The National Catholic Register, organ of the conciliar sect’s “conservative” wing, publishes a commentary by Thomas Griffin, a lay entrepreneur of the “Empty Tomb Project,” for the feast of the Queenship of Mary (observed by the neo-church on August 22). Griffin argues that Mary is not merely a model for imitation but a Queen upon whom we must “rely” for strength, consolation, and a “resilient will,” citing Pius XII’s *Ad Caeli Reginam* (1954) while invoking the late Protestant monarch Elizabeth II as the primary analogue for heavenly queenship. The article exemplifies the conciliar mariology that empties the Queen of Heaven of her doctrinal sovereignty, her universal mediation of grace, and her terrible power against the enemies of God, reducing her to a celestial therapist for broken moderns.
The Protestant Queen as Analogue for the Mother of God: Ecumenical Naturalism
The most glaring manifestation of the article’s theological bankruptcy is its reliance on Queen Elizabeth II — a Protestant head of a schismatic national church, Defender of the Faith only in name — as the explanatory model for the Queenship of the Immaculate Virgin. Griffin quotes Elizabeth’s secular exhortations on “courage,” “struggle for a better future,” and “grief as the price of love” to illuminate Mary’s maternal rule. This is adulteratio fidei (adulteration of the faith). The Queen of Heaven does not reign by the principles of constitutional monarchy, nor does she offer the vague “care, presence, and power” of a temporal sovereign who presided over the dissolution of Christian Britain. Mary’s queenship is not a metaphor drawn from earthly courts but a dogmatic reality rooted in her divine maternity, her unique cooperation in the Redemption, and her exaltation above all angels and saints (Pius XII, *Ad Caeli Reginam*, 1954: “The Blessed Virgin Mary should be called Queen… because of the singular excellence of her royal dignity”). To cite a Protestant queen — whose “reign” saw the legalization of abortion, divorce, and homosexual “marriage” in her realms — as a pedagogical bridge to the Mother of God is an insult to the Immaculata and a concession to the false ecumenism condemned by Pius XI in *Mortalium Animos* (1928): “The Catholic Church… cannot participate in the assemblies of non-Catholics… for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ.”
The False Dichotomy: Imitation Versus Reliance
Griffin constructs a straw man: “We can never simply imitate Mary… What we need is not merely to imitate Mary by our own strength, but to rely constantly on her as our Queen.” This opposition is alien to Catholic theology. The faithful have always both imitated Mary’s virtues — her humility, obedience, purity, faith — and invoked her powerful intercession. The Council of Trent teaches that the saints are proposed to the faithful as examples to be imitated and as intercessors to be invoked (Sess. XXV, *De invocatione sanctorum*). Griffin’s rhetoric suggests that imitation relies on “our own meager wills” — a semi-Pelagian slur on the grace of Christ — while “reliance” on the Queen becomes a substitute for the sacramental life and the struggle for virtue. This is the spirituality of the devotio moderna stripped of its ascetic rigor: a sentimental “crying out” that replaces the imitatio Christi through Mary with a psychological crutch. St. Louis de Montfort, the great Marian doctor, teaches that true devotion to Mary is interior, trustful, holy, constant, and disinterested (*True Devotion*, nn. 105-110) — not a mere “shout for aid” in “tough moments.”
Silence on the Universal Mediation and the Social Kingship of Christ
The article is utterly silent on Mary’s role as Mediatrix of all graces, Co-Redemptrix, and the terror of demons. It mentions her “perpetual intercession” but never that “every grace that is communicated to this world has a threefold course: from God to Christ, from Christ to the Virgin, from the Virgin to us” (St. Bernardine of Siena, *Pro Fest. V.M. sermo*). It speaks of “fleeing from sin” and “relying on her Son” but omits the necessity of the Church, the sacraments, the state of grace, and the final judgment. There is no mention of the Social Kingship of Christ the King, which Pius XI instituted in the very encyclical *Quas Primas* (1925) cited in the provided documents, declaring that “the state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders… who contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom” and that “rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” Mary’s queenship is inseparable from her Son’s universal kingship over nations and societies; the conciliar commentary privatizes her reign into individual “consolation in sorrow,” stripping it of its public, political, and ecclesiastical dimension. This is the laicism Pius XI condemned: “When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.”
The Conciliar Feast: A Liturgical Innovation Severed from Tradition
Griffin notes that Pius XII established the feast in 1954 on May 31 but omits that the conciliar “reform” of 1969 moved it to August 22, the octave day of the Assumption, to obscure the distinct mystery of Mary’s regal glory. The traditional liturgy (pre-1955) celebrated the Queenship implicitly in the feasts of the Assumption, the Immaculate Heart, and the patronal feasts of religious orders. The 1954 institution was a papal act of the supreme magisterium; the 1969 displacement was a bureaucratic act of the Consilium under the usurper Paul VI, part of the systematic dismantling of the liturgical year that expressed the Church’s mariology. The article, emanating from the neo-church’s media, treats the feast as a devotional option (“On Aug. 22, the Church celebrates…”) rather than a profession of the dogmatic truth that Mary, assumed into heaven, is crowned by the Holy Trinity as Queen of Heaven and Earth, seated at the right hand of her Son, dispensing all graces, crushing the serpent’s head, and judging the world with her Son.
Lay Usurpation of the Teaching Office
Thomas Griffin is presented as a layman, “founder and president of Empty Tomb Project, Inc., a nonprofit evangelization organization,” author of a book on St. Francis. He exercises a public teaching office without canonical mission, in the structures of the conciliar sect that have no jurisdiction. The Syllabus of Pius IX condemns the error that “lay authority possesses of itself the right of presenting bishops” (Error 50); a fortiori, laymen have no right to publish “commentaries” on dogmatic feasts as if they were theologians. The article’s tone — breezy, anecdotal, peppered with 9/11 references and royal soundbites — is the hallmark of the novus ordo “evangelization” industry: content marketing substituting for the munus docendi of the true hierarchy.
Therapeutic Deism Masquerading as Mariology
The article’s anthropology is purely naturalistic: “Life can be difficult for those who are moving away from sin and toward holiness… we must call out to her — cry to her with shouts for aid… she can gently usher us toward the glory of her Son.” No mention of the necessity of sacramental confession, the horror of mortal sin, the reality of hell, the obligation of Sunday Mass under pain of mortal sin, the duty of the Christian state to profess the Catholic faith. The “Queen” here is a divine social worker. Pius XII in *Ad Caeli Reginam* teaches that Mary’s queenship demands “an unceasing homage, filled with filial loyalty” and the “consecration to the Heart of Jesus” — acts of religion and reparation, not emotional venting. The conciliar commentary replaces the servus Mariae (slave of Mary) of St. Louis de Montfort with the “client of the Queen” of modern psychotherapy.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation’s Marian Facade
This article is a specimen of the conciliar sect’s counterfeit mariology: orthodox in vocabulary, modernist in substance, Protestant in analogies, naturalistic in anthropology, and lay-driven in authority. It uses the name of Pius XII to legitimize a spirituality that the same Pius XII would have condemned as “a false and dangerous devotion… which separates the Mother from the Son, the Queen from the King, the Mediatrix from the Mediator” (cf. *Ad Caeli Reginam*, passim). The true Queen of Heaven reigns from the Cross, not from a therapist’s couch; she crushes heresies, not merely “brokenness”; she demands the conversion of nations, not the “surge in weekly worship attendance” after a terrorist attack. The faithful of the true Church, adhering to the immutable Tradition and the valid sacraments, know that Mary’s queenship is a dogma of the faith, a terror to demons, the glory of the Church Militant, and the sure pledge of victory over the gates of hell — not a sentimental resource for “resilient wills.”
Source:
Why We Need Mary as Our Queen (ncregister.com)
Date: 22.08.2026