The National Catholic Register portal (May 9, 2026) publishes a blog post by Courtney Roach, digital marketing manager for FOCUS, titled “The Month of Mary: Celebrating the Women Who Shape Our Faith.” The article presents a personal narrative of the author’s conversion to Catholicism in 2015, her devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary through the Rosary, her self-consecration to Jesus through Mary, and her admiration for St. Thérèse of Lisieux alongside contemporary figures Lila Rose and Leah Darrow. Roach describes her nightly Rosary practice, her desire for “friendship” with the “Heavenly Mother,” her podcast “The Daily Nothings” inspired by St. Thérèse’s “little way,” and her aspiration to sainthood through the example of these women. She characterizes the Blessed Mother as “Queen of Heaven and earth” and “beacon of light” for Catholic women, and expresses gratitude for the Church’s “foundational respect for women.” The article is a specimen of the therapeutic, sentimental, and doctrinally vacuous spirituality that the conciliar sect has substituted for the supernatural faith of the Church — a feminism baptized in the language of Marian devotion but emptied of every doctrinal substance that makes such devotion salvific.
The “Month of Mary” Without the Kingship of Christ
The article invokes May as “dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary to honor her as the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven.” Yet this title — Regina Caeli — is systematically divorced from its dogmatic foundation. Mary is Queen precisely because Christ is King. Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King not as pious decoration but as a remedy against “the plague that poisons human society,” namely “secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors.” He declared that “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior.” The royal dignity of Mary flows from, and is entirely subordinate to, the royal dignity of her Son. To celebrate Mary’s queenship without proclaiming — indeed, while the conciliar structures actively suppress — the social Kingship of Christ over nations, families, and individuals is to perform a spiritual mutilation. It is to keep the crown while beheading the King.
The conciliar sect, which has spent six decades implementing the very laicism Pius XI condemned — religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), separation of Church and state, dialogue with the world — now piously invokes “Mary, Queen of Heaven” in blog posts written by digital marketing managers. The “Month of Mary” in the conciar structures is a liturgical and devotional vestige stripped of its dogmatic content, functioning as aesthetic nostalgia rather than as an act of supernatural faith ordered to the restoration of Christ’s reign over all creation.
“Friendship” With Mary: The Psychologization of Supernatural Devotion
Roach writes with revealing candor: “I truly desired a friendship with my Heavenly Mother.” She describes praying the Rosary nightly, and “if I felt like I wasn’t praying well enough, I would start over.” She speaks of St. Thérèse as her “closest heavenly friend” and refers to “saint besties.” The language is not that of the Church’s Marian devotion — which is theologically ordered to hyperdulia, the highest form of veneration short of the latria owed to God alone — but of contemporary therapeutic culture, where the relationship with the divine is framed in the categories of interpersonal psychology: friendship, closeness, feeling, emotional satisfaction.
This is not the devotion of St. Louis de Montfort, who taught in True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin that consecration to Mary is “a perfect renewal of the vows and promises of holy baptism,” a total slavery to Jesus through Mary, oriented toward the crucifixion of the old man. It is not the devotion of St. Maximilian Kolbe — whatever the conciliar sect’s illegitimate “canonization” may claim — who understood Marian consecration as total immersion in the Immaculate for the conquest of souls for Christ the King. Rather, it is a devotion of self-affirmation: Mary as the “Heavenly Mother” who provides emotional healing, who helps one “remain steadfast,” who serves as a spiritual companion for the journey of personal growth. The wound from which Roach seeks healing is described vaguely, as is the “consecration” she performed — language stripped of its baptismal and eschatological content and reduced to a self-help technique.
Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the proposition that “the dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (proposition 26). Here we see the practical outworking of that condemned error: Marian devotion understood not as assent to revealed truth about the Mother of God, but as a “practice” that “shapes” one’s life decisions and “transforms” one’s pursuit of dreams. Finis operantis — the intention of the agent — has swallowed the finis operis — the objective nature of the act.
St. Thérèse and the “Little Way” as Therapeutic Self-Help
The article’s treatment of St. Thérèse of Lisieux is particularly revealing. Roach admires “her littleness (and even her tantrums) and her desire to take the elevator to heaven.” She initially felt she could not “claim” Thérèse as a friend because of the saint’s “extreme popularity” — “it almost felt as though all the cradle Catholics had claimed her early on.” This is the language of consumer culture applied to the communion of saints: saints as products to be “claimed,” devotion as a matter of personal “investment,” spiritual friendship as a relationship to be “gotten to know” through continued consumption of content.
The “little way” of St. Thérèse, as the saint herself articulated it, was a path of spiritual childhood rooted in the theology of the merit of Christ, the reality of Purgatory, and the absolute necessity of the Church’s sacramental system for the salvation of souls. It was a way of doing nothing by one’s own strength and everything through confidence in God’s mercy — a radical dependence on grace, not a program of self-improvement. To reduce it to the inspirational premise of a podcast called “The Daily Nothings” — “rooted in the reality that all of our daily choices — those the world might classify as ‘nothing’ or unimportant — actually shape our eternity” — is to perform a subtle but devastating inversion. The “little way” becomes not a theology of grace but a theology of works: my daily choices, my “nothings,” my small decisions become the raw material of my own sanctification. The elevator to heaven becomes a self-service escalator.
Lila Rose, Leah Darrow, and the Celebrity Culture of the Conciliar Sect
Roach’s admiration for Lila Rose and Leah Darrow completes the portrait of conciliar feminine spirituality. Rose is “known for her work with Live Action, a pro-life movement,” and Darrow “is known for her time on America’s Next Top Model and her profound conversion back to the Lord.” Both are praised for being “bold, honest and fully alive in a way that I hope to embody,” and for having “influenced social media in a beautifully Catholic way.”
The criteria of admiration are telling: public presentation, social media influence, boldness, honesty, being “fully alive.” These are the values of the world — quae sunt mundi, quae sunt mundi — baptized with the adjective “Catholic.” The conciliar sect, having abandoned the supernatural conception of the apostolate — which is the communication of grace through the preaching of the Faith, the administration of the sacraments, and the offering of the Holy Sacrifice — has replaced it with the world’s own categories of influence: media presence, personal branding, public advocacy. The “boldness” admired is not the boldness of St. Catherine of Siena, who commanded popes and wept over the sins of the clergy, but the boldness of the activist and the influencer.
The reference to Darrow’s appearance on America’s Next Top Model as a credential of admiration is symptomatic. The conciliar sect, which has systematically dismantled the Church’s teaching on modesty, the virtue of humility, and the danger of vanitas, now celebrates a former reality television contestant as a model of Catholic womanhood. This is the “reconciliation with the world” that Pius IX condemned as the 80th proposition of the Syllabus of Errors: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.”
The Silence That Condemns: What the Article Omits
The most damning critique of this article is not what it says but what it does not say. There is no mention of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception as defined by Pius IX in Ineffabilis Deus (1854). There is no mention of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary. There is no mention of Mary’s Divine Maternity as defined at the Council of Ephesus (431). There is no mention of the Assumption as defined by Pius XII in Munificentissimus Deus (1950). There is no mention of Mary’s role as Mediatrix of All Graces or Co-Redemptrix — titles affirmed by the ordinary magisterium and implicit in Scripture and Tradition. There is no mention of the necessity of the sacraments — Baptism, Confession, the Holy Eucharist — for salvation. There is no mention of the state of grace, mortal sin, or the reality of Hell. There is no mention of the social Kingship of Christ over nations. There is no mention of the crisis of the Church, the apostasy of the conciliar structures, or the duty of the faithful to resist the destruction of the Faith.
The article presents “Marian devotion” as a purely affective, personal, and psychological phenomenon — a “friendship” that “shapes” one’s life and “transforms” one’s decisions — while remaining entirely silent on every doctrinal truth that gives such devotion its meaning, its necessity, and its salvific power. This is the conciliar method in its purest form: retain the language, the imagery, the aesthetic of Catholic piety, while hollowing out every doctrinal content that would make it an act of supernatural faith rather than of natural sentiment.
The “Church’s Foundational Respect for Women”
Roach concludes: “Without the Church and its foundational respect for women, I would not know these role models the way that I do today.” This sentence encapsulates the modernist inversion. The Church’s “respect for women” does not consist in providing “role models” for personal inspiration. It consists in the proclamation of revealed truth about the Blessed Virgin Mary — her Immaculate Conception, her Divine Maternity, her Perpetual Virginity, her Assumption, her Queenship — and in the communication of the grace necessary for women (and men) to attain eternal salvation through the sacraments of the Church. The Church’s “respect for women” is the Cross, the sacraments, the preaching of the Gospel, and the offering of the Holy Sacrifice. To reduce it to “role models” and “influence” is to replace the supernatural order with the natural, the divine with the human, the eternal with the temporal.
The conciliar sect, which has produced this article and thousands like it, has systematically replaced the Faith with feelings, doctrine with devotionals, theology with therapy, and the supernatural life of grace with the natural life of self-improvement. The “Month of Mary” in the structures occupying the Vatican is not a celebration of the Mother of God but a celebration of the conciar sect’s own image of itself: inclusive, affirming, feminine, “fully alive” — and doctrinally dead.
Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Outside the Church, there is no salvation. And outside the truth about Christ — His Kingship, His Cross, His sacraments, His Church — there is no truth about Mary. The Blessed Virgin does not need our “friendship.” She needs our obedience to her Son. And her Son demands not blog posts and podcasts but the restoration of His Kingdom over every nation, every family, and every human heart.
Source:
The Month of Mary: Celebrating the Women Who Shape Our Faith (ncregister.com)
Date: 09.05.2026