Happy Mother's Day
Posted on 05/11/2008 4:58:48 AM PDT by NYer
CNA).- Vitorrio Messori, the most popular Italian Catholic writer has slammed so-called “adult” Catholics who want to minimize the role of the Virgin Mary, just days before the presentation of his new book “Hypothesis About Mary” in Spain.
The best-selling author of books such as “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” addresses who Mary is for believers in his new work, the credibility of apparitions in Lourdes and Fatima and Mary’s role in Christian belief. The new book has yet to be translated into English.
Messori confesses that years ago he was asked to write a book about Mary, but the proposal “seemed extravagant.” However, little by little, he realized that “the Mother is discovered afterwards, when one has entered into a relationship with the Son…Then we realize that the discreet presence of Mary is essential.”
According to Messori, the fact that certain Catholics “are ashamed” of Mary is due “above all to a Protestant influence on Catholicism. Reformation theology has always been convinced that what is given to the Mother of God is taken away from the Son. In reality, the truth is the opposite: wherever Mary is eclipsed, Jesus disappears as well, either before or after. As almost five centuries of experience shows, the faith has been preserved much better between Catholics and Orthodox, who give Mary the role that is hers. The fact is that this Woman is the guarantor of the truth of the Incarnation: it is her flesh, it is her uterus that guarantees that God has truly been made man.”
“Many theologians,” he went on, “believe that Marian devotion isn’t ‘elegant,’ and they think that it is a sentimental deviation unworthy of adults. And it is true that, often times, devotion to Mary has been mere sentimentalism; but what I have tried to show in my book, where there is no rhetoric, is that there can exist a ‘manly’ devotion, in the truest sense of the word, like the Medieval knights for example.”
Starting with the Enlightenment, he said, “a culture understood only in an academic and scholastic sense has been exalted. In reality, while this culture can lead to pride, the humility of the ignorant according to the world makes him more willing to understand the Mystery of a God who wanted to become a child, who we know knew how to read but who we are not sure knew how to write.”
Therefore, in “Hypothesis About Mary,” Messori explains that he seeks to convey that “without Mary Christianity is incomplete. What’s more, without Mary the faith itself is in danger, is unbalanced and without strong roots… In fact, in the book I show how the Marian presence prevents the faith from falling into error. It is an essential element of equilibrium, it’s not an optional choice,” he said.
Mary rocks!
“According to Messori, the fact that certain Catholics “are ashamed” of Mary is due “above all to a Protestant influence on Catholicism.”
I don’t know a single Catholic who is ashamed of Mary...and I know thousands of Catholics! Jesus needed Mary and so do I.
For what? What can she provide that Christ lacks?
She does , as an obedient servant of God....but only the Blood of Christ redeems
I have a print of that Bouguereau painting “Song of the Angels” in my house - and I’m not Catholic. It’s one of the great, underappreciated works, like the artist himself.
“For what? What can she provide that Christ lacks?”
Christ doesn’t lack, I do. In my deepest meditation Mary hands me the baby Jesus and asks me to love His Church as she loves Jesus. Her sweet love of Christ reminds me that I am to love the Body of Christ - the Church - with all of the tenderness that she showed Baby Jesus. She is the Mother of God and my Mother.
Oh, really, “slams.” Grow some vocabulary, “journalists.” Surely there’s some other term that could convey “points out errors or misunderstandings in a measured and rather bland academic sort of way.”
Yes, indeed.
And Jesus would not want us to ignore, show disresepct or negligence to His mother. He saw to her care from His Cross.
And we are told in Scripture that when the Wise Men sought Him, “they found Him with His mother”.
To those who so smugly dismiss Our Lady as being merely an incidental prop to the mission of Jesus and the Church, and therefore to the Almighty's Plan of Salvation, I offer only this:
You say Jesus is love, do you not?
You honor your mother, do you not?
If you, such as you are (and undoubtedly you would admit at least a notch or two below Jesus on the scale of Perfection) if you would honor your mother, how much more does Jesus honor His Mother.
Don't you see, without her you wouldn't even have a Jesus to pretend you want to be like.
I urge you to thank the God you think you know that He is God, and someone like you or me isn't, because if you dissed my mother, I wouldn't sit for it.
And everything you do to this end puts another step between you and Christ. There is only ONE mediator between man and God, the MAN Christ Jesus.
It's simply the reflection of the early church's belief that Jesus was a harsh, stern judge and that one couldn't possibly pray to him or go directly to him. The pagans coming into the church were familiar with goddesses and goddess worship (Artemis in particular there in Ephesus) and there was a natural latching on to Mary as their own. It never started with the intention of worshiping Mary, but she became a substitute figure for "intercession" in light of the fear everyone had of going directly to the Son. (I'm not talking about the priesthood, I'm talking about the average believer).
Marian doctrine developed out of pagan beliefs, not intentionally, just incidentally. But there is nothing Biblical about praying to Mary or the belief that she can somehow intercede for anyone (maybe she can, maybe she can't, but there's nothing in scripture or early tradition to indicate she can).
Protestants are right, and it's why they jettisoned all the Marian doctrines. It's not consistent with Scripture (or early tradition - the tradition didn't develop until well into the third century and later).
That's not disrespectful of Jesus' mother. We simply believe that Catholics have created a pseudo-goddess, in Mary, that isn't there, and that the person Catholics pray to has nothing to do with the real, historical woman who was the mother of our Lord. We love Mary, we respect and honor her memory, we just don't believe that the real Mary who is now dead and gone to be with the Lord is the same person that Catholics pray to.
Is isn’t so much that the devotions to Mary is inelegant but its unnecessary. The only - repeat, only - mediation needed between God and man is Jesus.
Well said.
Your post is a logical falicy. One called “circular logic”, where we get such tripe as:
-God is Love
-Love is Blind
-Stevie Wonder is Blind
-Stevie Wonder is God
Utter nonsense.
God is indeed love, but to insist that Jesus holds Mary above all others is not substantiated in the scriptures. He did what was demanded of him while on the cross and provided support for his mother while she still lived. John was his cousin and the duty fell upon him.
Jesus summed up the Law and the Prophets by this:
Mat 22:35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
Mat 22:36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Mat 22:37 Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
Mat 22:38 This is the first and greatest commandment.
Mat 22:39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
Mat 22:40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Catholics need to stop putting artificial barriers between man and God. Jesus is the sole path to salvation. We pray to Him and He alone answers prayers. The Holy Spirit is the only one to intercede for us:
Rom 8:26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.
Christ ALONE!
Thank you for explaining what you believe.
My belief is not the same.
Furthermore,
I do not believe she is a “psuedo-goddess”.
I do not believe she is “now dead”, but that she is alive with Christ Jesus in glory.
I never said she was “co-redemptrix”.
I have never believed that she was a “Fourth” member of the Trinity.
I do not consider her to have the omniscience and omnipotence of the Triune God.
I do believe she enjoys all the promises of heavenly grace and glory promised to all who believe and love Jesus—and that she is the first among us to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him in the next.
If you believe that what you have posted is an accurate description of my beliefs, you are mistaken and have assigned to me what is not Truth.
Welcome, Spin-meister.
end of conversation!
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