Mater Populi Fidelis: Authored by Antichrist and Propagated by His Conciliar Agents, part two

Mater Populi Fidelis, which was issued by the counterfeit church of conciliarism’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith yesterday, Tuesday, November 4, 2025, the Feast of Saint Charles Borromeo and the Commemoration of Saints Vitalis and Agricola within the Octave of All Saints,  is the definitive “doctrinal” answer that many well-meaning Catholics, including many scholars with whom I was associated in the 1990s during my years as a second vice president and head of the political science section of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, had been seeking from Rome about the titles that many canonized saints and popes have used to describe Our Lady’s sublime privileges as the Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces.  These good Catholics have waited for nearly thirty years since Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI expressed personally in the negative before Ratzinger’s third successor at the same albeit renamed conciliar congregation gave them a resounding “papally approved” no.

A New Mariology for a New Religion in the Name of False Ecumenism

As noted in part one of this two-part commentary last evening, Mater Populi Fidelis dismissed over a millennium of the genuine development of Catholic Mariology to wave off the work of the likes of Saints Bernard of Clairvaux, Alphonsus de Liguori, Pope Leo XIII, Pope Saint Pius X, Pope Pius XI, Pope Pius XII, and even Father Maximilian Kolbe, O.F.M. Conv., the founder of the Missionaries of the Immaculate who was devoted to the promotion of total consecration to Our Lady and the establishment of the City of Mary Immaculate.

Herewith is Mater Populi Fidelis’s section denial the title of Mediatrix of All Graces to Our Lady:

Mediatrix

23. The concept of mediation appears in the Eastern Church Fathers starting in the sixth century. In the following centuries, Saint Andrew of Crete,[42] Saint Germanus of Constantinople[43] and Saint John Damascene[44] employed this title with different meanings. In the West, this expression gained more frequent use starting in the twelfth century, although it was not formally articulated as a doctrinal thesis until the seventeenth century. In 1921, Cardinal Mercier, Archbishop of Mechelen — with the scholarly collaboration of the Catholic University of Louvain and the support of the bishops, clergy, and laity of Belgium — petitioned Pope Benedict XV to issue a dogmatic definition of Mary’s universal mediation. However, the Holy Father did not grant this request; he only approved a feast with its own Mass and the Office of Mary Mediatrix.[45] From then until 1950, theological research on this question continued to develop up to the preparatory phase of the Second Vatican Council. The Council did not enter into dogmatic declarations[46] but preferred to present an extensive synthesis “of Catholic doctrine on the place to attribute to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the mystery of Christ and the Church.”[47]

24. The biblical statement about Christ’s exclusive mediation is conclusive. Christ is the only Mediator, “for there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:5-6). The Church has clarified this unique place of Christ in light of the fact that he is the eternal and infinite Son of God, hypostatically united with the humanity he assumed. This is exclusive to Christ’s humanity, and the consequences that derive from it can only be properly applied to him. In this precise sense, the Incarnate Word’s role is exclusive and unique. Given this clarity in the revealed Word of God, special prudence is required when applying the term “Mediatrix” to Mary. In response to a tendency to broaden the scope of Mary’s cooperation through this title, it is helpful to specify the range of its value as well as its limits.

25. On the one hand, we cannot ignore the fact that the word “mediation” is commonly used in many areas of everyday life, where it is understood simply as cooperation, assistance, or intercession. As a result, it is inevitable that the term would be applied to Mary in a subordinate sense. Used in this way, it does not intend to add any efficacy or power to the unique mediation of Jesus Christ, true God and true man.

26. On the other hand, it is clear that Mary had a real mediatory role in enabling the Incarnation of the Son of God in our humanity, since the Redeemer was to be “born of woman” (Gal 4:4). The account of the Annunciation shows that this involved not only a biological mediation since it highlights Mary’s active involvement in asking questions (cf. Lk 1:29, 34) and accepting with a firm resolve: “fiat” (Lk 1:38). Mary’s response opened the gates of the Redemption that all humanity had awaited and that the saints described with poetic drama.[48] At the wedding feast in Cana, Mary also fulfills a mediating role when she presents the needs of the newlyweds to Jesus (cf. Jn 2:3) and instructs the servants to follow his directions (cf. Jn 2:5).

27. The Second Vatican Council’s terminology regarding mediation primarily refers to Christ; it sometimes also refers to Mary, but in a clearly subordinate manner.[49] In fact, the Council preferred to use a different terminology for her: one centered on cooperation[50] or maternal assistance.[51] The Council’s teaching clearly formulates the perspective of Mary’s maternal intercession, using expressions such as “manifold intercession” and “maternal help.”[52] These two aspects together define the specific nature of Mary’s cooperation in Christ’s action through the Spirit. Strictly speaking, we cannot talk of any other mediation in grace apart from that of the incarnate Son of God.[53] Therefore, we must always recall, and never obscure, the Christian conviction that “must be firmly believed as a constant element of the Church’s faith” regarding “the truth of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Lord and only Savior, who through the event of his incarnation, death, and resurrection has brought the history of salvation to fulfillment, and which has in him its fullness and center.”[54]

Mary in the Unique Mediation of Christ

28. At the same time, we need to remember that the unicity of Christ’s mediation is “inclusive.” He enables various forms of participation in his salvific plan because, in communion with him, we can all become, in some way, cooperators with God and “mediators” for one another (cf. 1 Cor 3:9). Precisely because of Christ’s infinitely supreme power, he can elevate his brothers and sisters to make them capable of a genuine cooperation in the accomplishment of his plans. The Second Vatican Council affirmed that “the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in one source.”[55] For this reason, “the content of this participated mediation should be explored more deeply, but must remain always consistent with the principle of Christ’s unique mediation.”[56] Indeed, the Church extends in time and communicates everywhere the effects of Christ’s Paschal Mystery,[57] and Mary holds a unique place in the heart of Mother Church.[58]

29. Mary’s participation in Christ’s work becomes evident when one begins from the conviction that the risen Lord promotes, transforms, and enables believers to collaborate with him in his work. This does not happen due to some weakness, incapacity, or need on Christ’s part but because of his glorious power, which is capable of taking us up, generously and freely, as collaborators in his work. What must be emphasized in this case ster is that when Christ allows us to accompany him and — under the impulse of his grace — to give our very best, it is ultimately his power and his mercy that are glorified. (Victor Manuel Fernandez, Mater Populi Fidelis, November 4, 2025.)

Commentary:

Using the sort of strawman argumentation popularized by the late Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Mater Populi Fidelis makes it appear that Catholics who labor under the “misapprehension” that Our Lady is the Mediatrix of All Graces hve to be reminded that her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, is one Mediator between God the Father and man while condescendingly relying upon the words of Sacred Scripture alone to prove this indisputable truth without making even gratuitous references to Mariological tradition prior to the “Second” Vatican Council, which has of itself dispensed with the “exaggerations” of the past and is to be seen as the new “tradition” from which everything to do with the Catholic Faith must be viewed, including Mariology.

This reliance upon an interpretation of Sacred Scripture that ignores how Our Lady’s role as Mediatrix of All Graces has been treated by various saints and popes, and upon the “authority” of the “Second” Vatican Council is facilely shallow and is designed to appeal to those who know nothing about how our true popes themselves have used and defended the title of Our Lady as the Mediatrix of All Graces.

Although I used the following passages yesterday, I am doing so again now in the specific context of Mater Populi Fidelis’s very facile denial of the Marian title Mediatrix of All Graces:

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.)

Pope Saint Pius X 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, by explaining 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.)

Victor Manuel Fernandez would have us believe that the fathers of the “Second” Vatican Council had a mission to “correct” such “exaggerations” that God the Holy Ghost permitted Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII explained and defended.

Additionally, none other than the esteemed Thomistic theologian, Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., must have been tragically mistaken when he defined Our Lady’s title as the Mediatrix of All Graces in his The three ages of the interior life, volume 1:

The Catholic Church honours our Blessed Mother with so many beautiful titles including the Mediatrix of all graces. Mediatrix of all graces is a Marian title that includes the understanding that Our Lady mediates the Divine Grace.

“The Church, in fact, turns to Mary to obtain graces of all kinds, both temporal and spiritual; among these last, from the grace of conversion up to that of final perseverance, to say nothing of those needed by virgins to preserve virginity, by apostles to exercise their apostolate, by martyrs to remain firm in the faith. In the Litany of Loreto, which has been universally recited in the Church for many centuries, Mary is for this reason called: 'Health of the sick, refuge of sinners, comforter of the afflicted, help of Christians, Queen of apostles, of martyrs, of confessors, of virgins.' Thus all kinds of graces are distributed by her, even, in a sense, those of the sacraments; for she merited them for us in union with Christ on Calvary. In addition, she disposes us, by her prayer, to approach the sacraments and to receive them well. At times she even sends us a priest, without whom this sacramental help would not be given to us.

Finally, not only every kind of grace is distributed to us by Mary, but every grace in particular. Is this not what the faith of the Church says in the words of the Hail Mary: 'Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen'?

This "now" is said every moment in the Church by thousands of Christians who thus ask for the grace of the present moment. This grace is the most individual of graces; it varies with each of us, and for each one of us at every moment. If we are distracted while saying this word, Mary, who is not distracted, knows our spiritual needs of every instant, and prays for us, and obtains for us all the graces that we receive. This teaching, contained in the faith of the Church and expressed by the common prayers (lex orandi lex credendi), is based on Scripture and tradition.

Even during her earthly life, Mary truly appears in Scripture as the distributor of graces. Through Mary, Jesus sanctified the Precursor when she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth and sang the Magnificat. Through His mother, Jesus confirmed the faith of the disciples at Cana, by granting the miracle that she asked. Through her, He strengthened the faith of John on Calvary, saying to him: 'Behold thy mother.' Lastly, by her the Holy Ghost came down upon the apostles, for she was praying with them in the cenacle on Pentecost day when the Holy Ghost descended in the form of tongues of fire. With even greater reason after the assumption and her entrance into glory, Mary is the distributor of all graces. As a beatified mother knows in Heaven the spiritual needs of her children whom she left on earth, Mary knows the spiritual needs of all men. Since she is an excellent mother, she prays for them and, since she is all powerful over the heart of her Son, she obtains for them all the graces that they receive, all which those receive who do not persist in evil.”

When we assert that Our Lady is the Dispensatrix of all graces we mean that she actually obtains them for us, through some true causality on her part. By “all graces” we mean sanctifying grace, the infused theological and moral virtues, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, all actual graces, the charismatic gifts, and even temporal favours having a bearing on our supernatural end. In brief, everything which produces, conserves, increases, or perfects the supernatural life of man. This universally extends likewise to the beneficiaries of Mary’s mission, for it affects all human beings of all times, including the souls in Purgatory. Those who lived before Mary’s time received their graces in view of her future merits; those living after her, particularly after her Assumption into Heaven, receive all graces through her actual intercession, or even, according to some, through her physical instrumental causality.

The Holy Ghost, the third person in the Blessed Trinity, chose Mary to bring the Word, our Lord, Jesus Christ, into the world. Did He have to use a woman, who at the time was considered a lesser human being? Our God didn't have to use anyone to bring Jesus into this world. He chose her. She was chosen, above all women! She was chosen for the Son!

Upon choosing Mary to be the vessel of the incarnate Word, the Holy Ghost made her His channel through which all graces flow to this world! Jesus was brought to this world to complete the "new covenant" through His passion, death and Resurrection. It was only through grace that He was made in the flesh and walked on this earth. It was only through grace that our Father, God, chose to make a new covenant with us, to open the gates of Heaven. And there was only one vessel in which this grace was bestowed, and that was in our Mother Mary! (As found at Medatrixediatrix_web.pdf    .)

These beautiful words full of profound truths drawn from Sacred Scripture deal a complete death below to sophistic blasphemy of Victor Manuel Fernandez in Mater Populi Fidelis as do the simple reminder provided to Catholics by Father Maximilian Kolbe in Nagasaki, Japan, on April 6, 1934, and then elsewhere five years later:

Jesus Christ is the only Mediator between God and humanity; the Immaculata is the only Mediatrix between Jesus and humanity; and we shall be happy mediators between the Immaculata and souls all over the word. What a beautiful task! Is it not?  (1934)

The union between the Holy Ghost and the Immaculate Virgin is so close that the Holy Ghost, who permeated the soul of the Immaculata profoundly, exerts no influence on souls, except through her. Because of that she has become the Mediatrix of all graces, precisely because of that she is truly the Mother of all God’s graces. And also because of that she is also the Queen of angels and saints, the Help of Christians, the Refuge of sinners. (1939.) (As found at Medatrixediatrix_web.pdf.)

The conciliar revolutionaries are entirely intellectually dishonest, and the level of shallow dishonesty found in Mater Populi Fidelis makes it seem as though it was written by a high school student who asked ‘artificial intelligence” how to deny the Our Lady’s title of the Mediatrix of All Graces and to ignore the fact that Holy Mother Church herself approved of Our Lady’s apparitions to Saint Catherine Laboure in the convent at Rue de Bac in Paris, France, one hundred ninety-five years ago.

This is what happened on the night of Saturday, November 27, 1830:

Outside the convent on the rue du Bac, the City of Paris had grown quiet; people had gone back to their daily living. Charles X retreated to England, where he no longer ruled even "like and English king." Louis Philippe came to the throne. Although a Bourbon, he was not of the line of Bourbon kings, but of the Orleans family, and most certainly he wa snot the divine right monarch the royal Bourbons had been. Dubbed from the start "The Citizen King," he was the figurehead the new nation wanted.

Saturday, November 27, 1830, was just another day, busy like all the rest with prayer and work and study of the things of God. The next day would be the first Sunday of Advent. At half past five, all the Sisters, professed and novices alike, gathered in the chapel for/ their evening meditation. The chill November dusk had settled outside, and the chapel was in semi-darkness.

Catherine like this time of evening. She had always liked it, even at home: the laborious day was over and the tired mind found rest in thinking of God. Tonight, the quite voice of the Sister reading the prophecies of Christ's coming at Christmas seemed like the voice of Isaiah himself, calling down the centuries. In the darkness, time and place were no more; only the mind was alive. The voice stopped, and a great stillness followed.

Suddenly,Catherine's heart leaped. She had heard it--that rustling, that faint swish of silk she could never forget, the sound of Our Lady's gown as she walked! There it as again--and there was the Queen of Heaven, there in the sanctuary, standing on a globe. She shone as the morning rising, a radiant vision, "in all her perfect beauty," as Catherine said later.

Catherine's eyes widened with bliss at the sight. Yet they were not so dazzled but that, womanlike, they took note of every detail of the Virgin's dress: that her robe was of silk, "of the whiteness of the dawn," that the neck of it was cut high and the sleeves plain, that she wore a white veil which fell to her feet, and beneath the veil a lace fillet binding her hair.

The Virgin held in her hands a golden ball which she seemed to offer to God, for her eyes were raised heavenward. Suddenly, her hands were resplendent with rings set with precious stones that glittered and flashed in a brilliant cascade of light. So bright was the flood of glory cast upon the globe below that Catherine could no longer see Our Lady's feet.

Mary lowered her eyes and looked at Sister Laboure. Her lips did not move, but Catherine heard a voice.

"The ball which you see represents the whole world, especially France, and each person in particular."

These words stirred the heart of the Sister with fresh transports of joy, and the dazzling rays seemed to her to increase to blinding brilliance.

"These rays symbolize the graces I shed upon those who ask for them. The gems from which rays do not fall are the graces for which souls forget to ask."

At this moment, Catherine was so lost in delight that she scarcely knew where she was, whether she lived or died. The golden ball vanished from Mary's hands; her arms swept wide in a gesture of motherly compassion, while form her jeweled fingers the rays of light streamed around the Blessed Virgin, and written within it in letters of gold Catherine read the worlds:

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

The voice spoke again:

"Have a Medal struck after this model.all who wear it will receive great graces; they should wear it around the neck. Graces will abound for persons who wear it with confidence."

The tableau revolved, and Catherine beheld the reverse of the Medal she was to have made. It contained a large M surmounted by a bar and a cross. Beneath the M were the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, the one crowned with thorns, the other pierced with a sword. Twelve stars encircled the whole.

And then the vision was gone.

Habit is a saving thing. Certainly it saved Catherine embarrassment or discovery in the next few minutes. She must have said the closing prayers of the meditation with the others; she must have taken her place in line to go to the dining hall; she must have recited the grace and sat down at the table. She did not remember. It was the chastening voice of the Mistress of Novices brought her back to earth.

"Sister Laboure must still be in ecstasy," it said dryly.

Catherine started in confusion. "Why the other novices had begun to eat!

The three great Apparitions of Our Lady to Saint Catherine Laboure--they are designated by number for convenience--were complete. The first, the Apparition of July 18, is sometimes called "The Virgin of the Chair"; the second and third, actually two phases of the Apparition of November 27, are known by the titles: "The Virgin of the Globe" or "The Virgin Most Powerful," and "Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal."

The Medal design submitted by the engraver in 1832 and accepted by Father Aladel was the second phase of the Great Apparition of November 27, representing Our Lady bestowing her graces upon mankind through the symbolism of the rays falling from her outstretched hands upon the globe at her feet. It was not the design originally intended, which was the first phase of the Great Apparition, the "Virgin of the Globe," offering the golden ball to heaven while the rays streamed from her hands upon the large globe on which she stood. Catherine herself remarked upon this change form the original design in her account of the apparitions given to Sister Dufes, her superior, in 1876, and her words carry a tone of complaint. If she saw fit to complain, it must be that Our Lady had wanted the Medal to represent her in the attitude of offering the golden ball. Why, then, the change?

Father Chevalier, Catherine's last director, in his deposition before the Beatification Tribunal, expresses  the opinion that the change was made because of the difficulty of representing the attitude of the first phase in the metal, and also because Father Aladel thought it more prudent, in view of the anti-religious feeling at the time, to represent Our Lady in the attitude of the second phase. It is hard to see how the one attitude would been any more acceptable to anti-religious feeling than the other. The probable reason for the change is the first point made by Father Chevalier, that M. Vachette, the engraver, saw difficulty in delineating within the limits of the engraver's art at that time, the arms and the golden ball superimposed upon the stamped image of Our Lady's body. There would have been no such problem today [1958], when dies can be cut so deeply and etched so finely, bit it was a problem in 1832. Father Aladel, with no technical knowledge of the problem, would have followed the advice of the engraver.

There is, of course, a difference of emphasis upon doctrine in the two representations, for the first phase of the Apparition, in addition to honoring the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady in the words "conceived without sin," expressly demonstrates the doctrine that Mary is the Mediatrix of All Graces. Very simply, this doctrine--considered by the Church to be certain although not yet solemnly defined--teaches that all prayers, and petitions, whether made to God directly, to Our Lady, or to the saints, are presented to God by His Mother; and that all graces, whether answers to prayer or gratuitously bestowed by God, pass to men through the hands of His Mother. In the first phase of the Apparition, the attitude of Our Lady, eyes raised to Heaven, lips moving in prayer, and the symbolic offering of the golden ball of the world, beautifully express the intercession of Mary, while the rays from her fingers express the bestowal of God's graces through her. In the second phase of the Apparition, the bestowal of the graces alone is represented by the rays flowing from the outstretched hands.

However, while Father Aladel must have regretted the inability to present the completeness of doctrine symbolized in the first phase, he must have considered the intercessory powers of Mary as Mediatrix to be sufficiently represented by the words of the prayer on the Medal: "Pray for us who have recourse to thee." There is no record of dissatisfaction on Catherine's part when she saw the first Medals, fresh from the press. her only comment was a call to arms: "Now it must be propagated." She, therefore, consented from the first to the Medal's propagation in its altered form. Our Lady would be expected to consult her on such an important change. The proof of the Medal's acceptability to Heaven is the vast multitude of graces bestowed from the beginning on those who wore it and recited the prayer engraved on it. Catherine's complaining reference to change, forty-four years later, may be laid to natural anxiety, with approaching death, as to whether she had carried out her mission exactly. Such anxiety could arise easily out of her very justifiable concern, which we shall hear more of, that the statue of "The Virgin of the Globe," also commissioned by Our Lady, had not been made.

At the command of her director, Catherine would out full accounts of her visions, in 1841, in 1856, and again in 1876. It is odd that, while these accounts are minute and detailed in their descriptions, they omit two significant details of the Medal. The first of these is the serpent whose head Our Lady crushed beneath her heel, as she stood upon the white globe of the earth. This was an obvious pictorial reference to Genesis III: 15, the sole scriptural text with any reference to the doctrine of Mary's Immaculate Conception. "She (the woman) shall crush thy head (the serpent's), and thou shalt lie in wait for heel." The second detail left out of Catherine's written accounts was the twelve stars on the back of the Medal. These stars refer probably to the Twelve Apostles, and are mentioned in the text from Apocalypse XII: 1, applied by theologians to Our Lady: "A woman, clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and the moon under feet, and on her head a crown a twelve stars." That Catherine transmitted the details of the serpent and the stars to the director, at least by word of mouth, is morally certain, for she approved the Medal which bore both details from the first. Besides, in 1836, when the artist LeCerf was painting canvases of the apparitions, she described the serpent to her director as "green with yellow spots"--a rather fearsome serpent, and one, certainly, to offend the sensibilities of an artist!

There was one further instruction concerning the Medal which Catherine gave Father Aladel orally. The priest was puzzled by the fact that there were no words on the back of the Medal, to balance the prayer on the front. He told Catherine to ask Our Lady what should be written there, Catherine consulted the Virgin prayer, and returned with the verbatim reply: "The M and the two Hearts express enough."

Aside from the importance of Catherine's written accounts as religious historical documents, they are, like all such writings not meant to be published, supreme revelations of the character of the one who wrote them. If we knew nothing whatever of Catherine Laboure, we should know from these accounts that she was a practical, commonsense sort of person, not to be rattled even by the glorious visions of another world/ Her first thought upon being awakened by the angel on the night of July18 was: We shall be discovered. On her knees in the chapel, awaiting the arrival of the Blessed Virgin, she kept craning her neck and peering into the dim recesses of the chapel, for fear "the night Sisters, up with the sick," would see her. When Our Lady finally came, Catherine did not throw herself upon the Virgin at once in ecstasy, but wondered whether this were really the Mother of God. Certainly she had a practical prudence, much like Our Lady's when she asked the Angel Gabriel: "How shall this be done?"

Again, she is revealed as an extremely observant person, who, even in the ecstasy of her apparitions, did not miss the smallest details, and a precise person, who did not fail to report them. Catherine tells us, for example, that Our Lady wore "three rings on each of her fingers." She tells us, further, that the rings were graduated in size, "the largest one near the base of the finger, one of medium size in the middle, the smallest one at the tip." She even noticed that the rings themselves were set with stones "of proportionate size, some larger and others smaller."

Her description of Our Lady's veil and headdress is a marvel of exactitude. "A white veil covered her head," Catherine wrote, "falling on either side to her feet. Under the veil her hair, was bound with a fillet ornamented with lace, about three centimeters in height or of two fingers' breadth, without pleats, and resting lightly on the hair.

This supreme accuracy carries over into the recording of the time and place of her visions. She saw the heart of St. Vincent "above the little shrine where the relic of St. Vincent was exposed in the chapel of the Sisters, over the picture of St. Anne and in front of St. Joseph's picture." One the night of July 18, she heard herself called by name at "eleven-thirty in the evening." She heard the noise of Our Lady's coming "from the side of the tribune near St. Joseph's picture." when she returned to her bed, "it was two o'clock in the morning, for I heard the hour strike." The opening paragraph of her account of the Great Apparition is incomparable: "On November 27, 1830, which fell upon the Saturday before the first Sunday of Advent, at five-thirty in the evening, in the deep silence after the point of meditation had been read--that is, several minutes after the point of the meditation--I heard a sound like the rustling of a silken gown, from the tribune near the picture of St. Joseph."

The precision of these descriptions, particularly the details of the Virgin's attire, makes all the more mysterious Catherine's omission of the serpent and the twelve stars, and her failure to give us the faintest clue as to Our Lady's age or personal appearance.

Catherine had a woman's eye for color. When the heart of St. Vincent was shown her in April, 1830, she recorded that it was successively "white flesh color," "fiery red," "dark red," and "vermilion." It finally appeared "sombre, the color of dead flesh." Certainly not every woman can boast this eye for nuance and shading. Her description of the Virgin's dress in the apparition of November 27: "of the whiteness of the dawn," has been the despair of artists, and they have gotten around the problem by painting the dress a flat white or cream color. Catherine, who, as a farm girl had often seen the day break, meant literally that Our Lady was clothed in the color of the dawn sky: a basic white with myriad tints of red, pink, saffron, and the palest blue.

Perhaps the most surprising trait revealed by Catherine Laboure in her written accounts is her flair for the right word or phrase. Certain descriptive flashes in her story of the Apparitions would be the envy of professional writers. When she tells us that the chapel all lighted for the coming of the Blessed Virgin reminded her of "Midnight Mass," the phrase is completely evocative. When the Virgin departed, "she faded away and became but a shadow, which moved toward the tribune the way she had come." At the cose of the Miraculous Medal Apparition, on the other hand, "everything disappeared from my sight, like a candle that is blown out." In describing the brilliant rays that flashed from Mary's hands, Catherine uses the word rejaillissant, thus suggesting a breath-taking picture of dazzling light "bursting from all sides," like a fountain. The rays grew so bright that they "flooded the base, so that I could no longer see the feet of the Blessed Virgin." Mary's hands were "bent down under the weight of the treasures of graces obtained." For an uneducated girl, Catherine's accounts are masterpieces of clarity and beauty.  (Father Joseph Dirvin, CM, Saint Catherine Laboure of the Miraculous Medal, published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, Inc., in 1958, and republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1984, pp. 92-100.)

It is interesting to note that two Marian doctrines, neither of which had been solemnly defined by Holy Mother Church, were promoted by Our Lady by means of the Miraculous Medal.

The first, of course, is the doctrine of her Immaculate Conception, which was proclaimed solemnly by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854. This is why Father Maximilian Kolbe, M.I., sought to promote the Miraculous Medal as part of the external display on the clothing of his Knights of the Immaculata as their very mission was from its outset to establish the City of Mary Immaculate.

Our Lady foretold this proclamation of a basic doctrinal truth that is, after all, contained in the Ave Maria, which comes from the very words spoken to her by Saint Gabriel the Archangel to her at the Annunciation ("Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women," Luke 2: 27), in anticipation of Pope Pius IX's solemn definition of it, a solemn definition that she ratified when she appeared to Saint Bernadette Soubirous in the Grotto of Massabielle near Lourdes, France, on March 25, 1858, identifying herself as "I am the Immaculate Conception" (see Penance! Penance! Penance! Pray to God for Sinners). As Father Dirvin pointed out in his book about Saint Catherine Laboure, Saint Bernadette Soubirous was wearing a variation of the Miraculous Medal when Our Lady appeared to her in 1858:

In 1854, Pius IX made the momentous pronouncement that, beyond any shadow of doubt, Our Blessed Lady was "preserved and exempt from all stain of original sin, from the first moment of her conception." Pius himself recognized that the impetus of devotion to the Immaculate Conception that led to this definition had come from France. Indeed, it is certain that the Apparitions of the Miraculous Medal to Catherine Laboure in 1830 hastened the solemn declaration of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, just as at the Apparitions of Lourdes, wherein Our Lady declared: "I am the Immaculate Conception," set the seal of approval on it.

There was great joy in France in 1858 when it became known that Mary had appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, a peasant girl of the French Pyrenees. No one was happier than Catherine Laboure. "You see," she exclaimed, "it is our own Blessed Mother, the Immaculate!"

On the day of the first national pilgrimage of France to the grotto at Lourdes, a group of the Sisters of Enghien were standing at the front door of the house, deep in conversation. Catherine joined them, and, before they knew was happening, she had launched into a detailed description of the ceremony taking place at that moment in Lourdes. Several days later, the Parisian papers verified everything that she had said.

It is interesting to conjecture whether Catherine had her knowledge of an event occurring several hundred miles away by clairvoyance or whether she was bilocated, being actually present at Lourdes and Enghien at one and the same time. There are several well-authenticated cases of bilocation in religious history, notably those of St. Catherine of Siena, St. Alphonsus Liguori, and, more recently, of the English lay apostle, Teresa Higginson. Whatever the way in which Catherine Laboure came to a knowledge of this distant event, her knowledge was definitely of supernatural origin.

A tangible reminder of the very real connection between the Apparitions of Paris and Lourdes was the medal Bernadette wore around her neck during her meetings with the Mother of God. It was not a Miraculous Medal. It was not a Miraculous Medal, but a sort hybrid: the face of the medal was an exact copy of the from the Miraculous Medal, but the back was devoted to St. Teresa of Avila. The medal was given to Bernadette to parish priest of St. Thomas-d'Aquin in Paris, who was on pilgrimage to Lourdes, and eventually it found its way to the rue du Bac, where it now reposes in the archives. (Father Joseph Dirvin, CM, Saint Catherine Laboure of the Miraculous Medal, published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, Inc., in 1958, and republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1984, pp. 178-179.)

The second doctrine confirmed by the Miraculous Medal is the doctrine of Our Lady as the Mediatrix of All Graces, which has yet to proclaimed solemnly but is, as Father Dirvin noted above, theologically certain. And the fact that Our Lady herself revealed it to be so and that Pope Pius IX himself gave approval to the Miraculous Medal should make us simple peasants who are not decreed theologians jump with joy at the great gift that the Mother of God has given us, to know what Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort had taught us in True Devotion to Mary, summarizing the doctrine taught by various saints, namely, that Our Lady is indeed the Mediatrix of All Graces:

The conduct which the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity have deigned to pursue in the Incarnation and the first coming of Jesus Christ, They still pursue daily, in an invisible manner, throughout the whole Church; and They will still pursue it even to the consummation of the world in the last coming of Jesus Christ.

God the Father made an assemblage of all the waters and He named it the sea (mare). He made an assemblage of all His graces and he called it Mary (Maria). This great God has a most rich treasury in which He has laid up all that He ha of beauty and splendor, of rarity and precariousness, including even His own Son: and this immense treasury is none other than Mary, whom the saints have named the Treasure of the Lord, out of whose plenitude all men are made rich.

God the Son has communicated to His Mother all that He acquired by His life and His death, His infinite merits and His admirable virtues; and He has made her the treasurer of all that His Father gave Him for His inheritance. It is by her that He applies His merits to His members, and that He communicates His virtues, and distributes His graces. She is His mysterious canal; she is His aqueduct, through which He makes His mercies flow gently and abundantly.

To Mary, His faithful spouse, God the Holy Ghost has communicated His unspeakable gifts; and He 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, all His gifts and graces. The Holy Ghost gives no heavenly gift to men which He does not have pass through her virginal hands. Such has been the will of God, who has willed that we should have everything pass through Mary; so that she who, impoverished, humbled, and who hid herself even unto the abyss of nothingness by her profound humility her whole life long, should now be enriched and exalted and honored by the Most High. Such are the sentiments of the Church and the holy Fathers.

If I were speaking to the freethinkers of these times, I would prove what I have said to simply here, drawing it out more at length, and conforming it by the Holy Scriptures and the fathers, quoting the original passages and adducing various solid reasons, which may be seen at length in the book of Father Poire, La Triple Couronne de la Ste. Vierge. But as I speak of particularly to the poor and simple, who being of good will, and having more faith than the common run of scholars, believe more simply and more meritoriously, I content myself with stating the truth quite plainly, without stopping to quote Latin passages, which they would not understand. Nevertheless, without making much research, I shall not fail to bring forward some of them from time to time. (Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary, as translated by Father Frederick William Faber, TAN Books and publishers, pp. 14-16.)

Our Lady, of course, ratified this exquisite summary of Catholic teaching that is understandable to those of us who are monolinguists by her apparition of November 27, 1830, to Saint Catherine Laboure.

The Miraculous Medal also presaged the widespread devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary that would be ushered in when she appeared from May 13, 1917, to October 13, 1917, to Jacinta and Lucia Marto and Lucia dos Santos in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal.

All of this is quite baffling to the minds of "modern" men, steeped in rationalism and naturalism, men who are very unwilling to believe the miracles that did take place shortly after the Archbishop of Paris, Hyacinthe-Louis de Quelen, who was Archbishop of Paris, France, from October 20, 1831, to December 31, 1839, gave approval for what we know now as the Miraculous Medal to be struck and propagated:

Catherine always kept some of these first Medals with her throughout her life. About ten of them survive today, jealously guarded in the archives of the Sisters of Charity in Paris. One of them is on exhibition in the Miraculous Medal Art Museum in Germantown, Philadelphia. They are essentially the same the Medals we know today, except that they are not the masterpieces of artistry and engraving effected by modern craftsmen. Little, flat, oval pieces of some alloy, they are a far cry from the ravishing vision Catherine saw, yet they are the sole reason for the vision. Our Lady herself came down form Heaven to model them.

The propagation of the Medal urged by Catherine was carried out so swiftly that it was miraculous in itself. The first supply of Medals vanished in no time. Pope Gregory XVI placed one of them at the crucifix on his desk. Father Gillet, Redemptorist founder of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in America, had the design of the Medal placed on his ordination card in 1836.

As soon as Archbishop de Quelen had received some of the first Medals, he put one in his pocket and went to visit Monseigneur de Pradt, former chaplain to Napoleon and unlawful Archbishop of Malines, who lay dying in Paris. This prelate had sided with Napoleon in the Emperor's quarrel with the Church, and had been excommunicated by the Holy See. he had furthered his contumacy by accepting the archbishopric of Malines from Napoleon's hands. Ousted from his illegal possession of the See at the Emperor's downfall, he now lay on his deathbed, unreconciled to the Church and defiant. He received Archbishop de Quelen, but steadfastly refused to discuss the all-important object of the visit, the abjuration of his errors. At length, Archbishop de Quelen, admitting defeat, withdrew. He had not yet left the house when the sick man suddenly called him back. In that stroke of time he had capitulated to the Queen of the Medal. Completely docile and repentant, he made his confession and was received back into the saving bosom of the Church. He died a peaceful death the next day, the first signal triumph of the Miraculous Medal.

The first order of 20,000 Medals proved to be but a small start. The new "Medals of the Immaculate Conception" began to pour from the presses in streams, spilling over France and escaping to the world beyond. Wonders sprang up in their wake, miracles of mercy and healing and grace. By December 1836, the firm of Vachette had sold several million medals. Eleven other Parisian engravers had equaled this number, and four Lyon engravers were hard at work to meet the demand.

Excitedly, people passed the Medal from hand to hand.

"Take this Miraculous Medal. . . ."

Its formal name was forgotten. It was the "Miraculous Medal even in those first days, for the power working through it was seen to be truly miraculous. It would never be called anything else. Even the Liturgy accorded it the proud title conferred on it by the people who accepted it with faith and love.

If the wildfire spread of the Medal was miraculous, the wonders it worked were more so. No sacramental of the Church had made such impact on the Catholic world since the Rosary had routed the Albigensian and the Turk. Its name was honestly come by, for it literally worked miracles. It seemed to specialize in the impossible, the conversion of the hardened sinner, the cure of hopelessly ill. And yet it only seemed to specialize in these startling favors because they were startling. Actually it blanketed all the ills of daily living, if only because there were so many of these. People came to count on this Miraculous Medal in every need. And it is this universal concern of Mary for every necessity of her children, ordinary and extraordinary alike, that has endeared the Medal to all the world.

There would be no point in cataloguing the wonders worked by the Medal in those early days, for it works the same wonders today. There are hundreds of modern conversions to match that of Monseigneur de Pradt. The hopelessly ill are still cured. And there are countless lesser favors flowing in a steady stream from the outstretched hands of the Queen of the Medal. The national Shrine of the Miraculous Medal in Germantown, Pennsylvania, records 500 such favors, actually reported, every week. The favors that go unreported must be, conservatively, ten times that number. And this at but one tiny spot on the globe. (Father Joseph Dirvin, CM, Saint Catherine Laboure of the Miraculous Medal, published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, Inc., in 1958, and republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1984, pp, 92-101.)

Father Dirvin was not exaggerating the power of the Miraculous Medal.

Ordinary Catholics all across the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide are still devoted to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, distributing Miraculous Medals as plentifully as they were distributed in those first days in France.

An elderly man I met on a charter flight in 1984 from Rome, Italy, to New York, New York, operated by AirTran when it was a charter airline, told me that he was taking back with him to Berwick, Pennsylvania, thousands of Miraculous Medals after having been to France. He had story after story to tell of the miracles wrought by Our Lady's Miraculous Medal. And another man, a former benefactor of ours for whom we pray every day without fail, told me in May of 1999 that he would rather distribute a million Miraculous Medals than given another dime to any politician running for elected office. That comment started me on my own path of withdrawing from the world of partisan politics in which I was still somewhat enmeshed in order to concentrate in my writing and in my speaking on the root causes of our social problems that rest in the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolution and institutionalized by the allied, interrelated but nevertheless multifaceted naturalistic forces of  Judeo-Masonry.

As noted earlier in this reflection,  the miracle that brought Our Lady's Miraculous Medal worldwide attention was the conversion of the Catholic-hating Jewish man named Alphonse Ratisbonne. Even with this great miracle, however, Saint Catherine Laboure desired to remain unknown to even the future Father Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne:

News of the "Madonna del Ratisbonne" and his miraculous conversion had Rome agog, and quickly fanned out through all Europe, especially in diplomatic and financial circles, where Ratisbonne and Bussieres and De la Ferronnaya  were widely known. Interest centered especially on the Medal which, until this time, had only the approbation of the Archbishop of Paris. Rome immediately instituted an inquiry, and twenty-five sessions were held between February 17, 1842, and June 3, 1842. The findings of the court "fully recognized the signal miracle wrought by God through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the spontaneous and complete conversion of Marie Alphonse Ratisbonne from Judaism to Catholicism." It was a major triumph of the Miraculous Medal.

Ratisbonne entered with the Jesuit Fathers to study for the priesthood and spent ten years in the bosom of the Society. When, however, his superiors repeatedly turned down his request to go to China, he left, for, as he put it, his true vocation was to be an apostle, "not a sixth-form master." He joined his brother Theodore, who had formed the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion for the evangelization of the Jews, and spent more than thirty years in the Holy Land as a missionary to his own people.

Ratisbonne made several attempts to converse with the unknown Sister who had been given the Miraculous Medal in 1830, but never got beyond Father Aladel, who told him regretfully that the Seer insisted on remaining unknown. The Holy Father himself, Gregory XVI, became intensely interested, and wanted to converse with the Sister, but Catherine was adamant. Had the Pope commanded her to come forward, there would have been an interesting development, for it would seem that she would have had to obey the Vicar of Christ. As it was, Gregory did not insist, but he left her in her silence. (Father Joseph Dirvin, CM, Saint Catherine Laboure of the Miraculous Medal, published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, Inc., in 1958, and republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1984, pp. 170-171.)

Just ponder over this for a moment or two.

The man born as Alphonse Tobie Ratisbonne in Strasbourg, France, on May 1, 1814, knew immediately after his miraculous conversion that he had to be an apostle of the Catholic Faith.

Could you imagine Father Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne securing permission from Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV to work in the Holy Land for the conversion of the Jews?

No?

Isn't that a sign of these false "pontiffs'" apostate minds and hearts that rejects the necessity of seeking with urgency those who adhere to the Talmud and its blasphemous lies and its false rites that are "sacred" only to the devil?

Shouldn't it tell you something, just a little something, that the late Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his equally late predecessor, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, before him never mentioned Our Lady's Miraculous Medal.  Ratzinger/Benedict almost never mentioned Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary in his journeys to various countries.

Our Lady knew that we would be living in these times of such great confusion as the operation of error prophesied by Saint Paul has indeed deceived many of the elect and deprived most Roman Rite Catholics in the world of the Sanctifying Graces that are meant to flow from her loving hands through the ministration of true priests as they administer the Sacraments. Acting at the behest of her Divine Son, Christ the King, Our Lady did not want to leave her children that she had given spiritual rebirth to in such great pain as she stood by the foot of His Holy Cross feeling the torments of the Fifth Sword of Sorrow pierce her Immaculate Heart through and through without supernatural aids. She has thus given us, in addition to the Most Holy Rosary and the Brown Scapular, the Miraculous Medal and the Green Scapular, which was given to Sister Justine Bisqueyburo in the same convent of the Daughters of Charity on the Rue du Bac where Saint Catherine Laboure had been given the instructions concerning the Miraculous Medal by the Mother of God herself:

In 1840, Our Lady came again to the house on the rue du Bac, to reveal her Immaculate Heart to novice named Justine Bisqueyburu. Sister Justine had entered the novitiate on November 27, 1839, the ninth anniversary of the Apparition of the Medal. Toward the end of January she entered upon her retreat in a prayer hall, behind the Chapel of the Apparitions. This prayer hall contained a miraculous statue of the Blessed Virgin which was very old and which had figured several times in the supernatural protection of the Sisters and their house. During the exercises of retreat, the Blessed Virgin appeared suddenly to Sister Justine, on January 28, 1840. She wore a long white dress and a blue mantle. She was barefooted and bareheaded, her hair falling free to the shoulders. In her hand she her her Immaculate Heart, pieced with a sword, and surrounded with flames. This vision was repeated several times as the retreat continued, and later on the principal feasts of the Blessed Virgin. On September 8, 1840, the feast of Our Lady's Nativity, the vision took on an added detail. The Virgin carried the Immaculate Heart in her right hand, and suspended from her left hand, a kind of scapular of green cloth. On the face of the scapular was a representation of Mary as she had appeared in the preceding apparitions, and on the back "a heart all burning with rays more brilliant than the sun, and as transparent as crystal, this heart, surmounted by a cross, was pierced with a sword, and around it were the words: "Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death." The Green Scapular, as this sacramental is popularly called, is not really a scapular, but rather a "cloth medal," for it consists of only one piece of material, and is worn about the neck as a medal would be worn. Sister Justine confided her vision to Father Aladel, as Catherine Laboure had done, and found the same difficulty in having the scapular made as Catherine had encountered with the Medal. It was not until 1846, after Our Lady had complained several times that her gift to the Community was not appreciated, that the approbation of Monseigneur Affre, the Archbishop of Paris, was finally sought and obtained for the distribution of the scapular.

In spite of the slowness of the authorities to act, heaven continued to lavish its treasures on the Community of St. Vincent. Throughout the year 1845, another Sister of Charity, Sister Appolline Andreveaux, stationed at the Hospice de Saint Jean in Troyes, received several visits of Our Lord in His Passion. On July 26, 1846, Christ appeared to Sister Appolline, holding in His hand a red scapular. One piece of the scapular bore the image of Christ on the Cross, surrounded by the instruments of the Passion, and the words: "Holy Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, save us." The other piece bore representations of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, surmounted by a cross, and the words: "Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, protect us."

Sister Appolline was to meet with prompter action than either Sister Catherine or Sister Justine. Sister Appolline had confided her visions, in writing, to Father Etienne, and the Superior General sought and obtained approbation for the making of the scapular from Pope Pius IX in 1847, during the same audience in which the Pontiff approved the Children of Mary. (Father Joseph Dirvin, CM, Saint Catherine Laboure of the Miraculous Medal, published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, Inc., in 1958, and republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1984, pp. 164-166.)

So many graces for the daughters of Saint Vincent de Paul! So many graces for us at a time of tremendous sacramental barrenness.

Do not let anyone--and I mean anyone--dissuade you from believing in the power of the Miraculous Medal or the Green Scapular. Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has even given us the Red Scapular to promote devotion to His own Passion and to those matchless Hearts of love that are intertwined with each other, His own Most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, His Most Blessed Mother. The only way out of the mess that we find ourselves in at this time, my few and increasingly fewer readers, is through the Immaculate Heart of Mary as entrust ourselves to the tender mercies of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the very Immaculate Heart out of which this ocean of mercy was formed in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb.

Father Frederick William Faber, who had studied the not-yet-canonized Father Louis Grignion de Montfort's True Devotion to Mary for fifteen years, almost the entirety of his life as a Catholic priest following his conversion from Anglicanism, before he translated it from French into English, reminded us that we must promote True Devotion to Mary and reject the ways of "modern men" who are so baffled by what appears to them to be but childish practices and superstitions:

All those who who are likely to read this book [True Devotion to Mary] love God, and lament that they do not love Him more; all desire something for His glory--the spread of some good work, the success of some devotion, the coming of some good time. One man has been striving for years to overcome a particular fault, and has not succeeded. Another mourns, and almost wonders while he mourns, that so few of his relations and friends have been converted to the Faith. One grieves that he has not devotion enough; another that he has a cross to carry which is a peculiarly impossible cross to him; while a third has domestic troubles and family unhappinesses which feel almost incompatible with his salvation; and for all these things prayer appears to bring so little remedy.

But what is the remedy that is wanted? What is the remedy indicated by God Himself? If we may rely on the disclosures of the saints, it is an immense increase of devotion to our Blessed Lady; but, remember, nothing short of an immense one. Here in England, Mary is not half enough preached. Devotion ot her is low and thin and poor. It is frightened out of its wits by the sneers of heresy. It is always invoking human respect and carnal prudence, wishing to make Mary so little of a Mary that Protestants may feel at ease about her. Its ignorance of theology makes it unsubstantial and unworthy. It is not the prominent characteristic of our religion which it ought to be. It has no faith in itself. hence it is that Jesus is not loved, that heretics are not converted, that the Church is not exalted; that souls which might be saints wither and dwindle; that the Sacraments are not rightly frequented, or souls enthusiastically evangelized.

Jesus is obscured because Mary is kept in the background. Thousands of souls perish because Mary is withheld from them. It is the miserable, unworthy shadow which we call our devotion to the Blessed Virgin that is the cause of all these wants and blights, these evils and omissions and declines. yet, if we are to believe the revelation of the saints, God is pressing for a greater, a wider, a stronger, quite another devotion to His Blessed Mother. I cannot think of a higher work or a broader vocation for anyone than the simple spreading of this peculiar devotion of the Venerable Grignion de Montfort. Let a man but try it for himself, and his surprise at the graces it brings within it, and the transformations it causes in his soul, will soon convince him of its otherwise almost incredible efficacy as a means of salvation of men, and for the coming of Christ. Oh, if Mary were but known, how much more wonderful would be our faith, and how different would our Communions be! Oh, if Mary were but known, how much happier, how much holier, how much less worldly should we be, and how much more should we be living images of our sole Lord and Saviour, her dearest and most blessed Son! (Father Frederick William Faber, preface to True Devotion to Mary, pp. xxi-xxiii.)

This is, of course, why the great apostle of True Devotion to Mary in recent times, Father Maximilian Kolbe, M.I., promoted total Marian consecration in conjunction with the Miraculous Medal that Our Lady herself had instructed Saint Catherine Laboure to have struck and propagated. True devotees of Our Lady do not fear the sneers of others. They do not fear what will happen to their professional "respectability" if they mention the Holy Name of Mary in public and promote her Most Holy Rosary and Brown Scapular and Green Scapular.

We live at a time when the conciliar revolutionaries have indeed made of Our Lady so little of Our Lady and have made of the Holy Faith Itself so little of the Holy Faith that Protestants and others would not be offended. Behold the wretched results as a supposed "pontiff" endorses a vile means to "protect" those committed to lives of sin from the personal consequences of their perverse behavior and as one of his "bishops" can dismiss various references to God with a breezy, casual, flippant Whatever You Want.

The late Bishop Tissier de Mallerais of the Society of Saint Pius X wrote a very detailed history of how the revolutionaries at the “Second” Vatican Council worked hard to deny that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mediatrix of All Graces:

As we read in Mariology, before the Second Vatican Council “we know of no Catholic theologian who seriously questions the truth of Mary’s universal mediation in the sense already ex plained, and it is safe to say that the vast majority of them con sider it sufficiently warranted by the sources to be defined by the Church ”

The Second Vatican Council should have been the occasion to proclaim this doctrine a dogma of the faith, as a great number of bishops and fathers of the Council were requesting it, but the Modernist bishops at the Council prevented it from happening

The formal definition of Mediatrix of all graces as a dogma was not accepted during the Second Vatican Council — although this was expected (despite requests) and preparations were made for this Marian dogma The Dogma was not accepted, mainly under the influence of the Protestant "observers" invited to the Council.

“At the outset, the schema on the Blessed Virgin was an in dependent text and amongst other titles gave Mary the name of Mediatrix of all graces During a meeting of the Preparatory Commission, Cardinal Lienart had protested against this title, but nevertheless it was kept In the period between the sessions in 1963, the theologian Karl Rahner thought that this text “would do incalculable harm from an ecumenical point of view’; his opinion was shared by his colleagues Grilemier, Aemmelroth, and Ratzinger. As soon as the second session was opened, it was proposed that the schema on Mary be reduced to a simple chapter in the schema on the Church References were made to ‘an excess of Marian piety’. Thus, on October 27, Bishop Grotti, a Servite and one of the original members of the Coetus, had a refutation of these arguments handed out: ‘Does ecumenism consist in professing or hiding the truth?’ He developed an argument we saw Archbishop Lefebvre use in Dakar, stating: ‘Hiding the truth hurts us because we look like hypocrites It also harms those who are separated from us because it makes them look weak and liable to be offended by the truth’. Unfortunately, the vote on October 29, 1963 — 1,114 for and 1,097 against — gave victory, albeit a slim one, to the sensitive souls and ecumenists.”

Just as Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV has denied that truth is possessed by any one person or group in the name of false “unity” among “believers” (see Pontius Prevost and Truth), an observation that has prompted the conciliar “archbishop” of Rabat, Morocco, to state his supporting for eliminating the phrase “true religion” (see Moroccan cardinal says Church must 'abandon' idea of 'true religion, false religion'), so has the conciliar effort to undermine and then to deny Catholic Mariology been undertaken in the name of false ecumenism and to appeal “reasonable” and “non-superstitious” to those who are said to have “partial communion” with what is purported to be the Catholic Church but is in fact her counterfeit ape.

As a true and militant son of Our Lady, Father Maximilian Kolbe, M.I., briefly explained the dangers posed by false ecumenism ninety years ago:

"Only until all schismatics and Protestants profess the Catholic Creed with conviction, when all Jews voluntarily ask for Holy Baptism – only then will the Immaculata have reached its goals.”

“In other words” Saint Maximilian insisted, “there is no greater enemy of the Immaculata and her Knighthood than today’s ecumenism, which every Knight must not only fight against, but also neutralize through diametrically opposed action and ultimately destroy. We must realize the goal of the Militia Immaculata as quickly as possible: that is, to conquer the whole world, and every individual soul which exists today or will exist until the end of the world, for the Immaculata, and through her for the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.” (Father Karl Stehlin, Immaculata, Our Ideal, Kansas City, Missouri, Angelus Press, 2007, p. 37.)

Mater Populi Fidelis was crafted in the same apostate spirit of rationalism that motivated the doctors of the Sorbonne who attacked Venerable Mary of Agreda and The Mystical City of God three hundred thirty years ago now, which is why it is useful to call upon Dom Prosper Gueranger’s defense of Our Lady as the Mediatrix of All Graces that had been attacked in his own native country one hundred sixty years before he undertook his research into the records of the proceedings in the Vatican:

 In fact the Church, without deigning to pay attention to the censure of 1696, has not ceased to present Mary to us as being in every way, according to all our needs, the Mother of Mercy and the Mediatrix of Grace; and this, without believing that she derogates from the character of Redeemer and divine Mediator which is in Christ, since delegated power, far from absorbing the power from which it emanates, on the contrary attests to it in the most noticeable way. As for what the Sister says, that Mary merited for us at the same time as she merited for herself, who does not see that this is pure Catholic doctrine on the Treasury of the Church, into which the superabundance of the merits of the saints, made fruitful through the blood of Christ, comes to form a common resource in favor of the Church militant and the Church suffering? It must be admitted, however, according to the doctrine not only of the Sister, but of the most profound scholastic doctors, that the association of Mary with all the meritorious works of Christ was incomparably closer and at the same time more extensive in its effects than that of all the elect together; so the mediation of Mary must be regarded as universal and inexhaustible because of the character of the Mother of God, whose scope extends far beyond the needs of all men together. ((Mary of Agreda and The Mystical City of God: 28 Articles by Dom Prosper Gueranger, OSB, Abbot of Solesmes, theological, liturgist, historian, and 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. 395-397.)

Case closed.

Finally, I think that it is very important to pray the following two prayers that make reference to Our Lady’s being the Treasurer of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and whose Most Pure Heart opens up unto us all the channels of grace needful for our salvation:

Remember, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, what ineffable power thy Divine Son hath given thee over His Own adorable Heart. Full of trust in thy merits, we come before thee and beg thy protection. O heavenly Treasurer of the Heart of Jesus, that Heart which is the inexhaustible source of all graces, which thou mayest open to us at thy good pleasure, in order that from it may flow forth upon mankind the riches of love and mercy, light and salvation, that are contained therein; grant unto us, we beseech thee, the favors which we seek ... We can never, never be refused by thee, and since thou art our Mother, O our Lady of the Sacred Heart, graciously hear our prayers and grant our request. Amen. (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 439, p. 334.)

O Heart of Mary, Mother of God and our Mother; Heart most worthy of love, in which the adorable Trinity is ever well-pleased, worthy of the veneration and love of all the Angels and of all men; Heart most like to the Heart of Jesus, of which thou art the perfect image; Heart, full of goodness, ever compassionate toward our miseries; deign to melt our icy hearts and grant that they may be wholly changed into the likeness of the Heart of Jesus, our divine Saviour. Pour into them the love of thy virtues, enkindle in them that divine fire with which thou thyself dost ever burn. In thee let holy Church find a safe shelter; protect her and be her dearest refuge, her tower of strength, impregnable against every assault of her enemies.

Be thou the way which leads to Jesus, and the channel, through which we receive all the graces needful for our salvation. Be our refuge in time of trouble, our solace in the midst of trial, our strength against temptation, our haven in persecution, our present help in every danger, and especially at the hour of death, when all hell shall let loose against us its legions to snatch away our souls, at that dread moment, that hour so full of fear, whereon our eternity depends. Ah, then, most tender Virgin, make us to feel the sweetness of thy motherly heart, and the might of thine intercession with Jesus, and open to us a safe refuge in that very fountain of mercy, whence we may come to praise Him with thee in paradise, world without end. Amen. (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. 393, p. 286.)

May Our Lady always send us the graces we need to save and sanctify our immortal souls as the consecrated slaves of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her ow Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart and thus to recognize that it is our duty to rise to her defense when the occasion necessitates as it does now with the issuance of Mater Populi Fidelis.

May each Rosary we pray today and every day help us to spread true devotion to Our Lady, she who is indeed our Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Blessed Martin de Porres, pray for us.

The Holy Relics, pray for us. 

All the Saints, pray for us.