In an encyclical on the Rosary, Leo XIII says: “According to the will of God, nothing is granted to us except through Mary; and, as no one can go to the Father except through the Son, so generally no one can draw near to Christ except through Mary.”
(emphasis added)
Seriously, there is a real problem with this. This is incredibly disturbing. This essentially states explicitly that we can’t go to Jesus unless we go through Mary. That’s heretical and blasphemous.
Even during her earthly life, Mary truly appears in Scripture as the distributor of graces. Through Mary, Jesus sanctified the Precursor when she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth and sang the Magnificat. Through His mother, Jesus confirmed the faith of the disciples at Cana, by granting the miracle that she asked. Through her, He strengthened the faith of John on Calvary, saying to him: “Behold thy mother.” Lastly, by her the Holy Ghost came down upon the apostles, for she was praying with them in the cenacle on Pentecost day when the Holy Ghost descended in the form of tongues of fire.(25)
As Gottle already pointed out there are a vast number of graces that Jesus gave to people recroded throughout Scripture where Mary was nowhere to be found, and being on Earth certainly didn’t know what was happening. Given that, I can’t take this statement to be anything less than intentional deception; whoever wrote this can’t possibly be so ignorant of what is in the Bible so as to know that none of these events happened. They are picking and choosing scripture, which is the
same thing Protestants do to attack Catholicism.
With even greater reason after the assumption and her entrance into glory, Mary is the distributor of all graces. As a beatified mother knows in heaven the spiritual needs of her children whom she left on earth, Mary knows the spiritual needs of all men. Since she is an excellent mother, she prays for them and, since she is all powerful over the heart of her Son, she obtains for them all the graces that they receive, all which those receive who do not persist in evil.
Real problems here. This explicitly says that her prayers are the only reason we receive grace. This is a huge problem. If she
helps us get grace, fine. But this says we
can’t get it if she doesn’t pray for us.
Above all, though, look at this:
"since she is all powerful over the heart of her Son"
I don’t think I need to point out to anyone here how utterly blasphemous, idolatrous, and sinful that statement is. It says that Mary has control over Christ. Some people may try to reject that this is what it says by caliming that it really means she is Christ’s mother, so He can’t refuse her because he loves her so much.
There’s a major problem here: if Christ can’t say no to her, for
whatever reason, this makes him subjective to her! God is not subjective to ANYBODY, PERIOD. Also, Christ’s heart is more or less His will. Mary isn’t all powerful over Christ in any way!
