Rosary Insight

- from Insight Magazine, John Paul Meenan, Editor.

Many, many Popes have urged the daily recitation of the Rosary since Pius V, not least the saintly John Paul II, who in 2003 dedicated one of his last encyclicals, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, to this ancient prayer to the Virgin, also giving us the luminous mysteries, again as Father Rutler declares, to guide us in these dark times, which John Paul likely foresaw in some way.

The Rosary saved Europe, in the time of Pius V, but also earlier, through that original great promoter of the Rosary, Saint Dominic, battling intellectually and spiritually against the Albigensians, inheritors of the Manichean heresy, that all matter was evil, including bodies, marriage and children. As one priest recently put it, the very words of the Ave Maria put paid to this demonic lie: And blessed is the fruit of thy womb. God Himself took a body, sanctifying our very flesh, by His Incarnation declaring all ‘incarnations’ good and holy, and that this flesh, now subject to sin, will be gloriously resurrected on the last day.