Libs Tremble Before The RosaryThe Atlantic's hysterical piece demonizing Catholic prayer beads is a harbinger of persecution
By Rod Dreher
August 15, 2022
In both Orthodoxy and Catholicism, today -- August 15 -- is the feast of the transition of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, into eternal life. Catholics call it the Assumption, because they believe she was "assumed" (taken up) into heaven at the end of her earthly days without tasting death; Orthodox call it the Dormition (falling asleep), because we Orthodox believe that she died, like every other human being. (A brief discussion explaining the theological distinctions between the Assumption and the Dormition can be found here; it has to do with the different ways the Christian East and the Christian West think of original sin). Both traditions share the belief that God took up to heaven the body of Mary, which is why there is no tomb for her anywhere in the world.
Here is the standard Orthodox icon for the Dormition. It shows Jesus Christ at the deathbed of His mother, receiving her body into His arms. The fact that Jesus receives her body indicates that she did, in fact, experience death, like all humans; you wouldn't see anything like that in a Catholic depiction of Holy Mary's transition into eternity:
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Before I went to the church to pray, I had been re-reading a wonderful Orthodox book about St. Paisios the Athonite and spiritual warfare, titled, The Gurus, the Young Man, and the Elder Paisios. In it, the author talks about how he would visit the great elder on Mount Athos (St. Paisios is to the Christian East what St. Pio ("Padre Pio") of Pietrelcina is to the Christian West), and the elder once gave him a prayer rope and taught him to say the Jesus Prayer on it. The elder compared those prayers to firing "bullets" at the demons. It reminded me of how, when I was a Catholic, I would pray the rosary in the same spirit. Though I pray the Jesus Prayer on the chotki, or prayer rope, now, I recognize that the Rosary is a very powerful way of praying. I have experienced this myself on a number of occasions.
So when I read this hysterical anti-Catholic screen against the rosary in The Atlantic, the journal of middlebrow-elite liberalism (yes, there is such a thing as middlebrow elite), my first thought was not outrage, but satisfaction: Good, the enemies of God know what they're dealing with. But my second thought is that this is a remarkable escalation in the culture of hatred against Christians and Christianity that the Left is generating and perfecting. It is impossible to imagine that a magazine of The Atlantic's stature would produce such a piece condemning a venerable prayer practice of any other religion. Here's how the magazine presents the piece on its website:
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/libs-tremble-before-the-rosary/
