A LAY INITIATIVE FORMED TO DEFEND

CATHOLIC TEACHING ON THE FAMILY

Calx Mariae issue 18 – Christmas 2022

Calx Mariae (“the Heel of Mary”) is Voice of the Family’s magazine promoting the culture of life, faith and the family. The Christmas 2022 issue focuses on faith and formation and introduces Voice of the Family’s new initiative, the Family and Life Academy.

Advent is a time of renewal, with the hope of a new beginning. And this Christmas issue also comes to you renewed.

We launched Calx Mariae as a quarterly magazine in the summer of 2018 to amplify Voice of the Family’s initiatives — in particular, our conferences and public witness, the fruits and findings of which Calx Mariae has enabled us to share among clergy and laypeople, both in the UK and internationally.

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Recent years have seen widespread changes, no doubt guided by Divine Providence, to which we have endeavoured to respond with new initiatives — Calx Mariae Publishing and the Family and Life Academy.

Our publishing initiative, which bears the same name as the magazine, was launched in June this year. The provision of good Catholic books seems especially important in a time when sound-bites rule over principles and a superabundance of information can detract from the clarity of true Christian formation. The first titles launched by Calx Mariae Publishing offer authentic Catholic perspectives on history, contemporary moral and cultural issues, as well as counsel on the interior life.

Our new online learning platform, the Family and Life Academy, was launched in October and is dedicated to providing authentic Catholic formation, through affordable courses and free webinars on an extensive range of subjects relating to the defence of life and the family in today’s world.

And, of course, the Voice of the Family Digest continues to offer up-to-date commentary and insights into the changing landscape of our times and reflections on the treasures of Catholic tradition throughout the liturgical year.

We now close the year 2022 with this issue of Calx Mariae, and look forward to continuing the magazine as an annual publication, bringing together the best of all our initiatives. We hope you will benefit from all aspects of our apostolate and recommend them to others.

This year was marked by many dramatic events, the most significant being the war between Russia and Ukraine, their consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the overturning of the US supreme court decision, Roe vs Wade.

The fine thread that joins these three events together is the message of Fatima. This divine proclamation from the Queen of Heaven, only one century ago, is the crystal-clear lens which enables us to see the glaring contradictions of our times for what they are. War, disease and natural disasters will accompany mankind as long as we persist in offending God and resist His call to conversion. When people break His laws, God, who is infinitely just, intervenes. He has done so, in His Mercy, by sending His Holy Mother to correct the children whom she adopted at the foot of the Cross. Our Lady’s message in Fatima remains one of the most spectacular instances of divine intervention since Christ’s coming. In order to avert the catastrophes foreseen from Heaven, she asked for the consecration of Russia from all the world’s bishops, in communion with the pope, and penance from the whole Church — with the offering of the five First Saturdays in reparation for offences against her Immaculate Heart. As Mother of Christians and of the whole human race, Our Lady wishes her children to obey with confidence in her desire to free us from the errors of Russia.

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In 1917, the great error of Russia was Communism, which has now been spread around the world, leaving its foul fruits everywhere: the rejection of God and of the family and human life as He created them. The material and spiritual destructiveness of this error is unparalleled in history. Abortion alone, first legalised in Communist Russia in 1920, has killed more people than all wars in the whole of human history and denied God’s plan for them. Roe vs Wade which claimed many millions of these innocent victims in the past 49 years in the US was a terrible monument to that error. Whether its overturning was a reward of the consecration performed at St Peter’s on 25 March this year, we cannot know with certainty; but we do know that, even now, when we obey — perhaps imperfectly and certainly late — our heavenly Mother can win us time to save our souls and many others.

This time we must use well. Above all, by responding to the specific requests that Our Lady made to all the faithful. In 1939, Sr Lucy said of the First Saturdays devotion, “Whether the world has war or peace depends on the practice of this devotion, along with the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This is why I desire its propagation so ardently, especially because this is also the will of our dear Mother in Heaven.”

Let us take the opportunity, this Christmas, to renew our commitment to this devotion by the crib of Our Newborn Lord and make the coming year a total offering of obedience to Mary, so that Her Immaculate Heart may soon triumph.

The words Calx Mariae — “the heel of Mary” — embody this sentiment of hope in the triumph of Jesus Christ, through His Holy Mother, which underpins the whole of our Catholic faith and inspires us to extend the frontiers of the kingdom of God. Let us do our part.

48 pages.

Worldwide shipping available!

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