The critical devotees are, for the most part, proud scholars, rash and self-sufficient spirits, who have at heart some devotion to the holy Virgin, but who criticize nearly all the practices of devotion which simple people pay, simply and holily to their good Mother, because these practices do not fall in with their own humor and fancy. They call in doubt all the miracles and pious stories recorded by authors worthy of faith, or drawn from the chronicles of religious orders: narratives which testify to us the mercies and the power of the most holy Virgin.

They cannot see, without uneasiness, simple and humble people on their knees before an altar or an image of Our Lady, sometimes at the corner of the street, in order o pray to God there; and they even accuse them of idolatry, as if they adored the wood or the stone. They say that they are not so credulous as to believe so many tales and stories that are told about Our Lady. These kind of false devotees, proud and worldly people, are greatly to be feared. They do an infinite wrong to devotion to Our Lady; and they are but too successful in alienating people from it, under the pretext of destroying its abuses.   

The scrupulous devotees are those who fear to dishonor the Son by honoring the Mother, to abase the one in elevating the other. They cannot bear that we should attribute, to Our Lady, the most just praise which the Holy Fathers have given her. It is all that they can do to endure that there should be more people before the altar of the Blessed Virgin than before the Blessed Sacrament – as if the one were contrary to the other, as if those who prayed to our Blessed Lady did not pray to Jesus Christ through her. They are unwilling that we should speak, so often, of Our Lady and address her so frequently.

External devotees are persons who make all devotion to our Blessed Lady consist in outward practices. They have no taste except for the exterior of this devotion, because they have no interior spirit of their own. They will say quantities of Rosaries with the greatest speed ; they will hear many Masses distractedly; they will go, without devotion, to processions; they will enroll themselves in all confraternities- without amending their lives, without doing any violence to their passions, or without doing any violence to their passions, or without imitating the virtues of that most holy Virgin. They only love the sensible part of devotion, without having any relish for its solidity. If they have not sensible sweetness in their practices. They think they are doing nothing; they get all out joint, throw everything up, or do everything at random. The world is full of these exterior devotees.

Presumptuous devotees are sinner abandoned to their passions, or lovers of the world, who, under the fair name of Christians and clients of our Blessed Lady, conceal pride, avarice, impurity, drunkenness, anger, swearing, detraction, injustice or some other sin. They sleep in peace in the midst of their bad habits, without doing any violence to themselves to correct their faults, under the pretext that they are devout to the Blessed Virgin. They promise themselves that God will pardon them; that they will not be allowed to die without confession; and that they will not be lost eternally, because they say the Rosary, because they fast on Saturdays, because they belong to the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary, or wear the Scapular, or are enrolled in other congregations, or they wear the little habit or little chain of Our Lady.

They will not believe us when we tell them that their devotion is only an illusion of the devil and a pernicious presumption, likely to destroy their souls. They say that God is good and merciful; that He has not made us to condemn us everlasting; that no man is without sin; that they shall not die without confession; that one good act of contrition at the hour of death is enough; that they are devout to Our Lady, wear the Scapular, say daily, without fail and without vanity, seven Our Fahers and seven Hail Mary’s in her honor; and that they sometimes say the Rosary and the office of Our Lady, besides fasting and other things.

To give authority to all this, and to blind themselves still further, they quote certain stories which they have heard or read – it does not matter to them whether they be true or false – relating how people have died in mortal sin without confession, and then, because in their lifetime they sometimes said some prayers, or went through some practices of devotion to Our Lady, how they have been raised to life again, in order to go to confession; or their soul has been miraculously retained in their bodies till confession; or through the clemency of the Blessed Virgin, they have obtained from God, at the moment o death, contrition and pardon of their sins, and so have been saved; and that they themselves expect similar favors.

Nothing in Christianity is more detestable than this diabolical presumption. For how can we truly say that we love and honor our Blessed Lady when but our sins we are pitilessly piercing, wounding, crucifying and outraging Jesus Christ, her Son?

The inconstant devotees are those who are devout to our Blessed Lady by fits  and starts. Sometimes they are fervent and sometimes they are lukewarm. Sometimes they seem ready to do anything for her, and then a little afterward, they are not like the same people. They begin by taking up all the devotions to her, and enrolling themselves in the confraternities; and then they do not practice the rules with fidelity. They change like the moon; and Mary puts them under her feet with the crescent, because they are changeable and unworthy to be reckoned among the servants of that faithful Virgin, who have, for their special graces, fidelity and constancy. It were better for such persons not to burden themselves with so many prayers and practices, but to choose a few and fulfill them with faithfulness and love, in spite of the world, the devil and the flesh.

We have still to mention the false devotees to Our Blessed Lady, who are the hypocritical devotees, who cloak their sins and sinful habits with her mantle, in order to be taken by men for what they are not.

There are also the interested devotees who have recourse to Our Lady only to gain some lawsuit, or to avoid some danger, or to be cured of some illness, or for some other similar necessity, without which they would forget  her altogether. All these are false devotee, pleasing neither to God nor to His holy Mother.