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The Immaculate Heart of Mary: Visions for the World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
In the Catholic Church throughout the world, the cult of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is one of the most widespread forms of modern Marian devotion, expressing a dominant mood within contemporary Catholicism.’ For its devotees, the heart of Mary is almost literally ‘the heart of a heartless world’, and indeed, the image of the world - the globe of the Earth - is central to the cult.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004
References
1 Very little has been written on the subject of the cult of the Heart of Mary. The only published article I have found devoted entirely to the subject is Arragain, J., ‘a Devotion au Cceur de Marie’, in Manoir, Hubert du, ed., Maria: Etudes sur la Sainlc Vierge, 5 (Paris, 1958), 1007–48 Google Scholar.
2 Varghese, Roy Abraham, God-Sent: a History of the Accredited Apparitions of Mary (New York, 2000), 149–63 Google Scholar.
3 Miravalle, Mark, ‘In battle array with the Co-Redemptrix’, in Miravalle, Mark, ed., Contemporary Insights on a Fifth Marian Dogma (Goleta, CA, 2000), 39–50 Google Scholar.
4 Cushing, Richard J., ‘Foreword’, in Eudes, St John (trans. Charles di Targiani and Ruth Hauser), The Admirable Heart of Mary (New York, 1948), vii–viii Google Scholar.
5 For example, the sixteenth-century spiritual writer Lanspergius encouraged devotion to the Heart of Jesus. A quotation illustrating this is given in James Brodrick, Saint Peter Canisius (1938), 16.
6 Eudes, Admirable Heart, 14.
7 Ibid., 19-20.
8 Ibid., 24.
9 ibid, 19.
10 Ibid., 34-5.
11 Ibid., 3 8. Elsewhere Eudes writes of Christ as the sun, and Mary’s heart as the mirror which reflects it (e.g., 105-11).
12 This general line of thought is not unique to John Eudes. The Mexican nun, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-95), makes similar connections between Mary and creation. See Kirk, Pamela, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Religion, Art, and Feminism (New York, 1999), 60–5 Google Scholar.
13 Eudes, Admirable Heart, 42-3.
14 Ibid., 47-8.
15 Ibid., 55.
16 Ibid., 60.
17 Ibid., 68.
18 Ibid., 27. The Admirable Heart of Mary is the perfect image of the most divine Heart of Jesus. It is the pattern and model for our own hearts; and all our happiness, perfection and glory consists in striving to transform them into so many living images of the sacred Heart of Mary, just as her holy Heart is a consummate likeness of the adorable Heart of Jesus’ (ibid., 265).
19 Funkenstein, Amos, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, NJ, 1986), 28 Google Scholar.
20 Breton, David Le, Anthropologic du corps et modernite (Paris, 1990)Google Scholar.
21 Doueihi, Milad, A Perverse History of the Human Heart (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1997), 126–8 Google Scholar.
22 Galot, Jean S.J, Le Cam de Marie (Paris, 1955), 7 Google Scholar.
23 Chevalier, Jules, Nolre-Dame du Sacre-Cceur (Paris, 1895)Google Scholar.
24 Stratton, Suzanne L., Hie Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne, 1994)Google Scholar.
25 A discussion of the development of these ideas can be found in Sarah Jane Boss, Empress and Handmaid: on Nature and Gender in the Cult of the Virgin Mary (2000), 123-55, esp. 140-51.
26 Accounts of the origin of the Miraculous Medal are given in Rene Laurentin (trans. Paul Inwood), The Life of Catherine Laboure (1983), 52-105; and Joseph I. Dirvin, Saint Catherine Laboure of the Miraculous Medal (Rockford, IL, 1981), 80-123.
27 Louis Blond, Notre-Dame des Victoires (Paris, 1937), 10-13.
28 Ibid., 14-15.
29 Benamozegh, Elijah (trans. Maxwell Luria), Israel and Humanity (New York and Mahwah, NJ, 1995), 39 Google Scholar.
30 Ibid., 40.
31 Cited in Kselman, Thomas A., Miracles and Prophecies in Nineteenth-Century France (New Brunswick, NJ, 1983), 80, 92 Google Scholar.
32 Eliphas Levi (trans, A.E. Waite), The History of Magic (1969), 32.
33 Zimdars-Swartz, Sandra L., Encountering Mary: from La Salette to Medjugorje (Princeton, NJ, 1991), 27–43 Google Scholar.
34 Montfort, St Louis Marie de, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin (Liverpool, 1976)Google Scholar.
35 Barbara Corrado Pope, ‘Immaculate and powerful: the Marian revival in the nineteenth century’, in Clarissa Atkinson et al., eds, Immaculate and Powerful: the Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality ([Wellingborough], 1985), 173-200.
36 Quoted ibid., 181-2.
37 Kselman, Miracles and Prophecies, 12-36; Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (1999), 31. 33. 77-8.
38 See, for example, www.immaculateheart.com or www.archoftriumph.org. At the time of writing this article, the site www.fatima.org, devoted to promoting the cult of Our Lady of Fatima (see below), includes a page on which there is an article by Christopher A. Ferrara, entitled, ‘A potential apocalypse?’, the purpose of which is to point out that there is evidence from reputable scientists that the Earth is in danger of destruction. This evidence is interpreted as support for the Virgin’s warning of a coming ‘chastisement’ upon the world.
39 For a more detailed account, see Zimdars-Swartz, Encountering Mary, 67-91; for an account by a protagonist for the cult, see Johnston, Francis, Fatima: the Great Sign (Chulmleigh, 1980)Google Scholar.
40 Zimdars-Swartz, Encountering Mary, 190-219.
41 This practice recalls that of a popular devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whereby the devotee receives communion on the first Friday of each month for nine consecutive months.
42 Cuneo, Michael W., The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism (New York and Oxford, 1997), 134–7 Google Scholar.
43 Laurentin, Rene (trans. Kenneth D. Whitehead), The Meaning of Consecration Today: a Marian Model for a Secularized Age (San Francisco, CA, 1992), 86–9 Google Scholar.
44 Gaelle Finlan, ‘Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary among the Sisters of Charity’ (undergraduate dissertation, University of Oxford Faculty of Theology, 1991).
45 Roschini, G.-M., ‘L’Ordre des Servites de Marie’, in Manoir, Hubert du, ed., Maria: itudessur la Sainte Vierge, 2 vols (Paris, 1952), 883–907 Google Scholar, at 886-7, 894, 896, 900, 904-6.
46 Susan Griffin, Pornography and Silence (1981), 81-154.
47 Comment made at a meeting in Oxford, Jan. 1999, by Deborah Jones, editor of The Ark, the journal of the Catholic Study Centre for Animal Welfare.