Mary is the answer to the question of cultural Marxism

This past year, 2017, commemorated the centenary of apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima. The Virgin Mary prophesied and warned of the errors of communism in the midst of the First World War and the tremendous political turmoil in Europe.

In Portugal as well as Italy, the rise of communism was cause for concern as the Roman Catholic Church felt Bolshevik communism spread its atheistic errors. The message of Mary at Fatima was clear: to pray for the conversion of Russia.

Dramatically and miraculously, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was triggered by the election of a Polish Pope – John Paul II who offered solidarity to the oppressed Roman Catholic Poles and provided the Polish people the religious determination needed to tackle what seemed the unconquerable: the Soviet Union and its ideological machinery.

We are still left with the challenge of communist “errors spreading”: atheistic ideology that replaces God with the state, and divine law with human law.

Was the Virgin Mary’s warning only in reference to the hard communism of military intervention. Or did it also relate to “soft” communism, now referred to as “cultural Marxism”? Not the hunting down of priests in Poland, or plotting the assassination of the Pope by the Soviets, but using a media brain-washing campaign to damage the credibility of the Church and its priests, making the presence of Christ insignificant, his teachings irrelevant?

One does not need military arms when smear campaigns have the same effect – stifling the voice of individuals, ensuring Marxist agendas of social reconstruction prevail, glamorizing the material as the only true good and an ethos without God is imposed.

Let Christian symbols be removed in the name of multiculturalism. Let people express sexual identity any way they wish in the name of “rights.” Those who raise questions and violate the laws will be punished or bullied into silence.

It should come as no surprise that when the same-sex marriage referendum passed in Ireland, emotions were running high over Church-related scandals. What a strategic moment to have the referendum: when Irish Catholics were hurt and angry enough to succumb to anti-Catholic lobby groups.

Strategies used by cultural Marxists involve silencing their opposition. The Catholic Church, vocal in proclaiming the Gospel of truth, is the first to be targeted.

The Virgin Mary warned of Russia spreading its errors “throughout the world, causing wars and persecution of the Church…” This message goes much further than barricades, army tanks, and barbed wire fences characterizing communist regimes.

When I was travelling to West Berlin from Bremen while studying in Germany, Dobermans were used by the police to sniff underneath the trains as we entered East Germany. Cultural Marxists don’t use Dobermans to hunt down people anymore; instead, they have laws and penalties to keep people silent.

I always thought of university as being a pillar of freedom of expression, the place of exchange of ideas and intellectual debate. So I was confused when I heard the hostile reaction to Pope Benedict XVI’s lecture at the University of Regensburg because of his controversial reference to Islam.

I was shocked when he was later invited to give a lecture at La Sapienza University in Rome. The resulting controversy, including faculty petitions demanding the invitation be rescinded, led to Benedict cancelling his lecture.

In Canada the academic incoherency is evident with pro-life students required to remove pro-life displays and literature, while ideologically-driven students promote “reproductive rights” to the detriment of human life. Students who do not want preborn babies harmed are silenced, even punished.

The word “harm” has acquired a new meaning: making someone feel uncomfortable because the proper gender pronoun was not used in addressing the individual.

Forget the preborn baby who is destroyed in the mother’s womb. Killing a preborn baby does not meet the definition of harm. The killing of a preborn baby is not harm so long as it is not a baby seal. Cultural Marxism paves the way to social reconstruction through imposed change: the state imposes on its people how to think, and if one disagrees there are consequences.

Perhaps Marxism brings to completion what began with the “Enlightenment” and its bracketing of God. Once the Enlightenment rejected the Virgin Mary, since she belonged to Roman Catholic piety, a trajectory fell into place.

The Marxist errors plaguing western societies have as an intellectual/spiritual source the loss of the Virgin Mary, the loss of motherhood/womanhood, the confused male identity trying to find his place as husband, father, and man, and the loss of sexual identity.

But Christ himself on the cross says, “This is your mother,” for John and for all of the Church.

The Virgin Mary brings Christ our Saviour into the world. She brings us womanhood, the bride, the Church. She brings us the Son of God, the bridegroom.

She belongs to the conjugal imagery of male and female. The one to combat cultural Marxism, in fact, is the Virgin Mary: her heel will crush Satan’s head.

Father David Bellusci is a Dominican priest and assistant professor of philosophy at Catholic Pacific College in Langley, B.C. Email: [email protected]