Volume V, Issue 27, October 18, 2008

http://www.motherofallpeoples.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1512

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- The 40th Anniversary of Humanae Vitae by Michael D. O'Brien

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. It is hard to believe that so many years have passed, more than a generation. How swiftly it has gone, and how changed is the face of our world. Let us not blame war or economic trouble or abortion for the current state of the world, for this would be to blame symptoms and ignore the source of the disease. It is, in fact, contraception that is destroying Western civilization.

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- Rosarium Virginis Mariae, Part II by Pope John Paul II

The first part of Pope John Paul II’s Rosarium Virginis Mariae appeared in the previous Mother of All Peoples Bi-Monthly Issue.

CHAPTER II – MYSTERIES OF CHRIST—MYSTERIES OF HIS MOTHER

The Rosary, "a compendium of the Gospel"

18. The only way to approach the contemplation of Christ’s face is by listening in the Spirit to the Father’s voice, since "no one knows the Son except the Father" (Mt 11:27). In the region of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus responded to Peter’s confession of faith by indicating the source of that clear intuition of his identity: "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" (Mt 16:17). What is needed, then, is a revelation from above. In order to receive that revelation, attentive listening is indispensable: "Only the experience of silence and prayer offers the proper setting for the growth and development of a true, faithful and consistent knowledge of that mystery" (27).

The Rosary is one of the traditional paths of Christian prayer directed to the contemplation of Christ’s face. Pope Paul VI described it in these words: "As a Gospel prayer, centered on the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation, the Rosary is a prayer with a clearly Christological orientation. Its most characteristic element, in fact, the litany-like succession of Hail Marys, becomes in itself an unceasing praise of Christ, who is the ultimate object both of the Angel’s announcement and of the greeting of the Mother of John the Baptist: ‘Blessed is the fruit of your womb’ (Lk 1:42). We would go further and say that the succession of Hail Marys constitutes the warp on which is woven the contemplation of the mysteries. The Jesus that each Hail Mary recalls is the same Jesus whom the succession of mysteries proposes to us now as the Son of God, now as the Son of the Virgin" (28).

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- Signum Magnum by Pope Paul VI

The great sign which the Apostle John saw in heaven, "a woman clothed with the sun," (1) is interpreted by the sacred Liturgy, (2) not without foundation, as referring to the most blessed Mary, the mother of all men by the grace of Christ the Redeemer.

The memory, venerable brothers, is still vivid in our mind of the great emotion we felt in proclaiming the august Mother of God as the spiritual Mother of the Church, that is to say, of all the faithful and of the sacred pastors, as the crowning of the third session of the Second Vatican Council, after having solemnly promulgated the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. (3) Great also was the happiness of numerous Council Fathers, as well as of the faithful, who were present at the sacred rite in St. Peter's basilica and of the entire Christian people scattered throughout the world.

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