Intercession of the Blessed Mother

People encountering Catholicism for the first time, by marrying a Catholic or attending church services with one, may encounter the Catholic tradition of devotion to the Blessed Mother, the Mother of Jesus, for the first time, too. Indeed, Catholics are often accused of worshipping Mary, or the pope, or someone else besides (or instead of!) God. The subjects of Adoration and Worship are covered in the SUBJECT INDEX of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. For anyone interested, more formal and authoritative treatments of the position of Mary in the Church can be found at the Mary entry in the index item in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or in the The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, Lumen Gentium, by scrolling down to Chapter VIII, paragraph 51, There is a more comprehensive, but less authoritative, discussion of the Catholic concept of Mary on my website. To insure staying on track, though, a recent decree from Pope Leo XIV emphasizes that she is not a "co-redeemer" or "co-redemptrix" with her son. We believe that Jesus alone saved the world through his sacrificial death on the cross, an act obviously made possible by the normal motherly act of her giving birth to and raising him.

On the other hand, a very popular devotion to Mary is the saying of the rosary, facilitated by manipulating a string of beads used to keep track of the prayers being said, on 53 of which is said the popular prayer known as the "Hail, Mary." On five other beads is said a prayer called the Glory Be" and then the "Our Father," also known as "the Lord's Prayer." The devotion begins with the "Apostles' Creed" and ends with a prayer known as the "Hail, Holy Queen." Traditionally, the recitation includes pronouns "thee," "thou," and "thy" used in the King James Bible, that most Catholics find more "churchy" than colloquial English.

The church ladies with whom I sometimes join in this devotion also say a prayer between each Glory Be and Our Father that apparently has been added since my mother led my brother and me in the recitation in our home every night. It goes like this:

"O my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls into Heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy. Holy Mary, Mother of God, hear our prayer, save our unborn children from abortion and intercede for their parents."

This is where things get political!

Nowadays, the clergy at Catholic churches where I worship, and many of their parishioners, are absolutely obsessed with abortion! One of our preachers told me in private, without a shred of evidence, that the hurricanes, wildfires, floods and other weather-related disasters that are becoming more frequent and severe are a direct consequence of all thes sins of people having abortions lately!

The pastor of this man's church made the remark during his preaching about the presidential candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that, "The question is, can a Catholic vote for someone who is 'pro-choice?' "The answer is 'No'!"

To be fair, the Catholic Church, as an organization, has a long history of absolute opposition to abortion, and with good reason! Its official teaching on the subject can be found here. Procuring an abortion is one of the few sins that incurs excommunication "by the very commission of the offense," that parish priests, who are normally authorized to forgive sinners, must refer to their bishop to resolve.

One such bishop, Joseph V. Brennan, publicly opposed vaccination against the pandemic corona virus, and possibly others, (and then changed his position), on the grounds that doing so possibly represents some morally relevant cooperation between those who use these vaccines today and the practice of voluntary abortion long ago. This contradicted the Pontifical Academy of Life, that resolved this issue at "Note on Italian vaccine issue," July 31, 2017 which updated a 2005 publication, "Reflections on the Ethical Nature of Vaccines." I think this pretty much resolves the issue, with respect to abortion. Bishop Brennan has joined Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco in his support for attempting to prevent reception of communion by Catholic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi because of her support for legislation protecting maternal rights. I was unable to find any evidence that these reverend gentlemen have done anything to secure civil rights for the unborn, including those frozen embryos in cryogenic storage throughout the world, about whom the Catholic bishops as a group have said precious little, if anything! If anyone wants to discuss this with me, feel free to email me. I suggest he read my comments on Mississippi Initiative Measure 26 first, however.

In addition, I believe that Bishop was derelict in his duty to find out if any of the vaccines he opposes were in actually associated with aborted fetuses, or if he just sent his flock on a totally unjustified guilt trip because he didn't feel it necessary to do that. I am also uncomfortable with the fact that if they were associated, his guidance frustrated the only good works that could have been done by these innocent persons, that of saving countless lives by the admittedly unwilling contribution of their genetic material, surely a noble and praiseworthy memorial to their blameless lives. Not taking advantage of their sacrifice, if so it was, does nothing to mitigate what happened in the past, no matter how dreadful.

Regardless of their high offices, these men are wrong! They are false prophets! Do not believe them! President Biden was "pro-choice, and Pope Francis told him to keep receiving Communion, which an excommunicated Catholic is not allowed to do. In the opinion of virtually all reputable climatologists, who are, in fact, God's representatives and our prophets about such matters, climate change is undoubtedly being caused by unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide (35 billion tons per year and rising at last count) being dumped into the atmosphere by the increasing number of people in the world who were not killed before they were born.

But "Why do those unmarried men in the black robes think they have the right to tell women what they can do with their own bodies?" is a valid question. The answer is that those unmarried men in the black robes' job is to preach against sin, It's what they are paid for, and the religion they espouse regards abortion as a very great sin because it deprives a helpless, innocent human being of his or her most fundamental right to life! What they do not often address is an associated sin of the dereliction of duty of the unborn child's father and the other members of the community who should be helping the mother fulfill her sacred duty in this regard, the difficulty of which is almost always the basic reason for the termination of an otherwise successful pregnancy.

This does not mean that the Catholic Church claims that people should have as many babies as possible. In fact the only two paragraphs in the Catechism that contain the word "parenthood" are about morally legitimate means by which married people can avoid becoming parents.

The foregoing prayer to the Blessed Mother to "save our unborn children from abortion and intercede for their parents" is a manifestation of the Catholic belief in the Communion of Saints, by which Catholics profess the belief that the saints in heaven intercede with the Father for us, as they proffer the merits which they acquired on earth through the one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus. As the greatest of all saints, it is reasonable to assume that his mother is foremost in this holy endeavor. This is the motivation behind the exhortation to pray to her for this purpose, as shown by a local billboard.

I maintain, as the Church does, that proper dedication to Our Lady, as the mother of the People of God, which the Church is, is a holy and praiseworthy activity. I believe, however, that it is not a substitute for doing our duty on earth to bring about the conditions for which we pray to her, which, after all, is why we are all here. I tend to see her more as a role model who has set a standard to which we should all strive as parents, citizens, servants of God, and honorable doers of duty to our respective countries and lives. I think she has already done far more than her share in this regard, and is reaping her just reward, as we hope to do, for doing that. We sometimes ask her to pray for or do things for us that we should be doing for ourselves or worse yet, try to get other people to do, such as the billboard in Biloxi. It seems to me that if we want to "save our unborn children from abortion," we ought be helping their parents to accept them as precious gifts of God, and treat them with the dignity, respect, love and kindness all their lives that they deserve as human beings, let along defenseless children.

I think some of us may have lost sight of the fact that God is equally the author of choice as He is the author of life. I have always believed that, since the mother is the divinely appointed custodian of the unborn, it is a function of the Church to help her carry out this awesome responsibility by providing reasonable options other than raising a child she doesn't want, especially since we oppose artificial birth control. I also think we ought to be doing something about child abuse, neglect, poverty, and exploitation.

Death comes to us all, about 12% of us naturally before birth. I think that it is a far worse fate than prenatal death to be born into a hostile family!

As a child, I knew one such person, a little girl. Her Catholic father was my father's boss, as a result of which her Catholic mother, basically a mean habitual drunk, was an acquaintance of my mother. During one of her alcoholic episodes, I was scandalized to see the unwilling mom savagely beat the child and scream at her, "I hate you! I wish you had never been born! I hope you die!" I truly believe that it would have been far better for that little girl if she had gone home to God before birth instead of being born into to a life of unending physical and psychological torture!

In my view, a much more reasonable activity would be for the Catholic Church and its members to be more aggressive in providing the necessary help for unwilling mothers in need of it.

I would have chosen something like:

or maybe:

or possibly:

The Catholic Church used to sponsor many more orphanages and homes for unwed mothers than it does today. In spite of the good intentions of those (mostly nuns) who ran them, the demise of these essentially parental functions was due, among other things, to operation and management by women who were not mothers. I believe that the Catholic Church has a moral obligation to use as much of its enormous wealth to reconstitute this worthy activity in much the same way as St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital or Mercy Ships, with a board of directors consisting of managers of proven capability, pediatric and obstetric experts, child and adolescent psychologists, sociologists, and especially experienced mothers who would not only choose and oversee those who manage operations, but would vet and approve candidates to fill vacancies among them.

The claim that a Catholic cannot vote for someone who is pro choice is an oversimplification of a very complicated issue. It seems very much like "getting involved with politics," which United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, definitely opposes. But Donald Trump ran on one of the few promises he kept by "overturning Roe v. Wade." This was accomplished by three Supreme Court justices whom he appointed who claimed during their Senate confirmation hearings that Roe v. Wade was "settled law" and subsequently voted the other way.

So now Trump is known as the "pro life president," and we have him for a second time. The impact of that achievement, given what has so far transpired, is not at all settled. It has certainly not achieved any rights for the unborn who are still not "persons" before the law, and thus have no legal representation or rights anywhere in the United States, but it has put the United States of America on record as categorically denying one of the most fundamental unalienable rights of every single pregnant mother anywhere on earth!

As far as Trump himself is concerned, his record on human rights generally is nothing of which anyone should be proud!

I think we should have left Roe v. Wade alone and concentrated on helping poor families raise their children, which Trump is in the process of making unbelievably more difficult. While it is true that there was a drastic increase in abortions in the eight years following that decision, the number seems to have remained steady for ten years and then began a decline that was reversed during the first Trump administration. According to the chart below, if we had done that, procured abortions would have reached zero around the year 2050.

Maybe we should have elected a compassionate woman this time who has two stepchildren of her own who call her "Momala."

My point in all of this is that I often find myself swimming against the current as far as the attitude of some of my clergy are concerned regarding praying for things to happen instead of doing what is necessary to bring them about. I feel the clergy sometimes "bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers." We need to "pray pray pray" less that things will come out all right and work harder to find more and better ways to "move" the heavy burdens with which new mothers are often "bound."

This is not to say that I disagree with the Catholic Church! I believe absolutely in each and every teaching of the Church as contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church which I put on my website even before the Vatican had it on theirs. I also gave our director of religious education a handful of business sized cards that facilitate downloading of the official Catechism from the Vatican website as well as that of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and my own. While there is a great deal of discussion on these websites about the value of prayer, I find nothing whatever that even suggests that we should shirk our duty to do bring about the Kingdom of God by praying for somebody else to do it, regardless of who that somebody is!

But I disagree strongly with those whose only response to the sinfulness of this world is to "pray to the Blessed Mother" instead of doing our part, which, after all, is what we are put here to do. Otherwise we are simply freeloaders and beggars of God's goodness and the merits of our forebears, who did their duty instead of merely praying about it - just like the Blessed Mother.

On the other hand, as long as we do our own duty, if the good to be done is something totally beyond our ability, I maintain that it is a holy and blessed activity to pray to make things better - just like the Blessed Mother!

John Lindorfer