“The struggle between the Revolution and the Counter-Revolution” writes Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira “is a struggle that is religious in its essence.”41 Just like every religious problem, it cannot be separated from the role of Grace, on which every moral regeneration depends.
“Grace depends on God, but undoubtedly God, with a free act of his will, wished for the distribution of graces to depend on Our Lady. Mary is the Universal Mediatrix, she is the channel through which all graces pass. Therefore, her assistance is necessary so that there not be a Revolution or that it be defeated by the Counter-Revolution. (…) Therefore devotion to Our Lady is the sine qua non condition for the Revolution to be crushed, so that the Counter-Revolution wins.”42
The problem of the contribution of Our Lady to the Counter-Revolutionary apostolate is not however limited to that of grace. We should not in fact forget the devil’s part in the explosion and progresses of the Revolution. “It is only logical to think that an explosion of disorderly passions, so deep and so general as that which gave rise to the Revolution, could not have occurred without a preternatural action.”43 Therefore, this driving factor of the Revolution also depends on the command and power of Our Lady, to whom God reserved the right to crush the head of the devil.
The ascertainment of this sovereign power of Our Lady introduces the idea of the royalty of Mary in which, according to Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, we should not see a purely decorative title, but “a personal, absolutely authentic power of government”.44
“The faith of Catholics in the royalty of Mary” writes a famous Mariologist “can be said to be as old as the Catholic Church is old.”45 This truth of faith was admirably summarized in the Encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam of Pius XII,46 promulgated on the occasion of the institution of the liturgical feast of Mary, the Most Holy Queen, at the conclusion of the Marian Year of 1954.
“Jesus is the King of the eternal centuries by nature and by conquest; for him, with him, subject to him, Mary is Queen by grace, by divine relationship, by conquest, by special election. And her Kingdom is as vast as that of her Divine Son, because nothing has been subtracted from her dominion.”47
Our Lord — writes Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira — wished to make Our Lady “a royal instrument of his love”,48 establishing her as queen of the universe so that she may govern it, and, above all, govern the poor decayed and sinning human race. “There is therefore, in the government of the universe, an authentically Marian regime.”49
“Obviously Our Lady is infinitely inferior to God, but he wished to attribute this to her as an act of liberality. And by distributing graces at times with greater or lesser abundance, by blocking the action of the devil sometimes less, sometimes more, Our Lady exercises her royalty during the course of earthly events. In this sense the duration of the Revolution and the victory of the Counter-Revolution depend on her.”50
Notes:
41. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Prologue to the Argentine edition of Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 22-3.
42. The universal mediation of Mary, not yet officially defined as dogma, was confirmed in the encyclicals of Leo XIII Octobri Mense (1891), of St Pius X Ad diem illum (1904), of Pius XII Mystici Corporis (1943). Cf. J. Collantes S.J., La fede nella Chiesa cattolica, pp. 327-32.
43. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Prologue to the Argentine edition of Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 26-7.
44. Ibid, p. 28.
45. P. G. M. Roschini O.S.M., Maria Santissima nella storia della salvezza, (Isola del Liri, Tipografia Editrice Pisani, 1969), vol. II, p. 486. According to another famous Mariologist “the empire of Mary is extending, even if it is of a subordinated order, as much as the kingdom of Christ himself is extending, of which St Paul says, that before him all things must bend their knee in reverence: in heaven and on earth and under the earth (Phil. 2:10). Thus it is for Mary: because she is queen of the world, she is queen of heaven, of earth, of purgatory, and she also makes her royal power felt by those confined in Avernus”, Don Emilio Campana, Maria nel dogma cattolico, (Turin, Marietti, 1936), p. 937. On the royalty of Mary cf. Théodore Köhler, Royauté de Marie, in DSp, vol. XIII, 1988, coll. 1098-103; G. M. Roschini O.S.M., Maria Santissima, vol. II, pp. 345-516; Tommaso M. Bartolomei O.S.M., “Giustificazione dei titoli o fondamenti dommatici della Regalità di Maria”, Ephemerides Mariologicae, vol. XV, 1965, pp. 49-82.
46. Pius XII, Encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam of 11 October 1954, in AAS, vol. 46, 1954, pp. 625-40.
47. Pius XII, Radiomessage Bendito seja o Senhor, pp. 87-8.
48. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Prologue to the Argentine edition of Revolution and Counter-Revolution, p. 29.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.