It was the Protestant heretics who have contumaciously propagated this blasphemous and obscene profanity against Our Lady in their heretical transmogrifications of the Sacred Scriptures.
For the 44th chapter of the Prophecy of Jeremias, the Geneva Bible added this gloss to the 17th verse:
It seems that the Papists gathered of this place their Salve Regina and Regina coeli laetare calling the virgin Mary Queen of heaven, and so of the blessed virgin, and mother of our Saviour Christ made an idol; for here the Prophet condemneth their idolatry.
In this their malice and foolishness are evident, for the exclusive subject of these beautiful antiphons was not the queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Rather, the
Salve Regina prays for the Blessed Virgin's intercession in order to attain to the grace of final perseverance and thus to the Beatific vision of her Divine Son, and the
Regina cæli lætare is a dramatic representation of the exultation of the Blessed Virgin at the triumphant Resurrection of her Divine Son. These antiphons, as all other liturgical prayers and compositions that honor the Blessed Virgin Mary, are ultimately Christocentric.
Again, the Protestant heretics have debased Sacred Scripture into an abominable harlot to serve their autolatrous and audacious egocentricity wherewith they arrogate to themselves individually the prerogatives of the infallible magisterium of Holy Mother Church.
These heretics do not understand the grand mysteries of the Divine Person of Our Lord, because they have rejected His Blessed Mother, and so have become unworthy to be incorporated into His Mystical Body.
By a wondrous decree of Divine wisdom and omnipotence, human nature is united to the Godhead through the Eternal Word, Who took flesh from the Blessed Virgin Mary. The true dignity of human nature is restored by means of a retrogradatory dynamic whereby the maledictions incurred at the Fall are turned into benedictions greater than those that man would have obtained in his primal innocence. And so it came to pass that the Blessed Virgin Mary became the Second Eve, reversing the curse of the first Eve in her Immaculate Conception and in her cooperation with her Divine Son in the Mysteries of our Redemption (we greet Mary with the
Ave because she revered the curse of
Eva).
The horror and malice of the great transgression of Adam and Eve is far surpassed by the love that moved an infinite and eternal Deity to confine itself to space and time by means of a humble and unknown maiden at Nazareth. Far from threatening the prerogatives of Christ our Lord, extolling the Blessed Virgin renders the mystery of the Incarnation all the more admirable and astounding. For it was through her alone that the Eternal Son of the Heavenly Father chose to become incarnate as our Redeemer: no other means were chosen. Hence, the Deacon in the ancient rite of the Paschal Vigil exultingly cries out, “
O felix culpa, quæ talem ac tantum meruit habere redemptorem!” “O happy fault, that merited to have such and so great a Redeemer!”
Lastly, to whom are we to pay heed, to the novelties of heretics, or to the magisterium of Holy Mother Church as expressed in the teachings of the Fathers and in Apostolic tradition?
For this reason, I have endeavored to bring to you and to all the other readers of CathInfo, the first chapter of the great book
The Blessed Virgin Mary in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries (London: Burns & Oates, Ltd., 1893) by Rev. Fr. Thomas Livius, entitled "The Primitive Patristic Idea of Mary as the Second Eve."
Here is the link:
http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php/The-Blessed-Virgin-Mary-the-Second-EveI beseech you to read it prayerfully and with exceeding care, and irradiate your mind with the great luminaries that only the true Church of Christ can offer to the world.[/size]