Marian Devotion, the Rosary, and the Scapular

Canon 663.4 (Religious):

The Constitution Lumen Gentium (65) evoked the Virgin Mary as model for the Church. The decree Perfectae Caritatis, without using the expression "model and protector of the entire consecrated life," in citing the De Virginitate of St. Ambrose invited religious to have recourse to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God "whose life is a rule of conduct for all" (PC 25).

The Code of 1917 did not contain the equivalent of canon 663.4 concerning all religious. Nonetheless, the canon addressed to all clerics was certainly also addressed to religious clerics.

It is appropriate to note that the tone of canon 663.4 is not exactly that of a simple recommendation or counsel. Certainly, one could think or suppose that the formula employed in number 2 of the same canon: "insofar as they are able," is valid also for the following numbers and that consequently the special devotion in honor of the Virgin Mother of God, like the other practices mentioned, is not presented as a strict juridical obligation of religious. But one should immediately add that this is not for all that a simple exhortation.

What is not a strict juridical obligation is nonetheless a spiritual "obligation" linked to the state of life chosen. It is not because a canon does not oblige in a strictly rigorous way according to a juridical plan that it does not oblige the spiritual conscience. Finally, it is significant that these practices should be thus "prescribed" directly by the Code and no longer indirectly by means of a directive given by charge of the superiors.

This rapid examination of the canons of the Code of 1983 which treat of Marian devotion allow us to make a double declaration (52):

The reader will not have missed noting the explicit mention of the Rosary in the Code of 1917 (c. 125.2) and in the Code of 1983 (c. 246.3; 663.4): "almost considered as the elementary formula of all Marian devotion, the Rosary has thus now come to take its place even in church law" (54), comments the Dominican historian André Duval.

Sufficiently universal to find its place in the law of the Church, the prayer of the Rosary is very specially recommended not only to families, but also to religious and clergy (55). This declaration requires us now to present some indications about the genesis and eminent spiritual value of the Rosary, which remains, as John Paul II underscored, "at the dawn of this third millennium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness" (RVM 1).

The Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Vatican II and the Rosary

The Constitution Lumen Gentium exhorts all the sons of the Church that "the practices and exercises of devotion … recommended by the teaching authority of the Church in the course of centuries be highly esteemed" (LG 67), without any precise example being explicitly evoked in the conciliar text. Although a sufficiently significant number of bishops had vigorously insisted that the Rosary should at least be mentioned, the Council did not occupy itself with the enumeration of practices or exercises of piety.

On the eve of the closing of the Council and on the occasion of the Mariological Congress of Santo Domingo (1965), Pope Paul VI specified that among the exercises of piety towards the Virgin Mary recommended by the Fathers of the Council and the previous Magisterium in the course of centuries are obviously the Rosary as well as the Carmelite scapular (56). With regard to the Rosary, Pope Paul VI considered it his duty to underscore again the following year, in his Encyclical Christi Matri (1966), that "The Second Vatican Council recommended the use of the Rosary to all the sons of the Church, not in express words, but in unmistakable fashion" (57). It is obviously clear, as G. Philips explained, "that the Council did not reject largely widespread practices of devotion. On the contrary, it encouraged them, without entering into details" (58). These found a place later in the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum (1968), in the De Benedictionibus (1984) and especially in the fifth chapter of the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2002). The Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus (1974) contains rich indications by the same Pope Paul VI on the Angelus and the Rosary, two exercises of piety "widespread in the West, and with which this apostolic see has concerned itself on various occasions" (MC 40).

Two weeks after his election to the See of Peter, during the month of the Rosary in 1978, Pope John Paul II made this capital affirmation: "It can be said that the Rosary is, in a certain way, a prayer-commentary on the last chapter of the Constitution Lumen Gentium of Vatican II, a chapter which deals with the wonderful presence of the Mother of God in the mystery of Christ and the Church" (59). Thus the Rosary, already described as a "summary of the entire Gospel" (totius Evangelii breviarium) (60) by popes Pius XII and Paul VI, and of which Pope Leo XIII had already stated that "it epitomizes in itself the honor due to Our Lady" (61), was elevated by Pope John Paul II to the level of being a prayer-commentary on chapter 8 of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, of which it constitutes the "summit and crown" (62). There is no doubt, as the French Mariologist Guillaume de Menthière commented, that "what the Council had wanted to do by placing the mystery of Mary in the mystery of Christ and of the Church comes about spontaneously in the meditation of the mysteries of the Rosary" (63). As privileged instruments at the service of the authentic reception of the Council, the Catechism of the Catholic Church as well as its Compendium, promulgated respectively in 1992 by Pope John Paul II and in 2005 by Pope Benedict XVI make explicit mention of the Rosary (cf. CCC 1674; Compendium 198, 353, 567).

Among all the forms of devotion to the Virgin, none of them is better known and more widespread, at least in the West, than the Rosary, a prayer loved by numerous saints (64) and warmly encouraged by the Magisterium (65). According to Hiemer, the popes have praised the Rosary in more than 280 papal documents (66). Leo XIII alone has been given the title of "Pope of the Rosary," for having published every year from 1883 to 1901 an encyclical on Marian devotion and in particular on the Rosary (67). According to Louis Bouyer (+2004), the Rosary is

Popes Paul VI and John Paul II have highlighted with care the authentically contemplative dimension of the prayer of the Rosary (69). The Apostolic Letter Mane nobiscum Domine, signed by John Paul II on October 7 of the Year of the Eucharist (2004), contains this significant affirmation: "The Rosary itself, when it is profoundly understood in the biblical and Christocentric form which I recommended in the Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, will prove a particularly fitting introduction to Eucharistic contemplation carried out with Mary as our companion and guide" (MND 18).

In order to gauge the exceptional value of the Rosary, one must also consider its history, "not at defining in a sort of archeological fashion the primitive form of the Rosary, but at uncovering the original inspiration and driving force behind it and its essential structure" (Marialis Cultus 43). This slow evolution of the prayer of the Rosary proves at times to be exciting and very complex, because all of the forms of medieval Marian piety are seen to converge here (70), as the Dominican M.M. Gorce explains:

We will limit ourselves her to the exposition of some landmarks, referring our readers to numerous specialized studies (72) and above all recalling that in order to get to the heart of the sense and incomparable value of the Rosary nothing can replace the reading and study of the principal encyclicals of the popes on this subject.

The Genesis of the Rosary—Comments on Some Landmarks

The Apostolic Letter of John Paul II Rosarium Virginis Mariae (73) opens by recalling that the Rosary "gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God" (RVM 1). In declaring himself thus on a progressive development, Pope John Paul II takes into account, following his immediate predecessors and without the least iconoclasm, the fruit of the research of historians. This research brings nuances and corrections to the centuries-old tradition which attributes the origin of the Rosary directly and principally to St. Dominic (+1221), the founder of the Order of Preachers. Numerous papal documents from the sixteenth to the beginning of the twentieth centuries, from St. Pius V to Pius XI, echo this tradition (74). In contrast, as Bl. Ildefonsus Schuster, cardinal archbishop of Milan (+1954), Benedictine monk and eminent specialist in the history of the prayer of the Church appropriately indicated in 1933, it must be recognized, according to the author, that "the early biographers of St. Dominic do not attribute to him the institution of the Rosary, for this devotion was a tradition of Catholic piety long before his time" (75). This being so, it remains nonetheless true, as Pope John Paul II recalled, that "the history of the Rosary shows how this prayer was used in particular by the Dominicans at a difficult time for the Church due to the spread of heresy" (RVM 17).

As Cardinal Schuster had indicated, in reality the slow genesis of the Rosary takes its source upstream from the epoch of St. Dominic. A devotion does not ordinarily emerge all of a piece, but on the contrary, becomes elaborated slowly, transforms and perfects itself little by little. In the event, what characterizes the history of the formation of the Rosary, is that the majority of the great schools of spirituality brought to it their contribution: Cistercian, Carthusian, Franciscan, Dominican, the devotio moderna, without forgetting the French School, the Society of Jesus, etc. Let us also note that the origin of the Rosary also draws in a certain way from the orientale lumen, since Byzantine hymnology began to exercise its influence in the West in the ninth century with the translation into Latin of the Akathistos Hymn (76): "An important beacon in the development of Marian piety which took flight from the eleventh to the twelfth centuries, this translation is seen also to be at the origin of the principal forms of expression, learned and popular, of a devotion so marked by the multiform use of the Ave Maria," explains Duval (77). Cardinal Schuster discerned numerous points of resemblance between the Akathistos Hymn and the Rosary: "‘The Hymnos Akathistos’ in the East, the Rosary in the West are two admirable forms of devotion to Mary, somewhat resembling each other. … They arose from the same faith and the same love borne by the Universal Church for her who is the Mother of God and of men" (78). This consideration deserves renewed attention today since the Akathistos Hymn, which insistently repeats the chairé (translated in Latin by Ave but which means rejoice) has been happily spread in communities of the faithful of the Latin rite. Thus the prehistory of the Rosary attests that "if it is properly revitalized," according to the wishes of John Paul II, this means of sanctification "is an aid and certainly not a hindrance to ecumenism" (RVM 4).