Is Mary the “Queen of Heaven”?

If Christ were not King, Mary would not be Queen, as all her prerogatives and titles depend upon her being the Mother of the Son of God made Man for our salvation.

Christ succeeded on earth to the throne of King David. However, unlike David, Christ’s kingdom is not an earthly one, but a spiritual and eternal kingdom of truth, righteousness, and peace (Rev 19:6). In that Kingdom Mary sits as Queen, as queen mothers (gebirah) did in ancient Israel before her (1 Kings 2: 13-21). 

Mary’s queenly and maternal reign is in the spiritual realm, however. Her raiment is charity and virtue surpassing all other creatures, and her favors are the graces of her Divine Son to be given to her spiritual children in accordance with His will.

In his 1954 encyclical on Mary’s Queenship, Ad Caeli Reginam, Pope Pius XII wrote,

From the earliest ages of the Catholic church a Christian people, whether in time of triumph or more especially in time of crisis, has addressed prayers of petition and hymns of praise and veneration to the Queen of Heaven. And never has that hope wavered which they placed in the Mother of the Divine King, Jesus Christ; nor has that faith ever failed by which we are taught that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, reigns with a mother's solicitude over the entire world, just as she is crowned in heavenly blessedness with the glory of a Queen.

Is the Queen of Heaven in Scripture?

In Revelation 12, Mary is described as both Queen and Mother, representing both herself, as Mother of the Redeemer, and the Church, in her continuing battle against the Evil One.

Rev. 12:1-6 And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.

And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth.

And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.

Rev. 13-17 And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had borne the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon had poured from his mouth. Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus.