Fatimistas have meltdown over Italian text of consecration.

ope Fran­cis and the world’s bish­ops reconsecrate—I empha­size: recon­se­crate—Rus­sia to the Immac­u­late Heart of Mary today; and where the Eng­lish text refers to Mary as “Queen of Heav­en,” the Ital­ian text calls her “ter­ra del cielo,” which means “earth of heav­en.”

The Fatimis­tas, who seem to think the pope is reli­gious­ly bound by every last gran­u­lar detail of a pri­vate rev­e­la­tion, are apoplec­tic. Demon con­sul­tant Tay­lor Mar­shall was ini­tial­ly non-com­mit­tal and insist­ed he was “study­ing” the mat­ter. Then, after an intense appli­ca­tion of every ounce of intel­lect he could muster, Dr. Mar­shall decid­ed that “earth of heav­en” could be noth­ing oth­er than a ref­er­ence to Pachama­ma.

Oh no, Pope Fran­cis is con­se­crat­ing Rus­sia to Pachama­ma! What is a Faith­ful­Catholic™ to do?

Bish­op Strick­land of Tyler, Texas, did­n’t make any accu­sa­tions about Pachama­ma, but he was cer­tain that some­thing was not right and not accu­rate about the whole thing, and decid­ed that a quick tweet was just what the sit­u­a­tion called for:

As we join Pope Fran­cis in the Con­se­cra­tion Prayer on March 25, we must pay spe­cial atten­tion to Mary’s titles like Queen of Heav­en. There are ques­tions about some trans­la­tions in oth­er lan­guages. We must ensure that all trans­la­tions are accu­rate & hon­or Mary, Queen of Heav­en.

Strick­land did not tell us whether, like Mar­shall, he spent any time in “study” before pub­lish­ing his con­clu­sions on social media.

•••

Now, dear read­er, I want­ed to get at the bot­tom of what was going on here wih this expres­sion “ter­ra del cielo” to refer to Mary, so I searched high and low.

I said to myself: Sure­ly this must be an idiomat­ic expres­sion of some kind. So I searched and I found some­one who is flu­ent in Ital­ian: Fr. Stephanos Pedra­no, O.S.B., of Prince of Peace Abbey.

It’s not an idiom, accord­ing to Fr. Stephanos. It means just what Google Trans­late tells you it means: earth of heav­en. If you want­ed to say “queen of heav­en” in Ital­ian, you would say “regi­na del cielo.” Fr. Stephanos did not know where “ter­ra del cielo” orig­i­nat­ed, but he had a guess as to its mean­ing. On Face­book, he wrote:

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, in the text of the prayer in Ital­ian the expres­sion itself is put between quo­ta­tion marks, mean­ing it is some­thing unusu­al.

My take is that it’s a poet­ic choice, with some the­ol­o­gy or Mar­i­ol­o­gy behind it. As fol­lows:

Just as Gen­e­sis shows the Lord God took the vir­gin earth to shape a body for the first human, so God shaped the body of the New Adam from the immac­u­late, vir­gin “earth” in the per­son of Mary.

Not a bad guess, but I want­ed to find out more. And so I searched and searched, and what I found was that Andrea Tornielli—he’s the “Edi­to­r­i­al Direc­tor for the Vat­i­can Dicas­t­ery for Com­mu­ni­ca­tion”—wrote an arti­cle about it in L’Osser­va­tore Romano. Accord­ing to Torniel­li, the phrase “ter­ra del cielo” comes from a Byzan­tine-Slav­ic monas­tic hymn of the 9th cen­tu­ry or some­thing like that.

“What’s the source for this?” Matt Gaspers demand­ed on Twit­ter. (Gaspers is the man­ag­ing edi­tor of the five-alarm trad site Catholic Fam­i­ly News.)

Fr. Z found the answer. “A friend of mine,” wrote Fr. Z, “thought it [ter­ra del cielo] might be in a Byzan­tine hymn and … kapow! … he was right.” Here’s the source.

The text of the hymn runs this way:

Holy Mary,
moth­er of the Lord,
your faith guides us.

Turn your gaze
towards your chil­dren,
Earth of heav­en.

The road is long and night descends upon us:
inter­cede with Christ for us,
Earth of heav­en.

The Monastery of Bose (Bose is in Mag­nano, Italy) explains the think­ing behind the expres­sion:

Much loved by the East­ern [Catholic] and Ortho­dox church­es, [the hymn] is a cel­e­bra­tion of the birth of the woman who became “earth of heav­en”—in oth­er words, the fer­tile ter­rain offered by human­i­ty so that the Word’s Incar­na­tion might take place in human his­to­ry, ful­fill­ing God’s plan of sal­va­tion.

In oth­er words, Mary was the “earth” through which Jesus came to us. Well, that sounds entire­ly … ortho­dox!

And as it turns out, back in 2005, Car­di­nal Gian­fran­co Ravasi wrote a brief note about the hymn for Avvenire. (At the time, Ravasi was the pre­fect of the Ambrosian Library.) He explains “ter­ra del cielo” the same way:

There are two themes that emerge from the hymn. On the one hand, there is that evoca­tive def­i­n­i­tion of Mary as “earth from heav­en”: she is, in fact, the locus of cre­at­ed real­i­ty into which God descends in a direct and explic­it fash­ion. Beyond metaphor, she is the fer­tile womb offered by human­i­ty so that the Incar­na­tion of the Word may be accom­plished in our his­to­ry. On the oth­er hand, there is the sweet trust of the believ­er who gazes upon this Moth­er who is the believ­er par excel­lence. [Trans., Fr. Stephanos Pedra­no, O.S.B.]

Dear read­er, that is entire­ly ortho­dox.

So that’s what my inves­ti­ga­tion into the mat­ter uncov­ered in the course of an after­noon: “Ter­ra del cielo” is a title for Mary from a Byzan­tine hymn that pre­dates the year 1000, and it is to be under­stood in a the­o­log­i­cal­ly ortho­dox way.

Tay­lor Mar­shal­l’s deep stud­ies led him to con­clude it was all about Pachama­ma.

I report; you decide.

•••

Mary, earth of heav­en, pray for us.

UPDATES

Mike Lewis at Where Peter Is also takes down the non­sense from the Fatimis­tas.

 

At Catholic News Agency, Court­ney Mares dis­cuss­es Torniel­li’s arti­cle in L’Osser­va­tore Romano. As it turns out, the con­se­cra­tion prayer is steeped in tra­di­tion:

One line in the con­se­cra­tion refers to Mary as the “liv­ing foun­tain of hope” and asks her to “water the dry­ness of our hearts.” Accord­ing to Torniel­li, this is tak­en from a quo­ta­tion from St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s prayer, “Vir­gin Moth­er, Daugh­ter of your Son,” found in the last can­ti­cle (XXXIII) of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Com­e­dy.

The con­se­cra­tion prayer ref­er­ences Mary, Undo­er of Knots, a Mar­i­an devo­tion close to Pope Fran­cis’ heart.

It also direct­ly quotes Our Lady of Guadalupe’s words to St. Juan Diego: “Am I not here, I who am your Moth­er?”

And at Steel Mag­ni­fi­cat, my friend Mary Pez­zu­lo writes a beau­ti­ful piece reflect­ing upon the expres­sion “earth of heav­en”:

Because of [Mary’s] offer­ing of her­self, Christ became incar­nate, and now we all can also become earths for Heav­en to grow in. …

Spring is as impos­si­ble as a vir­gin becom­ing with child through the Holy Spir­it, through no inter­ven­tion by any man but sim­ply by say­ing “yes.”

Yes, let it be done to me. Fiat mihi sec­on­dum ver­bum tuum. And the earth turns into some­thing it wasn’t before, and life comes back. …

“Earth of Heav­en” isn’t a mis­take. It’s like the Spring: an impos­si­bil­i­ty that hap­pens any­way.

Read it all.