Pope Frantic has said so many egregious and blasphemous things about Our One Holy, Universal, and Apsotolic Faith that vehemently criticizing him has become almost a reflex action. So Of COURSE the Big Guns are coming out when he takes aim at Our Most August and Glorious Ever Virgin Blessed Mother. And this is exactly what Anthony Stine proceeds to do in a video entitled "Pope Francis Ruthlessly Corrected By Good Priest For Demoting The Virgin Mary". Early on Mr Stine states that: "Our Lady is Our Mother and many other Glorious Things but she is NOT our sister."
Hold on a moment, Anthony. Hold your fire. Is Our Lady really not our sister? Let us look at Pope Frantic's statements a little more closely.
Our Lady is the Daughter of God the Father, as, in a very real sense, so are we, all Sons and Daughters of God Almighty, the Creator of all things seen and unseen. So, in that sense, Our Lady is our sister. Now, much earlier in his "pontificate", Pope Frantic said that "The Gospel does not tell us anything: if [Our Lady] spoke a word or not… She was silent, but in her heart, how many things told the Lord! ‘You, that day, this and the other that we read, you had told me that [Our Lord Jesus Christ] would be great; you had told me that you would have given him the throne of David, his forefather, that he would have reigned forever and now I see him there [Towit, dying on the Cross] !’ Our Lady was human! And perhaps she even had the desire to say: ‘Lies! I was deceived!’ John Paul II would say this, speaking about Our Lady in that moment. But she, with her silence, hid the mystery that she did not understand and with this silence allowed for this mystery to grow and blossom in hope." (Homily at Mass on the morning of 20 December 2013)
Those words of Pope Frantic, of course, should strike any Catholic as blasphemous, at least superficially. Now, Pope Frantic does inject a lot of truth into those statements. Our Lady WAS human. Even though she is the August Mother of God, Co-Redemptrix, and Mediatrix of all Grace, free from Original Sin, and entitled to all the Prerogatives of the Litany of Loreto, she WAS human. We tend to forget that. And at times she was even exasperated, as we read in the Gospel of Luke. "Son, why hast thou done so to us? Behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing." Even of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ St Paul says: "For we have not a high priest, who can not have compassion on our infirmities: but one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin." St Paul does not say, "most things" but "all things". In other words, Our Lord Jesus Christ, though exempt from the guilt of Original Sin, was not exempt from the WOUNDS of Original Sin. And as the Son, so the Mother.
What makes Our Lady most glorious was not that she was some sort of demigod floating above the cares and trials of this life, lost in her own Economy of Salvation. No, what makes Our Lady most glorious was her journey here below, which was not tainted by the least sin, and, nay, the least imperfection. To get some idea of this, let us turn to one of the Mystics, St Catherine of Genoa. One day, God gave her a vision of the slightest venial sin of the sort most of us are guilty of with each passing day. Just the slightest sin, like a hesitation to do good, a lack of promptness to duty, or an idle word. According to St Catherine- if the retelling of this incident on the Barnhardt Website be accurate- the vision was so horrid she would prefer being immersed in Hell to seeing it again, so deeply had it seared her very being.
Now it says in the scripture that: "A just man shall fall seven times and shall rise again." and that with each passing day. [The number "seven" here is not being literal, but a figure of the unbounded.] And Matthew says of St Joseph that he was a Just Man, and tradition holds that St Joseph was never conscious of the slightest venial sin. Nevertheless, St Joseph had manifold imperfections. As do we. We might awaken and intend to give to God a Perfect Day, full of zealous prayers and acts, but the very thought wearies and disheartens us, and we say with the Psalmist: "Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?" Which is why we say repeatedly every day: "Pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death." And we address Our Mediatrix rather than Our Lord Jesus Christ directly, because we trust in her power of intercession, as Willed by Almighty God.
And so, Our Lady might indeed have been TEMPTED in the depths of Her Sorrows to think that perhaps she was deceived, but such temptations would have been as arrows deflected by a Tower of Ivory. Poor Pope Frantic wishes to drag Our Lady down to the realm of the Natural and Passible, rather than elevating his heart, and ours, to the realm of the Supernatural and Impassible. And Our Lady is that road- and that is why she is Our Mother, and we never reference her as being Our Sister. Not only was Our Lady not guilty of the least sin, but she had not the slightest imperfection. In this vale of tears, buffeted by legions of demons, sufferings both carnal and spiritual, and having but a dark vision, as per St Paul, she nevertheless always strove with her whole heart to do the will of God at every moment. That, apart from being the Mother of God, is her greatest glory, her greatest boast, and her greatest accomplishment.
And that is why She is most pleasing to God. And that is why, without her prayers, there would have been no Incarnation, no forgiveness of sins, and no Descent of the Holy Ghost. Her perfect obedience is the source and fountain of Her Seven Sorrows, her Infinite Suffering- Infinite because of its exact correspondence to those of Her Son on the Wood of the Holy Cross, and the immediate source of Our Salvation, not due to theological necessity, but due to the Sovereign Will of Almighty God.
The tragedy of the Vatican II Conciliar Church is that, at its very best, it is but natural, and concerned with merely the Earthly problems of humanity. And as such, it cannot attain the supernatural, such as perfect contingency in Holy Matrimony, or perfect celibacy in the unmarried state. Chastity is completely alien to its life, as is the bliss of the Supernatural Life. The Fallen World is a mystery to it- it sees in creation merely the building blocks to the Workers' Paradise, and so joins the Progressives in the Struggle and the Journey. It is the Church of Freemasonry, the Church of the Great Architect, and the Church of the Sons of Liberty. And that is what has begotten its Great Ecumenical Vision. And the above words of Pope Frantic, denigrating Our Lady, are the epitome of that mindset.
So, yes, in the natural order Our Lady is the daughter of Sts Anne and Joachim (although Holy Tradition tells us she was conceived in a most glorious and wondrous manner, and not during the normal course of the marital embrace). And, as offspring of Eve, she has a claim to being our sister. And in Heaven we shall realize that more fully when we shall all be Sons and Daughters, even with the Holy Angels, before the throne of Almighty God. But at the same time, Our Lady will never cease to be Queen of Heaven and Earth, and hold the most August place on the Crystal Sea. Our Lady proclaims that the Baptized are a New Creation, in this world Pilgrims and Wayfarers, having nothing to do with perishable things.
Our Lady, though not God, is the First of All Creatures.
I follow your work and greatly appreciate it, but the idea that both Our Blessed Lord and Our Lady were somehow saddled with the wounds of Original Sin does not make sense. Any further explanation of your meaning and understanding is appreciated. Godspeed.