We should consider some questions about the relationship between the work of St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort and everything I explain in my book Revolution and Counter-Revolution – hereafter, RCR.
The first of these is the role of Our Lady in the Counter-Revolution and, more especially, that of slavery to the Mother of God, that is, the perfect devotion preached by St. Louis.
Gnostic and revolutionary conception of the universe
RCR presents the Revolution as a movement born of moral deterioration. There are two fundamental vices, pride and impurity, which constitute in man an incompatibility with Catholic doctrine, from the following point of view.
The Church as it is, the doctrine it teaches, the universe that God created, and which we can know better from the standpoint of the Mystical Bride of Christ, are subjects that the virtuous, pure and humble man longs for. He has awe and joy to see that this is so, and accepts everything with a good heart.
But if a person gives in to the vice of pride, an incompatibility with various aspects of God’s work begins to form within them. It is an irreconcilability, with the hierarchical character of the Church, initially, then with that of civil society; or vice versa.
Next comes an inconformity with the hierarchical character of the family. Thus, egalitarianism develops, until it reaches the vertex of communism. That is to say, from pride raises a whole metaphysics contrary to Catholic doctrine, stemming from a vitiated incompatibility of the soul with the divine work.
Something more or less parallel could be said of impurity. The impure man has the necessary elements to object to the order established by God. He is generally led to liberalism. The existence of a rule, a restraint, a law that circumscribes the surge of his senses irritates him. With this, everything that signifies asceticism begins to seem averse to him. Naturally, an objection arises against the very principle of authority as such.
The result is that, from impurity and pride, the essential factors for a vision diametrically opposed to the work of God are formed. This vision no longer differs in one point or another from the doctrine of the Church, but, as these vices deepen and, over the generations, become more pronounced, an entire conception is structured that is not only different, but as contrary as possible. And it ends up being, ultimately, the gnostic and revolutionary conception of the universe.
From impurity and pride, moral causes of the Revolution, the elements for a vision diametrically opposed to God are formed
The Revolution has pride and sensuality as its moral cause. Thus, the whole problem of the Revolution and the Counter-Revolution, at its core, is a moral question.
What is affirmed in the lines or between the lines of the RCR is that, if it were not for pride and sensuality, the Revolution as an organized movement throughout the world would not exist, it would not be possible.
All moral preservation or regeneration stems from grace
Now, if at the heart of the problem of Revolution and Counter-Revolution we have a moral and therefore religious question – because all moral questions are substantially religious, since a morality without religion is the most inconsistent thing imaginable – it follows that the struggle of Revolution and Counter-Revolution is, at its core, a religious struggle.
Thus, as we find ourselves on the terrain of religious struggle, we will better understand the role of Our Lady in the Counter-Revolution.
If a moral crisis gives rise to the spirit of Revolution, then it is true that this crisis can only be remedied with the help of grace.
The Church teaches us that men cannot stably and steadfastly fulfil the Commandments of God’s Law, in their entirety, with merely natural resources; for this, they need grace.
On the other hand, when someone falls into a state of sin and the craving for evil increases in him, this moral situation, a fortiori, cannot be resolved without supernatural aid. The result is that all true moral preservation or regeneration stems from divine grace.
Condition for the triumph of the Counter-Revolution
We can easily see, then, the role of Our Lady. Since She is the channel through which all graces from God flow, we understand that the help of her prayers is indispensable for the Revolution to be defeated and the Reign of Mary to be established.
Graces can thus be obtained, but if men are not faithful to them, it becomes inevitable that the Revolution will triumph. Therefore, this influx of graces upon faithful souls is a fundamental element for the Revolution to be defeated. It depends on God, evidently, but He wished, by a free act of His will, to make it depend on the Blessed Virgin, for her glory and that of her Divine Son. From this it follows that devotion to Our Lady is the condition for the Revolution to be crushed and the Counter-Revolution to triumph.
The influx of graces on souls is the fundamental element for the Revolution to be vanquished, and the channel of these graces is Our Lady
I insist on this aspect because it is very important: if we take a humanity which is faithful to the graces it receives through the Blessed Virgin Mary for the practice of the Commandments, and this practice becomes a generalized phenomenon, it is inevitable that society will end up being well structured, because with the state of grace comes wisdom, and with wisdom all things fall into place.
It is not necessary to do extensive studies in Sociology, Economics, and Finance to achieve this. With the state of grace – not only through the natural, spontaneous, intrinsic movement of each man – everything tends to regulate itself, and the necessary studies will be done excellently and will achieve their desired result.
When grace is rejected, nothing progresses. And if something does go forward, it is worse than if it did not. We see an example of this in contemporary civilization: it was built upon the rejection of grace and achieved some resounding results; however, although this state of affairs seems to be an affirmation of humanity, in reality it devours it. The countries of great achievements are the countries of psychoses. That is to say, without grace, humanity either builds nothing, or constructs a prison, a torture chamber, a palace of delights in which it suffers more than in a concentration camp.
Intensity of graces proportional to the devotion to Our Lady
That being said, we can say that the greater the devotion to Our Lady, the more open the channel of graces will be. If it is an entirely authentic devotion, it is infallible that prayer will be answered and graces will be showered down upon a particular individual or country.
However, if devotion to the Blessed Virgin has restrictions or is defective, then grace also encounters, implicitly, a certain resistance from man. In this very fact, he already shows himself to be ungrateful, and it ends up happening that all the life, the sap of society, languishes.
It is often said that, in the economy of grace, Jesus Christ is the Head of the Mystical Body, and Our Lady the neck, because everything passes through her. The image is entirely true in the spiritual life of a person.
Imagine someone with little devotion to the Mother of God: he resembles an individual with a rope tied around his neck, which allows him only a tiny air stream. When he has no devotion, he suffocates. If, on the contrary, he has a great devotion to the Virgin Mary, his neck is entirely free, air enters his lungs in full draughts, and the man can live normally.
I am not saying that it is automatic, but that, if there is a correspondence to grace, everything necessarily becomes well-structured. It is not enough to work, to study and to organize. The fundamental problem is this correspondence.
In the opposite sense, we could say the same about the devil, because his role in the outbreak and progress of the Revolution was enormous. He managed to tempt man, inducing him to a revolutionary position and to revolutionary extremes, which are even beneath human misery, and to make a Revolution like the current one, which is worse than the present degree of the decadence of human nature. The process would not have been as terrible as it is if the devil were not there tempting man.
The determining factors of the Revolution and the Counter-Revolution, which are grace and the devil, depend on the reign and dominion of Mary
Now, this formidable driving factor of the Revolution is entirely dependent on Our Lady. It is enough for her to take the slightest stance of authority for all of hell to tremble, to become confounded, to withdraw and disappear. On the contrary, it is enough for her to see fit that, for the punishment of men, it is appropriate to allow the devil a certain range of action, for him to go as far as She allows.
So, the determining factors of the Counter-Revolution and the Revolution, which are grace and the devil, depend on the reign and dominion of the Blessed Virgin. We see, therefore, once more, her role in this struggle.
True Queen of the universe…
It must be added that the mediation of the Blessed Virgin Mary should not be considered solely from the point of view of prayer. She is not only the One who prays for all men, but the Queen of the universe, and this royalty is real.
Someone might object: “Dr. Plinio, calling Our Lady Queen is nonsense, because She does everything God wants, She is His servant. Therefore, ultimately, the Blessed Virgin is not Queen, but simply like a transparent and inert glass through which divine rays pass. The true King is God.”
There is a fine point here that needs to be considered. Imagine a school principal who has extremely insubordinate students; he punishes them and imposes an iron dictatorship. Then he steps aside and says to his mother the following:
“I know that you will govern this school in a different way than I did, because I govern with an iron rod and you have a motherly heart. I want you to govern now, not me. I hand the direction over to you.”
This lady would run the school as the principal wished, but using her own method, which would represent her will as distinct from his, but by which she would, at the same time, do the principal’s will entirely.
This is how Our Lady is Queen of the universe. Jesus Christ gave her, who is solely Mother and has no role as judge, a royalty whose mercy goes beyond the justice that He, in His position as Judge, wishes to exercise.
So Our Lord places her, with all the indulgence, all the extreme mercy of the Mother – unfitting to paternal authority alone – as Queen of the universe, in order to govern it. And the Son’s will is for His Mother to do something that He could not accomplish.
It is, therefore, as distinct from Our Lord that Mary, Queen of the universe, best fulfils His will.
…who guides events and directs History
So, there is a truly Marian regime of governance of the universe, which explains the role of Our Lady as the one who directs, regulates the course of earthly events and decrees what should happen. Always, of course, inspired by God and in union with Him.
Besides omnipotent and supplicant mediatrix, She is truly the Queen who directs the unfolding of History
The Blessed Virgin Mary is infinitely inferior to the Almighty, that is evident, but He freely chose to give her this role by an act of liberality. The duration of the Revolution and the Counter-Revolution depends on her, and it is She who intervenes in events so that the Revolution does not prevail. Suffice it to recall the Battle of Lepanto, for example.
How many other events in the History of the Church have there been in which the Blessed Virgin made it clear that it was her direct intervention that influenced happenings! And then it is understood that, more than an omnipotent and interceding mediator, She is truly the Queen who guides events and directs History.
When the Church sings about the Mother of God, “You alone exterminated all heresies in the entire universe,” it affirms that her role in this extermination was, as it were, unique. The one who promotes the elimination of heresies directs the triumphs of orthodoxy; whoever governs both directs History. She is truly the Queen. And this royalty of Our Lady gives us a further insight into her role in the entire conflict of the Revolution and the Counter-Revolution. ◊
Taken, with adaptations, from:
Dr. Plinio. São Paulo. Year XX. No. 237
(Dec., 2017), p.24-29
