The Church Needs Mary

A statue of Mary located near Bapst Library where students can go for private reflection.

If one had to tie the modern crisis in the Catholic Church to a single source, it would not seem unreasonable to link it with the spirit of excessive compromise that has relentlessly undermined and stripped away all devotions that had the potential to serve as a “stumbling block” to those outside the Church. This tendency has manifested itself in a variety of ways, such as through the syncretistic attitude of many modern prelates, the elimination of language stressing the need for the conversion of unbelievers, and a skeptical, pyrrhonistic attitude of many Catholics towards Divine revelation. However, if one looks for a particular consequence of this mentality which strengthens and propels all the others, they need look no further than the decline in devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

During the Second Vatican Council, there existed a tremendous amount of debate as to whether or not a chapter about the Blessed Virgin Mary ought to be included in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. While, at the insistence of the Pope and many Council Fathers, the chapter was included, a simple glance at the Church over the past forty years will demonstrate that this part of the document has been largely disregarded.

As Lumen Gentium says, “the Blessed Virgin is invoked by the Church under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix, and Mediatrix”. These titles are not mere window dressing that can be dispensed with whenever ecumenism dictates it, but a theological reality dealing with the economy of salvation. Though it may seem an overly bold statement to many, it is in fact sound Catholic teaching to state that devotion to Mary is necessary for salvation. This is not necessity in an absolute sense, as if God is powerless to save men without the Blessed Virgin, but rather necessity on account of the way He has ordained that graces be given to men. Duns Scotus, the 14th century theologian who contributed so much to Catholic doctrine on the Immaculate Conception of Mary, was well known for making this distinction between the absolute and the ordained power of God. By His absolute power, God can do anything which does not entail logical contradiction, while via His ordained power, God acts in accordance with the laws and systems which He has freely established, in order to benefit those to whom He has revealed Himself.

As the great Marian theologian St. Louis de Montfort says, drawing on St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Bernardino of Siena, “God the Holy Ghost…has chosen her to be the dispenser of all He possesses, in such wise that she distributes to whom she wills, as much as she wills, as she wills and when she wills, all His gifts and graces”. It was the will of God to become incarnate and reveal Himself through Mary, and, as de Montfort says “to commence and to complete His greatest works by the most holy Virgin ever since He created her”. And as God is eternally and essentially unchangeable, it is only logical that He continue to work through, with, and in her Immaculate Heart in time and in eternity.

When Marian devotion is understood to be necessary in this way, it becomes quite obvious why its decline is such a grave threat to the Church. If one deliberately takes the Mediatrix of all graces out of the salvific economy, they are essentially saying that God’s ways are insufficient, and need to be altered to better fit with the modern culture of compromise and syncretism. Conversely, however, if Catholics recognize and honor Mary’s sublime dignity as the Mother of God and ask often for her intercession, it logically follows that she will obtain for them the grace to know, love, and embrace the truth, and conquer the threats which the Church faces in this modern crisis.

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