Veneration of the Virgin Mary and the Young Man

by Gerhard Kremer, Dr of Theol.

Catholic youths who are genuinely pious will always feel a sincere affection for the ideal of the Virgin Mary. It is not as if the veneration of the Virgin Mary would detract from a warm and strong devotion to Christ. On the contrary, a true veneration of the Virgin Mary must lead to Christ and a moral code of life. We do not want to dispense with the ideal of the Virgin Mary for the moral and religious education of our youth.

Youth is the age of becoming, of external and internal struggle. Passions awaken; there is a fermenting and wrestling in man, a turbulent urging and awakening. To meet this distress, the youth must have an ideal, strong and powerful, an illuminating shining ideal, which will not be shaken by the urging and fermenting ideal must elevate the wavering mind and rouse the wavering heart. Its radiance will eclipse the ignoble and vile. Such an ideal is the Virgin Mary, for it is she who embodies an all-radiant purity and beauty. ‘It is said that there are women whose very presence educates us; whose very behaviour banishes sordid thoughts, prevents all questionable words from crossing our lips. The Virgin Mary is the epitome of such a woman. A young knight devoted to her service is incapable of vulgarity. But if- forgetting her presence - he should nonetheless slip, the remembrance of her will cause inconsolable anguish of soul and at the same time help the noble mind to regain its authority [P. Schilgen S. J.].’

To the young man, the Virgin Mary stands out as unrivalled grace, loftiness and dignity, the like of whom is not to be found in nature, art and the world of man. Why have artists and painters devoted their skill and creativity to the Madonna again and again? It is because they perceive in her the most sublime beauty and dignity. It is a dignity and beauty which never disappoints. Here we have a mistress and queen, ‘to serve whom, for whom to exist, must be the highest honour for the young man. Here we have an exalted woman and bride of the spirit, to whom you can give yourself with the full power of the love which gushes from your youthful heart, without having to fear degradation and desecration.’

The ideal of the Virgin Mary should inspire young men. Especially in an age which takes pleasure in darkening the radiant and dragging what is lofty into the mire, the ideal of the Virgin Mary should shine forth as a salvation and power. In this ideal the young man will perceive that there is indeed something great and elevated in beauty and chastity. Here he will find the strength to walk the steep path, even if all the others lose their best in the depths. The ideal of the Virgin Mary will fortify him who wavers, lift up and strengthen him who stumbles. Indeed, it will so overwhelm him who has fallen that he will be rehabilitated with new courage. The Virgin Mary is that radiant star which will illuminate the passion of the young individual in the dark night, that star which calls forth what is noble in him when everything appears to be shattered in him.

Look up, O young men, you who have your ideal meaning and wrestle for holy virtues, look up to your mistress and queen. How can a young man look up to her without being filled with holy idealism? How can he address her in Ave Maria, without feeling a keen longing for chastity? How can he sing the glorious songs about the Virgin Mary without feeling the courage to fight? How could a young man who has grasped the ideal

of the Virgin Mary deprive a woman of her chastity? How can he call her mother and queen and then acquire a taste for female indignity? When the ideal of the Virgin Mary is taken seriously, it becomes a strong incentive for every young man, a mighty summons to chastity and manliness.’ Ga2ing upon her, her image locked in your heart, must you not become chaste, no matter how hard you must wrestle?’

The young man’s attitude towards girls and towards women is decisive for his moral behaviour.

‘In former days when knights were dubbed, the knight had to give his solemn promise to protect defenceless women. That was when cathedrals were built in honour of the queen of heaven [P. Gemmel S. J.].’ There is an intimate relation between courtship of the Virgin Mary and true chivalry towards the female sex. The man who is inspired by the ideal of the Virgin Mary must of necessity bear within himself that knightly dub which stems from reverent respect for female dignity and majesty. Therefore, the dubbing of the knight in the middle Ages bound the young man to holy Minnedienst, as well as to the protection of a woman’s honour. The symbols of this knighthood no longer exist: but what is worse is that, more and more, shy reverence for women is dying out among the male youth and is giving way to a frivolous and vile robber-knighthood. Just as the knights of old in armour and arms protect and shelter frail femininity and innocence, so should and must the true man of today feel himself to be in the debt of the honour and innocence of woman. True manliness and real nobility of heart will become known to the female sex most easily and most beautifully. Lucky the young man who has girded his passion with this armour I Lucky the girl who has found the love of such a young man! ‘Inflict no wrong on a girl and remember that your mother too was once a girl.’

The young man of today is the husband of tomorrow. How will the husband and man be able to protect womanhood and assure female respect, if the young man and fiancé has desecrated love and engagement! Engagement is to be a time of undesecrated love. How many men’s fate would be happier, if the ideal of the Virgin Mary were more keenly alive in the world of youth. How much suffering and grief could be avoided, if young men would not play shameless games with the love of a girl’s soul. Hear me, O young people, let the radiant light of the ideal of the Virgin Mary illuminate your love, so that you don’t trip and fall.

The ideal of the Virgin Mary can mean a great deal to our young men. It is precisely for this reason that we have unfurled the banner of the Virgin Mary in our youth clubs and congregations. O that our young Catholic men would rally around this banner!

[Katholisches Kirchenblatt, no. 18, 3 May 1931]

The cult of the Virgin Mary is drawn upon very successfully as a means of inculcating chastity. Again we must inquire into the psychological mechanism that is capable of assuring the success of these intentions. It is a problem of the masses of young men and women who are subjected to this influence. It is chiefly a matter of overpowering genital drives. Just as the Jesus cult mobilizes passive homosexual forces against the genitals, the cult of the Virgin Mary also mobilizes sexual forces, this time from the heterosexual sphere itself. ‘Inflict no wrong on a girl and remember that your mother too was once a girl.’ Thus, in the emotional life of Christian youths, the Mother of God assumes the role

of one’s own mother, and the Christian youth showers upon her all the love that he had for his own mother at one time, that very ardent love of his first genital desires. But the incest prohibition cleaves his genital desires into an intense longing for orgasm on the one hand and asexual tenderness on the other hand. The intense longing for orgasm has to be repressed, and its energy intensifies one’s tender strivings and moulds them into an almost indissoluble tie to the mystical experience. This intense longing offers violent resistance, not only to the incestuous desire, but to every natural genital relationship with a woman. The same vital energy and enormous love that a healthy young man puts forth in an orgastic experience with his loved one is used by the mystical man to support the mystical cult of the Virgin Mary, after genital sensuality has been suppressed. This is the source from which mysticism draws its forces. Being unsatisfied forces, they should not be underestimated. They make intelligible the age-old power of mysticism over man and the inhibitions that operate against the responsibility of the masses.

In this regard it is not a matter of the veneration of the Virgin Mary or of any other idol. It is a matter of producing a mystical structure in the masses in every new generation. But mysticism is nothing other than unconscious longing for orgasm (cosmic plasmatic sensations). The orgastically potent, healthy man is capable of great veneration of historical figures. But there is no correlation between his appreciation of man’s primordial history and his sexual happiness. He does not have to become mystical, reactionary, or a slave to metaphysics to appreciate historical phenomena. Healthy adolescent sexuality would not necessarily have to stifle veneration for the Jesus legend. The Old and the New Testament can be appreciated as stupendous achievements of the human mind, but this appreciation should not be used to suppress sexuality. My medical experience has taught me that adolescents who are sexually sick have an unhealthy appreciation of the legend of Jesus.