in the Archives of the Sacred Congregation of Rites in Rome in July 1957, confirming the findings of Dom Guéranger (see Appendix 1 for details).

My primary goal in publishing these articles is, by the testimony of Dom Guéranger, to extinguish any controversy regarding whether the Mystical City of God may be freely circulated and read by the faithful. If anyone asks whether the book may be read, the answer of the Catholic Church is yes, as proven by Dom Guéranger in these Articles. Therefore let no one discourage or forbid the reading of this Life and History of the sacrosanct Mother of God, Mary most holy, for this would be hindering the sanctification of souls, frustrating the very purpose of these revelations.

The principal testimony of Dom Guéranger that the Mystical City of God is approved by the Church for all the faithful to read is found in Article 12.

Yet all of these Articles are highly relevant in understanding our situation today; for this reason they are well worth your time to read them. Dom Guéranger studies in detail the theological and liturgical aberrations regarding the veneration and honor due to the Blessed Virgin Mary which arose in France in the latter part of the 17th century. He centers his study on the attempted censure of the book by the Theological Faculty of the University of Paris (known as the Sorbonne) in 1696, showing how a Jansenist cabal (his word) rammed its scandalous ‘censure’ through the Sorbonne by trampling on the laws and procedures of this eminent Faculty, and brutally silencing all opposition. Even though the ‘censure’ is proven to be entirely null and void, nevertheless the scandal given caused a cooling of the fervor of devotion to Our Lady, the concomitant decline in devotion to, and even belief in, the Incarnation, and finally the ascendancy of Rationalism which would triumph in 1789 in the bloody French Revolution, whose cry of liberty, equality, fraternity echoes into our day in the usurpation of the Papacy in 1958, the triumph of Modernism at Vatican II, and the sacrilegious, invalid, and soul-destroying Novus Ordo Missae and invalidated ‘sacraments’.

These 28 Articles, along with the synopsis for each one, were translated verbatim from two websites. The first is a digital archive of the French National Library where the actual photographic images of the original L’Univers Articles are published. Reading them on that site is like having the original magazine in your hands. I have given the URL for each article in the Table of Contents; see Appendix 2 for a screenshot and instructions for navigating this site.

The second website is www.domgueranger.net; Appendix 3 has a screenshot and instructions for this site.

I have added paragraph numbers to each Article for ease of reference.

Finally, I wish to extend heartfelt gratitude to a friend who is a Canadian seminarian and native French speaker, versed in theology, for comparing and proofreading the DeepL translation word-for-word with the original French, and for his helpful and charitable corrections, suggestions and support. (Mr. Timothy A. Duff, Editor’s Preface, Mary of Agreda and The Mystical City of God: 28 Articles by Dom Prosper Gueranger, OSB, Abbot of Solesmes, theological, liturgist, historian, ad author of the Liturgical Year. Originally published in L’Univers, Paris, 1858-1859. Translated from the original French using Deepl.com by Timothy A. Duff, M.S. Ed., Editor of The New English Edition of The Mystical City of God. © 2024 HOMBOL Publications, 8711 St. Michael’s Road, Spokane, Washington, pp. 13-15. Future citations to the text of Mary of Agreda and The Mystical City of God  in this study will made by listing only page numbers and not the full title, translator, or publisher as in this initial citation.)

Perhaps the best way to explain the hostility of the Jansenists at the Sorbonne to Marian devotion in general and to The Mystical City of God in particular is to note that there great parallels between what the rationalists sought to do with the Sacred Liturgy and what actually done by Annibale Bugnini’s Consilium when concocting the synthetic Novus Ordo travesty, including changing the titles of Our Lady’s feast days because they believed that devotion to her detracted from the adoration due to her Divin Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ:

6. It was in the midst of this situation that Jansenism, which had been able to flourish in Paris during the long episcopate of Cardinal de Noailles, judged that the time had come to use the liturgy to strike a new blow at the piety of the faithful towards the Blessed Virgin by reducing her veneration to even narrower proportions than those left to her in the Harlay Breviary and Missal. We know that it was in 1736 that the new Parisian liturgy appeared. Its authors had taken no account of the previous books, in order to apply more widely their entire system of doctrine; and they themselves celebrated, in the Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, the importance of the triumph which they gained by the success of this skilful work. The new Breviary, under the pretext of avenging the rights of Christ, took away from the Mother of God the popular title of two of her principal feasts. On March 25 it was no longer the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, but the Annunciation of the Lord, Annunciatio Dominica; on February 2, the title of the feast read: Presentation of the Lord and Purification of the Blessed Virgin, as if the universal Church had lacked respect for Christ by not expressing his name in the name of this solemnity. Baillet thus triumphed after his death. The feast of the Conception was maintained on December 8, yet they dared to remove its Octave. The office of January 1, which until then had served almost exclusively to celebrate the Divine Maternity, lost the last traces of its ancient composition. Its magnificent antiphons, which date back to the fifth century, had been erased; those of the Assumption and the Nativity, handeddown to us by the Antiphonary of St. Gregory, had been replaced by others in which the name of Mary was not even pronounced. The lessons from St. John Damascene, which on the day of the Assumption proclaimed the resurrection of the Mother of God, were replaced by others which did not mention her at all. The Ave maris stella was banished from the office of Vespers on all feasts of the Blessed Virgin; it was relegated to the Little Office, which was not usually sung before the people; even so this hymn had been so disgracefully distorted by the most malicious alterations, to such an extent that it was necessary to restore the ancient lesson by means of an insert. It seemed as if the authors of the new Breviary were trying to fulfill the wish of that doctor of the Sorbonne whom we heard declare, in the discussions on the Mystical City, that there was no need, after all, to give the Blessed Virgin any other titles than those found verbatim in the Gospel. The sense of the grandeurs of Mary could not fail to diminish in France when, in most dioceses, liturgical innovation spread and came to disaccustom the faithful of so many usages and formulas which the centuries had dedicated to the veneration of the Mother of God, and which were maintained in the rest of the Church. In return, how much must we thank the divine goodness which deigns to restore to us in these days the venerable forms of the piety of our fathers, the true liturgy which proceeds from authority, antiquity and universality, and which carries with it light and life! (pp. 349-350.)

This is exactly what the anti-liturgical Modernists, suffused as they were with the spirit of Jansenism that had been condemned by Pope Pius VI in Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1694, who served on Annibale Bugnini’s Consilium did when they planned the synthetic monstrosity known as the Novus Ordo Missae. As had been the case in Paris at the end of the Seventeenth Century, the titles of the Feasts of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary were changed, respectively, to the Feasts of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Annunciation of Our Lord Jesus Christ, changes that I discussed in G.I.R.M. Warfare: The Conciliar Church's Unremitting Warfare Against Catholic Faith and Worship.

Dom Prosper Gueranger explained that even after the Sorbonne theologians who condemned The Mystical City of God were themselves condemned for publishing a book, A Case of Conscience, in which they adhered to Jansenist heresies, that the damage they had done to Marian devotion was permanent and had shown itself what was called the “Parisian Liturgy. Here is an excerpt from the Abbot of Solesmes’s twenty-fifth article in L’Univers, September 18, 1859:

We know that it was in 1736 that the new Parisian liturgy appeared. Its authors had taken no account of the previous books, in order to apply more widely their entire system of doctrine; and they themselves celebrated, in the Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, the importance of the triumph which they gained by the success of this skilful work. The new Breviary, under the pretext of avenging the rights of Christ, took away from the Mother of God the popular title of two of her principal feasts. On March 25 it was no longer the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, but the Annunciation of the Lord, Annunciatio Dominica; on February 2, the title of the feast read: Presentation of the Lord and Purification of the Blessed Virgin, as if the universal Church had lacked respect for Christ by not expressing his name in the name of this solemnity. Baillet [the chief opponent of The Mystical City of God] thus triumphed after his death. The feast of the Conception was maintained on December 8, yet they dared to remove its Octave. The office of January 1, which until then had served almost exclusively to celebrate the Divine Maternity, lost the last traces of its ancient composition. Its magnificent antiphons, which date back to the fifth century, had been erased; those of the Assumption and the Nativity, handed down to us by the Antiphonary of St. Gregory, had been replaced by others in which the name of Mary was not even pronounced. The lessons from St. John Damascene, which on the day of the Assumption proclaimed the resurrection of the Mother of God, were replaced by others which did not mention her at all. The Ave maris stella was banished from the office of Vespers on all feasts of the Blessed Virgin; it was relegated to the Little Office, which was not usually sung before the people; even so this hymn had been so disgracefully distorted by the most malicious alterations, to such an extent that it was necessary to restore the ancient lesson by means of an insert. It seemed as if the authors of the new Breviary were trying to fulfill the wish of that doctor of the Sorbonne whom we heard declare, in the discussions on the Mystical City, that there was no need, after all, to give the Blessed Virgin any other titles than those found verbatim in the Gospel. The sense of the grandeurs of Mary could not fail to diminish in France when, in most dioceses, liturgical innovation spread and came to disaccustom the faithful of so many usages and formulas which the centuries had dedicated to the veneration of the Mother of God, and which were maintained in the rest of the Church. In return, how much must we thank the divine goodness which deigns to restore to us in these days the venerable forms of the piety of our fathers, the true liturgy which proceeds from authority, antiquity and universality, and which carries with it light and life! (p. 350.)

Dom Prosper Gueranger also noted that Adrien Baillet and his Jansenist co-conspirators in their obsession to censure The Mystical City of God desired to do that which got done at the “Second” Vatican Council and thereafter: to rid Catholicism of anything that would give Protestants a pretext for scandal, including devotion to Our Lady:

But it is important to go through the work and point out its main features; nothing can serve more to enlighten the reader on the spirit of the system which prevailed in France towards the end of the 17th century, and on the manner in which it was applied. The great determined cause put forward by the whole dominant school was this: To rid teaching and worship of anything that might give Protestants a pretext for scandal. This is .the same idea which we saw put forward by certain Catholics in 1854, in the days before the definition of the Immaculate Conception; and those who know a little ecclesiastical history will also remember the violent pressure which the Fathers of the Council of Trent felt for a long time from those who wanted that holy and illustrious assembly to concern itself solely with the reform of morals, and not to irritate heretics by dogmatic definitions. People who allow themselves to be taken in by such traps are very blind or very foolish; but, in return, those who set these traps know perfectly well what they are doing. Catholics have, after all, more rights in the Church than heretics who do not belong to it; and we do not see that all these concessions of doctrine and practice have brought them back into the fold of the common Mother. (p. 227.)

These were the goals of the Jansenists who condemned The Mystical City of God, and many of the conciliar revolutionaries shamelessly repeated the same goal three centuries later. Moreover, Jorge Mario Bergoglio has told us on many occasions that a strict adherence to doctrine is an impediment to “Christian unity”:

We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants." (Annibale Bugnini, L'Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965.)

Let it be candidly said: the Roman Rite which we have known hitherto no longer exists. It is destroyed. (Father Joseph Gelineau, who worked with Annibale Bugnini's Consilium, Quoted and footnoted in the work of a Father John Mole, who believed that the Mass of the Roman Rite had been "truncated," not destroyed. Assault on the Roman Rite)

Certainly we will preserve the basic elements, the bread, the wine, but all else will be changed according to local tradition: words, gestures, colors, vestments, chants, architecture, decor. The problem of liturgical reform is immense. (Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, 1965, Quoted and footnoted in Assault on the Roman Rite. This has also been noted on this site in the past, having been provided me by a reader who had access to the 1980 French book in which the quote is found.)

"[T]he intention of Pope Paul VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should coincide with the Protestant liturgy.... [T]here was with Pope Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic in the traditional sense, in the Mass, and I, repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist mass" (Dec. 19, 1993), Apropos, #17, pp. 8f; quoted in Christian Order, October 1994. (Jean Guitton, a close friend of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI.)

The men quoted just above were either participants in the conciliar liturgical revolution or, in the case of Jean Guitton, a friend of the man who oversaw its development, and gave it his “papal” approval, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul VI. Each described the liturgical revolution as a decisive break with the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, not as an organic development as “conservative” apologists of the Novus Ordo such as James Likoudis and the late Kenneth Whitehead long contended.

Such a break was necessary as the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service was meant to enshrine a different religious faith than the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, replete as it is with references to a God Who judges sinners and the necessity of making reparation for our sins by living more with a penitential spirit, the possibility of losing our souls for all eternity in hell, and constant references to the miracles wrought by the saints. As such, therefore, the Novus Ordo is redolent of the same kind of Jansenistic ethos that was expressed by the illegal Synod of Pistoia in the Eighteenth Century and condemned by Pope Pius VI in Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794.

Pope Pius VI condemned the very following liturgical propositions advanced by the Synod of Pistoia:

The Suitable Order to Be Observed in Worship

31. The proposition of the synod enunciating that it is fitting, in accordance with the order of divine services and ancient custom, that there be only one altar in each temple, and therefore, that it is pleased to restore that custom,—rash, injurious to the very ancient pious custom flourishing and approved for these many centuries in the Church, especially in the Latin Church.

32. Likewise, the prescription forbidding cases of sacred relics or flowers being placed on the altar,— rash, injurious to the pious and approved custom of the Church.

33. The proposition of the synod by which it shows itself eager to remove the cause through which, in part, there has been induced a forgetfulness of the principles relating to the order of the liturgy, "by recalling it (the liturgy) to a greater simplicity of rites, by expressing it in the vernacular language, by uttering it in a loud voice"; as if the present order of the liturgy, received and approved by the Church, had emanated in some part from the forgetfulness of the principles by which it should be regulated,—rash, offensive to pious ears, insulting to the Church, favorable to the charges of heretics against it. (Pope Pius VI, Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794.)

One can see rather readily that Proposition 33 is a cogent summary of the very essence of the counterfeit church of conciliarism’s liturgical revolution both as it was conceived by “Archbishop” Annibale Bugnini, C.M., Ferdinando “Cardinal” Antonelli, O.F.M., “Archbishop” Rembert George Weakland, O.S.B., and, of course, by the sick one himself, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI, and is the exact same spirit that motivated the Jansenists at the Sorbonne to attack The Mystical City of God so doggedly.

Context is everything, and it is necessary to examine with complete scholarly dispassion the heresies held by the doctors of the Sorbonne who hated Marian devotion and used The Mystical City of God to propagate their hateful ideas to understand the baseless nature of their censure. This is precisely what Dom Prosper Gueranger did in his twenty-eight articles published in L’Univers between May 23, 1858, and November 8, 1859. After personally reviewing the entire five hundred ten-page file on Venerable Mary of Agreda’s cause for beatification at the Sacred Congregation of Rites in Rome.  

Before entering into the Dom Prosper Gueranger’s scholarly historical review of the facts contained in the files of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, it might be useful to consider the introductory article published in The Age of Mary magazine that was written by Monsignor John A. Sabo, a priest of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South, Bend Indiana, who was never sanctioned by any ecclesiastical authority because of his scholarly defense of The Mystical City of God and the fact that Pope Alexander VIII decreed that the book can distributed to and read by the faithful without interference:

Father Martin also gave us a copy of the January-February 1958 edition of The Age of Mary, which was a bi-monthly journal published by the Servants of Mary (the Servite Fathers), that was devoted in its entirety to The Mystical City of God and to the Venerable Mary of Agreda. This particular issue of The Age of Mary is a treasure-trove of scholarly research that examined and addressed each of the attacks upon the The Mystical City of God that has been waged ever since it was first published. The issue contains twenty-five articles that fill one hundred twenty-seven pages. Its contents must be read with care by anyone seeking answers concerning the background of the attacks upon The Mystical City of God and upon the person of the Venerable Mary of Agreda.

The first article in that January-February edition of The Age of Mary was written by the Right Reverend Monsignor John S. Sabo, who was ordained on June 14, 1930, and was the pastor of Our Lady of Hungary Church in South Bend, Indiana, at the time, and it was entitled “An Apology for The Mystical City of God”:

Some years ago I became acquainted with a set of books known as The Mystical City of God, written by Sister Mary of Jesus of Agreda.

I was impressed by the recommendations for the book by men high in authority in the Church.

My first anxiety came when I heard it was on the Index. I checked. It is not on the Index. It had been on the Index, once upon a time, for a period of about 3 months. If the Church saw fit to remove this prohibition form the book, it is not only safe, but of interest for reading.

I would like to insert here a foreword from a book by the Abbe J. A. Boullan:

APPROBATIONS

“The volume which we now offer to the public, under the title of The Admirable Life of the Glorious Patriarch St. Joseph, is a faithful extract, without change, modification, or alteration, taken verbatim et literatim from the celebrated production Le Cite Mystique, of Mary of Jesus of Agreda. Hence all the approbations conferred on the latter work are applicable to this. We subjoin a sketch of these various approbations which guarantee the authenticity, since they are copied from the acts of the process for the beatification and canonization of the servant of God, Mary of Agreda

1. Approbation of the bishop of the place where this servant of God died in the odor of sanctity, and also of that where the work was published. Bishops (as everyone knows) are the judges, in the first instance, of the doctrine of the books which are published in places under their jurisdiction.

2. Approbation of the inquisition of Spain, who examined it, word for word, and authorized its publication and diffusion.

3. Approbation of all religious bodies appointed to examine this work. They have bestowed unbounded praises upon it, and recommend it as a fruit of the Holy Spirit of God.

4. Approbation of the most celebrated universities, which, after a minute examination have declared that this book contains nothing contrary to faith or morals, and who have exalted it beyond measure, as the Sovereign Pontiff Benedict XIV attests in his decree of 1748. The University of Paris alone offers an exception, because at that epoch, it was controlled by the influence of Jansenism.

5. Finally, the Roman Church, after having placed this work on the Index, August 4th, 1681, on account of the controversy which it excited, withdrew it on the 9th of November the same year. This last decree is of such force, that in 1713 a bishop having prohibited the reading of it, the Holy Office declared this prohibition to be of no effect, and obliged the bishop to retract it, as being contrary to the decree of the 9th of November of 1681 of Innocent XI, which decree, said the Holy Congregation, has the force of an obligatory law throughout the Universal Church. Qui haet aures audiendi adiat.

Alexander VII authorized the reading of it “oraculo vivae vocis.” Clement IX, in 1704, prohibited its being placed on the Index. And last of all, in 1729, under Pope Benedict XIII, of holy memory, the Sacred Congregation of Rites promulgated an ample and unanimous decree, which allows this book to be read and retained without any further examination. Hence, he who, by whatever rank, dignity, or honor he may be vested, presumes to forbid the reading of this work, which has been approved by the Holy See, will be obliged, if required, to make a public retraction.

Thus, pious reader, the cause is ended. Read the book, study the book, and study it without hesitation, for Rome, who cannot err, has spoken. –The Abbe J. A. Boullan

I will add no further comment on whether or not the book is condemned.

In this day of artificially aroused interest brought on by clever advertising there is another incident that makes the book provocative. A group of people, overzealous in their endeavor against the enemies of the Church, have added Agreda leaflets to their literature. These people meant well, but because of the nature of their writings have done a disservice to the good book they would thus advertise. Should the Klan urge you to read Shakespeare, you certainly would not discard all Shakespeare.

Let us not get into the other argument whether or not Sister Mary of Jesus is worthy to be canonized. Much has been, and much will be, written on it. After all, Holy Mother Church will or will not declare on that in time. Our sole concern is with the book. Is it or is it not worth reading?

We read what we love to read. We read anything and everything from and about those we love. We have observed people tackle the newspaper, rush to the comics or the sport page. We have seen priests buy a half dozen papers to read every word written about their favorite baseball or football team. Choice phrases and quoted and requoted. This book, The Mystical City of God, is about the Blessed Virgin Mary, someone we love. It is about a real heroine to us priests.

Now, let us suppose for a moment that it does not bear the stamp of approval of the Church as do the Scriptures. Neither do a lot of the writings of the Fathers or of the Saints, and yet we love them. Thomas a Kempis has never been Beatified and yet we love his writings. We have heard a Bishop base an entire talk on Thompson, and I am sure all us who heard it like it.

Will the reading of this book harm us? We are priests. We have had Theological training. We are to continue reading. Let us be honest: we do much reading that is not only useless but even harmful. We clergy in spite of our learning are harmed by the same tempter that harms our faithful. Would it not be wise if we read and pondered over instructions such as these:

“. . . I wish to renovate in thee the enlightened teaching which thou hast received in order that thou mayest treat with the Spouse in the highest reverence: for humility and reverential fear should increase in the same measure in which especial and extraordinary favors are conferred upon it. On account of not being mindful of this truth, many souls either make themselves unworthy or incapable of great blessings, or, if they receive them, grow into a dangerous rudeness and torpidity which offends the Lord very much.” (The Mystical City of God, Incarnation paragraph 525)

In reading this book the Clergy will at times express surprise at the details of the descriptions in The Mystical City of God. They will perhaps think that the good Sister in Spain had a tremendous imagination, but also they will admit she knew her Scriptures. Your heart like mine will frequently be envious of her accuracy.

In the “Instructions of Our Lady” you will find solid matter for meditation and examination of conscience.

One day Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty was a guest in our rectory and used my room to talk to those who wished to see him in private. On my return to the room I found him standing before the bookcase, arms braced on the bookcase, looking intently at the books on the shelves. I paused to watch, his gaze was intent on the four volumes, “The Conception”, “The Incarnation”, “The Transfixion” and “The Coronation”, the four volumes of The Mystical City of God by Sister Mary of Jesus of Agreda. (Monsignor John Sabo, “An Apology for The Mystical City of God,” The Age of Mary: An Exclusively Marian Magazine, Volume V, Number 1, January-February 1958, pp. 1-4.)

Although the late Monsignor John Sabo’s apology for The Mystical City of God was prosaic and to the point, it demonstrates his great love for Our Lady and provides readers seeking the truth about The Mystical City of God with a cogent summary of the facts. Monsignor Sabo's summary of the facts was meant to speak to the hearts of his fellow priests in a very practical manner. Indeed, he was challenging priests to rise out of the torpor of their worldliness to read something that would help them foster a deep devotion to Our Lady and her vital role in our salvation.

Dom Prosper Gueranger’s Defense of The Mystical City of God in L’Univers

As Dom Prosper Gueranger’s articles speak for themselves, it is the purpose of this part one of this study to show how the Abbot of Solesmes's understood the history of the diabolically inspired hostiliy to The Mystical City of God as this hostility, born and nurtured by Jansenism in the latter part of the Seventeenth Century, resulted in the Sorbonne's kangaroo-court style censure of the book, which itself aroused others to defend a work that contains nothing contrary to Faith and Morals and is indeed reflective of the teachings found in the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.

Before doing this, though, it is useful to point out that, Scholastic that he was, dedicated several of his first articles in L’Univers to a summary of the extraordinary life and unquestioned sanctity of the Venerable Madre Maria de Jesus de Agreda. Dom Prosper Gueranger also devoted his fifth article in L’Univers, August 1, 1858, to the importance of private revelations and their role in the life and Divine Liturgy of Holy Mother Church:

Before entering into the presentation of the outline of the Mystical City, it will not be out of place to establish certain principles about private revelations, and about the importance that we can and must attribute to them in the economy of Christianity. In the absence of sufficient enlightenment on this point, which Catholic theology has not, however, left in the dark, it often happens that all these revelations are too lightly and systematically rejected, or that an exaggerated confidence is placed in them. Both are reprehensible precisely because of their excess; it is therefore important to establish the doctrine which governs this matter.

    2. It cannot be denied, without incurring the charge of temerity, that there have existed at various times in the Church private revelations which are nonetheless recognized as having a divine source. The Church, in the holy Liturgy, often bears witness to this, and the matter itself is too important to faith and morals for one to maintain that there has been an error in the matter. I will quote for the moment only the Collect used in the Office and Mass of the illustrious St. Bridget. The Church declares in it that God revealed celestial secrets to this saint, alluding to the book of her Revelations. Features of this nature are numerous in the Legends of the Breviary, which are merely an abridgment of what we read in the Bulls of Canonization, where as we know every word is weighed, and which offers a summary of the long and serious procedures that were carried out before the judgment. Therefore we cannot, without seriously failing to show the respect due to the Church, think and say that there have not been, in the course of the centuries, these divine manifestations made to certain holy souls, not only for their instruction and particular consolation, but also for the benefit of the faithful, in whose regard the Church has judged it appropriate to recommend the books which contain them.

    3. The permanence of the gift of revelation in Christianity is formally recognized by St. Thomas when, after speaking of the prophecy of St. John on the end of time, he adds: “In every age there have always been some persons endowed with the spirit of prophecy, not for the purpose of revealing a new doctrine of faith, but for the guidance of human conduct.” (2, 2a quest. 174, art. 6.) The learned theologian Salmeron (In Evangel., tract. 69) makes no difficulty in applying to these divine enlightenments the words of the Savior, “I have yet many things to say to you, but at present you could not bear them (John XVI);” and in this Salmeron merely repeats what had been taught before him by several orthodox doctors.

    4. If we go through the annals of the Church we are struck by this succession of personages favored with supernatural lights. The Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians reveal to us with what abundance these gifts were multiplied in the primitive Church. The assemblies of the faithful were so frequently marked by these phenomena of grace that the Apostle is obliged to give the faithful rules of conduct for using these heavenly favors with order and discernment. Later on this gift of vision and prophecy was like the gift of miracles: Both were restricted by the wisdom of God, yet they never entirely ceased in the Church, of which they have remained one of the essential characteristics. One can easily follow the trace of private revelations through the centuries, beginning with the instructive visions contained in the Acts of Sts. Perpetua and Felicity, and continuing with the Lives of the Desert Fathers and the numerous and authentic accounts given in the writings of the Fathers up to St. Gregory the Great. One remains convinced that the direct communications of heaven with earth, by means of these enlightenments granted to individuals, did not cease during these first six centuries, which were particularly the age of the great Doctors. Did we ever hear these solemn men speak out against this ever extraordinary way of teaching, under the pretext that the Holy Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church must suffice? Do we not rather see them expressing themselves with marked respect, St. Augustine for example, for these private manifestations of facts and truths which maintain the impulse in Christian souls, and facilitate, by enlightening them, our aspirations towards the still invisible world?

    5. The reason for this is they had in mind this rule of the Apostle: “Extinguish not the Spirit; despise not prophecies; but prove all things, and hold fast that which is good” (I Thess. V). It is clear that St. Paul is not speaking here of the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments; under no circumstances could the Christian be allowed to choose between these divine oracles, to test them, to weigh them, and to retain or reject at will what would seem acceptable to him. When the Apostle recommends that the Spirit should not be extinguished, he is not speaking of the Holy Ghost in so far as He dictated the prophecies to David, to Isaiah; for the work of his inspiration is recognized and published throughout the world by the holy Church, with the obligation for all the faithful to receive it with the submission of faith. Rather, he means those particular enlightenments which “this one and the same Spirit” produces in certain souls, and which, being received by others with contempt, may be extinguished, that is to say, may be deprived in part of the effects which they were intended to produce.

    6. Private revelations were not to be the exclusive privilege of the first six centuries. We follow the luminous trace of them in the Acts of the Saints; but they become more abundant, and if I may say so, more voluminous, as we approach our times, as if God wanted by this means to sustain the mystical element threatened by the approaches of rationalism. The century of Abelard had the revelations of St. Hildegard, whose spirit was judged and approved by Pope Eugene III. In the following century St. Dominic and St. Francis, whose mission was to raise so powerfully the supernatural sense in the people, were no less illustrious as Seers than as Thaumaturgists. The end of the century which had the glory of possessing them presents the precious revelations of Bl. Angela of Foligno. The first half of the 14th century, when the Church was in such peril, offers us the great St. Gertrude with her sister St. Mechtilde, and at the end the famous St. Bridget with the immortal St. Catherine of Siena. In the 15th century we find St. Frances of Rome, whose revelations contributed so much to sustaining piety in the capital of the Christian world, and at the end of the century St. Catherine of Genoa. The 16th century is sufficiently filled by the seraphic Teresa [of Ávila] and the sublime Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, who belongs to this period, although she lived until the year 1607.

    7. This enumeration is very incomplete; I wanted to include only the most famous works. As it stands, it will suffice to show in action that important characteristic of the Church which I have mentioned above, by virtue of which she has possessed in her bosom at all times souls to whom it pleases God to communicate extraordinary lights, some of whose rays are reflected upon the society of the faithful. It is therefore not surprising that this phenomenon of grace occurred in Spain in the 17th century. There is more: Ecstasies and raptures being undeniable facts and common enough, to a certain extent, to arrive from there at the revelations of which we speak, only one thing is needed, that God commands the privileged ones who experience these sublime states to write what He makes them know in these times of communication. It is rare that such an order is given; yet it is conceivable that it could be, and no more is needed to explain the existence of written revelations.

    8. It was natural that heresy, jealous of a gift it could not imitate, should blaspheme this characteristic of the true Church. The school of Luther did not fail to do so, and Melanchthon wrote early on against all the private revelations which were building up the piety of the faithful. The Centuriators [of Magdeburg] soon followed suit, pouring forth insults against the Church which had praised, after examination, the books of the likes of St. Hildegard, St. Bridget, and St. Catherine of Siena. Later, the apostate Archbishop Mark Anthony de Dominis, in his Ecclesiastical Republic, pursued these manifestations of divine goodness with no less scandal. Protestantism, however, could not keep entirely to the rationalist path on this point; it had, in its turn and at various times, its Seers; and the sect of Wesley, through its ignoble counterfeits, pays homage even today to the mystical principle which forms one of the constitutive elements of Christianity, and which finds its expression in the revelations which holy souls receive in calmness and humility, and which they sometimes make public under the correction of the holy Church.

    9. Naturalism, which began to penetrate our country at the end of the 17th century, gradually diminished the esteem for private revelations; if they did not become the object of contempt, they fell into oblivion. Without mentioning the Lives of the Saints by Baillet, was it possible not to be carried away when one heard Fleury, the one who was called the wise and judicious, express himself on this subject with such astonishing candor for a Catholic: “This idle, and therefore equivocal, devotion has been most common for about five hundred years, particularly among women, who are naturally more lazy and of a livelier imagination. Hence it is that the Lives of the Saints of these last centuries, St. Bridget, St. Catherine of Siena, Bl. Angela of Foligno, contain little more than their thoughts and speeches, without any remarkable facts. These female saints undoubtedly spent a lot of time giving an account of their interior to the priests who directed them; and these directors, biased in favor of their penitents whose virtue they knew, easily took their thoughts for revelations, and the extraordinary things that happened to them for miracles.”

    10. It is clear that Fleury, who only wants to see here the directors of these female saints, would have done better to ask himself what the Church had thought about the divine enlightenments with which these Servants of God were favored. He would have found that the Bulls of Canonization very expressly recognized the supernatural gifts in which he only wants to see the result of laziness and imagination, both aided by the complacency of the directors. If he had then opened the Breviary, he would have found there in abbreviated form these same facts produced and certified with an authority regarding which it is not permitted, in these matters, to oppose the freedom of the critic which one enjoys with regard to purely historical facts. But one cannot help but recognize that such language, used by a serious man as Fleury was, had to be a destroyer of the confidence which the faithful of France, as well as those of the whole world, had possessed until then in those marvels of grace for which the Church professed such serious respect. I will observe in passing that these words are taken from the VIIIth Discourse on Ecclesiastical History, which has to do with the religious state; that Scipio de Ricci drew verbatim from this same discourse all the principles which he unveiled regarding this subject in his Synod of Pistoia; and that these same principles were solemnly and expressly condemned in the Bull Auctorem fidei.

    11. One senses, in reading the words of Fleury, that one of the reasons which lead him to speak so lightly of private revelations is that they often came through women. Melanchton, the Centuriators, and Marc Anthony de Dominis had not failed before him to point out this particularity with disdain; de Dominis, in his easy Latin, goes so far as to call St. Catherine of Siena a femella. The fact is that God seems to have preferentially chosen women for these kinds of communications, the first of which were recorded in writing, as we have seen, as far back as the great martyr St. Perpetua. To quote St. Teresa here is to give her a voice in her own cause; but I am writing for Catholics. “It is a truth,” says the prophetess of Carmel, “that the number of women to whom God does similar favors is much greater than that of men; I heard it from the mouth of the holy Friar Peter of Alcantara, and I saw it with my own eyes. This great servant of God used to tell me that women make much more progress in this way than men, and he gave excellent reasons for this which it is unnecessary to relate here, but which were all in favor of women” (Life of Saint Teresa by herself, chap. XL). To the testimony of the famous contemplative, let us add that of the Angelic Doctor. “Science,” says St. Thomas Aquinas, “and generally everything that contains the idea of greatness, is an occasion for man to consider himself, and not to give himself up completely to God. Hence devotion is often stopped in its tracks by this obstacle, whereas in the simple and in women, with this elevation restricted, devotion develops with fullness; although he who knows how to lower before God his knowledge and his other superiorities can derive from this very fact an increase in devotion” (2a, 2æ quest. 82, art. 3).

    12. Thus simplicity and the absence of pretension already serve to explain why God so often chooses from the weaker sex the persons to whom He wishes to bestow the highest favors. There is also here the application of a primordial law of Christianity which the lack of space does not allow us to explain and justify here; let us limit ourselves to recalling a single circumstance of the Holy Gospel. The dogma of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the basis of the Christian religion: “If Christ be not risen,” says the Apostle, “then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain” (I Cor., XV). Now, to whom did Jesus Christ first manifest his Resurrection? To women, as a reward for their love. This manifestation preceded the one He made later to the Apostles, who were nevertheless charged with preaching to all nations the mystery of the risen Son of God. And how were these women received, who went straight to the Apostles to tell them what they had seen? Was their testimony believed? St. Luke tells us that what they said seemed to the Apostles to be an effect of delirium, sicut deliramentum, and that they did not believe it (Luke, XXIV). Nevertheless, they had received orders to carry out this mission with the disciples. Is it not to be believed that Fleury, if he had been in the company of the Apostles, who had not yet been enlightened by the Holy Ghost, would have rejected the testimony of Magdalen and her companions as they did? I will not examine here to what extent the Savior’s disciples were obliged to rely on this testimony; I want to certify only one thing, that the revelation was divine, and that Our Lord did not think it beneath Him to manifest it to women. When in the evening the Savior appeared to the assembled Apostles, they must have regretted not having welcomed the triumphant news earlier and with greater grace; but these regrets were not to change anything in the celestial disposition in virtue of which the favors from on high are distributed. Furthermore, the Church is less proud than Fleury; in the 13th century she instituted the feast of the Blessed Sacrament as a result of a revelation that the Savior had deigned to make of his intentions on this subject to a humble nun in Belgium. In the 19th century the Church finally enjoyed the universal feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, at the request of the French Episcopate to the Holy See; and the origin of this solemnity is again a revelation with which the Redeemer of men favored a cloistered woman, a Sister of the Visitation from an obscure convent in France.

    13. We should not therefore find it extraordinary that God, master of his gifts, should bestow on one sex rather than the other the mysterious favors of his intimate communications; we must leave this to his disposition, and bow to the facts which alone can put us on the path of his ever-wise designs. What is important for the Christian who wishes to know the things of God to the extent that we are permitted here below is to know that in addition to the general teaching given to all the children of the Church, there are still certain lights that God communicates to souls whom He has chosen, and these lights pierce the clouds when He deems it appropriate, so they spread far and wide for the consolation of simple hearts, and also to be a certain trial for those who are wise in their own eyes. It cannot be denied that the totality of the insights which have come to us by this way are of the most imposing effect, and have had since the first centuries of the Church a real influence on a more intimate understanding of dogma, morals and spiritual doctrine. If it is asked what degree of belief is to be given to the details which are to be found in private revelations, even in those which the Church has praised as containing “heavenly secrets,” the theologians who have dealt with the subject answer, first of all, that these revelations, insofar as they affirm things which are contained neither in Scripture nor in the Tradition of the Church, cannot in any way be the object of theological faith; they lack the explicit sanction of the Church, and this sanction could only be given insofar as the supernatural fact would be produced in confirmation of this or that detail. To deny the existence of these private revelations in the Church would be to insult the Church which honors and protects them; to grant them the faith which is due only to the word of God would be to fail in the conditions under which the first of the theological virtues must be exercised, which requires as its essential basis the testimony of God himself. Those to whom God deigns to make these manifestations must believe them with true faith, if the revelation is guaranteed by arguments of complete certainty; those to whom the Seer communicates what he has thus divinely learned, being reduced to a human and fallible intermediary, have only to give to it the assent which we give to probable things, an assent to which we give the name of pious belief. This is little, no doubt, if we consider the invincible certainty of faith; it is much, if we think of the shadows that surround us.

    14. It is not necessary to belabor this obvious principle, that private revelations must always be compared with the doctrine of the Church regarding dogma, morals, and dogmatic facts, and that any private revelation which contradicts it must be immediately abandoned. It may happen that these manifestations, which one has serious reasons for considering as divine, seem to settle questions debated in the School; is this a reason for abandoning them, as if one were obliged to believe that these questions would remain unsolvable for ever? It seems not, since it is undoubtedly true that God knows the truth of the matter, and that nothing can prevent Him from manifesting it if He judges it opportune. And besides, has it not happened more than once that questions freely discussed in the School for a certain period of time were later defined by the Church? Hurtado, Del Rio and Matteucci go even further when they teach that private revelation should not be abandoned simply because it goes against the common opinion of theologians.

    15. Yet what signs of credibility must be present in the person given to be favored with heavenly lights? Benedict XIV sums them up in this way: “She must not have asked for these kinds of graces; she must not have desired them; she must have communicated them to men learned in these matters; she must have preserved, in the midst of these favors, tranquility and poise of soul, have excelled in humility, and continued to chasten her body” (De Beatif. et canoniz., lib. III, cap. ult.). These signs are easy to observe, and one understands how necessary it is to find them in every person who speaks in the name of Heaven in virtue of an extraordinary mission.

    16. I believe what I have said is sufficient for those who would be inclined to disdain private revelations; I will add a few words for the benefit of those who have an exaggerated confidence in them, which would be another disadvantage. We have just established that in no case is it permissible to apply to them the adherence of theological faith, yet this is not saying enough. I would add that more than once in these revelations what is false can be found mixed with what is true. The people whom God favors with supernatural enlightenments are not therefore constituted in a state of permanent inspiration. They present themselves to the divine action with their natural faculties, their opinions, their previous ideas, the result of teaching, reading, and their own reflections. The divine light which penetrates them momentarily does not aim at rectifying these imperfections which do not create an obstacle to the union of God with the soul. If there is error, if there is prejudice in these personal ideas, this innocent error, this prejudice, remains in its place, and if it happens that the person takes the pen to describe what she saw and felt at the moment when the enlightenment occurred in her, it is difficult, not to say impossible, for her to always distinguish what belongs solely to human weakness from what is the real and positive memory of this non-personal light which visited her. She knows and can tell in all truth what her eyes have seen, what her ear has heard, what her soul has felt; but in this state she was not transformed into another, and the supernatural effect having ceased, she returns to ordinary life, where she finds herself penetrated by divine things, but not freed from the inaccurate ideas which the celestial light was not intended to remove. God, therefore, will let her write or allow her to write under his dictation; and in the work she produces there may be human things mixed with revealed things. Some contradictions will be pointed out in facts of a secondary nature which put one book of revelations at variance with another. There will sometimes be assertions which are in dissonance with such and such a conclusion acquired by historical science; these slight inconveniences should have been expected, since God never intended for us to compare the collections of private revelations with the inspired books of the Holy Scriptures, which are his own word. In the former, there will be edification and matter for pious belief; in the latter, the faithful will seek and find the object of his faith.

    17. These assessments, already made by authors who have dealt with the phenomena of the mystical life, and which have been summarized by Benedict XIV, take nothing away from the importance of private revelations, they only put them in their true light; and besides, they refer to a rather limited number of points. There are even books to which they remain entirely extraneous in their application. Thus, the Life of Saint Teresa written by herself, though full of revelatory features, does not offer a single line to which they can be related. It is different with books of revelations in which facts older than the narrator are recounted; here one feels there is room for more than one misunderstanding, especially if the person, before receiving the enlightenment from above, had already probed these same facts with the help of books and his own meditations. But there always remains that superhuman tone, soft and strong at the same time, an echo of the divine word that has resounded in the soul, an unction which penetrates the reader and soon obliges him to say: This is not of man. The heart gently warms up when reading it, the soul feels desires for virtue that it had not yet experienced, the mysteries of faith become more luminous, the world and its hopes gradually fade away, and the desire for heavenly goods, which seemed to be dormant, awakens with a new ardor. (pp. 73-86.)

These are very important points as the same kind of Jansenism and narrow legalism that poisoned the minds of the doctors of the Sorbonne in the Seventeenth Century continues to exist even in fully traditional Catholic circles where there is a proneness to approach that which Holy Mother Church has not condemned and, indeed, her true popes have recommended and made use to the profit of their own interior lives and the deepening of their own considerable understanding of Divine mysteries, with Pharisaical scrutiny and with no understanding of historical context.

As Dom Prosper Gueranger noted, Holy Mother Church, guided infallibly by the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, has based several of her liturgical feasts and given approval to various devotion on private revelations.

To wit, the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, after all, and the practice of the Nine First Fridays were based upon the direct request that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ made to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque in private revelations, and it is certainly the case that Pope Pius XII instituted the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in response to Our Lady's Fatima Messages.

Additionally, the Sabbatine Privilege, is based on a private revelation of Our Lady to Jacques Cardinal D’Euse, the future Pope John XXII, and the last true pope thus far to have borne the name of John:

In the night between the 15th and 16th of July of the year 1251, the gracious Queen of Carmel confirmed to her sons [the Carmelites] by a mysterious sign the right of citizenship she had obtained for them in their newly adopted countries [of the West]; as mistress and mother of the entire religious state she conferred upon them with her queenly hands the scapular, hitherto the distinctive garb of the greatest and most ancient family of the West. On giving St. Simon Stock this badge, ennobled by contact with her sacred fingers, the Mother of God said to him: 'Whosoever shall die in this habit shall not suffer eternal flames.' But not against hell fire alone was the all-powerful intercession of the Blessed Mother to be felt by those who should wear the scapular. In 1316, when every holy soul was imploring heaven to put an end to that long and disastrous widowhood of the Church, which followed in the death of Clement V, the Queen of Saints appeared to James d'Euse, whom the world was soon to hail as John XXII; she foretold to him his approaching elevation to the Sovereign Pontificate, and at the same time recommended him to publish the privilege she had obtained from her Divine Son for her children of Carmel--viz., a speedily deliverance from purgatory. 'I, their Mother, will graciously go down to them on the Saturday after their death, and all whom I find in purgatory I will deliver and will bring to the mountain of life eternal.' These are the words of our Lord herself, quoted by John XII in the Bull which he published for the purpose of making known the privilege and which was called the Sabbatine Bull on account of the day chosen by the glorious benefactress for the exercise of her mercy.

We are aware of the attempts made to nullify the authenticity of these heavenly concessions; but our extremely limited time will not allow us to follow up these worthless struggles in all their endless details. The attack of the chief assailant, the too famous Lounoy, was condemned by the Apostolic See, and after, as well as before, these contradictions, the Roman Pontiffs confirmed, as much as need be, by their supreme authority, the substance and even the letter of the precious promises. The reader may find in special works the enumeration of the many indulgences with which the Popes have, time after time, enriched the Carmelite family, as if earth would vie with heaven in favouring it. The munificence of Mary, the pious gratitude of her sons for the hospitality given them by the West, and lastly, the authority of St. Peter's successors, soon made these spiritual riches accessible to all Christians, by the instruction of the Confraternity of the holy Scapular, the members whereof participate in the merits and privileges of the whole Carmelite Order. Who shall tell the graces, often miraculous, obtained through this humble garb? Who could count the faithful now enrolled in the holy militia? When Benedict XIII, in the eighteenth century, extended the feast of July 16 to the whole Church, he did but give an official sanction to the universality already gained by the cultus of the Queen of Carmel. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B.)

One disbelieves in the Brown Scapular and the Sabbatine Privilege at his own eternal peril.

Obviously, there will always be skeptics about private revelations. However, one of the proofs of the soundness of these revelations is that, apart from the first consideration that they contain nothing contrary to Divine Revelation, they show evidence of bearing abundant fruit over the course of time, and it is certainly the case that a harvest of such good fruit has been reaped in the souls of those who have had the humility to read The Mystical City of God.

Each of the following Catholic practices or devotions is based on private revelations:

1. The Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel given by Our Lady to Saint Simon Stock.

2. The Holy Rosary given to Saint Dominic de Guzman by Our Lady.

3. Our Lady appeared to the Venerable Juan Diego in December of 1531, instructing him to tell Bishop [then Administrator Fray] Juan de Zumarraga to build a church in her honor, which request was honor when Juan Diego presented the Castilian roses that Bishop Zumarraga wanted as proof of the apparition, revealing also the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on his tilma in the process.

3. Devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, revealed by Our Lord to Saint Gertrude and Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, who was given the message to institute the devotion of the Nine First Fridays.

4. The Miraculous Medal that Our Lady instructed Saint Catherine Laboure to have struck.

5. The Green Scapular that Our Lady revealed to Sister Justine Bisqueyburo, starting on September 8, 1840.

6. Promotion of devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, especially through the Five First Saturdays, requested by Our Lady in the Cova da Iria in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. Pope Pius XII placed the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the universal calendar of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church in 1942 as a direct result of the Fatima apparitions.

There are some priests even in traditional circles, sadly, who dismiss Our Lady's Fatima Message as a private revelation that does not bind our consciences, that one can save his soul without believing in the Fatima Messages or without fulfilling them.

Although it is possible for one to save his soul without believing in Our Lady's Fatima Message or without fulfilling the requests she made in the Cova da Iria to Lucia dos Santos and Francisco and Jacinta Marto, it would be very foolish to reject the great Mercy of Our Lord Himself represented by His sending His own Most Blessed Mother to earth a number of times since the beginning of the Nineteenth Century (Saint Catherine Laboure, Sister Christine Bisqueyburo, Melanie Calvert and Maximim Giraud, Saint Bernadette Soubirous, at Pontmain, Pellevoisin, Knock, Fatima, Banneaux, Beauraing). To dismiss Our Lady's Fatima Message on the grounds that it is but a private revelation makes it incongruous for any priest to justify keeping devotions to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus on the First Friday of the month as these devotions are based entirely on the private revelations given by Our Lord to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. The Rosary itself is based on a private revelation.

Would one be justified in dismissing devotion to Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary by saying that it is based on a private revelation?

Our Lady does not act on her own. She only does the will of the Heavenly Father, to Whom she gave her perfect fiat through Saint Gabriel the Archangel at the Annunciation, permitting herself to be overshadowed by God the Holy Ghost to become the Mother of the Word, Who was made Flesh in her Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of that same Holy Ghost. It has been God's merciful will that Our Lady be sent to us erring sinners to help us get home to Heaven by stressing the necessity of prayer and penance to save us from the fires of Hell, making acts of reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. This is something that all Catholics should embrace with enthusiasm regardless as to their interpretation of the application of the Fatima Message as it pertains to the consecration of Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Similarly, the private revelations given to Venerable Mother Mary of Agreda of Jesus as recorded in The Mystical City of God are not necessary to save one’s immortal soul. However, they can in no way hinder the salvation of any Catholic and, quite instead, has proven to be of inestimable benefit to the sanctification of millions of Catholics, many of whom turned away from naturalism and worldliness to become more immersed in First and Last Things and to become more tenderly devoted to the August Queen of Heaven who wants us to penetrate the holy mysteries of her Divine Son’s love for us and how irreplaceable role in the economy of salvation, including our own.

After spending six articles reviewing the influence of The Mystical City of God in art and literature as well as detailed summary of each of its books and finding not only nothing contrary to Faith and Morals but expressed doctrines and teachings that were held and taught by the Church Fathers and Doctors, the Abbot of Solesmes devoted his remaining dseventeen articles in L’Univers providing a detailed background about the adversities that The Mystical City of God endured starting in 1681 before discussing the identities of the Jansenists a decade later at the Sorbonne  and their hostility to “excessive” devotions to Our Lady that they believed were “irrational” and detracted from the adoration due to her Divine Son.

Although it is not necessary to identify each of the persons at the Sorbonne who had a part in the censure of The Mystical City God, it is useful to note that Dom Prosper Gueranger’s used an article published on December 19, 1858, to summary Roman actions, replete with intrigues caused by the influence of Jansenism within the Roman Curia, and then provided a synopsis of those actions in an article on January 16, 1859:

 5. The essential thing was to appreciate, first of all, the acts of the Apostolic See in relation to the book itself, and to ascertain whether Rome had allowed the faithful to read it freely. We saw first a decree of the Holy Office [in 1681] proscribing the Mystical City, and then soon Innocent XI suspending the execution of this decree, “contrary,” he said, “to the customs of the Inquisition.” Alexander VIII came next, who declared that the book could be read with impunity by any of the faithful. Clement XI, by express order, had it erased from the Index, in one of whose editions it had been fraudulently inserted. Under the same Pope, the Bishop and Inquisitor of Ceneda, who thought he could prohibit its reading in that diocese, had his edicts suppressed by the Holy Office itself, which declared in the sentence that the suspensory decree of Innocent XI “had force throughout the whole Church.” Benedict XIII added, to so many marks of Apostolic tolerance in favor of the book, an express decree that the Mystical City could be read and retained by everyone. Clement XII and Benedict XIV, without regard to an alleged decree of the Holy Office which would have once again reserved the book to its tribunal, had it examined outside this Congregation by commissions which were to refer only to the Pontiff. At the same time the Italian translation of the Mystical City was circulating freely in Rome and throughout the Papal State. This is certainly more than enough to conclude that if the extraordinary book whose history we are writing was a sign of contradiction, at least its reading remained free to all the faithful subject to the judgment of the Holy See. Yet at the risk of repeating what I have said elsewhere, I will add that it is rather difficult to escape from a reasoning which presents itself after the inspection of the facts; it is if, on the one hand, the high sanctity of Mary of Ágreda cannot be doubted, and if, on the other, the authenticity of the book as written by her hand is no less certain, one cannot help but conclude that the Mystical City is entitled to the respect of all those who believe in the existence of private revelations. Now we have proven that the Church expressly admits not only the possibility but the fact of such revelations, although the faithful remain free to admit or deny them, without infringing the faith essential to salvation. One cannot blame those who count the judgment of the Sorbonne for nothing, independent of the more than strange circumstances in which it was rendered. It is time now to approach this famous episode; but beforehand permit me to insert certain facts before the year 1696, which is that of the censure. (pp. 189-190.)

This cogent summary, found in Article 13 of Dom Prosper Gueranger’s twenty-eight articles in L’Univers published on January 16, 1858, of the very detailed facts about the early adversities of The Mystical City of God after the death of Venerable Mother Mary of Jesus of Agreda in 1665 that the Abbot of Solesmes provided in Article 12 on December 19, 1858, are a necessary prologue to the intrigues at the Sorbonne in the 1690s at a time when Jansenism was at the height of its influence in France, the eldest daughter of the Church. This summary, though, explains that the faithful is free to read The Mystical of God and that its placement on The Index was personally removed by Blessed Pope Innocent XI and that Pope Clement VIII decreed that book could be read with impunity by all the faithful.

It is important at this point to remind readers that Dom Prosper Gueranger personally reviewed the five hundred-ten-page file in the offices of the Sacred Congregation of the Rites in Rome. He did not rely upon a summary of those files. He read them personally and has detailed their contents with his usual meticulous scholarly attention and care. It is incomprehensible that any responsible person would claim that Dom Prosper Gueranger was somehow “misled” unless someone so claiming is driven as much as a personal animus against the contents of The Mystical City of God as Monsieur Adrien Baillet, who started his career as a librarian in 1680 and who had cooperated in drafting articles declaring King Louis XIV as supreme over popes in temporal matters and thus restricting the exercise of the plenipotentiary powers of papacy (Gallicanism). Baillet’s prejudices against mystical revelations and “excessive” Marian devotions were discussed by the Abbot Solesmes in articles published on March 13, 1859, and March 28, 1859.

Dom Prosper Gueranger admitted that the extensive background he provided about the Cartesian Adrien Baillet might seem as a “digression” from the topic of The Mystical City of God, but he explained that Baillet’s popularization in France of a pamphlet published in Cologne, Germany, in 1686, Monita salutaria, became the “manifesto of the many parties that conspired against the devotion and love and faith the whole of Catholicism renders to the Mother of God.” One cannot properly understand the actions of the Sorbonne unless one understands the ways in which Adrien Baillet used Monita salutaria to “canonize” his own Jansenist prejudices against devotion to Our Lady and thus to accustom scholars who hated the “straitjacket” of Scholasticism to use his own rationalist presuppositions to strip away honors to Our Lady that Baillet believed belonged to God alonera

It should be noted that the fact that Adrien Baillet’s Lives of the Saints was proscribed by Rome in 1709 and again in 1714 meant nothing to the doctors of the Sorbonne. Indeed, as readers will see below, it was Rome’s censure against Baillet’s popularization of Monita salutaria in De la dévotion à la Sainte Vierge et du culte qui lui est dû in 1695 (and again in 1701) as containing poisons that were injurious to the Faith that was the lightning rod that inflame the anti-Marian doctors of the Sorbonne to undertake their unremitting and intellectually dishonest crusade against The Mystical City of God. By that time, Dom Prosper Gueranger explained, Jansenism had taken such a strong hold in many French intellectual circles that the censures of the Index meant nothing to them unless, of course, it suited their own anti-Marian purposes.

I will interject about various points of the Abbot Solesmes’s two-part discussion of Adrien Baillet and his false philosophy:

The pamphlet Monita salutaria had been the manifesto of the many parties that conspired against the devotion of love and faith that the whole of Catholicism renders to the Mother of God. Published in Latin and abroad, it had found one of the most influential prelates in the Church of France willing to take it under his patronage. Quickly translated into French, it circulated freely, to the scandal and peril of the faithful. Only one condition was missing to ensure the success of the ideas that the odious faction was destined to spread: It was that a doctor of the Sorbonne undertook to give it the form of a French devotional book, and to publish this work with the approval and privilege of the King. This is what happened in 1693, as we will relate shortly.

 2. But in the meantime, it was necessary to prepare peoples’ minds, to incline them towards a less tender and less enthusiastic devotion towards the Virgin Mary. The effective way to obtain this result was to modify the liturgy in the Church of Paris; for the ancient formulas of public prayer, the work of centuries of faith, testified too highly to a belief in the prerogatives and power of Mary, very different from that which they wanted to substitute. A commission had been instituted by Archbishop Hardouin de Péréfixe for a reform of the Breviary and the Missal of Paris. This prelate died before the work was completed, and his successor, François de Harlay, maintained the commission which prepared the Breviary published in 1680 and the Missal which was published in 1684. Since the Bull of St. Pius V, the liturgical books of the Church of Paris which were included in the favorable exception had been the object of several reforms under the Gondy, and always the corrections had been applied in the direction of the Roman piety. This time it was different, and clear-sighted minds were able to foresee that the liturgy was going to become a means at the service of those who had resolved to modify according to their system the religious sense of the French.

3. The soul of the Parisian commission was the same Chastelain, canon of Notre-Dame, whom we saw appear in the cabal which, under the pretext of restoring a text of Usuard, tended to undermine the confidence of the faithful in the bodily Assumption of the Mother of God. We do not have to present here a complete study of the liturgical books published by François de Harlay; we have attempted it elsewhere; it is simply a question of pointing out the characteristics of this Liturgy regarding the veneration of the Blessed Virgin. In the preceding article I recounted the tactful and appropriate way in which Hardouin de Péréfixe stopped the deplorable attempts of some members of his Chapter to deny the privilege of Mary in her Assumption. After the death of the prelate, Chastelain was able to take his revenge. The Breviary of the Gondy contained, on August 15, lessons taken from St. John Damascene, in which the bodily Assumption of the Mother of God was celebrated in energetic and magnificent terms; this passage disappeared from the Breviary of 1680. The earlier Breviaries contained a host of Responsories and Antiphons in honor of Mary, found not only in the Breviary of St. Pius V, but even in the Responsories of St. Gregory. These pieces, remarkable for their ancient form and the ineffable unction they exude, were among the most precious monuments of Tradition, of which the Liturgy is, according to Bossuet, the principal instrument. In the Breviary of 1680 they were ruthlessly, and I would say skillfully, sacrificed. From then on, in the Church of Paris, and of course in the other Churches of France, one had to stop repeating these beautiful and instructive words: “Rejoice, O Virgin Mary; for it is Thee who hast destroyed the heresies of the whole world;” and these: “Let me praise Thee, holy Virgin; give me strength against thy enemies.”

A Personal Note:

I pray these two prayers every day.

Returning now to Dom Prosper’s March 13, 1859, article:

4. Since the first centuries of Christianity the Churches of the East and West had applied to the Blessed Virgin, in the office of her feasts, certain passages from the Sapiential Books in which the sacred author first has in view the greatness of the Incarnate Word, and at the same time recounts, under a sublime obscurity, the predestination of her who is to be the Mother of God in the flesh. The practice of the holy Church and the luminous commentaries of the Doctors have made sacred as well as precious this interpretation, which was attacked by the reformers of the 16th century, and which we have seen elevated by Pius IX in the Bull for the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. All these passages were deleted from the Breviary and the Missal and replaced by others. The Churches of the East and West celebrate the feast of March 25 under the title of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, thinking that the glory of the Son of God, incarnated on this day, could not be offended. The new Breviary had changed this popular title, and the feast of March 25 was now called the Annunciation of the Lord,[2] Annuntiatio Dominica. These changes were significant, and made it clear that, according to the prevailing ideas of the time, the reduction of the veneration of Mary was one of the means of bringing the Liturgy to greater perfection.

    5. At the same time, a man whose erudition and extreme boldness were destined to exert an influence as fatal as it was to be extensive was established in Paris. Worthy emulator of Ellies Du Pin, Adrien Baillet entered in 1680, as librarian, the office of the general counsel, later president of Lamoignon. One could already get an idea of the direction of the ideas of this person by reading his Life of Richer, his Life of Descartes, and his History of the disputes of Boniface VIII with Philippe-le-Bel. But the most dangerous of his works is the one which, under the title of Lives of the Saints, published in-folio, in-quarto, in-octavo, exerted such a disastrous influence on French piety, and deserved to be proscribed by the Holy See, under the dates of March 4, 1709 and January 14, 1714. To a mind of this caliber, the Monita salutaria must have seemed an invaluable book, whose maxims could not be spread too widely. Baillet therefore conceived the project of a book which he would entitle: De la dévotion à la Sainte Vierge et du culte qui lui est dû,[3] and in which he would make penetrate all the spirit of the Flemish pamphlet by inserting in it at the same time a number of praiseworthy sentences, with strong protestations of the greatest respect for the Mother of God.

6. The book, dedicated to Mme de Lamoignon, appeared in 1693 in Paris. It did not lack the approval of doctors, but the most notable was that of Dr. Hideux, parish priest of Holy Innocents Church, who has since become a notorious figure in the pomp of Jansenism. There were some timid complaints in favor of Catholic piety on a point of such importance, so insolently attacked in the work. An anonymous memorandum addressed to the Sorbonne, in which justice was demanded for the veneration of the Blessed Virgin, was printed; also published was a Letter to Dr. Hideux, parish priest of Holy Innocents Church, on his approval of the new book of Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Finally, the noise became so strong that the archbishop de Harlay was obliged to examine a production which raised such complaints. The examiners appointed by the prelate found the book without reproach, and its success was then assured. It is true that a decree of the Index, dated September 7, 1695, and renewed for the second edition on October 26, 1701, came to warn the faithful to distrust a book in which the poison, having been disguised, was not less dangerous; but already at that time the condemnations of the Roman Index, intended to serve as a warning for the entire Church, were regarded as without value for France by a crowd of faithful too docile to the prejudices which were instilled into them. Nevertheless, the Sorbonne felt the blow, and the revenge which it drew from the censure that Rome had inflicted on a book guaranteed by Dr. Hideux and three others was, as we shall see in detail, the censure which the Faculty itself undertook and consummated against the Mystical City [of God] of Mary of Ágreda. It must be admitted that the plot was not lacking in skill, and that, as for the result, one could expect all the disfavor possible for the Spanish book on the part of a public which had tasted more and more of the book of Adrien Baillet.

    7. But it is important to go through the work and point out its main features; nothing can serve more to enlighten the reader on the spirit of the system which prevailed in France towards the end of the 17th century, and on the manner in which it was applied. The great determined cause put forward by the whole dominant school was this: To rid teaching and worship of anything that might give Protestants a pretext for scandal.[4] This is the same idea which we saw put forward by certain Catholics in 1854, in the days before the definition of the Immaculate Conception; and those who know a little ecclesiastical history will also remember the violent pressure which the Fathers of the Council of Trent felt for a long time from those who wanted that holy and illustrious assembly to concern itself solely with the reform of morals, and not to irritate heretics by dogmatic definitions.

 A Brief Interjection:

Dom Prosper Gueranger’s comparison of Adrien Baillet’s desire not to offend Protestants concerning The Mystical City of God to the opposition of some Catholics, mostly bishops, to the solemn, infallible proclamation of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Pope Pius IX in Ineffabillis Deus, December 9, 1854, and most of those bishops were Americans, who later opposed the solemn proclamation of Papal Infallibility at the [First] Vatican Council on July 18, 1870.

An Americanist apologia in defense of those American bishops contains some very important information to show the straight line that exists between Jansenists’ desire to avoid offending Protestants to the exact same spirit exhibited by Americanists in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries:

No American theologians had been consulted the preparatory Apart. work between 1848. In 1854.

Apart from Dom Prosper Gueranger and the Viennese Jesuit Charles Schrader, the Commission members and advisors were Italian. The first American intervention. Took place. At a series of meetings held in the Ducal Hall of the Vatican Palace. From November 20th to 24th, 1854, but before that time, the official opinion. Of the American Church and the subject of the Immaculate Conception had been registered in a number of conciliar enactments. The 19th decree of Bishop John Carroll's Baltimore Senate of 1791 confirmed the Blessed Virgin Mary as the patroness of the Diocese of Baltimore. Which then embraced the entire United States, and ordered that the Sunday within the octave of the Assumption, or the feast itself if it fell on a Sunday, should be kept as the principal diocesan feast. In 1846, the 6th Provincial Council of Baltimore had chosen Our Lady under the title of the Immaculate Conception as the Patroness of the United States, but with the provisions That December 8th was not to become a holy day of obligation. These dispositions were confirmed by the Sacred Congregation did Propaganda Fidei. The same council also petitioned the privilege of inserting the word Immaculate Conception in the office and Mass of the Feast of Mary’s conception and of adding the invocation “Queen conceived without original sin” in the litanies. Two years after the Provincial Council of Baltimore was held, Archbishop Francis Norbert Blanchet of Oregon City met in the First Provincial Council of Oregon City with his two suffragans, Augustin Blanchet of Walla Walla and Modeste Demers of Vancouver Island. In a departure from the practice in other parts of the United States, they listed the feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary among the holydays of obligation, but they took no other action and apparently did not follow the in practice of the rest of country in adding the word “Immaculate.”

The Seventh Provincial Council of Baltimore (1849) made the most significant contribution in the prehistory of the definition. The two archbishops and twenty-two bishops present legislation for all the diocese of the United States and they passed two decrees in response to Pope Pius IX’s Ubi Primum. The decrees simply repeated in declaratory sentences the questions asked by the Pope in his Encyclical. The prelates testified that there was great devotion to Mary’s Immaculate Conception among priests and faithful in the United States and declared that they would welcome definition of the privilege if the Pope should judge such as definition opportune. In 10 volumes of documents published at Rome between 1851 and 1854. Which contained over 600 responses to the encyclical from bishops and others the texts of these two decrees of the 7th Provincial Council. Is the only representation from the United States. The only other recorded American petition for the definition. Stoned in Sardis collection of Atti e documenti, and it came from Archbishop John Francis Purcell of Cincinnati on September 17, 1854.

Among the 24 bishops who signed the decree of the 7th Provincial Council were four who would later participate in the Roman meetings which immediately preceded the 1854. Definition. They were Francis Kenrick, Michael O'Connor. John Hughes of New York and John Timon, C.M. of Buffalo. Another three signers were ready to be among the staunchest opponents of the definition of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council. They were the newly appointed Archbishop of Saint Louis, Peter, Richard Kenrick, John B Purcell and Bishop Richard Vincent Whelan of Richmond. The actions of these last three in regards to the Immaculate Conception definition in 1849 has a certain importance in interpreting their later reluctance over papal infallibility, and the study of the two positions sheds some light on their view of the relation of the Episcopal College to the papacy. During the Vatican Council, Peter Kenrick was fully aware that Pope Pius the 9th definition of the Immaculate Conception. Was a strong historical argument in favor of the acceptance of papal infallibility by the Church. He tried to save the anti-infalliblist position which He had then adopted. By maintaining that the 1854 definition had not been made by the Pope alone, but only after he had canvassed the opinion of the rest of the world's episcopate. It is difficult to assess the exact intention. Of the Fathers of the 7th Baltimore Council. From a reading of the text of their decree. They could simply have been, according to the obvious desire of Pius the IX that they assure him of their moral support in the project which he obviously had very much at heart.  But if the decree is read in the context of the thought of the man who is incontestably the leading American Catholic theologian of the day, Peter Kenrick's older brother Francis, then the Bishop of Philadelphia, the Fathers could have intended to give their formal consent precisely as part of the Episcopal college dispersed throughout the world. Similarly, the 1854 letter of Archbishop Purcell, referred to above is ambiguous. It is stated that he, his clergy, and his people “desire and awaited” the definition that would be made “through Pius IX.” By 1870 Peter Kenrick, Purcell, and others were opposing what they took to be the majority interpretation at the Vatican Council, and of their basic reasons was to be expressed by Bishop Bernard McQuaid of Rochester when he said: “Somehow or another it was in my head that the Bishops ought to be consulted” in the promulgation of infallible decrees. It would seem that at the very least it can be said that the concept of episcopal collegiality was not completely alien to the mind of the mid-century American hierarchy. (James Hennessey, S.J., “A Prelude to Vatican I: American Bishops and the Definition of the Immaculate Conception,” Theological Studies 25. 1964.)

Although I have been criticized for stating repeatedly that there is a straight line from Americanism to conciliarism, the excerpt above, written while the robber council was taking place, is ample proof that error of episcopal collegiality embraced at the “Second” Vatican Council had roots right here in the United States of America and, as at the Sorbonne in 1696, one of the motivating factors for those who believed in episcopal collegiality was to avoid offending Protestants as far as was possible, including deemphasizing the privileges of Our Lady that Adrien Baillet sought to accomplish while effecting the censure of The Mystical City of God.

Before continuing with Dom Prosper Gueranger’s careful analysis of Baillet’s efforts to avoid offending the tender sensibilities of Protestants, it is useful to explain Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick’s opposition to the description of Our Lady’s prerogatives eight days before Pope Pius IX promulgated Ineffabilis Deus:

In the November 30 session Arcbishop Kenrick also questioned two phrases which were used to describe Mary’s prerogatives. He felt that both would cause difficulties in the United States and other countries with non-Catholic populations. The first of these occurred in the exordium of the Bull where, in speaking of the Blessed Virgin’s innocence and sanctity, it was stated that they were such that, under God, no one could even conceive them. Kenrick wanted the phrase dropped, “since it could have a bad sense in American countries.” For the same reason he asked that another phrase, which declared that “in a certain measure God in redeeming man seemed to depend on the consent” of Mary, be removed. (James Hennessey, S.J., “A Prelude to Vatican I: American Bishops and the Definition of the Immaculate Conception,” Theological Studies 25. 1964.)

To say that our redemption did not depend upon Our Lady’s fiat to the will of God the Father as announced by Saint Gabriel the Archangel is to deny the constant teaching of the Catholic Church as expressed so clearly by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux:

You have heard, O Virgin, the announcement of the great mystery; the means designed for its fulfilment have been unfolded to you, each wondrous, each replete with joy. “Rejoice, O daughter of Sion, and exult exceedingly, O virgin daughter of Jerusalem.”[1] And because to you has been given joy and gladness, allow us to hear from your lips the answer and the good tidings which we desire, that the bones that have been humbled may rejoice. You have heard the fact, and have believed; believe also in the means which have been explained to you. You have heard that you are to conceive and bring forth a Son, and that it will not be through the power of man, but by the virtue of the Holy Ghost.

The angel awaits your reply, for it is time that he should return to God, Who sent him. We, too,are waiting, O Lady, for a word of mercy—we, who are groaning under the sentence of condemnation. See, the price of our salvation is offered to you; if you consent, we shall at once be delivered. By the Eternal Word of God we were all created, and behold we die. By your short answer we shall be refreshed and recalled to life. Adam, with all his race—Adam, a weeping exile from Paradise, implores it of you. Abraham entreats you, David beseeches you. This is the object of the burning desires of the holy fathers, of your fathers, who are still dwelling in the region of the shades of death. Behold the entire human race prostrate at your feet in expectation. And rightly, for on your word  depend the consolation of the wretched, the redemption of the captive, the freedom of the condemned, the salvation of your entire race, of all the children of Adam.

Hasten, then, O Lady, to give your answer; hasten to speak the word so longed for by all on earth, in limbo, and in heaven. Yea, the King and Lord of all things, Who has greatly desired your beauty, desires as eagerly your word of consent, by which He has purposed to save the world. He whom you have pleased by your silence will now be more gratified by your reply. Hark! He calls to you from heaven: “O most beautiful among women, give me to hear your voice.” If you let Him hear your voice, He will enable you to see our salvation. And is not this what you have sought for, what you have prayed for night and day with sighs and tears?

Why, then, delay? Are you the happy one to whom it has been promised, or “look we for another”?[2] Yes, you indeed are that most fortunate one. You are the promised virgin, the expected virgin, the much-longed-for virgin, through whom your holy father Jacob, when about to die, rested his hope of eternal life, saying: “I will look for thy salvation, O Lord.[3]

You, O Mary, are that virgin in whom and by whom God Himself, our King before all ages, determined to operate our salvation in the midst of the earth. Why do you humbly expect from another what is offered to you, and will soon be manifested through yourself if you will but yield your consent and speak the word? Answer, then, quickly to the angel—yes, through the angel give your consent to your God. Answer the word, receive the Word. Utter yours, conceive the Divine. Speak the word that is transitory, and embrace the Word that is everlasting.

Why do you delay? Why are you fearful? Believe—confess—receive. Let humility put on courage, and timidity confidence. It is certainly by no means fitting that virginal simplicity should forget prudence. Yet in this one case only the prudent virgin need not fear presumption, because, though modesty shone forth in her silence, it is now more necessary that her devotion and obedience should be revealed by her speech.

Open, O Blessed Virgin, your heart to faith, your lips to compliance, your bosom to your Creator. Behold, the desired of all nations stands at the gate and knocks. Oh, suppose He were to pass by while you delay! How would you begin again with sorrow to seek Him whom your soul loveth! Arise—run—open! Arise by faith, run by devotion, open by acceptance. (Sermons of St. Bernard on Advent & Christmas.
Compiled and translated at St. Mary s Convent. R. & T. Washbourne, Ltd.. London Manchester, Glasgow, Cincinnati, Chicago, 1909.)

Thus. apart from the fact that our redemption did indeed depend upon Our Lady’s fiat at the Annunciation, Peter Richard Kenrick’s concern with the reaction of Protestant has been one of the reasons that Baillet (a biographer of Rene Descartes and follower of the false Cartesian philosophy that separate Faith from Reason and thus resulted in the fragmentation of reality itself), who simply did not love the Mother of God, used as a rationale to opposing The Mystical City God, which Dom Prosper Gueranger brilliantly dispatched as follows:

People who allow themselves to be taken in by such traps are very blind or very foolish; but, in return, those who set these traps know perfectly well what they are doing. Catholics have, after all, more rights in the Church than heretics who do not belong to it; and we do not see that all these concessions of doctrine and practice have brought them back into the fold of the common Mother. Far from it; they noted with sectarian joy, in numerous writings, the variations they recognized between the way in which the veneration of the Blessed Virgin was understood in France at the end of the 17th century, and the way in which it was preached and practiced in earlier times. They were able to recognize and say that the teaching and practice of Rome on this subject were in opposition to those which were paraded before them. I imagine that our teachers of that time would have acted with more dignity, and at the same time with more skill, if they had offered the spectacle of an ever closer conformity to the directions which the divine center of unity constantly communicates to the various members of the great body of the Church. A dogmatic decree of the Holy See had just anathematized this proposition: The praise of Mary, as Mary, is vain praise; this condemnation should have been published from the rooftops, and everyone, Catholics and heretics alike, would have understood that to be in union with the Church it is not enough to venerate Mary in the act of her divine maternity, but that this Queen of heaven and earth has a personal right to the homage of every creature because of the proper perfections that are in her and the power that God has conferred on her. Instead, the Sorbonne, which in the 16th century had been able to draw up such a courageous censure of the errors with which the writings of Erasmus were filled, found nothing to say against the Monita salutaria which Rome had proscribed; all its anger was based on the humble and pious writing of a poor Spanish nun, a writing of which the Protestants were not unaware of its immense popularity in one of the largest provinces of the Catholic Church, just as they were also aware of the special consideration with which Rome treated it. It was to give the dissenters to understand that, in spite of all the beautiful theories that one unfolded in front of them on the unity of the Church, there was only one country in the world where one knew well what to hold on the true veneration due to the Holy Virgin. Still, this great Middle Kingdom had to be significantly minimized, for France had been enlarged by various provinces in which the old way of feeling and acting in religious matters still showed itself to be quite lively; and we have seen above that the Faculty of Theology of Toulouse, the organ of teaching in one of our old provinces, had not failed to proffer its support of Mary of Ágreda, on the very eve of the day when the Sorbonne was to cover with ignominy this name for which Benedict XIV professed such explicit veneration fifty years after the censure of Paris. It is doubtful that the act of the Sorbonne ever converted a single Protestant; but it is easy to imagine the disdain that such inept and passionate undertakings inspired in those who were supposed to be brought back by giving them such spectacles. I do not speak of the weariness, the uneasiness, and the bold ideas that such proceedings would naturally engender among the faithful themselves; what is certain is that unbelief, as soon as it was allowed to lift the mask a few years later, found little resistance, and was soon able to irresistibly drag the nation into the greatest misfortunes. The diminution of truths, the extinction of holiness (defecit sanctus, diminutæ sunt veritates), prepared this terrible situation under which we are still struggling. I ask forgiveness from the reader for this too long digression, and I return to the book of Adrien Baillet. (pp. 227-229.)

An Interjection:

In other words, Dom Prosper Gueranger, who lived under consequences of the French Revolution throughout his entire life (1805-1875), judged the way for the triumph of the mocking unbelief and anti-Theism evangelized by the French Revolutionaries began with the contemptuous treatment of Our Lady by Adrien Baillet and the other members of the Sorbonne cabal, who hated The Mystical City of God because it contained elucidations about Marian doctrines and the privileges that flowed from those doctrines upon Our Lady that they absolutely despised. It is an easy thing to mock the entire Catholic Faith and even the very existence of God once one has attacked His Most Blessed Mother and, wittingly or not, prepared the way for the “Goddess of Reason” to be installed in an act of desecration at the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris Aon November 10, 1793.

Moreover, Dom Prosper Gueranger notes that not only did the Sorbonne’s attacks on the doctrines and privileges of Our Lady contained in The Mystical City of God that had heralded by many of the Holy Mother Church’s Fathers and Doctors did not only not convert Protestants, but as happened with the mainline Protestant sects themselves which had shriveled into disbelief and thus irrelevance in large part because of their own rejection and mockery of the same Marian doctrines and privileges, but it corrupted the hearts of so many French Catholics against the tender devotion that they had for Our Lady and thus prepared their immediate descendants to be enthusiasts of the rationalism and then the Deism of the French Revolution.

As was the case with the clever dual-minded Modernists two centuries later against whom Pope Saint Pius X fought his entire career as Bishop of Mantua, the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice and the Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ on earth, Adrien Baillet sung various praises of Our Lady in order to lull the unsuspecting to accept him as Our Lady’s devoted client  to convince them as his nonexistent “good intentions” when he lowered the boom on all that had been taught about the Mother of God throughout the centuries and that was only reiterated by Our Lady herself to her servant, the Venerable Mary of Jesus of Agreda.

Dom Prosper Gueranger explained how Baillet when about his wretched business:

    8. The author first lays the foundation of devotion to Mary, which is her quality as Mother of God, to which he pays homage, and then moves on to the veneration that is due to this incomparable creature. According to him, “of so many honors that are paid to Mary on earth, she accepts and receives only those offered to her by the true children of God” (p. 7) Thus sinners must take it for granted that their tributes to the Mother of God will never obtain a favorable look from her, and they can dispense henceforth with coming to weary with their presence the one whom the Roman Church nevertheless calls the Refuge of Sinners. Besides, the court of the Queen of Heaven will not be numerous, for the author warns us that “if in our veneration of Mary we love something other than God, or something not related to God, this veneration becomes idolatry” (Ib.). How many idolaters there are in the Church of God, which, as our holy faith teaches us, is not composed only of the perfect! These are the Monita salutaria in all their crudeness. Further on, Baillet tells us: “Mary cannot suffer people to profess to love her unless they love God above her, and unless she is loved in relation to Him. She has no other friends than those of God” (p. 8). Woe, then, to him who counted on her to effect his reconciliation!

    9. The author then endeavors to confuse the love which the Christian must have for Mary with that to which he is bound towards God, always with the aim of discouraging the devotees of Mary, who have not yet arrived at the highest perfection; he does not admit a love of Mary which is for Mary, because, he tells us, “right reason, the natural order, and the eternal law demand that man love God alone” (p. 12). Thus, in order to annihilate the love of Christians for Mary, Baillet finds it necessary, and understandably so, to overturn paternal love, filial love, spousal love, fraternal love, friendship; sentiments which, in order to be Christian, must be related to God, but which, if they did not legitimately exist in themselves, would not be susceptible to this supernatural relationship. The thinking of the author, tempestuous in itself, sometimes hides itself, but more often it betrays itself, as when he openly teaches that “to love the Blessed Virgin after God consists in loving her only in God” (p. 14); that “the honors we pay her must be related solely to her author” (p. 16); that “to honor this holy Creature is nothing other than to honor God” (Ib.). Baillet especially disapproves of the flattery (that is his word) that is too often addressed to the Queen of the universe; he teaches us “that she is not less outraged by flattery than by superstition” (p. 24). So according to Baillet, there is a danger of flattery toward Mary when one takes as a pretext to praise her without measure, “that the praises which are legitimately due to her are above the efforts of all her preachers” (Ibid.). The Church, however, in the beautiful and ancient Responsory Sancta et immaculata, professes this same feeling of our impotence to praise worthily this privileged creature, and Baillet knew this admirable liturgical formula, which only disappeared from the Breviary of Paris in 1736 when the theories that were put forward in 1693 had borne fruit. (pp. 229-231.)

Interjection:

In rejecting what he termed excessive “praise” or “flattery” of Our Lady Adrien Baillet was disparaging such odes of praise as offered by, say, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and Saint Alphonsus de Liguori:

‘And the Virgin’s name was Mary, Let us speak a little about this name, which signifies star of the sea, and which so well befits the Virgin Mother. Rightly is she likened to a star: for as a star emits its ray without being dimmed so the Virgin brought forth her Son without receiving any injury; the ray takes nought from the brightness of the star, nor the Son from His Mother’s integrity. This is the noble star risen out of Jacob, whose ray illumines the whole world, whose splendour shines in the heavens, penetrates the abyss, and, traversing the whole earth, gives warmth rather to souls than to bodies, cherishing virtues, withering vices. Mary, I say, is that bright and incomparable star, whom we need to see raised above this vast sea, shining by her merits, and giving us light by her example.

Oh! whosoever thou art that seest thyself amid the tides of this world, tossed about by storms and tempests rather than walking on the land, turn not thine eyes away from the shining of this star if thou wouldst not by the hurricane. If squalls of temptations arise, or thou fall upon the rocks of tribulation, look to the star, call upon Mary. If thou art tossed by the waves of pride or ambition, detraction or envy, look to the star, call upon Mary. If anger or avarice or the desires of the flesh dash against the ship of thy soul, turn thine eyes toward Mary. If, troubled by the enormity of thy crimes, ashamed of thy guilty conscience, terrified by dread of the judgment, thou beginnest to sink into the gulf of sadness or the abyss of despair, think of Mary. In dangers, in anguish, in doubt, think of Mary call upon Mary. Let her be ever on thy lips ever in thy heart; and the better to obtain the help of her prayers, imitate the example of her life. Following her, thou strayest not; invoking her, thou despairest not; thinking of her thou wanderest not; upheld by her, thou failest not; shielded by her, thou fearest not; guided by her, thou growest not weary; favoured by her, thou reachest the goal. And thus does thou experience I thyself how good is that saying: And the Virgin’s name was Mary.’ (Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, as found in Matins, Divine Office, Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, September 12.)

Many learned theologians say that a soul that possesses a habit of virtue, as long as it corresponds faithfully to the actual grace which it receives from God, always produces and equal act in intensity to the habit it possesses, so much so that it acquires each time a new and double merit, equal to the sum of all the merits previously acquired. This kind of augmentation was, it is said, granted to the angels in the time of their probation; and if it was granted to the angels, who can ever deny that it was granted to the divine Mother when living in this world, and especially during the time of which I speak, that she was in the womb of her mother, in which she was certainly more faithful than the angels in corresponding to divine grace?  Mary, then, during the whole of that time, in each moment, doubled that sublime grace which she possessed from the first instant; for, corresponding to her whole strength, and in the most perfect manner in her every act, she subsequently doubled her merits in every instance. So that supposing she had a thousand degrees of grace in the first instance, in the second she had two thousand, in the third four thousand, in the fourth eight thousand, in the fifth sixteenth thousand, in the sixth thirty-two thousand. And we are as yet only at the sixth instance; but multiplied this for an entire day, multiplied for nine months, consider what treasures of grace, merit, and sanctity Mary had already acquired at the moment of her birth?

Let us, then, rejoice with our beloved infant, who was born so holy, so dear to God, and so full of grace. And let us rejoice, not only on her account, but also on our own; for she came into the world full of grace, not only for her own glory, but also for our good. St. Thomas remarks in his eighth treatise, that the most Blessed Virgin was full of grace in three ways: first, she was filled with grace as to her soul, so that from the beginning her beautiful soul belonged all to God. Secondly, she was filled with grace as to her body, so that she merited to clothe the Eternal Word with her most pure flesh. Thirdly, she was filled with grace for the benefit of all, so that all men might partake of it: "She was also full of grace as to its overflowing for the benefit of all men." The angelical Doctor adds, that some Saints have so much grace that it is not only sufficient for themselves, but also for the salvation of many, though not for all men: only to Jesus Christ and to Mary was such a grace given as sufficed to save all: "should any one have as much as would suffice for the salvation of all, this would be the greatest: and this was in Christ and in the Blessed Virgin." Thus far St. Thomas. So that what St. John says of Jesus, "And of His fullness we all have received, the saints say of Mary. St. Thomas of Villanova calls her "full of grace, of whose plentitude all receive;" so so much so that St. Anselm says, "that there is no one who does not partake of the grace of Mary." And who is there in the world to whom Mary is not benign, and does not dispense some mercy? "Who was ever found to whom the Blessed Virgin was not propitious? Who is there whom her mercy does not reach?

From Jesus, however, it is (we must understand) that we receive grace as the author of grace, from Mary as a mediatress; from Jesus as a Savior, from Mary as an advocate; from Jesus as a source, from Mary as a channel. Hence St. Bernard says, that God established Mary as the channel of the mercies that he wished to dispense to men; therefore he filled her with grace, that each one's part might be communicated to him from her fullness; "A full aqueduct, that others may receive of her fullness, but not fullness herself." Therefore the saint exhorts all to consider, with how much love God wills that we should honor this great Virgin, since he has deposited the whole treasure of his graces in her: so that whatever we possess of hope, grace, and salvation, we may thank our most loving Queen for all, since all comes to us from her hands and by her powerful intercession. He thus beautifully expresses himself: "Behold with what tender feelings of devotion he wills that we should honor her! He who has placed the plenitude of all good in Mary; that thus, if we have any hope, or anything salutary in us, we may know that it was from her or that it over-flowed."

Miserable is that soul that closes this channel of grace against itself, by neglecting to recommend itself to Mary! when Holofernes wished to gain possession of the city of Bethulia, he took care to destroy the aqueducts: He commanded their aqueduct to be cut off. And this the devil does when he wishes to become master of a soul; he causes it to give up devotion to the most Blessed Virgin Mary; and when once this channel is closed, it easily loses supernatural light, the fear of God, and finally eternal salvation. (Saint Alponsus de Liguori, The Glories of Mary.)

Is this not a very apt description as to what happened in France because of the Cartesian rationalism that Adrien Baillet applied to the Mother God that poisoned the minds of many Frenchmen against Our Lady and laid the philosophical groundwork for the Sorbonne’s kangaroo court that censured The Mystical City of God that was reverend in Spain, Italy, and even at The Louvain in Belgium and Toulouse in France itself?  

Is this not exactly what has happened to so many Catholics in the past sixty years since the “Second” Vatican Council and the dawning of the age of conciliarism?

Is this not an apt description of how even some traditionally-minded Catholics who, when given access to the general public via the mass media, refuse at any time to speak at all about the necessity of relying upon Our Lady, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary, so that we can grow close to her Divine Son through her Immaculate Heart?

That is, there are some Catholics who have access to the mass media who refuse to instruct those who are watching and listening to them that Our Lady holds the key to peace in individual souls and thus to peace within and among nations. Why are we so afraid to give the public honor that is due to Our Lady as the Queen Mother of the King Whose Social Reign she wants to see restored in all of its glory?

This is either the cowardice born of the prudence of the flesh or it is an outright disbelief in the necessity of Our Lady’s graces and intercessory assistance to effect our sanctification and salvation that, though differing in context, has the same result as Adrien Baillet’s and the Sorbonne’s outright disparagement of the sublime privileges of the August Queen of Heaven.1

10. Further on (p. 34) the author, speaking of the titles of Mediatrix, Advocate, Mother of Mercy and Grace, which the Church gives to Mary, dares to say: “We confess in good faith that we have not found these titles in the writings of the Apostles or of their disciples,[6] and that our language seems to have been unknown to the first faithful.” For the time being, this remark will not displease the Protestants; yet in the meantime a simple faithful could reply to the learned doctor that the Apostles, having left us no rules for the language we should use when it is a question of praising Mary, we defer to the Church which is directed by the same Holy Ghost who inspired the Apostles. As for the non-liturgical terms of Co-Redemptrix and Reparatrix, Baillet thinks that the Church had thought it could conceal or excuse them in the writings of some zealous people. It is not my place to undertake here the justification of these terms used by theologians of the first order; the reader can consult what the learned Fr. Faber says about them in his beautiful book entitled The Foot of the Cross. But if our doctor does not agree to give amnesty to the title of Co-Redemptrix, he has found a way to give a good meaning to that of Mother of Mercy. Listen: “We call the Blessed Virgin Mother of mercy and grace, because He of whom she is Mother is the only author of grace and mercy” (Page 45). This is ingenious, and will certainly not scandalize Protestants. But that is not all: In order to banish from the minds of Christians any temptation to consider Mary as Mother and minister of mercy, Baillet announces to the sinner that this Advocate in whom he hopes will be his terrible and pitiless judge on Judgment Day, for he says “we would not, to flatter our imagination, lower the condition of Mary below that of the Apostles whom Jesus Christ promised to make judges of the twelve tribes of Israel, or that of all the other saints who are to judge the nations” (p. 49). Thus, let us no longer see in Mary a compassionate Mother of men; let us tremble at the thought of her as at that of a formidable judge. Baillet does not love Mary; that is a judged question. Yet he exposes himself a little to the risk of his sinner saying to him: “Since, according to you, Mary must appear on Judgment Day, armed with the vengeful wrath of divine anger, that moment not having arrived yet, I beg you to let me implore in her the Mother of Mercy. The Apostles and the other saints who are to judge the world with Jesus Christ on the last day deign, in the meantime, to show themselves accessible to our wishes and our confidence; why should I not expect from the merciful Queen of heaven a kindness equal to her power?” We will come back to this book, pardoned in Paris and condemned in Rome; it played too great a role in the historical episode we have undertaken to recount, and it has exercised too serious and too long an influence for us to deal with it only in passing. (pp. 231-233.)

Dom Prosper Gueranger devoted such time to Adrien Baillet’s prejudices against Our Lady and thus against Holy Mother Church’s Mariology because of the decisive influence Baillet’s popularization of Monita salutaria—and the subsequent Roman censure of Baillet’s work for containing poisonous influences—had upon the doctors of the Sorbonne in their warfare against The Mystical City of God in 1696. Unlike The Mystical City of God that was on the Index for grand total of three months in 1681 before being removed therefrom by Blessed Pope Innocent XI, Baillet’s works remained condemned in perpetuity.

Before concluding part one of this study, however, I would like to comment on Adrien Baillet’s dismissal of Our Lady’s role as Co-Redemptrix, which, although not formally defined doctrinally, has been used referred to saints, learned priest-scholars such as Father Fredrick William Faber, to whom Dom Prosper Gueranger mentioned in the passage cited just above, and by none other than Pope Leo XIII, Pope Saint Pius X, and is found in indulgenced prayers found in The Raccolta approved by Pope Pius XII in 1950 and published in an official English translation in 1957.

Before providing this documentation, however, perhaps is rather useful to demonstrate how Adrien Baillet’s rejection of the title of Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix has been repeated anew in recent decades by both Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the late mythical “restorer of tradition,” Joseph Alois Ratzinger.

Here is Bergoglio said in his general audience address on Wednesday, March 24, 2021, the Feast of Saint Gabriel the Archangel in the Catholic Church:

Christ is the Mediator, Christ is the bridge that we cross to turn to the Father (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2674). He is the only Redeemer: there are no co-redeemers with Christ. He is the only one. He is the Mediator par excellence. He is the Mediator. Each prayer we raise to God is through Christ, with Christ and in Christ and it is fulfilled thanks to his intercession. The Holy Spirit extends Christ’s mediation through every time and every place: there is no other name by which we can be saved: Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and humanity (see Acts 4:12).

Due to Christ’s one mediation, other references Christians find for their prayer and devotion take on meaning, first among them being the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus. . . . .

Jesus extended Mary’s maternity to the entire Church when He entrusted her to his beloved disciple shortly before dying on the cross. From that moment on, we have all been gathered under her mantle, as depicted in certain medieval frescoes or paintings. Even the first Latin antiphon – sub tuum praesidium confugimus, sancta Dei Genitrix: the Madonna who ‘covers’, like a Mother, to whom Jesus entrusted us, all of us; but as a Mother, not as a goddess, not as co-redeemer: as Mother. It is true that Christian piety has always given her beautiful titles, as a child gives his or her mamma: how many beautiful things children say about their mamma whom they love so much! How many beautiful things. But we need to be careful: the things the Church, the Saints, say about her, beautiful things, about Mary, subtract nothing from Christ’s sole Redemption. He is the only Redeemer. They are expressions of love like a child for his or her mamma – some are exaggerated. But love, as we know, always makes us exaggerate things, but out of love.

Mind you, this was just another time that Bergoglio has blasphemed Our Lady with a heresy that denies the teaching of such Church Fathers as Saint Jerome and Saint Irenaeus as well as Church Doctors as Saint Bernard and Saint Thomas Aquinas, in addition to five true popes. Here is a report of what the monstrous, pestilential plague of a heretic had said on December 12, 2019, the Feast of Our Guadalupe:

ROME — Pope Francis appeared to flatly reject proposals in some theological circles to add “co-redemptrix” to the list of titles of the Virgin Mary, saying the mother of Jesus never took anything that belonged to her son, and calling the invention of new titles and dogmas “foolishness.”

“She never wanted for herself something that was of her son,” Francis said. “She never introduced herself as co-redemptrix. No. Disciple,” he said, meaning that Mary saw herself as a disciple of Jesus.

Mary, the pope insisted, “never stole for herself anything that was of her son,” instead “serving him. Because she is mother. She gives life.”

“When they come to us with the story of declaring her this or making that dogma, let’s not get lost in foolishness [in Spanish, tonteras],” he said.

Francis’s words, delivered in Spanish, came while celebrating a Thursday evening Mass in Rome for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The title of Mary as “co-redemptrix” dates to the Middle Ages, and the idea of declaring it as a church dogma was discussed, though not adopted, at the Second Vatican Council. In the 1990s American Catholic theologian Mark Miravalle launched a petition asking the pope to make such a declaration, and today the “co-redemptrix” devotion tends to be strongest among more conservative Catholics.

What Francis said Thursday is in line with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s doctrinal chief during most of St. John Paul II’ papacy, and now Pope emeritus Benedict XVI.

Speaking with Peter Seewald for the book-length interview published as God and the World: A Conversation, the then cardinal said: “The formula ‘co-redemptrix’ departs to too great an extent from the language of Scripture and of the Fathers, and therefore gives rise to misunderstandings.”

“Everything comes from Him [Christ], as the Letter to the Ephesians and the Letter to the Colossians, in particular, tell us; Mary, too, is everything she is through Him,” Ratzinger said. “The word ‘co-redemptrix’ would obscure this origin. A correct intention being expressed in the wrong way.” (Bergoglio Calls Idea of Declaring Mary as Co-Redemptrix to be Foolishness, December 12, 2019.)

As noted in the report just quoted, Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s rejection and disparagement of the doctrine of Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix is something that he has quite in common with his supposedly “more erudite” predecessor in the conciliar seat of apostasy, the late Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who once described himself as “much too much of a rationalist.” The Antipope Emeritus said the following in God and the World: A Conversation, one of his numerous book length interviews with Peter Seewald, that was published in 2002, and summarized as follows in an article quoted on this site fifteen years ago:

What counts in Ratzinger's eyes are the "essentials," the "profound inner level" of understanding, conviction, and commitment. Here may be one of the reasons, a personal as well as a professional one, why he assesses the movement in favor of the dogmatization of Mary's co-redemption with caution. He points out that Christ "builds a profound and new community with us" (Seewald, 306). Redemption is the heart of the "great exchange": what is his became ours, and what is ours becomes his. This "being with" is expressed in exemplary fashion in Mary who is the "prototype of the Church," and so to speak, "the Church in person." It must not lead us "to forget the 'first' of Christ: . . . Mary, too, is everything that she is through him" (Seewald, 306). Ratzinger finds that the expression "co-redemptrix" would obscure this absolute origin in Christ, and departs to "too great extent from the language of Scripture and Fathers." The continuity of language with Scripture and Fathers is essential for matters of faith. It would be improper, according to Ratzinger, to "simply manipulate language." He sees in the movement promoting Mary's co-redemption a "correct intention" being expressed in the wrong way. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith holds that "what is signified by this (scil. 'Co-redemptrix') is already better expressed in other titles of Mary." And so his answer to the request is summarized in the following sentence: "I do not think there will be any compliance with this demand, which in the meantime is being supported by several million people, within the foreseeable future" (As found at Ratzinger and Mary, quoting Peter Seewald, God and the World, Saint Ignatius Press, 2002, p. 306.)

Ratzinger had the temerity to talk about manipulating language!

The late Joseph Alois/Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was one of the foremost manipulators of language in human history, and we live at time when such manipulators of language—and thus of truth itself—abound in halls of the Occupied Vatican on the West Bank of the Tiber River in the upper echelons and nooks and crannies of government, law, “healthcare,” “news,” “entertainment,” “sports,” “education,” and the entirety of the corporate and banking worlds. All manner of atheistic, totalitarian elites are at hard at work every day and every night to manipulate the language in order to control the masses.

Men such as Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict/XVI spent their entire lives working—and Jorge Mario Bergoglio still continues to work hard—to make the Catholic Faith something that it is not and to make the Church Fathers and Holy Mother Church’s Doctors into veritable witnesses on behalf of their own conciliar revolutionary precepts that are false on their nature and, in many cases, have been anathematized by Holy Mother Church’s true general councils and/or her true popes. Ratzinger and Bergoglio may have had differences on the margins on various matters, but they were joined at the hip as men who taught that the Catholic doctrine is defined by sentimentality and emotionalism and is not to be found in the “cold” and “crystal-clear” formulations Holy Mother Church, she who is the repository of the Sacred Deposit of Faith, that she has taught under the infallible guidance of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, from the first Pentecost Sunday to now. Ratzinger never believed and Bergoglio does not believe that God and His truth are immutable and not prone to “conditional” expression based on the historical circumstances that gave rise to their formulation. One while is dead and the other has just escaped death both men are noted for their rationalism while existing in a world of contradiction, paradox, dilemma, and constant change.

They have done Adrien Baillet and the bishop who plotted to supplant, Baillet, as the leader against The Mystical City of God, Jacques-Benigne Lignel Bossuet, who emerges as the villain of the piece in Dom Prosper Gueranger’s L’Univers articles of May 15, 1859, May 29, 1859, June 15, 1789, July 18, 1859, and September 18, 1859, very proud indeed.

The Theology of Redemptive Suffering is Excluded by Denying Our Lady as the Co-Redemptrix

Before providing a brief review of some of the papal explications of the substance of the doctrine of Our Lady as the Co-Redemptrix, perhaps it would be useful at this juncture to point out that a rejection of Our Lady as the Co-Redemptrix and/or of the notion of “co-redeemers” in the work of salvation wrought by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday does away with the whole theology of redemptive suffering. If there is no redemptive suffering, of course, then one comes to view human suffering as something to be avoided and not to be embraced as the means to sanctify our souls and to make reparation for one’s own sins and those of the whole world. If there is no redemptive suffering, therefore, the first recourse to suffering is to anesthetize it or, in the case of chronic or fatal illnesses, to call in the hospice brigade for a “dignified” end to one’s suffering.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio made it clear on March 24, 2021, that there are no “co-redeemers Jorge Mario Bergoglio said on December 12, 2019, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, when he first denied the doctrine of Our Lady as our Co-Redemptrix in the work of her Divine Son’s salvation:

Christ is the Mediator, Christ is the bridge that we cross to turn to the Father (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2674). He is the only Redeemer: there are no co-redeemers with Christ. He is the only one. He is the Mediator par excellence. He is the Mediator. Each prayer we raise to God is through Christ, with Christ and in Christ and it is fulfilled thanks to his intercession. The Holy Spirit extends Christ’s mediation through every time and every place: there is no other name by which we can be saved: Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and humanity (see Acts 4:12). (General Audience Address, March 24, 2021.)

While Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the one and only Redeemer and that it is true there is no other name by which we can be saved, something that he does not preach to Jews or Mohammedans or practitioners of a number of pagan cults, it is also true that the Apostle to the Gentiles explained that we can fill up what is wanting in the sufferings of Our Lord in His Mystical Body, Holy Mother Church, by bearing our share of hardship which the Gospel entails:

And you, whereas you were some time alienated and enemies in mind in evil works: [22] Yet now he hath reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unspotted, and blameless before him: [23] If so ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and immoveable from the hope of the gospel which you have heard, which is preached in all the creation that is under heaven, whereof I Paul am made a minister. [24] Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church: [25] Whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God, which is given me towards you, that I may fulfill the word of God: (Colossians 1: 21-25.)

Father George Leo Haydock provided a concise explanation Verse 24 that Jorge Mario Bergoglio conveniently ignores:

 And fill up those things….in my flesh for his body, which is the church.[5] Nothing was wanting in the sufferings or merits of Christ, for a sufficient and superabundant redemption of mankind, and therefore he adds, for his body, which is the church, that his sufferings were wanting, and are to be endured by the example of Christ by the faithful, who are members of a crucified head. See St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine. (Witham) — Wanting. There is no want in the sufferings of Christ himself as head; but many sufferings are still wanting, or are still to come in his body, the Church, and his members, the faithful. (Challoner) — St. Chrysostom here observes that Jesus Christ loves us so much, that he is not content merely to suffer in his own person, but he wishes also to suffer in his members; and thus we fill up what is wanting of the sufferings of Christ. (St. Chrysostom) — The wisdom, the will, the justice of Jesus Christ, requireth and ordaineth that his body and members should be companions of his sufferings, as they expect to be companions of his glory; that so suffering with him, and after his example, they may apply to their own wants and to the necessities of others the merits and satisfaction of Jesus Christ, which application is what is wanting, and what we are permitted to supply by the sacraments and sacrifice of the new law. (Haydock Bible Commentary on Colossians, Chapter 1.)

This is pretty clear, and Catholic theologians have long used the term “co-redeemers with Christ” to explain the theology of redemptive suffering while making the proper distinctions as provided in Father Hadock’s commentary and are to be found also in the commentary of Bishop Richard Challoner. We must suffer to be purified of our sins, and we must suffer for the sanctification and salvation of others. Indeed, self-sacrifice was at the heart of Our Lady’s messages to Saint Bernadette Soubirous in the Grotto of Massabielle, in Lourdes, France, in 1858, and to the Fatima seers in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, in 1917.

On the contrary, though, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI always disparaged Our Lady’s Fatima Message, which included Our Lady’s consistent reminders to Jacinta and Francisco Marto and their cousin, Sister Lucia dos Santos, to sacrifice themselves for sinners, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio altogether ignored the true words of Our Lady at Fatima when he visited there May of 2017. However, the words of Our Lady are very clear:

“Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the conversion of sinners?”

“Then you are going to have much to suffer, but the grace of God will be your comfort.” (May 13, 1917.)

"Continue to come here every month. In October, I will tell you who I am and what I want, and I will perform a miracle for all to see and believe."

Lucia made some requests for sick people, to which Mary replied that she would cure some but not others, and that all must say the rosary to obtain such graces, before continuing: "Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say many times, especially when you make some sacrifice: O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary." (July 13, 1917.)

“Pray, pray very much, and make sacrifices for sinners; for many souls go to hell, because there are none to sacrifice themselves and pray for them.” (August 19, 1917.)

“The moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father, in union with all the Bishops in the world, to make the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means. There are so many souls whom the Justice of God condemns for sins committed against me, that I have come to ask reparation: sacrifice yourself for this intention and pray.” (Words of Our Lady to Sister Lucia dos Santos during the Apparition of the Most Holy Trinity in Tuy, Spain, June 13, 1929.) (As found at Our Lady’s Words at Fatima.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has disparaged the practice of personal mortification throughout his life as a lay Jesuit revolutionary, doing so within three months of his “election” on March 13, 2013:

"In the history of the Church there have been some mistakes made on the path towards God. Some have believed that the Living God, the God of Christians can be found on the path of meditation, indeed that we can reach higher through meditation. That's dangerous! How many are lost on that path, never to return. Yes perhaps they arrive at knowledge of God, but not of Jesus Christ, Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity. They do not arrive at that. It is the path of the Gnostics, no? They are good, they work, but it is not the right path. It’s very complicated and does not lead to a safe harbor. "

"Others - the Pope said - thought that to arrive at God we must mortify ourselves, we have to be austere and have chosen the path of penance: only penance and fasting. Not even these arrive at the Living God, Jesus Christ. They are the pelagians, who believe that they can arrive by their own efforts. " But Jesus tells us that the path to encountering Him is to find His wounds:

"We find Jesus’ wounds in carrying out works of mercy, giving to our body – the body – the soul too, but – I stress - the body of your wounded brother, because he is hungry, because he is thirsty, because he is naked because it is humiliated, because he is a slave, because he's in jail because he is in the hospital. Those are the wounds of Jesus today. And Jesus asks us to take a leap of faith, towards Him, but through these His wounds. 'Oh, great! Let's set up a foundation to help everyone and do so many good things to help '. That's important, but if we remain on this level, we will only be philanthropic. We need to touch the wounds of Jesus, we must caress the wounds of Jesus, we need to bind the wounds of Jesus with tenderness, we have to kiss the wounds of Jesus, and this literally. Just think of what happened to St. Francis, when he embraced the leper? The same thing that happened to Thomas: his life changed. "

Pope Francis concluded that we do not need to go on a “refresher course” to touch the living God, but to enter into the wounds of Jesus, and for this "all we have to do is go out onto the street. Let us ask St. Thomas for the grace to have the courage to enter into the wounds of Jesus with tenderness and thus we will certainly have the grace to worship the living God. " (We encounter the Living God through His wounds.)

Catholics embrace penance and mortification as a means of conquering self, of dying to self, in order to live more fully for Christ the King as He has revealed Himself through His true Church.

A true Jesuit and a true priest, Father John Croiset, wrote as follows on interior mortification:

It is not enough to mortify ourselves in some things, for some time; we must, as far as possible, mortify ourselves in everything and at all times, with prudence and discretion. A single unlawful gratification allowed to human nature will do more to make it proud and rebellious than a hundred victories gained over it. Truce with this sort of enemy is victory for him; “Brethren,” said Sr. Bernard, “what is cut will grow again, and what appears extinguished will light again, and what is asleep will awake again.”

To preserve the interior spirit of devotion, the soul must not be dissipated with exterior distractions, and as the prophet says, must be surrounded on all sides by a hedge of thorns. Now, if we omit to do that, it will be for us the cause of tepidity, back sliding, and want of devotion. When we mortify our disordered inclinations in one thing, we generally make up for it by some other satisfaction which we allow ourselves. During the time of retreat, we are recollected, but as soon as it is over, we open the gates of the senses to all kinds of distractions.

The exercise of this interior mortification, so common in the lives of the saints, is known by all who have a real desire to be perfect. In this matter we have only to listen to the Spirit of God. The love of Jesus Christ makes people so ingenious, that the courage and energy which they display and the means of mortifying themselves with which the Holy Spirit inspires even the most uncultured people, surpass the genius of the learned, and can be regarded as little miracles.

There is nothing which they do not make an occasion to contradict their natural inclinations; there is no time or place which does not appear proper to mortify themselves without ever going beyond the rules of good sense. It is enough that they have a great desire to see or to speak, to make them lower their eyes or keep silent; the desire to learn news, or to know what is going on, or what is being said, is for them a subject of continual mortification which is as meritorious as it is ordinary, and of which God alone is the Witness. The appropriate word, a witticism in conversation, can bring them honor, but they make it the matter of a sacrifice.

There is hardly a time of the day but gives opportunities for mortification; whether one is sitting or standing, one can find a place or an attitude that is uncomfortable without being remarked. If they are interrupted a hundred times in a serious employment, they will reply a hundred times with as much sweetness and civility as if they had not been occupied. The ill-humor of a person with whom we have to live, the imperfections of a servant, the ingratitude of a person under obligations to us, can give much exercise for the patience of a person solidly virtuous. Finally, the inconveniences of place, season or persons suffered in a manner to make people believe that we do not feel them are small occasions of mortification, it is true, but the mortification on these occasions is not small; it is of great merit.

It may be said that great graces and even sublime sanctity usually depend on the generosity with which we mortify ourselves constantly on these little occasions. Exact fulfillment of the duties of one’s state and conformity in all things to community life without regard to one’s inclinations, employment, or age involve that continual mortification which is not subject to vanity but which is in conformity with the spirit of Jesus Christ.

If occasions for exterior mortifications are wanting, those for interior mortification are ever at hand. Modesty, recollections, reserve require mortification; honesty, sweetness and civility may the effects of education, but are more usually the result of constant mortification. Without this virtue it is difficult for a person to be always at peace, to be self-possessed, to do his actions perfectly, and be always content with what God wills. (Mortification.)

Our true popes have called for personal sacrifice and mortification through the history of Holy Mother Church, an example of which can be found in Pope Leo XIII’s Exeunte Iam Anno, December 25, 1888.)

Now the whole essence of a Christian life is to reject the corruption of the world and to oppose constantly any indulgence in it; this is taught in the words and deeds, the laws and institutions, the life and death of Jesus Christ, "the author and finisher of faith." Hence, however strongly We are deterred by the evil disposition of nature and character, it is our duty to run to the "fight proposed to Us," fortified and armed with the same desire and the same arms as He who, "having joy set before him, endured the cross." Wherefore let men understand this specially, that it is most contrary to Christian duty to follow, in worldly fashion, pleasures of every kind, to be afraid of the hardships attending a virtuous life, and to deny nothing to self that soothes and delights the senses. "They that are Christ's, have crucified their flesh, with the vices and concupiscences"-- so that it follows that they who are not accustomed to suffering, and who hold not ease and pleasure in contempt belong not to Christ. By the infinite goodness of God man lived again to the hope of an immortal life, from which he had been cut off, but he cannot attain to it if he strives not to walk in the very footsteps of Christ and conform his mind to Christ's by the meditation of Christ's example. Therefore this is not a counsel but a duty, and it is the duty, not of those only who desire a more perfect life, but clearly of every man "always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus." How otherwise could the natural law, commanding man to live virtuously, be kept? For by holy baptism the sin which we contracted at birth is destroyed, but the evil and tortuous roots of sin, which sin has engrafted, and by no means removed. This part of man which is without reason -- although it cannot beat those who fight manfully by Christ's grace -- nevertheless struggles with reason for supremacy, clouds the whole soul and tyrannically bends the will from virtue with such power that we cannot escape vice or do our duty except by a daily struggle. "This holy synod teaches that in the baptized there remains concupiscence or an inclination to evil, which, being left to be fought against, cannot hurt those who do not consent to it, and manfully fight against it by the grace of Jesus Christ; for he is not crowned who does not strive lawfully." There is in this struggle a degree of strength to which only a very perfect virtue, belonging to those who, by putting to flight evil passions, has gained so high a place as to seem almost to live a heavenly life on earth. Granted; grant that few attain such excellence; even the philosophy of the ancients taught that every man should restrain his evil desires, and still more and with greater care those who from daily contact with the world have the greater temptations -- unless it be foolishly thought that where the danger is greater watchfulness is less needed, or that they who are more grievously ill need fewer medicines. (Pope Leo XIII, Exeunte Iam Anno, December 25, 1888.)

Pope Leo XIII explained is not a "counsel but a duty" to walk in the footsteps of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and conform our minds to His as seek to live in a penitential manner and refuse to be drawn into a spirit of worldliness, especially during Holy Week, the week in which our redemption was wrought on the wood of the Holy Cross on which the Saviour of the world paid in His Sacred Humanity the debt of human sin that was owed to Him in His Sacred Divinity. We are not to have the false spirit of the world within our hearts, which must beat in unison with the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

What is a duty in the Catholic Church is considered to be but outdated foolishness in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, whose very General Instruction to the Roman Missal summarizes its rejection of outward penances as “belonging to another age in the history of the Church:”

In this manner the Church, while remaining faithful to her office as teacher of truth, safeguarding "things old," that is, the deposit of tradition, fulfills at the same time the duty of examining and prudently adopting "things new" (cf. Mt 13:52).

For part of the new Missal orders the prayers of the Church in a way more open to the needs of our times. Of this kind are above all the Ritual Masses and Masses for Various Needs, in which tradition and new elements are appropriately brought together. Thus, while a great number of expressions, drawn from the Church's most ancient tradition and familiar through the many editions of the Roman Missal, have remained unchanged,
numerous others have been accommodated to the needs and conditions proper to our own age, and still others, such as the prayers for the Church, for the laity, for the sanctification of human labor, for the community of all nations, and certain needs proper to our era, have been newly composed, drawing on the thoughts and often the very phrasing of the recent documents of
the Council.

On account, moreover, of the same attitude toward the new state of the world as it now is, it seemed to cause no harm at all to so revered a treasure if some phrases were changed so that the language would be in accord with that of modern theology and would truly reflect the current state of the Church's discipline. Hence, several expressions regarding the evaluation and use of earthly goods have been changed, as have several which alluded to a certain form of outward penance which was proper to other periods of the Church's past. . In this manner the Church, while remaining faithful to her office as teacher of truth, safeguarding "things old," that is, the deposit of tradition, fulfills at the same time the duty of examining and prudently adopting "things new" (cf. Mt 13:52).

For part of the new Missal orders the prayers of the Church in a way more open to the needs of our times. Of this kind are above all the Ritual Masses and Masses for Various Needs, in which tradition and new elements are appropriately brought together. Thus, while a great number of expressions, drawn from the Church's most ancient tradition and familiar through the many editions of the Roman Missal, have remained unchanged, numerous others have been accommodated to the needs and conditions proper to our own age, and still others, such as the prayers for the Church, for the laity, for the sanctification of human labor, for the community of all nations, and certain needs proper to our era, have been newly composed, drawing on the thoughts and often the very phrasing of the recent documents of
the Council.

On account, moreover, of the same attitude toward the new state of the world as it now is, it seemed to cause no harm at all to so revered a treasure if some phrases were changed so that the language would be in accord with that of modern theology and would truly reflect the current state of the Church's discipline. Hence, several expressions regarding the evaluation and use of earthly goods have been changed, as have several which alluded to a certain form of outward penance which was proper to other periods of the Church's past. (General Instruction to the Roman Missal, 2002 edition. Please see G.I.R.M. Warfare: The Conciliar Church's Unremitting Warfare Against Catholic Faith and Worship.)

Remember, the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination makes no references to a God Who judges men or provides any kind of substantive reminder to Catholics that they could lose their souls for all eternity. The conciliar religion is “feel good” religion of “fellowship” and “glad tidings,” a spirit that is reflected perfectly in the Novus Ordo travesty as its current presiding officer, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, dismisses as “foolishness” those who “cling” to the past, including to the title of Our Lady as the Co-Redemptrix.

The Meaning of Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix

Although the doctrine of Our Lady as the Co-Redemptrix has not been defined solemnly, the fact that the substance of the title has been explained by some of Holy Mother Church’s Fathers and Doctors and by six successive true popes means that it is part of the Catholic Faith just as were the doctrines of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception and Assumption had been prior to their solemn definitions by Pope Pius IX (Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854) and Pope Pius XII in 1950.

Writing in the Twelfth Century, Saint Bernard explained that Our Lady is the Queen of Martyrs and thus participated fully in the work of her Divine Son’s Redemptive Act:

The Martyrdom of the Virgin is set before us, not only in the prophecy of Simeon, but also in the story itself of the Lord’s Passion. The holy old man said of the Child Jesus, Luke ii. 34, Behold, this Child is set for the fall and the rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; yea, said he unto Mary, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also Even so, O Blessed Mother! The sword did indeed pierce through thy soul! for nought could pierce the Body of thy Son, nor pierce thy soul likewise. Yea, and when this Jesus of thine had given up the ghost, and the bloody spear could torture Him no more, thy soul winced as it pierced His dead Side His Own Soul might leave Him, but thine could not.

The sword of sorrow pierced through thy soul, so that we may truly call thee more than martyr, in whom the love, that made thee suffer along with thy Son, wrung thy heart more bitterly than any pang of bodily pain could do. Did not that word of His indeed pierce through thy soul, sharper than any two-edged sword, even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, Heb. iv. 12, Woman, behold thy son! John xix. 26. O what a change to thee! Thou art given John for Jesus, the servant for his Lord, the disciple for his Master, the son of Zebedee for the Son of God, a mere man for Very God. O how keenly must the hearing of those words have pierced through thy most loving soul, when even our hearts, stony, iron, as they are, are wrung at the memory thereof only!

Marvel not, my brethren, that Mary should be called a Martyr in spirit. He indeed may marvel who remembereth not what Paul saith, naming the greater sins of the Gentiles, that they were without natural affection, Rom. i. 31. Far other were the bowels of Mary, and far other may those of her servants be! But some man perchance will say Did she not know that He was to die? Yea, without doubt, she knew it. Did she not hope that He was soon to rise again? Yea, she most faithfully hoped it. And did she still mourn because He was crucified? Yea, bitterly. But who art thou, my brother, or whence hast thou such wisdom, to marvel less that the Son of Mary suffered than that Mary suffered with Him? He could die in the Body, and could not she die with Him in her heart? His was the deed of that Love, greater than which hath no man, John xv. 13; her’s, of a love, like to which hath no man, save He. (Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Matins, Feast of the Seven Dolors of Our Lady.)

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori wrote the following in The Glories of Mary about the sufferings of Our Lady as she stood so valiantly at the foot of her Divine Son’s Most Holy Cross:

The Martyrdom of the Virgin is set before us, not only in the prophecy of Simeon, but also in the story itself of the Lord’s Passion. The holy old man said of the Child Jesus, Luke ii. 34, Behold, this Child is set for the fall and the rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; yea, said he unto Mary, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also Even so, O Blessed Mother! The sword did indeed pierce through thy soul! for nought could pierce the Body of thy Son, nor pierce thy soul likewise. Yea, and when this Jesus of thine had given up the ghost, and the bloody spear could torture Him no more, thy soul winced as it pierced His dead Side His Own Soul might leave Him, but thine could not.

The sword of sorrow pierced through thy soul, so that we may truly call thee more than martyr, in whom the love, that made thee suffer along with thy Son, wrung thy heart more bitterly than any pang of bodily pain could do. Did not that word of His indeed pierce through thy soul, sharper than any two-edged sword, even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, Heb. iv. 12, Woman, behold thy son! John xix. 26. O what a change to thee! Thou art given John for Jesus, the servant for his Lord, the disciple for his Master, the son of Zebedee for the Son of God, a mere man for Very God. O how keenly must the hearing of those words have pierced through thy most loving soul, when even our hearts, stony, iron, as they are, are wrung at the memory thereof only!

Marvel not, my brethren, that Mary should be called a Martyr in spirit. He indeed may marvel who remembereth not what Paul saith, naming the greater sins of the Gentiles, that they were without natural affection, Rom. i. 31. Far other were the bowels of Mary, and far other may those of her servants be! But some man perchance will say Did she not know that He was to die? Yea, without doubt, she knew it. Did she not hope that He was soon to rise again? Yea, she most faithfully hoped it. And did she still mourn because He was crucified? Yea, bitterly. But who art thou, my brother, or whence hast thou such wisdom, to marvel less that the Son of Mary suffered than that Mary suffered with Him? He could die in the Body, and could not she die with Him in her heart? His was the deed of that Love, greater than which hath no man, John xv. 13; her’s, of a love, like to which hath no man, save He. (Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Matins, Feast of the Seven Dolors of Our Lady.)

Yes, Our Lady is indeed the Queen of Martyrs. She is our Sorrowful Mother whom our sins brought tears to her eyes and sorrow to her Immaculate Heart as those sins, having transcended time, took their toll on her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Pope Pius IX, without using the title of Co-Redemptrix in Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854, explained its meaning while referring to her as the Reparatrix, which is simply another term for Co-Redemptrix or Co-Redemptress:

The Fathers and writers of the Church, well versed in the heavenly Scriptures, had nothing more at heart than to vie with one another in preaching and teaching in many wonderful ways the Virgin’s supreme sanctity, dignity, and immunity from all stain of sin, and her renowned victory over the most foul enemy of the human race. This they did in the books they wrote to explain the Scriptures, to vindicate the dogmas, and to instruct the faithful. These ecclesiastical writers in quoting the words by which at the beginning of the world God announced his merciful remedies prepared for the regeneration of mankind — words by which he crushed the audacity of the deceitful serpent and wondrously raised up the hope of our race, saying, “I will put enmities between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed”[13] — taught that by this divine prophecy the merciful Redeemer of mankind, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, was clearly foretold: That his most Blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary, was prophetically indicated; and, at the same time, the very enmity of both against the evil one was significantly expressed. Hence, just as Christ, the Mediator between God and man, assumed human nature, blotted the handwriting of the decree that stood against us, and fastened it triumphantly to the cross, so the most holy Virgin, united with him by a most intimate and indissoluble bond, was, with him and through him, eternally at enmity with the evil serpent, and most completely triumphed over him, and thus crushed his head with her immaculate foot.[14]

This sublime and singular privilege of the Blessed Virgin, together with her most excellent innocence, purity, holiness and freedom from every stain of sin, as well as the unspeakable abundance and greatness of all heavenly graces, virtues and privileges — these the Fathers beheld in that ark of Noah, which was built by divine command and escaped entirely safe and sound from the common shipwreck of the whole world;[15] in the ladder which Jacob saw reaching from the earth to heaven, by whose rungs the angels of God ascended and descended, and on whose top the Lord himself leaned’[16] in that bush which Moses saw in the holy place burning on all sides, which was not consumed or injured in any way but grew green and blossomed beautifully;[17] in that impregnable tower before the enemy, from which hung a thousand bucklers and all the armor of the strong;[18] in that garden enclosed on all sides, which cannot be violated or corrupted by any deceitful plots;[19] as in that resplendent city of God, which has its foundations on the holy mountains;[20] in that most august temple of God, which, radiant with divine splendors, is full of the glory of God;[21] and in very many other biblical types of this kind. In such allusions the Fathers taught that the exalted dignity of the Mother of God, her spotless innocence and her sanctity unstained by any fault, had been prophesied in a wonderful manner.

In like manner did they use the words of the prophets to describe this wondrous abundance of divine gifts and the original innocence of the Virgin of whom Jesus was born. They celebrated the august Virgin as the spotless dove, as the holy Jerusalem, as the exalted throne of God, as the ark and house of holiness which Eternal Wisdom built, and as that Queen who, abounding in delights and leaning on her Beloved, came forth from the mouth of the Most High, entirely perfect, beautiful, most dear to God and never stained with the least blemish. . . .

As if these splendid eulogies and tributes were not sufficient, the Fathers proclaimed with particular and definite statements that when one treats of sin, the holy Virgin Mary is not even to be mentioned; for to her more grace was given than was necessary to conquer sin completely.[24] They also declared that the most glorious Virgin was Reparatrix of the first parents, the giver of life to posterity; that she was chosen before the ages, prepared for himself by the Most High, foretold by God when he said to the serpent, “I will put enmities between you and the woman.”[25]-unmistakable evidence that she was crushed the poisonous head of the serpent. And hence they affirmed that the Blessed Virgin was, through grace, entirely free from every stain of sin, and from all corruption of body, soul and mind; that she was always united with God and joined to him by an eternal covenant; that she was never in darkness but always in light; and that, therefore, she was entirely a fit habitation for Christ, not because of the state of her body, but because of her original grace. (Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854.)

Pope Leo XIII used the title of Co-Redemptrix explicitly in Iucunda Semper Expectatione, September 8, 1894:

The recourse we have to Mary in prayer follows upon the office she continuously fills by the side of the throne of God as Mediatrix of Divine grace; being by worthiness and by merit most acceptable to Him, and, therefore, surpassing in power all the angels and saints in Heaven. Now, this merciful office of hers, perhaps, appears in no other form of prayer so manifestly as it does in the Rosary. For in the Rosary all the part that Mary took as our co-Redemptress comes to us, as it were, set forth, and in such wise as though the facts were even then taking place; and this with much profit to our piety, whether in the contemplation of the succeeding sacred mysteries, or in the prayers which we speak and repeat with the lips. First come the Joyful Mysteries. The Eternal Son of God stoops to mankind, putting on its nature; but with the assent of Mary, who conceives Him by the Holy Ghost. Then St. John the Baptist, by a singular privilege, is sanctified in his mother's womb and favored with special graces that he might prepare the way of the Lord; and this comes to pass by the greeting of Mary who had been inspired to visit her cousin. At last the expected of nations comes to light, Christ the Savior. The Virgin bears Him. And when the Shepherds and the wise men, first-fruits of the Christian faith, come with longing to His cradle, they find there the young Child, with Mary, His Mother. Then, that He might before men offer Himself as a victim to His Heavenly Father, He desires to be taken to the Temple; and by the hands of Mary He is there presented to the Lord. It is Mary who, in the mysterious losing of her Son, seeks Him sorrowing, and finds Him again with joy. And the same truth is told again in the sorrowful mysteries.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus is in an agony; in the judgment-hall, where He is scourged, crowned with thorns, condemned to death, not there do we find Mary. But she knew beforehand all these agonies; she knew and saw them. When she professed herself the handmaid of the Lord for the mother's office, and when, at the foot of the altar, she offered up her whole self with her Child Jesus -- then and thereafter she took her part in the laborious expiation made by her Son for the sins of the world. It is certain, therefore, that she suffered in the very depths of her soul with His most bitter sufferings and with His torments. Moreover, it was before the eyes of Mary that was to be finished the Divine Sacrifice for which she had borne and brought up the Victim. As we contemplate Him in the last and most piteous of those Mysteries, there stood by the Cross of Jesus His Mother, who, in a miracle of charity, so that she might receive us as her sons, offered generously to Divine Justice her own Son, and died in her heart with Him, stabbed with the sword of sorrow. (Pope Leo XIII, Iucunda Semper Expectatione, September 8, 1894.)

Pope Leo XIII repeated this theme in one year later in another of his annual encyclical letters on Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary, Adjutricem, September 5, 1895):

7. It is impossible to measure the power and scope of her offices since the day she was taken up to that height of heavenly glory in the company of her Son, to which the dignity and luster of her merits entitle her. From her heavenly abode she began, by God’s decree, to watch over the Church, to assist and befriend us as our Mother; so that she who was so intimately associated with the mystery of human salvation is just as closely associated with the distribution of the graces which for all time will flow from the Redemption.

8. The power thus put into her hands is all but unlimited. How unerringly right, then, are Christian souls when they turn to Mary for help as though impelled by an instinct of nature, confidently sharing with her their future hopes and past achievements, their sorrows and joys, commending themselves like children to the care of a bountiful mother. How rightly, too, has every nation and every liturgy without exception acclaimed her great renown, which has grown greater with the voice of each succeeding century. Among her many other titles we find her hailed as “our Lady, our Mediatrix,”[3] “the Reparatrix of the whole world,”[4] “the Dispenser of all heavenly gifts.”[5]

9. Since faith is the foundation, the source, of the gifts of God by which man is raised above the order of nature and is endowed with the dispositions requisite for life eternal, we are in justice bound to recognize the hidden influence of Mary in obtaining the gift of faith and its salutary cultivation-of Mary who brought the “author of faith”[6] into this world and who, because of her own great faith, was called “blessed.” O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee.”[7]

10. It is no exaggeration to say that it is due chiefly to her leadership and help that the wisdom and teachings of the Gospel spread so rapidly to all the nations of the world in spite of the most obstinate difficulties and most cruel persecutions, and brought everywhere in their train a new reign of justice and peace. This it was that stirred the soul of St. Cyril of Alexandria to the following prayerful address to the Blessed Virgin: “Through you the Apostles have preached salvation to the nations. . . through you the priceless Cross is everywhere honored and venerated; through you the demons have been put to rout and mankind has been summoned back to Heaven; through you every misguided creature held in the thrall of idols is led to recognize the truth; through you have the faithful been brought to the laver of holy Baptism and churches been founded among every people.”[8]

11. Nay she has even, as this same Doctor claims, upheld and given strength to the “sceptre of the orthodox faith.”[9] It has been her unremitting concern to see to it that the Catholic Faith stands firmly lodged in the midst of the people, there to thrive in its fertile and undivided unity. Many and well known are the proofs of her solicitude, manifested from time to time even in a miraculous manner. In the times and places in which, to the Church’s grief, faith languished in lethargic indifference or was tormented by the baneful scourge of heresy, our great and gracious Lady in her kindness was ever ready with her aid and comfort.

12. Under her inspiration, strong with her might, great men were raised up-illustrious for their sanctity no less than for their apostolic spirit-to beat off the attacks of wicked adversaries and to lead souls back into the virtuous ways of Christian life, firing them with a consuming love of the things of God. One such man, an army in himself, was Dominic Guzman. Putting all his trust in our Lady’s Rosary, he set himself fearlessly to the accomplishment of both these tasks with happy results.

13. No one will fail to remark how much the merits of the venerable Fathers and Doctors of the Church, who spent their lives in the defense and explanation of the Catholic Faith, redound to the Virgin Mother of God. For from her, the Seat of Divine Wisdom, as they themselves gratefully tell us, a strong current of the most sublime wisdom has coursed through their writings. And they were quick to acknowledge that not by themselves but by her have iniquitous errors been overcome. Finally, princes as well as Pontiffs, the guardians and defenders of the faith-the former by waging holy wars, the latter by the solemn decrees which they have issued- have not hesitated to call upon the name of the Mother of our God, and have found her answer powerful and propitious.

14. Hence it is that the Church and the Fathers have given expression to their joy in Mary in words whose beauty equals their truth: “Hail, voice of the Apostles forever eloquent, solid foundation of the faith, unshakable prop of the Church.”[10] “Hail, thou through whom we have been enrolled as citizens of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”[11]”Hail, thou fountain springing forth by God’s design, whose rivers flowing over in pure and unsullied waves of orthodoxy put to flight the hosts of error.”[12] “Rejoice, because thou alone hast destroyed all the heresies in the world.”[13] (Pope Leo XIII, Adjutricem, September 5, 1895.)

According to Jorge Mario Bergoglio, of course, this is all so much “foolishness” when he is the foolish one for believing that he is correct and everyone in the “past” who either described Our Lady’s role as Co-Redemptrix and/or used that title explicitly were misguided “fools” who “exaggerated” Our Lady’s role in the redemption of the human race. Bergoglio’s disparagement of those who hold to the teaching of so many saints and popes has even caused some “conservative” Catholics who are attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the mistaken belief that they represent the Catholic Church to reflect on what manner of man their “pope” is even though he has given plain evidence of his disregard for Our Lady’s work in the salvation of mankind throughout the course of the past ninety-seven months.

Another one of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s fools must have been Pope Saint Pius X, who reiterated the teachings of his two immediate predecessors, Pope Pius  IX and Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical letter Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum, February 2, 1904, on the approaching fiftieth anniversary of Pope Pius IX’s issuance of Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854, explained some of the prerogatives of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception and the private and public honor that is owed to her as the Mother of God and the Mediatrix of All Graces and as our Reparatrix of “the lost world.”:

11. If then the most Blessed Virgin is the Mother at once of God and men, who can doubt that she will work with all diligence to procure that Christ, Head of the Body of the Church (Coloss. i., 18), may transfuse His gifts into us, His members, and above all that of knowing Him and living through Him (I John iv., 9)?

12. Moreover it was not only the prerogative of the Most Holy Mother to have furnished the material of His flesh to the Only Son of God, Who was to be born with human members (S. Bede Ven. L. Iv. in Luc. xl.), of which material should be prepared the Victim for the salvation of men; but hers was also the office of tending and nourishing that Victim, and at the appointed time presenting Him for the sacrifice. Hence that uninterrupted community of life and labors of the Son and the Mother, so that of both might have been uttered the words of the Psalmist “My life is consumed in sorrow and my years in groans” (Ps xxx., 11). When the supreme hour of the Son came, beside the Cross of Jesus there stood Mary His Mother, not merely occupied in contemplating the cruel spectacle, but rejoicing that her Only Son was offered for the salvation of mankind, and so entirely participating in His Passion, that if it had been possible she would have gladly borne all the torments that her Son bore (S. Bonav. 1. Sent d. 48, ad Litt. dub. 4). And from this community of will and suffering between Christ and Mary she merited to become most worthily the Reparatrix of the lost world (Eadmeri Mon. De Excellentia Virg. Mariae, c. 9) and Dispensatrix of all the gifts that Our Savior purchased for us by His Death and by His Blood.

13. It cannot, of course, be denied that the dispensation of these treasures is the particular and peculiar right of Jesus Christ, for they are the exclusive fruit of His Death, who by His nature is the mediator between God and man. Nevertheless, by this companionship in sorrow and suffering already mentioned between the Mother and the Son, it has been allowed to the august Virgin to be the most powerful mediatrix and advocate of the whole world with her Divine Son (Pius IX. Ineffabilis). The source, then, is Jesus Christ “of whose fullness we have all received” (John i., 16), “from whom the whole body, being compacted and fitly joined together by what every joint supplieth, according to the operation in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in charity” (Ephesians iv., 16). But Mary, as St. Bernard justly remarks, is the channel (Serm. de temp on the Nativ. B. V. De Aquaeductu n. 4); or, if you will, the connecting portion the function of which is to join the body to the head and to transmit to the body the influences and volitions of the head — We mean the neck. Yes, says St. Bernardine of Sienna, “she is the neck of Our Head, by which He communicates to His mystical body all spiritual gifts” (Quadrag. de Evangel. aetern. Serm. x., a. 3, c. iii.).

14. We are then, it will be seen, very far from attributing to the Mother of God a productive power of grace — a power which which belongs to God alone. Yet, since Mary carries it over all in holiness and union with Jesus Christ, and has been associated by Jesus Christ in the work of redemption, she merits for us “de congruo,” in the language of theologians, what Jesus Christ merits for us “de condigno,” and she is the supreme Minister of the distribution of graces. Jesus “sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high” (Hebrews i. b.). Mary sitteth at the right hand of her Son — a refuge so secure and a help so trusty against all dangers that we have nothing to fear or to despair of under her guidance, her patronage, her protection. (Pius IX. in Bull Ineffabilis).

15. These principles laid down, and to return to our design, who will not see that we have with good reason claimed for Mary that — as the constant companion of Jesus from the house at Nazareth to the height of Calvary, as beyond all others initiated to the secrets of his Heart, and as the distributor, by right of her Motherhood, of the treasures of His merits,-she is, for all these reasons, a most sure and efficacious assistance to us for arriving at the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ. Those, alas! furnish us by their conduct with a peremptory proof of it, who seduced by the wiles of the demon or deceived by false doctrines think they can do without the help of the Virgin. Hapless are they who neglect Mary under pretext of the honor to be paid to Jesus Christ! As if the Child could be found elsewhere than with the Mother! (Pope Saint Pius X, Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum, February 2, 1904.)

This is, of course, all quite foreign to the naturalistic and Modernist mind of the blaspheming heretic named Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and this is not even to repeat here the references to Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix made by the Holy Office in 1908 when replying to a question to elevate the Feast of the Seven Founders of the Order of Servites to a double of the second class nor to the several times that Pope Pius XI used the title in the 1930s. (See Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix for those specific references.)

According to the biggest fool of them all, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, another “fool” who explicated the doctrine of Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix must have been Father Adolphe Tanquery, who wrote the following in his Manual of Dogmatic Theology:

II. THE RELATIONS OF MARY WITH CREATURES

These are four in particular which proceed from her divine maternity: The Blessed Virgin is first, the mother of Christians, secondly, the cooperatrix in the Redemption, thirdly, the queen of creatures, fourthly, the mediatrix of grace.

839 A. Mary is the spiritual mother of men.

1. This is proved from her divine maternity: Mary is the mother of Christ, the head of the mystical body the members of which are men. But the fact that she is the mother of the head makes her mother of her members. Mary's spiritual motherhood is proved also from the title of donation or gift since Christ dying on the cross gave us to her as sons, saying to John (and through extension to all Christians): "Behold thy mother".

2. The manner in which Mary is our spiritual mother. Truly she bears us spiritually because she is the meritorious (de congruo) and exemplar cause of our justification; in a secondary degree, however, dependently on Christ.

840 B. Mary is Christ's cooperatrix in the Redemption; she is co-redemptrix. She cooperated in man's salvation secondarily and dependently on Christ by consenting both to the Incarnation of the World and to the death of Christ.

1. Proof from Scripture. In the Gospel story the Angel announces to Mary the conception of the Son of God who will be the Savior of the world. Mary, however, with the greatest humility gives her consent. Also, she is associated in the work of the Passion and therefore of the Redemption: she stands at the cross, suffering along with the suffering Christ.

2. Proof from Tradition. The Fathers compare Eve, who was the cause of death, to Mary, who is the cause of our salvation. Thus writes St. Irenaeus. This doctrine Pius X and Benedict XVI confirm, the latter with these words: "She (Mary) with Christ redeemed the human race".

841 C. Mary is the Queen of men and of all creatures. She is the Mother of Christ Who is the King of men and of all creatures. So we say: Hail, Queen" and we call her Queen in the Litany of Loreto. She carries on a royal rule of benevolence and of mercy. (Father Adolph Tanquerey, A Manual of Dogmatic Theology, 1894.)

Father Adolphe Tanquerey had accepted by 1894 the title of Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix as a summary of the means by which she cooperated perfectly as the New Eve in her Divine Son’s work of Redemption as the New Adam. Yet it is that Bergoglio would have us consider Father Tanquerey to have been “foolish.”

The Argentine Apostate would probably consider as “foolish” the following words of Venerable Mary of Agreda as found in the New English Edition of The Mystical City of God that Our Lady herself inspired:

452. The eternal Father graciously received this prayer of our Redeemer and sent innumerable hosts of his angelic courtiers to assist at the wonderful works which Christ was to perform in that place. While this happened in the Cenacle most holy Mary in her retreat was raised to highest contemplation in which She witnessed all that passed as if She was present; thus She was enabled to cooperate and correspond as a most faithful Coadjutrix, enlightened by the highest wisdom. By heroic and celestial acts of virtue She imitated the doings of Christ our Savior, for all of them awakened fitting resonance in her bosom and caused a mysterious and divine echo of like petitions and prayers in the sweetest Virgin; moreover, She composed new and admirable canticles of praise for all the sacred humanity of Christ was now about to accomplish in obedience to the divine will and in accordance and fulfillment of the figures of the written law.

453. Very wonderful and worthy of all admiration would it be for us, as it was for the holy Angels and as it will be for all the Blessed, if we could understand the divine harmony of the works and virtues in the Heart of our great Queen, which like a heavenly chorus neither confused nor hindered each other in their superabundance on this occasion. Being filled with the intelligence of which I have spoken, She was sensible of the mysterious fulfillment and accomplishment of the legal ceremonies and figures of the old law through the most noble and efficacious Sacraments of the new. She gazed upon the vast fruits of the Redemption in the predestined; the ruin of the reprobate; the exaltation of the Name of God and of the most holy humanity of her Son Jesus; the universal notice and faith in the Divinity which the Lord himself was preparing for the world; that He would open heaven, closed for so many ages, so from now on the children of Adam could enter it by the establishment and progress of the new evangelical Church and all of its mysteries; and how of all this her most holy Son was the admirable and most prudent Artificer, with the praise and admiration of all the courtiers of heaven. For these magnificent results, without forgetting the least of them, She now blessed the eternal Father and rendered Him ineffable gratitude in the consolation and jubilation of her soul.

454. However, She also reflected how all these admirable works were to cost her divine Son the sorrows, ignominies, affronts and torments of his Passion, and at last the death of the cross, so hard and bitter, all of which He was to endure in the very humanity He had received from Her, while at the same time so many of the children of Adam for whom He suffered would ungratefully waste the copious fruit of the Redemption. This knowledge filled with bitter sorrow the most sincere Heart of the pious Mother; yet since She was a living and faithful reproduction of her most holy Son, all these sentiments and operations found room in her magnanimous and expanded Heart, and therefore She was not disturbed or dismayed, nor did She fail to console and instruct her companions, but without losing touch of her high intelligences She descended to their level of thought in her words of consolation and eternal life for their instruction. O admirable Instructress and superhuman example entirely to be followed and imitated! It is true that in comparison with this sea of grace and light our prerogatives dwindle into insignificance; but it is also true that our sufferings and trials in comparison with hers are so to say only imaginary and not worthy to be even noticed, since She suffered more than all the children of Adam together. Yet neither in order to imitate Her, nor for our eternal welfare, can we be induced to suffer with patience even the least adversity. All of them excite and dismay us and take away our composure; we give vent to our passions; we angrily resist and are consumed with restless sorrow; in our stubbornness we lose our reason, give free reign to evil movements, and hasten on toward the precipice. Even good fortune lures us into destruction, and so no reliance can be placed on our infected and spoiled nature. Let us remember our heavenly Mistress on these occasions in order to repair our disorders. (Venerable Mary of Agreda, The New English Edition of The Mystical City of God, Book VI, The Transfixion, Chapter X.)

Herewith, therefore, are two prayers from The Raccolta that give witness to Holy Mother Church's official sanctioning of the title of Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix. We should pray these prayers in reparation for the blasphemies committed in the past against Our Lady by the likes of Baillet and Bossuet and at present by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his band of revolutionaries:

In Reparation for Insults Offered to the Blessed Virgin Mary

O blessed Virgin, Mother of God, look down in mercy from Heaven, where thou art enthroned as Queen, upon me, a miserable sinner, thine unworthy servant. Although I know full well my own unworthiness yet in order to atone for the offenses that are done to thee by impious tongues, from the depths of my heart I praise and extol thee as the fairest, the holiest creature of all God’s handiwork. I bless they holy Name, I praise thine exalted privilege of being truly Mother of Go, ever-Virgin, conceived without stain of sin, Co-Redemptrix of the human race. I bless the Eternal Father who chose thee in an especial way for His daughter; I bless the Word Incarnate who took upon Himself our nature in thy bosom and so made thee His Mother; I bless the Holy Spirit who took thee as His bride. All honor, praise and thanksgiving to the ever-blessed Trinity who predestined thee and love thee so exceedingly from all eternity as to exalt thee above all creatures to the most sublime heights. O Virgin, holy and merciful, obtain for all who offend thee the grace of repentance, and graciously accept this homage from me thy servant, obtaining likewise for me from thy divine Son, the pardon and remission of all my sins.  Three Hail Marys. The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences: approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, No. 328, pp. 228-229.)

O merciful Queen of the Rosary of Pompeii, thou, the Seat of Wisdom, hast established a throne of fresh mercy in the land that once was pagan, in order to draw all nations to salvation by means of the chaplet of thy mystic roses: remember thy divine Son hath left us this saying: “Other sheep I have that are not of this fold; them also must I bring, and they shall hear  voice; and there shall be one fold, and one Shepherd.” Remember likewise that on Calvary thou didst become our Co-Redemptrix, by virtue of the crucifixion of Thy heart cooperating with Thy Crucified Son in the salvation of the world; and from that day thou didst become the Restorer of the human race, the Refuge of sinners, and the Mother of all mankind. Behold, dear Mother, how man souls are lost every hour! Behold, how countless millions of those who dwell in India, in China, and in barbarous regions do not yet know our Lord Jesus Christ! See, too, how many others are indeed Christians and are nevertheless far from the bosom of Mother Church which is Catholic, Apostolic and Roman! O Mary, powerful mediator, advocate of the human race, full of love for us who are mortal, the life of our hearts, blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii, where thou dost nothing else save dispense heaven’s favors upon the afflicted, grant that a ray of thy heavenly light may shine forth to enlighten those many blinded understanding and to enkindle so cold hearts. Intercede with thy Son and obtain grace for all the pagans, Jews, heretics and schismatics in the whole world to receive supernatural light and to enter with joy into the bosom of the true Church. Hear the confident prayer of the Supreme Pontiff [of Holy Church in these times of papal vacancy], that all nations may be joined in the one faith, may know and love Jesus Christ, the blessed fruit of thy womb, who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Spirit world without end. And then all men shall love thee also, thou who art the salvation of the world, arbiter and dispenser of the treasures of God, and Queen of mercy in the valley of Pompeii. And glorifying thee, the Queen of Victories, who by means of thy Rosary, dost trample upon all heresies, they shall acknowledge that thou givest life to all the nations, since there must be a fulfillment of the prophecy in the Gospel: “All generations shall call me blessed.” (The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, Number 628, pp. 501-503.)

There is a whole lot of good, solid Catholic theology in the prayer just above.

Our Lady is the Co-Redemptrix of the human race.

Our Lady is the Seat of Wisdom.

Our Lady is our Refuge of Sinners.

Our Lady is the Treasurer of all the graces won for us by her Divine Son on the wood of the Holy Cross.

For Jorge Mario Bergoglio to be correct, you see, every Church Father, Doctor, and true pope must be considered as “foolishness” whereas he is the greatest fool of them all as he propagates a false religion of emotionalism and sentimentalism that makes it necessary for him to disparage Our Lady’s role in the economy of salvation to little more than “pious acts” of love. This is something that places him in good company with the other true fools he admires so much in the false world of Protestantism that was inspired by the devil to de-throne Christ the King and the world, to propagate a corrupted Christianity without the Cross that indulges all manner of vice in the belief that one is “saved” by a “professing faith in the Lord,” thus providing the ready excuse to use Martin Luther’s exhortation to “sin, and sin boldly” and of rationalize the need for redemptive suffering by claiming, as Bergoglio has done twice within sixteen months, that there are no co-redeemers with Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Here is another prayer we should pray to make reparation for Bergoglio's most recent blasphemy against Our Lady:

An Act of Reparation for Blasphemies Against the Blessed Virgin Mary

Most glorious Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, turn our eyes of pity upon us, miserable sinners; we are sore afflicted by the many evils that surround us in this life, but especially do we feel our hearts break within us upon hearing the dreadful insults and blasphemies uttered against thee, O Virgin Immaculate. O how these impious sayings offend the infinite Majesty of Go an of His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ! How they provoke His indignation and give us cause to fear the terrible effects of His vengeance! Would that the sacrifice of our lives might avail to put an end to such outrages and blasphemies; were it so, how gladly should we make it, for we desire, O most holy Mother, to love thee and to honor thee and to honor thee with all our hearts, since this is the will of God. And just because we love thee, we will do all that is in our power to make thee honored and loved by all men. In the meantime, do thou, our merciful Mother, the supreme comforter of the afflicted, accept this our act of reparation which we offer thee for ourselves and for all our families as well as for all who impiously blaspheme thee, not knowing what they say. Do thou obtain for them from Almighty God the grace of conversion, and thus render more manifest and more glorious thy kindness, thy power and thy great mercy. May they join with us in proclaiming thee blessed among women, the Immaculate Virgin and most compassionate Mother of God.  (Three Hail Marys. An indulgence of five years. The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences: approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, No. 328, pp. 227-228.)

Adrien Baillet and the Jansenists of the Sorbonne who supplanted him during the actions of 1696 that will be exmamined at length in part two of this study have already had to reckon with Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ at their own Particular Judgments for the ways in which they disparaged and belittled Our Lady’s sublime privileges and her perfect cooperation in her Divine Son’s Redemptive Act as the Queen of Martyrs on Calvary. So has Joseph Alois Ratzinger, and so will the consummate blasphemer, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who is every bit the embodiment of the Jansenist spirit of Adrien Baillet and the leaders of cabal against The Mystical City of God (who silenced, removed, and exiled opposition voices from their deliberations, refused to follow proper procedures during the voting, and even changed the text of their predetermined censure so as to  convince the French public of an esteem for Our Lady that did not pass from their lips during their Soviet-style show trial in which they had created crimes when none existed).

Jorge Mario Bergoglio will have to reckon with Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ at his own Particular Judgment for way in which he, the Argentine Apostate, has so consistently disparaged and belittled His Most Blessed Mother’s perfect cooperation in His Redemptive Act as the Queen of Martyrs atop Mount Calvary. We need to pray to Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary, to send us the supernatural strength that we need to defend her privileges and to denounce those who do the work of the evil one whose head has been crushed by her heel.

As noted earlier in this study, context is everything, and it is essential to understand that the decree of the Sorbonne is of no binding force anywhere in the world. It, was the work of the same sort of Jansenist anti-liturgical revolutionaries who did their dirty work using false representations with Pope Pius XII in the 1950s and then did so out in the open with Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII and Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI. The open hostility to Our Lady’s sublime privileges as the Mother of God and the doctrines that flow from those privileges that were held by the Jansenists of the Sorbonne was a nothing other than a foreshadowing of the “renewed” liturgy that was promulgated by Montini/Paul VI on April 3, 1969, and went into effect on the First Sunday of Advent, November 30, 1969.

The results of Adrien Baillet’s writings and the anti-Marian sentiments it aroused in many parts of France when the naturalism that was the logical rotten fruit of the Protestant rationalism to which the Jansenists sought in vain to appeal were made manifest the Sorbonne’s decree of censure against The Mystical City of God on September 17, 1696, precisely one hundred fifty years before Our Lady appear to Maximim Giraud and Melanie Calvet at La Salette, France.

Part two of this study will focus on Dom Prosper Gueranger’s discussions of the single-minded obsessions of Bossuet against The Mystical City of God, an obsession that seems to possess the minds of uncritical thinkers and skim-and-scan researchers interested in special pleading than in an honest assessment of truth about the  hatred the authors of the illicit Sorbonne censure had for authentic Catholic Mariology and mystical theology, as well as the actions leading up to the censure and the reactions to it in other parts of the Catholic world.

For now, however, permit me to quote the following words from Father Peter Rookey’s own review of the L’Univers articles in 1958 that came to the exact same conclusion as those reached by Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., a century before:

“Blessed Innocent XI died without carrying further the cause of the books of Ven. Mary de Agreda. However his forthright Brief suspending [the] condemnation of the Holy Office, helped his successor, Pope Alexander VIII, in his decision. The latter Pontiff’s words as they appear in the manuscript before us in our manuscript run: ‘Hos libros posse ab omnibus impune legi’; These books may be read by everybody with impunity.” (Ib. 90). (p. 402.)

Why is it, therefore, that there are those in the fully traditional Catholic world strive to convince Catholics that The Mystical City of God, having been on The Index for a total of three months over three hundred years ago before it was removed by the great Blessed Pope Innocent XI, to whom I pray daily, should not be read by Catholics and/or that there may have been just readers its censure by the Sorbonne without mentioning, no less detailing, the Jansenist presuppositions that were are the very heart of the censure?

Why is it, therefore, the defense of The Mystical City of God by theologians at The Louvain in Brussels, Toulouse in France, and Salamanca, during the time that Adrien Baillet’s attacks were taking place and in the case of theologians of The Louvain, after the kangaroo court’s censure had been passed at the Sorbonne is ignored as somehow irrelevant to the history of the attacks upon The Mystical City of God.

Why do some still insist on disparaging private revelations from which countless millions of Catholics, including popes, bishops, priests, consecrated religious, and ordinary lay Catholics have drawn inspiration and became more intimate in their devotions to Our Lady and the essential role she has always played, including today in our own lives, in the economy of salvation?

The faith of Catholics has been strengthened by reading and meditating upon The Mystical City of God.

As noted earlier in part one of this study, one can save his immortal soul as a Catholic without ever reading The Mystical City of God.

Granted.

However, it is reprehensible for anyone to claim that reading The Mystical City of God is detrimental to one’s salvation as a Catholic or, worse yet, that it contains texts that are contrary to Faith and Morals when popes themselves have profited from reading what Mother Maria de Jesus de Agreda wrote at the behest of the August Queen of Heaven herself:

Pius IX (1846-1878)

He stated “The Mystical City of God is a most excellent book, very appropriate for propagating the veneration of the Virgin Mary, and an antidote against the evil doctrines of our days.”

Leo XIII (1878-1903)

In 1900 a devout Canadian lay woman undertook the project of printing in one book the instructions of Our Lady found at the end of the chapters in The Mystical City of God. She travelled to Rome, obtained an audience with Pope Leo XIII, and informed him of her project. The great Pontiff not only gave her the Apostolic Blessing, but to the amazement of many he ordered her book to be printed on the presses of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda in Rome. The book is still extant and is titled Sublime Doctrine de la Mère de Dieu sur les vertus Chretiennes (extrait de la ‘Cite Mystique de Dieu’ par le Ven. Marie d’Agreda) (Rome: 1900).

A few months later it was observed by a Canadian diocesan journal:

“The reserve which is ordinarily maintained on the subject of private revelations has no longer any real reason to exist in relation to The Mystical City of God, since His Holiness Leo XIII has been so good as gladly to encourage the project of spreading among the faithful the science of the saints which is contained in that heavenly Life of the Mother of God.”

Pius XI (1922-1939)

On April 29, 1939 (within the lifetime of some of us) Pius XI granted an audience to the publisher of The Mystical City of God. He told him:

“You have done a great work in honor of the Mother of God; she will never permit herself to be outdone in generosity, and will know how to reward a thousandfold. We grant the Apostolic Benediction to all readers and promoters of the Mystical City of God.”

Thus speak true sons of the Handmaid of the Lord, for if Our Lady is Queen of Apostles then She certainly could be called Queen of Popes, their successors. One of the most beautiful revelations in the book is the extreme piety, love and reverence the Apostles had for the Blessed Mother, and the daily (and often miraculous) care She had for them. The Apostles loved Her as their Mother, and they certainly rejoice in heaven upon seeing some particulars of the great love and concern She had for them revealed in our time in The Mystical City of God. (As found at: Other Papal Approbations.)

Does anyone think that he knows better than Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius XI?

We are nearing Passiontide and I, for one, cannot encourage readers enough to read the accounts of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Passion and Death as found in The Mystical City of God’s section on The Transfixion. Those who do will find themselves edified and inspired to enter the very week of weeks during our salvation was wrought for us Our King and Kings and to understand more fully ways in which our Most Blessed Mother, our Queen of Martyrs on Golgotha, is indeed our Co-Redemptrix who cooperated fully in the her Divine Son’s Redemptive Act to redeem us by paying back in His own Sacred Humanity what was owed to Him in His Sacred Divinity and Infinity as God, the debt of our sins.

May every Rosary we pray each day of our lives help us to grow in humility in a knowledge of the science of the saints who trusted in Our Lady to help them to sanctify and thus to save their immoral souls.

We never be as holy or as simple as Father Solanus Casey, O.F.M., Cap., or as has holy and learned as Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., but we can grow closer to the Our Lady and thus to her Divine Son through her to understand that He Himself permitted her to revealed that which was hidden from the clever to the Servant of God, the Venerable Mother Mary of Agreda of Jesus.

Part two of this study will appear within four or five days.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.