If you persuade me that I am mistaken in thinking about Mary this way, you will have been (by Grace) Part (a MINOR part, but a part) of the process of bringing me closer to God and to conformity with His will, if only by correcting a misconception I had about Him. You will have shared, my His grace in His redemptive work. -- That's what.
I have to ask. Do you think I am unfamiliar with or have forgotten the tests of Scripture you quote here?
I>It just seems to me that Christ is lessened if we say that He needed help, AND that we owe thanks to Mary for saving us.
I don't think the infinite can be lessened. ANd I owe thanks to people who brought me to to Church, who corrected me, who showed me how Grace could possibly be "irresistible" without crunching my freedom, and on and on and on. I owe so many thanks that they would never give me an Oscar because I'd be there all night and into the next day. I LOVE to give thanks! (Well, okay, not to the IRS, ....) "Thanks" is one name of my chief act of worship, after all, and I see the Grace of God as coming to me in a thousand different ways and through a thousand different conduits. And I think the pipes as well as the Well, and I would be ungenerous, I would be showing that I had not yet drunk so deeply that the suply of thanks was no welling up in me to eternal life If I di dnot thank God for all the people He has given me to thank, and thank him for thinking up gratitude as a thing for me to feel and show. I am in debt all over the place! It's fabulous!
Why does Mary need this additional title?
Mary needs nothing at all! She is full of Grace. But I need to understand how unutterably cosmic the smallest word can be, and how much more beyond the measure of my mind is a woman, a girl really, who gives herself to God, who can say "yes" so intimately and so completely -- by His gift, and bu His gift bring His love into the world. I need to remember that She bore the son who bruised and more, who gave a mortal wound the the head of the ancient serpent.
But even that need is not like."Oh I need to do pushups now," not a burdensome need. It's more like I need to sing because if I don't I'll burst. Like I need to hug my daughter or to kiss my wife.
Without quoting you, yes princes are in some sense "inferior" to queens. I didn't say to the same degree. I said a similar fashion.
You recognize the reference to envy, I hope?
But once again we hit the wall of your thinking that the only revelation of God since well, since back then, is the Bible, and my not thinking about the whole intercourse between God and humanity in the same way at all. Starting with different premises and different modes of argument unsurprisingly leads to different conclusions.
Finally, I think you DO have a cultural "lens". I don't think you get royalty, and how royal titles in another culture are part of the currency of honor. I think the lens not so much of the Reformation as of the Enlightenment and the separation of Church and state provides a distorted understanding of and affect towards this kind of lingo. It's a younger language.
OOPs I'm late for "24".
No, not at all. But I don't know how you see them either. :) From my POV, I'm sure you can see how I would think there is an apparent contradiction.
You recognize the reference to envy, I hope?
I thought of the parable of the workers in the vineyard, but I still didn't think it applied. I have no problems with Mary. I don't envy her, I don't think she's getting special treatment that I "deserve", and it is not my purpose to tear her down. I worry that others exert such great energy in their Christian lives venerating, adoring, admiring, exhorting, praying to, supplicating to, lifting up, placing above others, and indeed placing faith in, etc., Mary, that the true focus of their worship may suffer. The distinctions made by truly learned Catholics here have some objective plausibility, but I seriously doubt that the masses have such an understanding. (That is only based on my personal interactions with "regular" Catholics who are not of the theologian ilk. No offense to them. :)
Finally, I think you DO have a cultural "lens".
Yes, I certainly do. I was saying that I don't think I had a theologic lens when I first started reading the Bible. But now, of course, I also have a theologic lens.
I don't think you get royalty, and how royal titles in another culture are part of the currency of honor. I think the lens not so much of the Reformation as of the Enlightenment and the separation of Church and state provides a distorted understanding of and affect towards this kind of lingo. It's a younger language.
Well, all of this could be right. :) Do you think it is correct that the hierarchy should be treated as Royalty, and that the Church's rightful place is to head the state? I mean this in the sense of the current political organization of the RCC. IOW, "the people" have zero say, and the hierarchs elect themselves to all offices of higher power.
OOPs I'm late for "24".
Never miss it. Still can't get over "little Ricky" as a tough guy. :)