As an aging hippy and son of the Council, I am uncomfortable with today's Feast.Yes, it says in the Missal its the Memoria of Holy Rosary in the Old Rite it is a Feast but it is actually the commemoration of the Battle of Lepanto and the triumph of the Catholic forces under Don John of Austria. Pius V got the Church to pray and the Catholic navies won the day. Christians destroyed the dominance of Muslim forces in the Mediteranian and the BVM was venerated as Our of Victories, and all over Catholic Europe churches and chapels were erected in her honour, that is in honour of the destruction of the enemies of Catholic Christendom!
For the Catholics of the 16th Century, it was simple, Christianity was threatened, we had recourse to the Blessed Virgin Mary and God acted. This feast is not about shades of grey but black and white: it is the Catholic faith good, Islam bad.
This feast challenges us to see God as Lord of History and on the side of the Church, to see the Mother of God as intolerant and partisan, this is not 21st Christianity!
19 comments:
So Father, this Feast sees Our Lady as intolerant and partisan. Hmmm! How far does tolerance go? Does 21st Century Christianity see the beheading of Christians by the scourge of Islam as something which we should tolerate? Should we open our churches to Moslem refugees for them to despoil as has happened in Belgium?
Well,I, in fact, took today as a Feast to savour. Clearly I am less tolerant than yourself and I feel absolutely no shame in saying so.
If I may say so, "Yay!"
"This feast challenges us to see God as Lord of History and on the side of the Church, to see the Mother of God as intolerant and partisan, this is not 21st Christianity!
Thank God for that!!! Otherwise I might be dressed in a damn burqa and a Mohammadan
Sorry, whilst I nearly always agree with you, not this time! What the church now needs is a
backbone, in order to face up to the threat from Islam, which has been there for over a thousand years, and only shows sighns of increasing. God help us, and the Christian Church!
Terry
Yeah, it was simple. Christ didn't mean to bring belial into His camp. It was simple.
I comment in the secular press. Recently I have given several example, including Lepanto, of how we in the past have repulsed Islam.
Once again it is interesting how little support this received, from secularists which is understandable, but apparently from Catholics.
But Our Lady is on our side.
Most nowadays know little history, or only a modernistic propagandised version of it. They will just have to learn from experience.
Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.
And to Hell with relativism.
"Mary Destroyer of all Heresies" - Pope St. Pius X (Pascendi dominici gregis)
Our Lady was the Champion Leader even before Lepanto. See this:
https://bellarmineforum.org/2013/02/15/before-lepanto-mary-became-known-as-the-invincible-champion-trimuphant-leader/
I agree, the Mary I've chosen to believe in would never do anything like that.
Our Lady is partisan in protecting the true faith. This is the very time the Church Militant needs to be invigorated.
I was just wondering if anyone knows if this article (below) is true or if it's just a wind-up.
07 October 2016 "Lightning strikes dome of St. Peter’s Basilica on Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary"
http://aleteia.org/2016/10/07/lightning-strikes-dome-of-peters-basilica-on-feast-of-our-lady-of-the-rosary/
I'm rather hoping you have your tongue firmly in your cheek, Father Ray. Lepanto was a crucial victory in the struggle against an aggressively invading Islamic army let by the Ottomans, that would have reconquered Spain and swept westward into Italy and France. Catholic nations were its main predatory targets.
Chesterton hymned the Battle with moving splendour here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/47917
There is also Our Lady of Ransom, a devotion and feast of the 13th century Order of Mercedarians who worked to free Christian slaves from their captivity in the moslem Mediterranean lands, where they were chained and forced to row in the galleys, while Christian women were forced into the harem. That feast of Our Lady was made universal by the Pope in the late 17th century shortly after the Ottomans had been repelled from the gates of Catholic Vienna. This commemoration too is wildly anti-ecumenical, no? Unless of course one prefers living as a Catholic to being subjugated and/or forced to convert to Islam...which is still a constant threat, and a goal of islamists round the globe.
The feasts of Our Lady of the Seven Dolours and Our Lady Help of Christians were instituted by Pope Pius VII, the first in 1814 to commemorate his sufferings during his captivity by Napoleon, the second in 1815 after the Battle of Waterloo, following his return to Rome. Surely these Marian feasts are also reprehensibly anti-French, anti-revolutionary, racist and tactlessly triumphalist - are they not? Unless of course, you feel as I do that Napoleon's tyranny was justly defeated.
And the next great battle, the next attack on the Catholic church, wherever it comes from, Our Lady will be our defender. What you overlook is that our prayers, and her intervention, actually did succeed. And they will again: but we must return to the Rosary in serious numbers.
The problem with the contemporary Church is that many Catholics have doubled down with the American neocons in the Middle East. These wars are immoral and not in the Church's interests.
You sound like my mother when visiting Covadonga: "Our Lady's supposed to appear to children and tell them to make reparation and say the rosary, not win battles". It's a very modern way of thinking about the BVM, and ends up locking Her in a box we've constructed for her.
Irony, anyone?
I just read G.K.Chesterton's "Lepanto". What a trimphant but moving poem it is! If you have never read it then please do read it.
Here is another new Francis quote “the contradiction of those who want to defend Christianity in the West, and, on the other hand, are against refugees and other religions.”
I am left speechless by him.
There are limits to religious tolerance and our Lord would call tolerance hypocrisy or being luke warm.
Where did we get the idea tolerance of anything was Christian? It would be stupid to help a man who wanted to cut my throat. Anyone whose religion told him to force me into submission and behead me.
Even at the end of WW2 there was a process of denazification.
The UN refugee system and illegal Immigration accomplishes now what war was used for in the past.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
Don John was born in Ratisbon (Regensburg), the Imperial city on the Danube where Benedict XVI made his famous address in 2006 and where his brother Georg directed the Cathedral choir, the most celebrated Catholic choir in Germany.
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