The Modern Age’s Great Attack on the Virgin Mary

As we discussed in our first and second parts of this series, Christ as New Adam and Mary as New Eve formed a new creation. It canceled the contest of power from Original Sin and founded the Church on humility within God’s sacred order. The Protestant revolt renewed the contest of power by removing the cult of the Virgin Mother and idealizing revolution against all hierarchy. This led directly to the Marxist feminist push toward further revolution of individuals for more power within society and the family. This was countered by the Church in the further exaltation of Mary and condemnation of feminist false liberation. Our Lady of Fatima called the world to repent and oppose the errors of Russia and make reparation to her Immaculate Heart. The original documents of Vatican II were imbued with this spirit against these dark forces seeking to destroy the Church and enslave women again as the pagans did.

The Church’s Attempt to Compromise with Satan

As we know, John XXIII explicitly refused to publish the foreboding Third Secret of Fatima, and in the context of the Curia’s warnings against the dark forces surrounding the Church, Pope John said, “We feel we must disagree with these prophets of doom.” He turned the Council away from the stark realism of Fatima and the prior Magisterium and toward some Teilhardian optimism, which was able to gain the victory at the council. The Rhine group led by Ratzinger, Küng, Schillebeeckx, and Rahner were successful in convincing enough council Fathers to throw out all of the original, cautionary documents (save the Bugnini schema) and adopt an incredible optimism regarding the dark forces of modernity. Petitions to condemn communism were suppressed by the forces of the New Springtime, and Yves Congar, with a nod to the Soviets, stated with triumph: “The Church did peacefully her October revolution” [1].

At the end of the Council in 1965, Paul VI seemed to embrace some of the progressivism of Marxist-feminism by making this revolutionary statement: “But the hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of woman is being achieved in its fullness, the hour in which woman acquires in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved” [2]. But the vocation of woman was already achieved “in its fullness” — by Our Lady! But to the Marxist feminist, this fullness could only be achieved with more power, which Our Lady never wanted or sought. Filled with this progressivist view of history, Papa Montini and the majority of the Fathers pressed forward into modernity, believing that their springtime was just over the horizon.

Revolution Unleashed

In 1965, Dietrich von Hildebrand begged Paul VI to condemn the heresies that were already running rampant in the Church. He refused, thinking this was “too harsh.” But just three years later, Paul VI began to realize that the new springtime was nowhere to be found. In the pivotal year of sexual revolution, 1968, the pope hastily proclaimed an orthodox creed and then condemned contraception that summer as the dark forces were gaining more force. To his credit, he correctly perceived, like Pius XI, that the contraception revolution of 1968 would only hasten the pagan slavery of woman:

A man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection. [3]

But Papa Montini and the Rhine group refused to believe the true gravity of the darkness about which Fatima and the Curia had warned. The gathering evil was far worse than the partisans of springtime seemed to be able to imagine. One year after Humanae Vitae, seminal feminist Kate Millett gathered to chant her Marxist liturgy with her allies:

“How do we make cultural revolution?”

“By destroying the American family!” they answered.

“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.

“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.

“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she probed.

“By taking away his power!”

“How do we do that?”

“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted.

“How can we destroy monogomy?”

“By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution, abortion and homosexuality!” they resounded.

Ratzinger would later admit that the machinations of Vatican II “rendered the Church defenseless against these changes in society.” And since the Rhine group also suppressed the document on the Virgin Mother, womankind’s greatest defense against feminism was only further diminished [4].

Thus did the feminists seek to destroy every shred of feminine glory once held by the Virgin Mother. The philosophy through all their efforts in mass media, movies, and public protests seemed to be “anything but the Virgin Mary.”

Sue Ellen Browder … former employee at Cosmopolitan, said that when she worked at the magazine, she regularly fabricated stories about fictional women known as the Cosmo Girl. “I could make her into anything I wanted her to be — a doctor, a lawyer, judge, even a high-priced call girl — but there were two things she could not be if she was going to be glamorous, sophisticated and cool: a virgin or a mother.” [5]

The Marxist feminists, in order to achieve their designs, sought to remove — by any means necessary — every influence of Our Lady in society.

The Hirelings Run Away from the Wolves

After 1968, Paul VI was faced with a worldwide revolution of Marxist feminism and a worldwide clerical rebellion against Humanae Vitae. In these things the Virgin Mother was attacked. Everything that made her glorious was dishonored — her virginity, purity, maternity, humility, obedience. In short, everything feminine was under attack, which all reflected back to the Queen of Virgins.

So what does a man do when his lady is attacked? As we discussed in another place, the ideal of chivalry had transformed our fathers when they were barbarous pagans into men of God who turned out in the hundreds to die for Holy Mother Church. These men spent decades working at manual labor to build churches in honor of Our Lady. These men shed their blood and their lives in wartime to defend the honor of the Church and Our Lady.

But by 1968, too many Catholic fathers and too many Catholic clerics had long ago abandoned this Christian masculinity in favor of a soft, effeminate sentimentality and the false Gospel of Psychology. Most lamentably, Pope Paul VI was a man who refused the paternal duty of his venerable predecessors to fight manfully against the forces of darkness. Instead, it was as if the majority of Catholic men — whether clerical or fathers — were hirelings who ran in fear when the wolves came.

John Paul II and New Feminism

John Paul II, like Paul VI, began his pontificate in great optimism about the Vatican II compromise with the modern forces of darkness. John Paul seemed to believe that a great compromise could be struck with feminism. He began teaching his new Theology of the Body, which removed the marital hierarchy, and did the same in Familiaris Consortio (as well as the New Catechism later) while proclaiming that “women have the same right as men to perform various public functions” [6]. He tried to compromise with feminism by granting such innovations against the moral tradition while still holding up an ideal of femininity in virginity and maternity. But his 1981 encyclical refused to quote the last two papal documents on the subject (Pius XI’s Casti Connubii and Leo XIII’s Arcanum), attempting, like Vatican II, to create something new with an ambiguous relationship with Tradition.

By 1990, his optimism, as with Paul VI, had also begun to regain the stark realism of the Vatican II Curia and their original documents. Thus, in 1993, he tried to confront the onslaught of Marxist feminism with Veritatis Splendor and in particular confirmed the rights of the Virgin Mother in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis:

The fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, received neither the mission proper to the Apostles nor the ministerial priesthood clearly shows that the non-admission of women to priestly ordination cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity, nor can it be construed as discrimination against them. Rather, it is to be seen as the faithful observance of a plan to be ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the universe. The presence and the role of women in the life and mission of the Church, although not linked to the ministerial priesthood, remain absolutely necessary and irreplaceable. [7]

But once again, as with Paul VI, John Paul II’s approach was not strong enough to stop the revolution. These popes both believed that some sort of compromise could be struck with Marxist feminism. Like Vatican II’s refusal to condemn communism, the conciliar popes have repeatedly attempted to compromise instead of condemn, leading ultimately to unleashing the wolves to turn the Church into what Von Hildebrand called “The Devastated Vineyard.”

Thus, when Benedict was elected, he said publicly in his first homily as pope: “Pray for me that I may not flee from the wolves.” To his credit, he initiated a crackdown — unprecedented since at least Pius XII — on Vatican corruption, including infamous evil priests like Marcel Maciel and Medjugorje spiritual director Tomislav Vlašić. But whatever good was in his pontificate ended with his resignation. Pope Francis has not only compromised with Marxist feminism, but encouraged it and all its aims.

Against all this, women are waking up to the destructive force of Marxist feminism. Mallory Millett, former feminist, Catholic revert, and sister to the aforementioned Kate Millett, summarizes:

When men ran the world and women ran society we had a chance to conduct our lives in some semblance of balance, but women have abdicated their running of society and thus, it has collapsed dramatically. Women forced their way into the running-the-world deal and now we have a world gone mad. And the beautiful society which we Western women built is in tatters. Moms decided they were the same as men so they deserted the home and babies to grab their briefcases and rush out to run the world.

When women ran society power emanated from the home. Men labored to keep their families sheltered, warm, clad and fed while women mostly stayed in the home to run the children and the community. Mother oversaw the household and carefully watched the children’s behavior.

But if women are waking up to the truth, will men do the same? Until men arise to defend Our Lady’s due honor, never will women regain their truly regal throne, which is theirs in every home by right. Let every man offer the First Saturday reparations to Our Lady and defend their wives, sisters, daughters and mothers from the filth that dishonors the glory of their femininity. Just as the evil men of Protestantism, Marxism, and feminism dethroned Our Lady and turned to enslaving women like pagans, let men restore the throne of Our Lady and the honor due to women and hope always for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart.

[1] Yves Congar, Le Concile au jour le jour deuxième session (Paris: 1964), 115

[2] Paul VI, “Message of the Council: To Women” (1965). Pope Paul does go on in this address to distinguish women as mothers, but this statement alone is enough to be used by the revolutionaries, as the Amazon final document shows (n. 100).

[3] Paul VI, Humanae Vitae (1968), 17

[4] On the efforts of the Rhine group bishops to suppress the document on Mary, see Rev. Ralph Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber (Augustine, 1979), p. 90ff

[5] Carrie Gress, The Anti-Mary Exposed (St. Benedict Press LLC: 2019), ch. 5

[6] John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio (1981), 23. In traditional Catholic moral theology it is the right of the children to have their mother full-time at home, while it is the right of the mother not to be forced to work outside the home and the duty of the man to provide for these rights. Grave cause alone can permit a woman working outside the home. See also Ripperger on this point and Prümmer, Manuale Theologiae Moralis, vol. II; n. 593.

[7] John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994), n. 3