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Jubilee Year. The purpose of this week's Roman holiday was the formal inauguration of the Marian Year, proclaimed by the Pope to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the promulgation .of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception (which holds that the Mother of Jesus Christ was preserved from original sin). For the occasion, the Pope drove through downtown Rome for the first time since the war. In the Piazza di Spagna, at the foot of the magnificent Spanish Steps, he stopped to place a bouquet of flowers at the column commemorating the Immaculate Conception. Then he drove on to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore (where, 55 years ago next April, at 23. the future Pope celebrated his first Mass).
Pius entered the basilica, under a velvet and damask canopy, while the choir sang the triumphant Tu es Petrus. Then, with members of a Catholic Action youth group, he recited the prayer he wrote for the Marian Year: "Enraptured by the splendor of your heavenly beauty, and impelled by the anxieties of the world, we cast ourselves into your arms, O Immaculate Mother of Jesus . . . Bend tenderly over our aching wounds. Convert the wicked, dry the tears of the afflicted and oppressed, comfort the poor and humble, quench hatreds, sweeten harshness, safeguard the flower of purity in youth, protect the Holy Church, make all men feel the attraction of Christian goodness . . ."
The ceremony had a meaning beyond the purely religious. The veneration of Mary, considered sentimental, superstitious or downright sinful by most Protestants, is historically significant. Mary in Catholic theology is the No. 1 saint. In the imagination of many Catholics, she is even something of a radical, the special friend of the "poor and humble."* Like individual Catholics, the Church has traditionally turned to Mary in times of trouble, and has drawn strength from what, in politics, would be called her mass following.
When Pius IX proclaimed the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception a century ago, the Age of Enlightenment had proclaimed sin to be a word with which to frighten children, scientific progress was god, and man was widely regarded as merely a higher animal. The Marian dogma challenged this non credo of the age—an assertion that man is sinful but touched by God, that the greatest mysteries are beyond science, that the supernatural and the spiritual are real. That is also the significance of Pius XII's attention to Mary, including the proclamation three years ago of the Dogma of the Assumption.† For the crisis the Church faced 100 years ago continues.
It is as serious as any since the Reformation. But the Reformation was a revolt only against the Church; the present crisis is, essentially, a revolt against God. It has many aspects. Its climax is Marxism; its accompanying symptoms include many ills of modern society—lack of moral certainty, an overdose of materialism, worship of the state, negation of all things spiritual. Therefore it is a threat not only to the Catholic Church, but to all Christian ideals. Despite the gulf that divides them, both Protestants and Catholics have found that they can be allies in defense of common values against the common enemy.