To Give a Defense
William Bouguereau, “The Virgin With Angels”
In a recent post, Steve “Purple” Hays of Failablogue (he calls it Triablogue) tries to pit those wicked “lay Catholic pop apologists” against “their religious superiors” in the USCCB. To this end, he quotes from the textual notes to Rev. 12:1, found on the USCCB Web site.
The woman adorned with the sun, the moon, and the stars … symbolizes God’s people in the Old and the New Testament.
The Israel of old gave birth to the Messiah … and then became the new Israel, the church, which suffers persecution by the dragon.
Sorry, says Mr. Hays to those “lay Catholic pop apologists” who think that Mary is the woman clothed with the sun. “I’ll side with the bishops” who say that Rev. 12:1 is talking about the Church.
I’m glad to know that Mr. Haze now sides with the bishops. That’s progress. Maybe, then, he’ll side with the bishop of Rome. Here is Pope Pius X, in Ad Diem Illum Lætissimum 24:
Everyone knows that this woman signified the Virgin Mary, the stainless one who brought forth our Head. … John therefore saw the Most Holy Mother of God already in eternal happiness, yet travailing in a mysterious childbirth. What birth was it? Surely it was the birth of us who, still in exile, are yet to be generated to the perfect charity of God, and to eternal happiness. And the birth pains show the love and desire with which the Virgin from heaven above watches over us, and strives with unwearying prayer to bring about the fulfillment of the number of the elect.
Here, too, is Pope Pius XII, in Munificentissimus Deus 27:
[T]he scholastic Doctors have recognized the Assumption of the Virgin Mother of God as something signified, not only in various figures of the Old Testament, but also in that woman clothed with the sun whom John the Apostle contemplated on the Island of Patmos.
Here, too, is Pope Paul VI, in Signum Magnum:
The great sign which the Apostle John saw in heaven, “a woman clothed with the sun,”is interpreted by the sacred Liturgy, not without foundation, as referring to the most blessed Mary, the mother of all men by the grace of Christ the Redeemer.
And here, too, is Pope John Paul II, in Redemptoris Mater 24:
In this way, she who as the one “full of grace” was brought into the mystery of Christ in order to be his Mother and thus the Holy Mother of God, through the Church remains in that mystery as “the woman” spoken of by the Book of Genesis (3:15) at the beginning and by the Apocalypse (12:1) at the end of the history of salvation.”
Oh, don’t take my word for it, Mr. Haze. I’m just a lay Catholic pop apologist. Take it from the bishop of Rome.
Mr. Haze will surely say: A-ha! A contradiction! But no. Because here is what Haydock’s Bible Commentary of 1859 has to say about Rev. 12:1:
By this woman, interpreters commonly understand the Church of Christ … under the protection of the sun of justice, Jesus Christ. The moon, the Church, hath all changeable things of this world under her feet, the affections of the faithful being raised above them all. … It may also, by allusion, be applied to our blessed Lady. … The Church is clothed with the sun, that is, with Christ. She hath the moon … under her feet; and the twelve stars with which she is crowned, are the twelve apostles. She is in labour and pain, whilst she brings forth her children, and Christ in them, in the midst of afflictions and persecutions. … Under the figure of a woman and of a dragon, are represented the various attempts of Satan to undermine the Church. On her head twelve stars, her doctrine being delivered by the twelve apostles and their successors.
So Catholics are a both-and people, Mr. Haze. The woman clothed with the sun is both the Church and Mary. (For Mary is the Mother of the Church, which is also the New Israel.)
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