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.
“Well, no thanks, my early reformers grew up and learned we don’t need to pray through her.”
So you’re following “early reformers”? Which one(s) are you following?
Hail Mary full of grace,
the Lord art with thee,
Bless art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.
{Luke, I, 28}
Thanks narses.
Actually, scripture says:
” 46 And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.”
Magnify means “to extol; praise”. Remember Jewish poetry tends to repeat the same thing in different words in a second phrase - so “My soul magnifies the Lord” is followed by “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior”.
Hence the NIV translation:
And Mary said:
“My soul glorifies the Lord
47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
49for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
Jesus is not made bigger or better by the soul of Mary (the other definition of magnify). She is simply giving glory to God.
And why? “...for the Mighty One has done great things for me”. Not HER ministry to HIM, but God’s to her.
Nothing in this passages even suggests an eternal ministry for Mary. Because “...all generations will call me blessed;”?
We do all her blessed, as she was, but that is completely true without any eternal ministry of Mary. Had she died the day after birth, she still would have been called blessed for all generations.
If venerate means to honor, as you claim, would the Catholic church be willing to substitute honor for venerate in its descriptions of Mary and cease praying to Mary (and the saints)? I suspect not, which makes your claim of equivalence implausible.
31Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. 32A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”
33”Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.
34Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
Mary was subordinate to him because she is not God.
“Mary was subordinate to him because she is not God.”
So when the Holy Writ says:
He was obedient to them. {Lk 2:51}
The Holy Writ simply gets it wrong? Odd that point of view. Certainly not Biblical.
“Had she died the day after birth, she still would have been called blessed for all generations.”
Why? And how is that not an ‘eternal ministry’?
Oh, c’mon...the first part of the “Hail Mary” prayer was taken direcly from scripture as the angel announced to Mary her chosen status to bear the Messiah. She was indeed “blessed AMONG women”, not ABOVE women. The rest of the canned prayer which is repeated over and over again in praying the rosary was added by the Romanist church.
No scripture ever tells believers to ask Mary to “pray for us sinners”. What can she ask our Heavenly Father for that we cannot come directly to Him?
No scripture ever tells believers that Mary is “the Mother of God”. She is the human birth giver of Jesus’ human body. He is the incarnation of Almighty God, as we read in John chapter 1, “In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was made flesh and dwelled among us. All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.”
As a former Roman Catholic, I have seen the truth and it sets me free. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father but through Him. This is NOT Catholic-bashing. It is trying to speak the truth in love.
How does the word Honor change anything? I ask many people I honor to pray for me, why not the Mother of God?
And where does anyone say that Mary is “subordinate” to Jesus?
It is a sign of respect.
Why wouldn’t I respect my mother’s wishes even though I’m in my 40’s and have children of my own?
It’s a sign of respect. A sign of Honor, as in “Honor your father and mother”
Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord art with thee, Bless art thou among women, And blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. {Luke, I, 28}
Would that be from Luke 1:
"28 And coming in, he said to her, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you."
John 2
he obeyed his mother’s direction at Cana
>>It is trying to speak the truth in love.<<
Make that “speaking YOUR truth”.
My truth is different.
“She was indeed “blessed AMONG women”, not ABOVE women.”
Really? But you say:
“...the angel announced to Mary her chosen status to bear the Messiah. “
She was the ONLY women so Blessed, NO?
How is that particular, singular and Most Holy Blessing NOT “ABOVE {other} women”?
Why? Because of all the young women who have ever been born, she was chosen by God for the birth of Jesus. That sounds pretty special to me! She was blessed!
But where do you derive an eternal ministry out of that?
In the 1984 New International Version translation, yes - http://bible.cc/luke/1-28.htm - but that is a very new, controversial and certainly not TRADITIONAL translation.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today’s_New_International_Versionfor comments like “It is explicitly Protestant like its predecessor;...” and the very simple and obvious issue of gender confusion. Modernists love this translation - I know that many denominations do not.
It says, "And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them."
When he was 12, he "was submissive to them". "Was" is past tense, not future.
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