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Why do Protestants hate the Blessed Virgin Mary? I want to have this discussion to help further our understanding of Mary and of Protestantism.

They hate her by refusing to give her the honour owed to her, which is a form of hatred or contempt. Even without the knowledge of the Immaculate Conception and the statements of the Church Fathers that she was sinless and holier than all the angels, they at least ought to honour her as the Mother of He whom they profess to be their Saviour. Yet, they treat her as though God used her as mere womb to produce Jesus Christ, and then dispensed with her as superfluous.

So why do they hate her in this way?

I would like to know your opinions, but I will first offer mine: I think that Protestants hate Mary because they hate the supernatural life of sanctity. This is also why the Protestants hate all the saints.

Martin Luther suffered from very great scruples, that he was constantly and grievously sinning. These scruples drove him to despair and then into heresy, because he said that the life of grace is impossible, that no man can avoid sin, and that our justification is by faith alone, a "fiduciary" faith, a faith that God has forgiven our transgression as a matter of legal fact, without reforming us interiorly to be holy. This theology was taken up more or less also by Calvin, it is the oldest Protestant theology of justification.

They do not believe that baptism remits sins and begins in us the life of supernatural grace, but believe that it remits sins merely as a matter of legal fact, so that God no longer counts our sin as sin legally. This is why many Protestants will say that it is impossible to lose one's salvation once one has been "born again", because they say that when they are "born again" God remits all their sins as a matter of legal transgression.

This is the core Protestant doctrine of total depravity, that men are essentially and irreformably depraved and sinful, and can never be holy before God. We are all essentially dung, but by faith God chooses to put Christ over us as a cloak to hide the sight and smell of our eternally depraved souls from His sight.

For this reason, Protestants have no need of Mary or the saints, Mary being the Queen of saints. For them, Christ is above all a one-and-for-all sacrifice that saves them from God's wrath. Mary's purpose was to give birth to this sacrificial victim. Once Christ was sacrificed, they need only believe that Christ has forgiven their sins, and they are assured of heaven for the rest of their lives no matter how many sins they commit. Good works are unnecessary, even a blasphemy because they imply that man in some sense saves himself when Christ only saves. Neither Mary nor the saints are needed because holiness is not needed for salvation; in fact, human holiness is impossible due to original sin and total depravity; Mary and the saints are not holier than anybody else, because all alike are totally depraved; to point towards Mary and the saints as examples of holiness, lives full of charity and good works, is to take away from our being saved by faith alone.

We know that Mary and all the saints are icons or images of God's grace, but the God of Protestant theology is an infinitely distant and wrathful Judge who is not present among us - not present in our souls by sanctification and not really and fully present in the Eucharist.

So, to conclude, I think Protestants hate Mary because they do not think that God can make men holy; they think that God alone is holy and that to point out the holiness of anybody else would be to take away from God's holiness. They deny the very greatest work of God, which is the sanctification of our souls, which is how we really participate in the life and sanctity of God.

Why do you think Protestants hate Mary, or at least refuse her the honour she is owed?