The Characteristic Commitments of Its Spirituality
Unity with the Pope and with the Church United to Him
The Church is both divine and human, and in its human dimension, it is fragile and sinful and thus has great need to do penance. The Church is the light of the world, "Lumen Gentium," but often the evils of the world in which it lives become the maladies which attack the human dimension of the Church. This has been proven by nearly two thousand years of its history.
Today the Church is living in a world which has built up a new secular civilization. The spirit of this world, or secularism, which has entered into its interior, has caused the state of great suffering and of crisis in which the Church finds itself. This is the famous "smoke of Satan" spoken of by Pope Paul VI of venerable memory.
Secularism, at the intellectual level, becomes "rationalism" and, at the level of life, it becomes "naturalism."
Because of rationalism, there is today the tendency to interpret the whole mystery of God and the deposit of revealed truth in a purely human way, and thus often the fundamental dogmas of the faith are denied and most serious errors are spread about in a hidden and ambiguous way. Sometimes these errors become taught even in Catholic schools and little or nothing survives of Divine Scripture or even the Gospel of Jesus.
"You have made a gospel of your own with your own words." (September 25, 1976)
Because of naturalism, there is the practice today of giving great value to one’s own personal actions, to efficiency and to the setting up of programs in the apostolic sector, forgetting the primary value of divine grace and that the interior life of union with Christ, that is of prayer, must be the soul of every apostolate.
From this originates the gradual loss of the awareness of sin as an evil and the neglect of the sacrament of Reconciliation, which has now spread throughout the whole Church.
Against these errors, which are ensnaring the integrity of the faith in a subtle and dangerous way, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has spoken out clearly with his famous interview, published in the book, "The Ratzinger Report."
But the Magisterium of the Pope has also frequently spoken out powerfully and insistently.
So then, one spontaneously asks oneself: how is it that the Church has not yet emerged from this profound crisis of its faith? The persistence of the crisis within the Church up to the present time comes only from its interior disunity. Because of this, not everyone today is listening to and following what the Pope, together with his Magisterium, is pointing out.
Our Lady has obtained for the Church a great Pope, consecrated to her Immaculate Heart and whom she herself is leading along all the roads of the world, in order to spread the light of Christ and of his Gospel of salvation and to strengthen everyone in the faith, both pastors and the flocks entrusted to them. But, about the Pope, there is often a great void: his Magisterium is not supported by the whole Church and often his word falls upon a desert.
And yet the renewal of the Church takes place only through its interior unity. The road to be followed is still that of full union of all the bishops, priests, and faithful with the Pope.
Here we find explained the profound reason for the second commitment of the Marian Movement of Priests. Our Lady is asking of us today to be an example to everyone in this unity. An example in loving the Pope, in praying and suffering for him, in heeding and spreading the teachings of his Magisterium, and especially in always obeying him in everything.
Our Lady desires that there be a return among the clergy to the humble and powerful exercise of the virtue of obedience!
Naturally obedience to the Pope, who is the point of reference and of unity with the bishops, implies the unity of obedience with the pastor of one’s own diocese and with one’s own superiors.
