Periodically some non-caucus Protestant topic is posted, usually about arminianism v double predestination or something of the kind. There is no urge that I'm aware of for me to come in and tear up the pea-patch and being up every beef I have with Protestantism, in its multifarious splendor.
But within a hundred or so posts from the beginning of a thread about Catholics teaching on and devotion to the Virgin here it all comes implicitly or explicitly, The Authority of Scripture v. tradition, merit v. grace, immaculate conception, at least one shot hurtling in the general direction of the doctrine of the Trinity. It's as though there's one thing Protestants can get back together on, Them Calflicks need to be STOPPED! We can't even let them articulate what they think, we've got to stop them.
And then there's the phenomenon of the line of arguments infinitely wide but one deep: We'll fire the Immaculate conception argument, then step down the line and fire the merit v. grace argument, and then down the line to the next controversy.
There are some physicians who kill babies born alive, and others who will amputate perfectly healthy limbs of people who will pay for it. Yet in general we all think modern medicine and modern surgery are pretty good things. But if some wacko who can't think reasonably about what co-redemptrix might mean wants to promote Mary to Divine status, then we should throw out the decision and usage of the united Church since middle of the fifth century. Are there no Protestant teachings perversions of which have led to Spiritual disaster?
OR, try it again: The Church is a hospital for sinners, not a society of the elect. The disease is so virulent and so pandemic that even he hospital staff are infected, and one way or another they will show symptoms of illness. Sometimes a particular manifestation of the illness will crop up with the same symptoms in a number of different people.
On-lookers say, "I don't want to go to THAT hospital. Every one there is SICK!" It's like the problem with assessing hospitals on the basis of how many people die there. When I was a Chaplain at MGH, we had cases which other hospital s couldn't figure out sent to us, and our geniuses could only figure out some of them, so we had a lot of people die. Our high rate of death was precisely BECAUSE we were a good hospital, almost a hospital of last resort.
So the novel perturbations of sound doctrine and the bouts of Mariolatry out there on the fringes are, to me, as much an indication of the validity of the doctrines and of the RC church in general as anything else.
If we never leave the house, we won't get in car wrecks. WE won't get anywhere either. If we don't enter into Marian devotion, we won't risk Mariolatry. We'll miss a lot too.
**And so the "Mother of God" sinks slowly in the west, and we say a wistful, "Farewell," to the topic of the thread.**
I'm close to being gone here.