St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort in the Light of Vatican II?
This article is reproduced with the kind permission of Corrispondenza Romana, which published it in Italian on 5 March 2025.
Do we go to Jesus with Mary or through Mary? According to the prevailing orthodoxy, which has become de rigueur in the Church since the last Council, the answer given to this question would be “with” rather than “by”, so much so that one may wonder whether we shouldn’t rephrase St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort’s venerable principle of Marian devotion: Ad Jesum per Mariam. Among the countless examples of this new tendency which has prevailed in recent years are the words of a theologian in the tradition of John Paul II, Father Guillaume de Menthière. Albeit with ostensible restraint, he confirms this tendency when asked by a journalist if, with Pope John Paul II, we did not undergo “a kind of change of perspective”, to which he replies
“Yes, [with] the Council and Pope John Paul II who, especially in his encyclical Redemptoris Mater, comments on the Council. Indeed, the new position, one might say, is … that Mary is not simply the one who is like a ladder which leads us to God, or like an aqueduct, as Saint Bernard says, which leads us to God, but she is on our side, she walks with us, she makes her pilgrimage of faith. So, we no longer simply go to Jesus through Mary, but we go to Jesus with Mary. Both are true, of course, but in contemporary Marian theology, and in the Magisterium of John Paul II, the emphasis is much more on the fact that Mary walks with us; she accomplishes her pilgrimage in faith with us.”[1]
“Both are true,” he says to reassure us. However, if we examine his words, we notice that the “with” is reinforced at the expense of the “through”, thanks to a turn of phrase that amounts to a kind of insidious semi-negation: “no longer simply… but” (or “not only… but”). This turn of phrase has become so hackneyed in ecclesiastical circles that it is probably used mechanically by most prelates. It is normally used to mark a crescendo, a higher degree, as in: “Not only do we love God, but we adore him.” Normally, it is the “only” (or the “simply”)that is negated, but here – under the veil of an affirmation maintained and reinforced, albeit completed by a more important affirmation – there is in reality a surreptitious form of negation: the mediation of Mary as ladder or aqueduct is thus devalued in favor of the accompaniment of the one who, at our humble level, goes on pilgrimage with us. This rhetorical device suggests that, between the two propositions, the latter far outweighs the former in importance. There’s a rupture in equilibrium, and so the first is weakened, even undermined. It’s like saying, “It’s not this that counts, but that.” Implicitly, what one claims to maintain is actually minimized. So, to say that from now on we go to God with Mary, “no longer simply” through Mary, is to minimize Mary’s mediation, in favor of her role as companion.
However, the question of whether we go to Jesus through or with Mary is misleading in any case, as it poses a false and irrelevant alternative. Let’s now see why the question is apt, surreptitiously, to be misleading, by insinuating a sterile opposition. Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort can shed some light on this.
True devotion according to Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort
This great Marian saint defines true and perfect devotion to Mary as follows:
“The Perfect Practice of Devotion to Mary… consists in giving oneself entirely, as a slave, to Mary and to Jesus through her; then, in doing everything with Mary, in Mary, through Mary and for Mary.”[2]
These four prepositions can aptly be related to the four Aristotelian-Thomistic causes: material, formal, efficient and final. The Marian wisdom of St. Louis-Marie harmonizes perfectly with the philosophical wisdom of St. Thomas, as can be seen from the analogy made by Carmelite Father Jean de Jésus-Hostie[3]:
“In short, to say that we must do all our actions through Mary is to give her the role of efficient cause, to abandon to her the initiative and guidance of our whole life, reminding us that it’s not just a question of the gestures we make or the steps we take, but of all the movements of our soul down to the very depths of our spirit. To do all our actions with Mary is to take her as our model, as the exemplary, if not material, cause of the smallest details of our lives. To do all our actions in Mary is to make her the formal cause of our whole spiritual being, to make her truly the soul of our soul and of all its action. Finally, to do all our actions for Mary is to take her as our final cause, indeed, our final end.”
The first two causes, efficient and exemplary (if not material), can therefore be related to these prepositions which Father de Menthière separates. According to the first cause, Mary acts as Mediatrix of our salvation, guiding our actions and thoughts, and according to the second, she serves as a model to be imitated, or even, insofar as we allow ourselves to be entirely transformed into her, as the quasi-material cause of our actions as well as of the movements of our heart. (For Mary becomes by grace like the matter of which we are made.) No sterile opposition insinuates itself between these two causes in the mind of our great Marian saint, contrary to what can be heard nowadays. What’s more, Mary is even, according to this analogy, the formal cause, or, as this saint puts it in a figurative way, the mold that forms and reforms our souls in her image and likeness. And she is even the proximate final cause that leads us to our true last end, which is God. On the latter cause, Father Jean de Jésus-Hostie adds:
“It is here that what we have said about the immediate mediation of the Blessed Virgin, founded on her incomparable fusion with God, is confirmed. God always remains our one and only true last end, and it is to reach him more surely that we direct all our energies towards Mary, as towards a spiritual landmark: but this landmark is much more than a mere proximate or intermediary end: Mary is truly for us the face of God and constitutes with him, let us not fear to say it, one and the same last end.
This extraordinary statement is in conformity with St. Louis-Marie’s teaching that Mary is so transformed into Jesus “that one might more easily separate the light from the sun, … than the divine Mary”[4] from her Son. And the Carmelite religious concludes: “The four formulas used by Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort are therefore not a mere oratorical amplification, but the expression of a very lofty reality, and of a universal Marian causality.” Thus is explained in a convincing manner Saint Louis-Marie’s Marian doctrine: applying to this doctrine the four Thomistic causes highlights Mary’s universal mediation.
A regrettable conciliar “rereading” of the Montfortian doctrine[5]
How, then, have we come to reduce the mystery of Mary by contrasting the efficaciousness of her mediating action with the exemplarity of her faith and charity, to the point of making her a mere model to follow, or even a mere traveling companion? Father de Menthière points to John Paul II and the Council. A text from the Council enumerates some of the Blessed Virgin’s titles: “The Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix, and Mediatrix. This, however, is to be so understood that it neither takes away from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficaciousness of Christ the one Mediator.”[6] This text says that, in a weakened sense, Mary is invoked, not by the Church but only in the Church[7], as “mediatrix” tout court, without adding “of all graces”. John Paul II explains: “Chapter 8 of Lumen gentium recalls [the title] ‘Mediatrix’. However, care was taken not to attach it to any particular theology of mediation, but to add it only to the other titles recognized for Mary.”[8] Thus, this title is attributed to Mary as an honorific title among others, but without any precise meaning being attributed to it, leaving the door open to both minimalist and maximalist interpretations.
John Paul II, a great devotee of St. Louis-Marie, who wrote some fine passages on the Blessed Virgin, nevertheless affirms, in his Letter to the Montfortian Families on the Marian doctrine of their holy founder, that “it is in the light of the Council that Montfortian doctrine must today be reread and interpreted.”[9] Yet, isn’t it better to strive to understand it according to its own light, as does St. Pius X in Ad illum deum, and not according to a “rereading” desired by the Council? It is regrettable that John Paul II, following his own advice, affirms: “Attributing the maximum to Mary cannot become the norm of Mariology.”[10] However, Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort writes: “All that belongs to God by nature, belongs to Mary by grace.”[11] And Pius XII, in the bull proclaiming the dogma of the Assumption, affirms:
“in the field of Mariology the norm that ‘keeping in mind the standards of propriety, and when there is no contradiction or repugnance on the part of Scripture, the mysteries of grace which God has wrought in the Virgin must be measured, not by the ordinary laws, but by the divine omnipotence.’”[12]
Pius XII thus confirms the doctrine taught by St. Alphonsus de Liguori[13], who invites his readers to make it a rule always to attribute the maximum glory and greatness to Mary, provided this does not contradict Scripture, in order to glorify God by glorifying his Mother. In a striking contrast, John Paul II “urges” Catholics “to contemplate Mary as a humble woman of our humanity who allowed herself to be led by the interior action of the Spirit”[14], which is certainly not false in itself, but which is a far cry from the Marian doctrine transmitted by Pius IX in the bull proclaiming the dogma of the Immaculate Conception :
“Far above all the angels and all the saints so wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all heavenly gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity that this mother, ever absolutely free of all stain of sin, all fair and perfect, would possess that fullness of holy innocence and sanctity than which, under God, one cannot even imagine anything greater, and which, outside of God, no mind can succeed in comprehending fully…. God alone excepted, Mary is more excellent than all, and by nature fair and beautiful, and more holy than the Cherubim and Seraphim. To praise her all the tongues of heaven and earth do not suffice.” [15]
To obscure Marian mediation is to obscure divine Providence.
To conclude this brief reflection, let’s return to the philosophical notion of efficient cause, defined by Aristotle as “that from which motion proceeds”, i.e. “the agent”[16]. Movement, as understood by Aristotle, has a much broader meaning than it does today: it does not just designate a change of place, but also of physical state, such as growth, or of the state of the soul. The notion of cause is based on the principle that movement is not chaotic, but obeys a natural order. It is divided into two: the principal efficient cause and the instrumental efficient cause. When a painter paints a picture, the principal efficient causality belongs to the painter, the instrumental efficient causality to the brush he handles. In this way, the efficient cause not only explains movement, but indicates that the existence of things has an external origin. According to this distinction, the immediate source of movement is the instrumental causation, the primary origin of existence is the principal causation. Applied to Christian revelation, this distinction signifies that God is the principal efficient cause, while Mary, as mediatrix, is the instrumental efficient cause. Yet isn’t veiling her instrumental causality a way of veiling God’s principal causality? It could be argued that it is, on the contrary, a way of highlighting God’s principal causality, but in reality, the undermining of Mary’s mediatorial action is accompanied by a diminished understanding of God’s providential action in the world. After all, we hardly hear a word about divine Providence these days…
It’s worth recalling the words of St. Jerome: “Let no one doubt, for all that is worthily and solemnly attributed to Our Blessed Mother is entirely to the praise and glory of God.”[17] Following this affirmation, we can state that obscuring the instrumental efficient cause results in obscuring the principal efficient cause. In other words, diminishing the efficaciousness of the Mediatrix has the effect of diminishing, in our minds, God’s almighty action. Our minds remain fixed on our toilsome journey in the shadowy gloom of this lowly world, in the company of a simple woman like us, without lifting our eyes heavenward. This unfortunate tendency is in line with what the spirit of the day, troubled and uncertain, conceives of God, but distances us from the certainty of sound philosophy and Sacred Tradition.
Karen Darantière
[1] Théologie Mariale pour tous, KTO TV, Interview by Régis Burnet with Rémi Chéno, o.p. and Father Guillaume de Menthière, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiITXnEun3M, from 4:40 to 5:55. Two decades earlier, Father de Menthière had published a book entitled, Marie, mère du salut: Marie corédemptrice? : essai de fondement théologique (éditions Téqui, 2000), in which he employs the Thomistic method to systematically examine the doctrine of coredemption, and answers, at the end of the book, in the affirmative to the question of whether it is legitimate, from a doctrinal point of view, to call Mary by the title of Coredemptrix.
[2] Le Secret de Marie, n° 28.
[3] Notre-Dame de la Montée du Carmel, by Father Jean de Jésus-Hostie, éd. Du Carmel, Tarascon, 1951, pp. 162-165; quoted in Marie Médiatrice, éditions Clovis, 2007, pp. 165-166.
[4] Treatise on True Devotion n° 63.
[5] This section is based on La sainte Vierge à Vatican II, le huitième chapitre de Lumen gentium, by Abbé Stephen, in Le Sel de la Terre, nº 45, Summer 2003.
[6] Lumen Gentium 62.
[7] However, a large number of Council Fathers unsuccessfully asked for this passage to be amended, by replacing “in Ecclesia” with “ab Ecclesia”. (Acta synodalia, vol. III, pars VIII, p. 163).
[8] 1st October 1997; ORLF 2489 (7 October 1997), p. 8.
[9] L’Osservatore Romano, n. 3, 20 January 2004, p. 2-3.
[10] 3 January 1996; ORLF 2400 (9 January 1996) p. 8.
[11] Treatise on True Devotion, n° 74.
[12] Pius XII, Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, 1st November 1950, n° 37.
[13] Cf. St Alphonsus Liguori, Paraphrase of the Salve Regina, chapter 5.
[14] 16 December 1997; ORLF 2532 (11/18 August 1998), p. 3. (quoted in La sainte Vierge à Vatican II, op. cit.).
[15] Pius IX, Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus, 8 December 1854.
[16] Aristotle, Physics, II, 3, 194 b 29 ff, 195 a 21 ff.
[17] Saint Jerome, Epist. 9 Ad Paul. et Estoch. n° IV.