"The powers of Hell fear the name and protection of Mary."

Men do not fear a powerful hostile army as much as the powers of hell fear the name and protection of Mary.

-St. Bonaventure

“God has established not just one enmity but ‘enmities’, and not only between Mary and Satan but between her race and his race. That is, God has put enmities, antipathies and hatreds between the true children and servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and slaves of the devil. They have no love and no sympathy for each other. The children of Belial, the slaves of Satan, the friends of the world, - for they are all one and the same - have always persecuted and will persecute more than ever in the future those who belong to the Blessed Virgin, just as Cain of old persecuted his brother Abel, and Esau his brother Jacob. These are the types of the wicked and of the just. But the humble Mary will always triumph over Satan, the proud one, and so great will be her victory that she will crush his head, the very seat of his pride. She will unmask his serpent's cunning and expose his wicked plots. She will scatter to the winds his devilish plans and to the end of time will keep her faithful servants safe from his cruel claws.

But Mary's power over the evil spirits will especially shine forth in the latter times, when Satan will lie in wait for her heel, that is, for her humble servants and her poor children whom she will rouse to fight against him. In the eyes of the world they will be little and poor and, like the heel, lowly in the eyes of all, down-trodden and crushed as is the heel by the other parts of the body. But in compensation for this they will be rich in God's graces, which will be abundantly bestowed on them by Mary. They will be great and exalted before God in holiness. They will be superior to all creatures by their great zeal and so strongly will they be supported by divine assistance that, in union with Mary, they will crush the head of Satan with their heel, that is, their humility, and bring victory to Jesus Christ.” (Treatise On True Devotion To The Blessed Virgin, 54).

I have always viewed the sling which David used to slay Goliath as a harbinger, a sort of figure or sign pointing to the Holy Rosary which would be given to the faithful by Our Lady and by which they would “crush the head of Satan” – “the very seat of his pride” as Montfort puts it. We read in 1 Samuel 17:

“With his shield-bearer marching before him, the Philistine also advanced closer and closer to David. When he had sized David up, and seen that he was youthful and ruddy, and handsome in appearance, he held him in contempt. The Philistine said to David, ‘Am I a dog that you come against me with a staff?’ Then the Philistine cursed David by his gods and said to him, ‘Come here to me, and I will leave your flesh for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field.’ David answered him: ‘You come against me with sword and spear and scimitar, but I come against you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel that you have insulted. Today the Lord shall deliver you into my hand; I will strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will leave your corpse and the corpses of the Philistine army for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field; thus the whole land shall learn that Israel has a God. All this multitude, too, shall learn that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he shall deliver you into our hands’…David put his hand into the bag and took out a stone, hurled it with the sling, and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone embedded itself in his brow, and he fell prostrate on the ground. Thus David overcame the Philistine with sling and stone..” (1 Samuel 17: 41-47, 49-50).

The Devil is the adversary of faithful Christians. And, like Goliath, he seems to cast a big shadow. But when we approach him on the battlefield [“For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens,” Eph 6:12] we have our own sling as a weapon – the Holy Rosary. And every bead, every Hail Mary prayerfully recited, is hurled as a weapon against the Devil’s head, the seat of his pride. Therefore, Montfort exhorts us, “So arm yourself with the arms of God, with the holy Rosary, and you will crush the devil’s head and stand firm in the face of all his temptations. That is why even a pair of rosary beads is so terrible to the devil, and why the saints have used them to fetter him and drive him from the bodies of those who were possessed.” (The Secret of the Holy Rosary, 85).

Related reading here.

From the moment of conception, a person is entitled to protection under the law

CBN reports:


"A Harvard Law journal says one of the most important parts of the U.S. Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment, protects the rights of unborn babies.

Adopted in 1868, in the wake of the Civil War, that amendment sought to protect the rights of newly freed slaves.

It declares that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

According to an article in The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, law student Joshua Craddock argues that a person becomes a human being at the point of conception, and from that moment forward is entitled to protection under the law.

The journal is a conservative and libertarian review and one of more than a dozen publications edited by Harvard Law students.

Craddock writes, "The preborn are members of the human species from the moment of fertilization. Therefore, the Fourteenth Amendment protects the preborn. If one concedes the minor premise (that preborn humans are members of the human species), all that must be demonstrated is that the term 'person,' in its original public meaning at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment's adoption, applied to all members of the human species."

Based upon the premise that the lives of the unborn are constitutionally protected, Craddock further argues that states that allow abortion are breaking the law.

"Congress or the courts must intervene," he writes, explaining that abortion must not be condoned by the courts.

He argues that legal abortion deprives a particular category of people, in this case the unborn, the equal protection of the law. In other words, it's unlawful not to prosecute people who murder the unborn while at the same time prosecuting those who murder other types of people.

Craddock asserts that the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment was to include the protection of the unborn. "A general consensus treated preborn human beings as 'persons,'" he says. "The preborn were included within the public meaning of the term 'person' at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted."

Furthermore, at that time, most states outlawed abortion in laws covering "offenses against the person" according to The Stream.  Most states referred to an unborn child as a "child" in their laws.

Finally, Craddock points out that in 1859, the American Medical Association demanded the government protect the "independent and actual existence of the child before birth." Eight years later, the Medical Society of New York called abortion at any stage of the child's life "murder."

As Dr. & Mrs. J.C. Willke explain in their book "Why can't we love them both: questions and answers about abortion," "Biologic human life is defined by examining the scientific facts of human development. This is a field where there is no controversy, no disagreement. There is only one set of facts, only one embryology book is studied in medical school. The more scientific knowledge of fetal development that has been learned, the more science has confirmed that the beginning of any one human individual's life, biologically speaking, begins at the completion of the union of his father's sperm and his mother's ovum, a process called "conception," "fertilization," or "fecundation." This is so because this being, from fertilization, is alive, human, sexed, complete and growing."

In his Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II said that: "Some people try to justify abortion by claiming that the result of conception, at least up to a certain number of days, cannot yet be considered a personal human life. But in fact, "from the time that the ovum is fertilized, a life is begun which is neither that of the father nor the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already. This has always been clear, and ... modern genetic science offers clear confirmation. It has demonstrated that from the first instant there is established the programme of what this living being will be: a person, this individual person with his characteristic aspects already well determined. Right from fertilization the adventure of a human life begins, and each of its capacities requires time-a rather lengthy time-to find its place and to be in a position to act". Even if the presence of a spiritual soul cannot be ascertained by empirical data, the results themselves of scientific research on the human embryo provide "a valuable indication for discerning by the use of reason a personal presence at the moment of the first appearance of a human life: how could a human individual not be a human person?" (No. 60).

Don't expect the liberal mainstream media, which has succumbed to a radical anti-life Culture of Death, to cover this story.  They prefer the lie to the truth.

But examine these photos of murdered babies and turn away from the liberal media.

I recommend One America News.  See here.

Pope Francis, isn't concern for the protection of nature incompatible with the justification of homosexual acts?

Pope Francis, in Laudato Si, insists that, “Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion.” And “How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?” See here.

And what of the homosexual question? Isn't it also true that concern for the protection of nature is incompatible with the justification of homosexual acts?

Today so many, even within the Church, seek to justify homosexual acts.  But, as the Roman barrister and statesman Cicero reminded us, "right is based, not upon men’s opinions, but upon Nature. This fact will immediately be plain if you once get a clear conception of man’s fellowship and union with his fellow-men. For no single thing is so like another, so exactly its counterpart, as all of us are to one another…And so, however we may define man, a single definition will apply to all.” [Laws I x 28-30]

Cicero goes on later to draw two conclusions of critical importance, namely that laws exist for the common good, and laws that deny fundamental human rights are not valid laws at all: “It is agreed, of course, that laws were invented for the safety of citizens, the preservation of States, and the tranquillity and happiness of human life, and that those who first put statutes of this kind in force convinced their people that it was their intention to write down and put into effect such rules as, once accepted and adopted, would make possible for them an honourable and happy life; and when such rules were drawn up and put in force, it is clear that men called them ‘laws’. It may thus be clear that in the very definition of the term ‘law’ there inheres the idea and principle of choosing what is just and true.”

Vatican II stressed that the moral goodness of the acts proper to conjugal life, ordered according to true human dignity, "does take only the good intentions and the evaluation of motives into account; objective criteria must be used, criteria drawn from the nature of the human person and of his acts, criteria which respect the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love" (Gaudium et spes, n. 51).

This teaching is emphasized in the Declaration Persona humana: "The use of the sexual function has its true meaning and moral rectitude only in true marriage" (n. 5).

Homosexuality is objectively incapable of achieving "the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation". In this regard the above-mentioned Declaration Persona humana says: "According to the objective moral order [Natural Law], homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality" (n. 8).

May we not say that concern for the protection of nature is incompatible with the justification of homosexual acts?

Of course. So why doesn't Pope Francis say this in his Encyclical?

Related reading here.