Fr. Amroth, the chief exorcist of Rome at the time, asked the devil: "Why do you hate Mary so?" The response: "She is humble, I am proud; she is pure, I am not; she is obedient, I am rebellious."
Milton's Satan: "It is better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven."
Lucifer's "Non Serviam!" (I will not serve) is answered absolutely by Mary's "Fiat" (be it done to me according to your will.) The binary of opposition and contradiction between these two is perfect and complete. Here there is no negotiation, no merging or blending, no compromise! The Immaculate repels the demonic; as she is herself absolutely repelled by it. Each of us, in our identity and destiny, is finally defined by our consent to one or the other side of this binary: the darkness or the light. In our weakened, wounded humanity we are often in the fog of confusion, compromise and conflict; but the dramatic structure of life requires a final decision, one way or the other, for eternity.
Accommodating and Accompanying Sin.
Pervasive in our culture is a resistance to this binary: a compulsion to blend good with bad, to enjoy both. The famous Carl Jung developed a psychological religiosity that ignored a Creator God and Trinity but identified the divine as a dimension of the human personality. He rejected the binary of opposition between the kingdoms of light and of darkness. He advocated a psychology of integration that accepted the dark side of human nature as inevitable. We know that when he was developing this approach he himself was involved with drugs, the occult and sexual sin. He was, in effect, rationalizing (brilliantly) his own surrender to sin. This concordat with sin has now permeated our culture and even our Church. The surest antidote to this accommodation: devotion to our Blessed Mother along with love for our crucified-risen-spirit-sending Savior in confession and Eucharist.
Luciferian Misogyny.
In his hatred of Mary, Satan despises the feminine as such. Note that he targeted Eve in the garden; and ignored the male. Scripture indicates that he revolted against God and his kingdom. One tradition has it that the trigger for this rebellion was God's decision to crown Mary, a fleshly woman, as Queen of Heaven and Earth, of the Angels and the Saints. In his pride as God's supreme angel, he refused to defer to a fleshly, earthly, fragile female. He is the great, the primal, the quintessential Misogynist. He despises the feminine as such.
So, we can see that violation or degradation of the feminine as feminine is deeply diabolical. By contrast, the Catholic, loving Mary in her holiness, mercy and purity, transfers this affection/reverence to the feminine as such and to all woman and is the quintessential, sublime Philogynist. ("philogyny" as reverent admiration for the feminine is different from "gynephilia" as physical attraction.)
Misogyny is (in my view) the primary objective of Lucifer and the deepest, strongest evil in our world. We see this in various cultural forms around the globe: the targeting of female fetuses for abortion, the honor killings, polygamy (but almost never polyandry), pornography, prostitution, the contraceptive pill with its toxicity for the female body and person, a raging feminism that mimics a crude machismo, adultery, fornication, and serial divorce.
We find it in language. I was once told by a holy woman (but never from a priest), and I believe it still, that obscene language is a sign of the demonic. This applies specifically to language that expresses contempt for the sexual and the feminine. The F-bomb is an example: it refers to the violent, sexual abuse, usually of the woman. Likewise, words that refer to the woman's body with contempt and disgust are blatantly demonic.
This hatred of the womanly finds graphic, horrific expression in the eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia) that diminish and destroy especially the feminine body by starvation, a slow and tortuous death. These are, in my view, the most directly diabolical of pathologies.
The Marian World
By contrast, where women are held in reverence and tenderness, all of human life flourishes: the masculine is ennobled, purified, strengthened, and sanctified; the small, the suffering, the incompetent are safe and cherished; the sacred is revered. Herein, femininity itself is recognized as a divinely created form, contrasted with, complementary of, and facing towards the masculine in the mutual generosity and intimacy of the spousal embrace. Herein, in family and religious life, the woman is cherished specifically as daughter, sister, virgin, bride, mother. In this world, the masculine is deferential to and in service to the feminine as holy.
The Catholic Church in its hierarchical structure is patriarchal. But we who live in this world know that that patriarchy is deferential to the matriarchy of Mary, our heavenly Mother, Queen of Angels and Saints, of Heaven and Earth. She is the greatest of creatures, superior to all the angels, to all the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and popes. But her matriarchy is itself within a greater patriarchy, that of God our Father. Her preeminence flows from her humility as handmaid, her Fiat and her Magnificat.
The guaranteed way for us all, men and women both, to defeat Lucifer is to draw close to Mary.
Mary, our Mother, we place ourselves under the mantle of your holiness and purity, your beauty and your love.
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