August 22, Queenship of the Blessed Virgin.
Today’s feast is a memorial in the liturgical calendar, which suitably falls on the octave of the Assumption. Before the reform of the liturgical calendar, this day was celebrated as the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which has now been transferred to the Saturday after the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In 1954, Pius XII instituted the feast of the Queenship of Mary to be observed on May 31 - which is now the feast of the Visitation in the revised calendar. It all makes sense when you consider the “time-lines” - you know, March 25, Annunciation, followed by May 31, the Visitation, and so on. (Check out Vultus Christi for a more detailed history.)
My pagan friends enjoy pointing out to me how the Catholic Church incorporated all the Pagan myths into Christianity. Along with Protestants, they go to great lengths to demonstrate that the title, Queen of Heaven is the title of the goddess Isis. (Most Catholics have heard this before, just like the stories of how Christmas is the old pagan feast of Saturnalia, as well as a host of other pagan connections. In their eyes, this somehow proves Catholics are mislead in their faith.) The upshot is that many accuse Catholics of goddess worship. Yeah, whatever! G.K. Chesterton can respond to those aruments better than I can.
Chesterton on Paganism.
“It is often said by critics of the Christian origins that certain ritual feasts, processions or dances are really of pagan origin. They might as well say that our legs are of pagan origin. Nobody ever disputed that humanity was human before it was Christian; and no Church manufactured the legs with which men walked or danced, either in pilgrimage or ballet. What can be maintained is this, that where the church has existed it has preserved not only the processions but the dances; not only the cathedral but the carnival. One of the chief claims of Christian civilization is to have preserved things of pagan origin…” - Superstition of Divorce
“What is to be done with the dingy and inky people who laboriously prove to us that Christianity (if they atheists) or Catholicism (if they are Protestants” is ‘only’ a rehash of Paganism or borrowed its ideas from the Pagans? A man standing here in Rome is reduced to silence; he can only answer that such stupidity is stupefying. It is as if someone said that Science may pretend to be independent of, but has really stolen all its facts from Nature; or that protestants professed to be Christians, and yet filched things from the sacred books of the Jews. Science boasts of being based on Nature; and Protestants, when they were Protestants, boasted of being based on the Bible. Christian Rome boasts of being built on Pagan Rome; of surmounting and transcending, but also of preserving it.” - The Resurrection of Rome.
[When Chesterton references science, he might as well have said, Neo-Pagans, since their beliefs are based upon Nature as well.]
My ”pious” explanation.
For lack of a better term I have a ‘pious’ response to these arguments posed by Neo-Pagans. It seems probable that the evil one - the devil - since his intelligence is higher than man’s, and having known or intuited the Incarnation and Redemption beforehand, deceived mankind with false notions of divinity - since as Scripture says, “the gods of the pagans are demons.” Perhaps, anticipating the mystery of Christ through Pagan myths and religions, the devil instigated in man distortions and perversions of the Truth before the fullness of Revelation in Christ, only to revive these false teachings again and again throughout history. Hence, the claim of Pagan myths predating Christianity somehow bolsters their ‘truth’ in the minds of those without faith.
From age to age Paganism has emerged in various forms, with “cleverly concocted myths” seeking to discredit the true God, only to be destroyed by the power of the Cross, the triumph of the Resurrection of Christ, and the witness of the Church. We see this happening again in our own day; unlike the old form of Paganism, the new form has no gods - except the gods of relativism, materialism, and self.
[Note: My source for the Chesterton quotes; "Common Sense 101" - Dale Ahlquist.]
