Posted on 06/18/2009 4:02:05 PM PDT by bronxville
Mary not just for Catholics anymore
By Patricia Zapor Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- As publications from Time magazine to Christianity Today have discovered recently, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is not just for Catholics anymore.
Features on Mary are perennial favorites for editors looking for a religion-themed story before Christmas, and in the last few years many of these articles have focused on the increasing popularity of Mary among Protestants.
Marianist Father Thomas Thompson, editor of the Marian Library Newsletter at the University of Dayton in Ohio, points out that the expanding Protestant acceptance of Mary is based upon a strictly scriptural view of her, rather than on any change in Protestant theology.
Some Catholic doctrines about Mary, such as the Immaculate Conception -- the belief that she was conceived without sin -- remain controversial among Protestants, Father Thompson said. But as anti-Catholicism has waned among Protestants, the barriers to Episcopalians, Baptists and evangelicals turning to Mary have faded as well.
"We're very happy to see others taking an interest in Mary," he said in a telephone interview with Catholic News Service.
Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, a Baptist college in Birmingham, Ala., wrote recently that "it is time for evangelicals to recover a fully biblical appreciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in the history of salvation, and to do so precisely as evangelicals." George's comments appeared in the December 2003 issue of Christianity Today and in a 2004 collection of essays by various theologians, "Mary: Mother of God."
"We may not be able to recite the rosary or kneel down before statues of Mary, but we need not throw her overboard," George wrote.
In the magazine, he quoted an early 20th-century Southern Baptist New Testament scholar, A.T. Robertson, who said Mary "has not had fair treatment either from Protestants or Catholics." Robertson argued that while Catholics have "deified" Mary evangelicals have coldly neglected her.
"We have been afraid to praise and esteem Mary for her full worth," said George, citing Robertson, "lest we be accused of leanings and sympathy with Catholics."
George's article went on to explain historical, scriptural and theological reasons why Protestants should embrace Mary.
"We need not go through Mary in order to get to Jesus," George concluded, "but we can join with Mary in pointing others to him."
Another recent book, "Blessed One," is a collection of 11 essays about Mary by Protestant scholars.
In their introduction, editors Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Cynthia L. Rigby, professors at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey and Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Texas, respectively, said their goal for the book was to help Protestants think in new ways about Mary, "blessing her and being blessed by her."
"She is a person of faith who does not always understand but who seeks to put her trust in God," they wrote.
For Muslims, on the other hand, Mary has always been a part of the picture.
John Alden Williams, professor emeritus in the humanities of religion at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, is a Catholic historian who has studied Islamic civilization and religion. He and fellow William and Mary professor James A. Bill published "Roman Catholics and Shi'i Muslims" in 2002.
It notes that two sections of the Quran, the sacred book of Islam, are devoted to Mary, known there as Maryam. She is recognized as the purified woman chosen to be the mother of the promised Messiah. Islam considers Jesus an important prophet, but not the incarnation of God.
Williams explained in a phone interview that, like Catholics, Shiite Muslims, who are a minority compared to the vastly more numerous Sunni Muslims, believe in intercessory prayer through saints and other holy people. That includes Mary, who is highly revered as a mediatrix between humans and God, or Allah. Sufis, another Islamic sect, also believe in intercession.
In Sunni Islam, "the whole idea of intercession is disputed," Williams said, "just as it is among Calvinist Protestants."
Among the differences the leaders of the Protestant Reformation had with the Catholic Church was the growth during the Middle Ages of devotion to Mary. Reformers argued that Jesus was the only mediator between God and mankind and that "exuberant Marian devotion seemed to them to threaten the clarity of the Gospel message of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, through Christ alone," wrote Daniel L. Migliore, a theology professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, in his chapter in "Blessed One."
Muslims who seek Mary's intercession, on the other hand, see her in much the same way Catholics do, said Williams.
While living in the Middle East, he said he witnessed several striking examples of the reverence many Muslims have for Mary.
At the Convent of Our Lady, an Orthodox church in Sednaya, Syria, he watched devout Muslims roll out prayer rugs to join Christians in reverencing an icon of Mary that is reputed to have been painted by St. Luke the Evangelist and believed to have the power to cure illnesses.
And in the late 1960s, many Muslims were among the millions who gathered in a Coptic Orthodox church in Egypt, hoping to catch a glimpse of reported Marian apparitions, he said.
For more than a year starting in 1968, apparitions of Mary were reported over the domes of the Church of the Virgin Mary in the Zeitoun area of Cairo.
Williams went to the church once during that time and was surprised to see Muslims among the crowd, he said.
"I asked some people, 'Isn't it a little funny for you to be coming here to a Christian church?'" Williams said. They said they considered it only proper that Mary would appear at a church dedicated to her, but explained that they believed she was speaking to all Egyptians, not just Christians.
"They all saw it as a great sign of consolation after the war with Israel (in 1967) that God had not forgotten the people of Egypt," he said.
Mary was a mortal human being, a sinner like all of us.
Bingo.
Speak directly to The Man.
No need to go through subordinates.
Martin Luther, Founder of the Reform, Speaks on Mary
In his sermon of August 15, 1522, the last time Martin Luther preached on the Feast of the Assumption, he stated:
There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know. And since the Holy Spirit has told us nothing about it, we can make of it no article of faith . . . It is enough to know that she lives in Christ.
The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart. (Sermon, September 1, 1522).
[She is the] highest woman and the noblest gem in Christianity after Christ . . . She is nobility, wisdom, and holiness personified. We can never honor her enough. Still honor and praise must be given to her in such a way as to injure neither Christ nor the Scriptures. (Sermon, Christmas, 1531).
No woman is like you. You are more than Eve or Sarah, blessed above all nobility, wisdom, and sanctity. (Sermon, Feast of the Visitation, 1537).
One should honor Mary as she herself wished and as she expressed it in the Magnificat. She praised God for his deeds. How then can we praise her? The true honor of Mary is the honor of God, the praise of God’s grace . . . Mary is nothing for the sake of herself, but for the sake of Christ . . . Mary does not wish that we come to her, but through her to God. (Explanation of the Magnificat, 1521).
Luther gives the Blessed Virgin the exalted position of “Spiritual Mother” for Christians:
It is the consolation and the superabundant goodness of God, that man is able to exult in such a treasure. Mary is his true Mother .. (Sermon, Christmas, 1522)
Mary is the Mother of Jesus and the Mother of all of us even though it was Christ alone who reposed on her knees . . . If he is ours, we ought to be in his situation; there where he is, we ought also to be and all that he has ought to be ours, and his mother is also our mother. (Sermon, Christmas, 1529).
Martin Luther had the belief of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, Luther’s words follow:
It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin” (Sermon: “On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God,” 1527).
She is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin- something exceedingly great. For God’s grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil. (Personal {”Little”} Prayer Book, 1522).”
That’s what Martin Luther had to say about the Blessed Mother. So even the reformers/rebels revered and honored Holy Mary. What happened to the Protestant Tradition?
Mary was a human mother born in sin. That’s all nothing more. The one qualifying factor that she had that Jesus needed was the unbroken, unblemished line from David through his son Nathan. Whereas Joseph’s bloodline which was broken but his line carried the title of King through David.
Free of sin so that she could bear Christ in her womb.
You are getting erroneous information from you Catholic bashing churches.
Free of sin?
We are all born sinners, so where does a person who is free of sin come from? Was she the daughter of God and Jesus is really the Grandchild of God?
Christians go through Christ, everyone else is just a dead human
"Never apologize for the Blessed Virgin Mary!"
~~Mother Angelica
You are not familiar with the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Please educate yourself.
Christians worship God through Christ Jesus. That is all.
There sure are a lot of Catholic-bashers aka protestants on this site - they’re here to ensure you know in no uncertain terms what their opinion is of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
I don’t know whether Mary was sinless or not, and I’m comfortable with not knowing. All I know is that God found her special, and so do I.
I wouldn't apologize for her, I just don't consider her terribly relevant.
See, I worship Christ, not His mom or His second cousin or His lawyer.
I am privileged with direct communication to Him.
I have no need of intermediaries.
Tradition ... Topal .....men can speak of anything but there’s nothing about venerating Mary in the Bible ... great theologians can speak on whatever they want but it doesn’t make it Biblical ... Mary was just the means whereby Jesus entered the world ... nothing more.
Heinrich Bullinger
Bullinger (d. 1575) . . . defends Mary’s perpetual virginity . . . and inveighs against the false Christians who defraud her of her rightful praise: ‘In Mary everything is extraordinary and all the more glorious as it has sprung from pure faith and burning love of God.’ She is ‘the most unique and the noblest member’ of the Christian community . . .
‘The Virgin Mary . . . completely sanctified by the grace and blood of her only Son and abundantly endowed by the gift of the Holy Spirit and preferred to all . . . now lives happily with Christ in heaven and is called and remains ever-Virgin and Mother of God.’
{In Hilda Graef, Mary: A history of Doctrine and Devotion, combined ed. of vols. 1 & 2, London: Sheed & Ward, 1965, vol.2, pp.14-5}
That’s the problem they’re not educated in the doctrine. I mean if they were they’d know what their protestant reformers had to say about her. Heinrich Bullinger wrote the above on the Holy Mother. What happened one might wonder.
"Do whatever he tells you" she said (John 2:5). Mary calls us to obedience, and Our Lord has made her the vehicle to bring warring factions together in peace to Him. She did so in Mexico (as Our Lady of Guadalupe).
Throughout history, she has always pointed the way to her Son through obedience to Him.
I have been here long enough to know, you ain’t gonna change each others minds. To my fellow Catholics, I offer you this sage advice;
Stop casting pearls before swine.
“Tradition ... Topal .....men can speak of anything but there’s nothing about venerating Mary in the Bible ... great theologians can speak on whatever they want but it doesn’t make it Biblical ... Mary was just the means whereby Jesus entered the world ... nothing more.”
But who says that...? I mean your founding protestant reformers continued to honor and rever her. What happened? Do you all follow your own ideology? You’re your own little mini-gods? Mary is Biblical as your founding reformers knew... How come you strayed so far off the path?
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