Mary, Communism, and the Only Begotten Daughter

The Only Begotten Daughter, Part V

By Jeffrey Scharfen

I have written earlier about the significant role devotion to Mother Mary played in my youth, and how that spiritual formation provided me with an emotional receptivity to Hak Ja Han as the Only Begotten Daughter of our Heavenly Parent. As I have reflected on my personal experience, additional historical and personal continuities have become apparent to me. Of central importance in this providential age has been True Parents' struggle against Marxism and communism, which took the form of an aggressive campaign to restore communist countries to God's side and to defeat Marxist ideology on university campuses and in the public square. For those of us raised as Catholics, these campaigns felt quite familiar both spiritually and politically.

Catholic anticommunism was the backbone of American anticommunism through the post-WWII period, and the backbone of Catholic anticommunism was devotion to Mother Mary. The cosmic struggle against evil, and quite literally the forces of Satan, was the water in which we Catholics swam. We were daily immersed and when we came up for a breath, the air tasted acrid from the fires of spiritual battle… or maybe that was the incense burning while we prayed the rosary.

The secular, atheistic revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, profoundly and violently affected the international institution of Roman Catholicism. The shuttering of churches, universities, hospitals and schools, the seizure of land, coupled with the historical and ongoing accounts of martyrdom, the persecution and suffering of priests, sisters, and the lay faithful that occurred worldwide during periods of revolutionary upheaval, became the cri de coeur of Catholic clergy and educators seeking to inform and form generations of Catholic youth. Using the venues of the pulpit, spiritual practice, the classroom, radio programming, television, and publications (to include comic books), they were profoundly effective. I think it was no accident that leading anticommunists, such as John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State and his brother, Allen Dulles as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, were conservative Roman Catholics—or that the Catholic Kennedys cut their political teeth going after Russian sympathizers and communists in the post-WWII American government. The country's most iconic conservative and anticommunist publication, The National Review, was founded by the conservative Catholic, William Buckley. These political figures who rose to the top of American political, intellectual, and cultural life, were only the most obvious fruits of Catholic education.

At the very heart of the Catholic evangelistic effort resided devotion to Mother Mary. In a series of apparitions by Mary at Fatima in 1917, she delivered messages to three youths which possessed a specifically anticommunist thrust and emphasized the prayer of the rosary as a means of spiritual warfare against atheism, and for the conversion of Russia. The critical effect of these apparitions on the religious and political posture of Catholics in the 20th century, cannot be overstated. Marian devotion became the pathway for broad clergy and lay participation in the evangelical effort of the Catholic Church to bring salvation to a suffering and threatened world.

My personal experience provides a window into how these religious convictions translated into action. As I grew up in the 1950's Catholic Church, the priests and sisters trained us to be the foot soldiers in this apocalyptic war. In our classrooms, the sisters communicated a sense of existential crisis and a conviction that our prayer and penance were absolutely essential to prevent the collapse of the Free World and effectuate the demise of atheistic communism. We prayed the rosary, collected pennies for the missions, sacrificed during Advent and Lent, and dedicated our devotional hours to the salvation of the millions of oppressed souls trapped in Russia and China. All the while, we looked to Mother Mary to hear our petitions and to intercede on our behalf with her son, Jesus. We never doubted the transcendent power of our individual and communal prayers, which were impassioned and frequent.

Our Catholic student periodicals, written to grade level, proved especially effective vehicles for teaching. The graphic depictions of the cruelties of the communists—I can never forget the images of chopsticks being driven into the ears of children—shaped our anticommunism on an emotional level. The Catholic Church, with an educational expertise developed over the course of two millennia, understood well how the affections of a child (what to love and what to hate) must first be cultivated for their intellects to be fully receptive to the evangelical message. We learned to hate the demonic doctrines and practices of atheistic communism, and to love Mother Mary, the Queen of Peace, to whom we appealed throughout our day.

What seems incontrovertible to me on a personal level, that Marian devotion prepared me to meet and follow the True Parents, also appears to be true on a grand providential level. The generations of fervent prayer for the conversion of Russia and China, the extensive long term educational activity to shape an international anticommunist movement, and the seeding of American cultural and political life with the fruit of this spirituality, education, and devotion, ripened as our True Parents met with Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev and the Korean dictator Kim Il Sung. It is axiomatic in spiritual understanding that no sincere prayer or devotional effort is ever lost or wasted. When we look for the traces of our Heavenly Parent's work in history, we should not ignore the efforts of Mother Mary to lay the foundation for the cosmic struggle against atheistic communism fought by our True Parents in these Last Days.

As Hak Ja Han assumes her proper role as the Only Begotten Daughter and the Mother of Peace, we can intentionally harvest the good and plenteous fruit of Mother Mary's work as the Queen of Peace in the Christian era. We might begin by reflecting on how Mary's profound sorrow and deep repentance for her providential failure found expression in her intermediary role in Christian history. She worked tirelessly to bring the hearts of men and women to faith in her son, Jesus. This work appears to have expanded in the 400 years before the Advent of the Only Begotten Daughter to encompass preparation for the final cosmic battles between good and evil, between the Free World and atheistic communism. Central to her efforts was the cultivation of a devotional heart, a faithful heart, a pure and compassionate heart. Meditating on these traces of God's work in history, hopefully will help us gain insight into the role of the Only Begotten Daughter, Holy Mother Han, as she labors to bring all of humanity, past, present, and future into the bosom of our Heavenly Parent's infinite love.