tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post6751684443344866533..comments2024-03-05T06:16:30.628-06:00Comments on Mary and Mariology: Secret of the Rosary- SimplicityServant of Maryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-29367047875541360062015-12-02T11:26:53.472-06:002015-12-02T11:26:53.472-06:00While I agree completely with the above commenters...While I agree completely with the above commenters that Momfort is not so "simple" as he may appear, I think that his claim of simplicity is significant. We have discussed how a modern conception of Mary as simple, poor, loving, and pious contrasts with the Medieval Mary as perfect master of the 7 liberal arts. I think Momfort is intentionally creating this contrast in order to accomplish his purpose. <br /><br />As is abundantly clear from the text, Momfort is primarily interest in the reform of Christian souls. He sees today's Christendom as lax and worldly - and he sees the rosary converting people from this mindset to true Christianity. His sometimes over the top claims of the rosary's efficacy can be understood in terms of his perceived alternative. Momfort believes the devout recitation of the rosary is infinitely more efficacious than any efforts we may make for knowledge or worldly success. "True Christianity" is in faith and simplicity, where simplicity is understood as focus and reliance on God. As part of this, we see significant emphasis in Momfort on moral reform. His version of the rosary seems in some ways not strictly Marian -- with each decade we are to contemplate a virtue, something clearly intended to make us focus on the moral state of our souls. I don't really have the concrete knowledge to justify this claim, but I think Momfort resembles some Protestants in this regard - an orientation toward faith and the moral life, more so than towards, say, scholastic theology. This orientation, I think, is also helpful in understanding Ratzinger. When he describes the Marian as emotional and affective and somehow "yin," I think he is looking at the kind of Marian piety emerging from people like Momfort.<br /><br />--MDMDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13424015875125261176noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-52222232375401848942015-11-23T22:19:33.835-06:002015-11-23T22:19:33.835-06:00While I agree that "Secret of the Rosary"...While I agree that "Secret of the Rosary" was much easier to read and follow, I view the rosary as simple in format yet difficult in ideal execution. To a certain extent, the mind likes to slow down and savor all the details of a particular topic like one of the mysteries of Jesus’ life, yet on the other hand, when it gets bored the mind likes to jump around and think about various things which can make concentration difficult. Fighting this second appetite of the mind compromised by acedia is itself not so simple a battle, but the easy-to-follow format of the rosary allows one to become refocused quickly. Nonetheless, maintaining focus during one Rosary is only the beginning of the battle; making it a daily habit to say the Rosary, even when you don’t want to, takes a lot of time. In the same way, you cannot water a tree once and expect it to grow overnight. Like a lot of simple things, they turn out to be so deceptively; at their core it is often found that they are much more complicated and detailed. Perhaps this seeming simplicity is a good thing since the Rosary has become a wide-spread devotion for many laypeople unable to pray longer and more demanding prayers.<br /><br />- J.B.Servant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-46154173974942424382015-11-22T14:20:58.689-06:002015-11-22T14:20:58.689-06:00It is true that Louis insists that saying the rosa...It is true that Louis insists that saying the rosary is "simple," but he also makes the point that it is not, in fact, easy; rather, it requires great efforts of attention to be able to sustain one's meditations on the various mysteries as well as the repetitions of the "Ave, Maria" and "Pater noster" throughout. I suggested at the end of class that one way to think about Sor Maria's "Mystical City" is as a kind of elaborate rosary--exactly the kinds of extended meditations on the scenes in Jesus's and Mary's life that Louis recommends. Does having these scenes in mind not help make Sor Maria's elaborate meditations a little easier to understand? If you spent an hour or so every day of your life saying the rosary (as Louis suggests), the meditations that you had on the scenes in the mysteries could quite easily get fairly elaborate--and yet the practice still be "simple." RLFBServant of Maryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13686441055922333147noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7155226280212467063.post-25212526424869573192015-11-19T16:29:47.815-06:002015-11-19T16:29:47.815-06:00Something that's worth considering is the degr...Something that's worth considering is the degree towards which the protestations of simplicity which are made in St. Louis's writings are a mask which cover a fair bit of rhetorical complexity. It's often the most simple seeming works which are in fact the most highly constructed and sophisticated, just sophisticated/complicated in a different sense than Sister Mary's work. <br /><br />Something that might be interesting to consider further is in what sense the rosary might have proved an especially effective tool in the types of struggles that Louis describes, not the military struggles themselves but the larger "war" against heresy in the south of France at the time. Is it the simplicity of the rosary that makes it so effective? The devotion to Mary that it entails? or something else? Why would this particular form of devotion be pushed as a weapon against heretics in this way, and what might that tell us both about the heretics and those combating them? dyingsthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02087241514388178221noreply@blogger.com