Posted on 11/05/2025 2:44:59 PM PST by ebb tide
On October 16, 1793, what was perhaps the most disgusting crime of the French Revolution took place: the execution of the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, after a sham trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Plinio Correa de Oliveira wrote of Marie Antoinette: "There are certain souls who are only great when the winds of misfortune blow upon them. Marie Antoinette, who was futile as a princess and unforgivably frivolous in her life as queen, was transformed in a surprising way when faced with the vortex of blood and misery that flooded France; and the historian verifies, with respect, that a martyr was born from the queen and a heroine from the doll."
On January 21, the King of France, Louis XVI, was guillotined. Pope Pius VI, in his allocution Quare lacrymae of June 17, 1793, recognized in the sovereign's sacrifice “a death devoted to hatred of the Catholic religion,” attributing to him “the glory of martyrdom.” The same glory, we might say, befell Marie Antoinette, guilty only of representing—by her very presence—the principle of Christian royalty in the face of the hatred of the Revolution.
The British writer Edmund Burke (1729-1797), in what is perhaps one of the most beautiful passages of his Reflections on the French Revolution (1791), writes: "It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I first saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphine, at Versailles, and surely never did a more graceful vision come to visit this earth, which she seemed to barely touch. I saw her at her first rising on the horizon, decorating and cheering that elevated sphere in which she had just begun to move, shining like the morning star, full of life and splendor and joy. Oh! What a revolution! And what a heart I must have to contemplate that elevation and that fall without emotion! [...] I never dreamed I would live long enough to see such a disaster befall her in a nation of such gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and knights. In my imagination, I saw ten thousand swords suddenly rise from their sheaths to avenge even a glance that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is over. The age of sophists, economists, and accountants has arrived; and the glory of Europe lies extinguished forever" (Reflections on the Revolution in France, Italian translation Ideazione, Rome 1998, pp. 98-99).
Today, two centuries later, the British writer's words come to mind in the face of an event of far greater gravity. On November 4, 2025, at the Jesuit General House, Mater Populi fidelis was presented, a “doctrinal note” from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose prefect is Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández.
The document consists of eighty paragraphs dedicated to the “correct understanding of Marian titles,” which claim to clarify “in what sense certain expressions referring to the Virgin Mary are acceptable or not,” placing her “in the right relationship with Christ, the only Mediator and Redeemer.”
It is with deep sorrow that we have read this text, which, behind a mellifluous tone, hides a poisonous content. In a historic hour of confusion, in which all the hopes of fervent souls turn to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wants to strip her of the titles of Co-Redemptrix and Universal Mediatrix of all graces, reducing her to a woman like any other: “mother of the faithful,” “mother of believers,” “mother of Jesus,” “companion of the Church,” as if the Mother of God could be confined to a human category, stripping her of her supernatural mystery. It is difficult not to see in these pages the fulfillment of the post-conciliar mariological drift which, in the name of the “happy medium,” has chosen a minimalism that demeans the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Marie Antoinette represented earthly royalty, a reflection of divine royalty, but fragile like everything human: her throne collapsed under the fury of the revolution. Mary Most Holy, on the other hand, is the universal Queen—not by human right, but by divine grace. Her throne is not in a palace, but in the heart of God. “The Most High,” says St. Louis Grignion de Montfort, “descended perfectly and divinely through the humble Mary to us, without losing anything of his divinity and holiness. And it is through Mary that the little ones must ascend perfectly and divinely to the Most High, without fearing anything” (Treatise on True Devotion to Mary, n. 157).
Men may try to “decapitate” her, reducing her to a mere woman, but Mary remains the Mother of God, Immaculate, ever Virgin, Assumed into Heaven, Queen of Heaven and earth, Co-Redemptrix and universal Mediatrix of all graces, because, as St. Bernardine of Siena explains: “Every grace given to men proceeds from a threefold orderly cause: from God it passes to Christ, from Christ it passes to the Virgin, and from the Virgin it is given to us” (Serm. VI in festis B.M.V., a. 1, c. 2).
For this reason, according to St. Augustine, quoted by St. Alphonsus Liguori, everything we say in praise of Mary is always too little in comparison with what she deserves for her exalted dignity as Mother of God (Le glorie di Maria, vol. I, Redentoristi, Rome 1936, p. 162).
Edmund Burke lamented that there were not ten thousand swords ready to defend Queen Marie Antoinette, “against a single glance that threatened her with insult.” We are convinced that today there is a handful of priests and lay people in the world, noble and courageous in spirit, ready to take up the double-edged sword of Truth to proclaim all the privileges of Mary and cry out at the foot of her throne: “Quis ut Virgo?”
Upon them will descend the graces necessary for the struggle in these stormy times. And perhaps, as always happens in history when attempts are made to obscure the light, the document of the Dicastery of the Faith that seeks to minimize the Blessed Virgin Mary will unwittingly confirm her immense greatness.
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Ping
You’ve gone off the deep end. You are a blasphemer and heretic to even suggest this as appropriate. May God stop you from spreading such damnable lies that diminish the blood of Christ. Anathema to you!
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