Sharing the Real Mary (with our Protestant brethren) [Ecumenical Caucus]

ic ^ | October 16, 2009 | David Mills

[NYer]

 

Many of our Protestant friends appreciate Mary in a way their ancestors didn't. This is a good thing. Some of them even like her a lot, and in a way that their ancestors would denounce. This is an even better thing. But there are limits, which too many Catholics just can't see.

 

By "Protestant" I'm thinking particularly of our Evangelical friends who are, in doctrinal seriousness and many other ways, close to us. For centuries they simply ignored Mary, even at Christmas. The only time they thought of her in any substantial way was when they were denouncing Catholic teaching, which they thought idolatrous, unbiblical, superstitious, and a rejection of the Lord Himself in favor of His mother.

 

She was for them, as an Evangelical pastor once said to me, just "the delivery system" needed to bring Jesus into the world. The Incarnation required a human mother; God picked Mary; she agreed, and in nine months Jesus was born. Since He had to have a mother, who it was didn't really matter. Having this child didn't change her in any way. Once Jesus was old enough to take of Himself, her small part in our salvation was over.

 

An Episcopal minister told me that Mary was well down the list of "great Christians." Asked for an example, he said she was well behind a 19th-century British missionary to Canada named Hudson Taylor. If you wanted an example of faithfulness, he said, look to Taylor before you look to Mary.

 

After all, he said, she didn't really do anything. She just had a baby.

 

 

But things are changing. One can guess at the reasons: The culture so promotes women that a heavily masculine tradition will prudently look to its sources for famous women to feature. Mary is the obvious first choice, though some Evangelicals have wanted "stronger" women as their examples of biblical women to follow, because they think of Mary as passive and her calling too typically feminine. (After all, she didn’t really do anything. She just had a baby.)

 

But this new and growing affection for Jesus' mother is also the result of their piety finally free to play itself out, now that many of the prejudices and commitments of the past have lost some of their power. They love their Lord and begin feeling a natural affection for His mother, and often begin to look more closely at who she is in the Gospels. They begin to reflect on what her assent to the angel's news means, and on what the prayer we call the Magnificat says about her; some even begin to look at the Old Testament for ways she may have been anticipated there.

 

The Southern Baptist theologian Timothy George, a leader in that world, has admitted, "We have been afraid to praise and esteem Mary for her full worth." This he wants to change, and offers several substantial suggestions for doing so, stressing aspects of Mary and her work that Evangelicals have not talked about much but that follow from their theological commitments.

 

Writing in the major Evangelical magazine Christianity Today a couple of years ago, he said that an "Evangelical retrieval of a proper biblical theology of Mary will give attention to five explicit aspects of her calling and ministry: Mary as the daughter of Israel, as the virgin mother of Jesus, as Theotokos, as the handmaiden of the Word, and as the mother of the Church."

 

 

So far, so good. Or maybe I should say, only so far, so good. Because the Protestant attitude shifts quickly from such talk of Mary to considering her as the Catholic knows her. They feel themselves drawn to Jesus' mother until they meet her in all her glory, as the Mother of the Church and the Queen of Heaven, immaculately conceived, perpetually virgin, assumed into Heaven. Then, as the saying goes, not so much.

 

Even the irenic George, at the end of his article, can only go so far as to commend this prayer: "And now we give you thanks, Heavenly Father, because in choosing the Blessed Virgin Mary to be the mother of your Son, you exalted the little ones and the lowly. Your angel greeted her as highly favored; and with all generations we call her blessed and with her we rejoice and we magnify your holy name." A good prayer, but not a Marian prayer. He would refuse on pain of death to say the "Hail Mary."

 

This difference matters, and matters a lot more than we might want to think. In my experience, Catholics who love their Protestant friends often exaggerate their points of agreement. They hear polite statements of interest or a curiosity about Catholic teaching and read into them a change in conviction that really isn't there. They take an article like George's as evidence that our Evangelical friends almost accept the Catholic teaching, missing how little, if anything at all, they've actually conceded.

 

In a recent Catholic News Service story, for example, a mariologist was quoted as saying, with all the good will in the world, that "some Catholic doctrines about Mary, such as the Immaculate Conception -- the belief that she was conceived without sin -- remain controversial among Protestants." He seems to think that some believe it and others don't, but that as a group they're moving our way.

 

But the belief is not controversial among them at all: Those who understand the matter almost unanimously reject it out of hand. You would have to search long and hard to find any Protestant who believes it. (Outside, that is, of a few high-church Lutherans and Episcopalians, but they're far from the mainstream of their traditions.)

 

Just try talking about Mary's sinlessness to an Evangelical friend. He may simply say politely that he doesn't believe in it, but he may react as if you'd casually urged him to sacrifice his children to Baal. He will tell you that you've denied the Lord, replaced Him with Mary, rejected the biblical teaching, and the like. He thinks the Catholic belief a serious heresy. A fact that is crucial to our friendship with Mary is, to most of our Evangelical friends, an abomination.

 

The desire to find our friends closer to us than before is an admirable impulse, but it prevents the clarity needed for a truly effective exchange. We must be careful not to take a sign of Evangelical openness to Catholic teaching as a conversion -- to treat a friendly wave in our direction as a proposal of marriage.

 

 

Marian doctrine and devotion is not a matter, like some others, where the Catholic teaching is an extension or expansion of something believing Protestants hold already. The Communion of Saints, and by extension prayer to the saints for their help, is one of these, at least at the basic level. The Protestant believes in asking others for their prayers, and he knows mutual prayer to be a sign of the Church at work. The Catholic teaching only expands the number of fellow believers whose prayers he can request, by claiming that God has given us access to them. He probably still rejects it -- and quite firmly -- but it fits what he already believes about the relation of one Christian to his brothers.

 

Marian doctrine and piety are not like this. They rest on several beliefs radically different from those our Evangelical friends hold, not least the ability of the Church to discern through her Tradition truths that Scripture does not teach explicitly in the way the Evangelical requires. Nothing in Protestant piety could lead them to belief in Mary as the Queen of Heaven, and much tells them that she can't possibly be anything of the sort. That kind of belief requires a conversion, in the sense of turning around and walking in the opposite direction, in a way the acceptance of many other Catholic teachings and practices doesn't.

 

But this is something that many Catholics just don't get. Priests and laity ask me about this, as a convert who's written a book on Mary. They confidently give me what they think are winning arguments that are, in fact, hopelessly in-house, deeply Catholic arguments that would leave the inquiring Protestant cold, and in some cases quite offended. The Marian realities are so clear to them that they just can't see how others can't see them as clearly as they do. This keeps them from speaking effectively about Mary.

 

The person called to share the Catholic Faith has to know exactly what the other believes and -- just as important, if not more importantly -- how he feels about this belief. Think of a doctor trying to persuade a patient to try a new therapy, one that sounds worse than the disease it's supposed to cure. If he speaks to the patient clinically, as one doctor to another, he won't be able to convince the patient to try it, and may instead make him dig in his heels. For the patient's own good, the doctor has to know how he thinks and feels. He must understand that the patient will first, and above all else, see the horrors of the treatment and has to be brought to see that the cost in pain and trouble is worth paying.

 

We want our Protestant friends to pay the cost, because the knowledge of the Blessed Mother can only change their lives for the better. But too optimistic a view of what they believe now will blind us to the severe challenge of sharing what we know about her with our Evangelical brethren, who are so close to us in so many ways, but so far from us in this.

[NYer]

---

David Mills is the author of Discovering Mary: Answers to Questions about the Mother of God (Servant Books) and a columnist for Lay Witness and the Pittsburgh Catholic. He recommends Timothy George's article "Evangelicals and the Mother of God" as an example of a positive appreciation for Mary.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

After a lot of study of the Scriptures and the Church Fathers,
I’ve personally come to the conclusion that Protestants make too
little of Mary and Catholics make too much.

Given the current lay of the land, I’d give the edge currently
to Catholics as being closer to the truth - but still too
far from the center.

best,
ampu

[NYer]

Mary leads all men to her Son, Jesus Christ. To fully appreciate that statement, an excellent example is the conversion story of Roy Schoeman, a conservative Jew.

[BertWheeler]

Some modern Protestants appreciate Mary?

Some moder Protestants actually like Mary?

Gosh, that’s big of them.

God Almighty CHOSE Mary from the very beginning of the world to be the Mother of the Savior so the opinion of protestants, albeit a step up from the vulgar blasphemy of the past, is still very deficient.

[Psalm 73]

"Since He had to have a mother, who it was didn't really matter."

I have never believed that - of course it mattered - Mary was of the Davidic lineage - a crucial point.
As an Evangelical, I have always known that everything else about who Mary was as a person is important.
After all, Jesus entrusted her to his closest friend before He died - Mary matters to me because Mary mattered to Jesus.
Thank you for posting this article on Mary - I try to look at what we have in common rather than points of contention - have a blessed day.

[trisham]

[Salvation]

That's funny because Luther, Zwingli and Calvin got there.

Are you being Ecumenical? No antagonism?

[Salvation]

Luther, Calvin, and Other Early Protestants on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary

Luther, Calvin, and Other Early Protestants on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary

The Protestant Reformers on the Virgin Mary

Zwingli’s’ Mariology: On Mary “Full of Grace”

[ArrogantBustard]

Best advice ever given to anyone, by any human person:

"Do whatever He tells you."
-Mary of Nazareth

[trisham]

:)

[jagusafr]

I’m asking for an explanation. I’m an evangelical Christian who cares to know what others think.

Colonel, USAFR

[AnAmericanMother]

There are two possible explanations for "siblings" that have nothing to do with Mary -- (1) they were cousins, Aramaic and Koine Greek are both very fuzzy about the use of the term "brother" (2) Joseph was by tradition a much older man, most likely married before, and they were his children by a previous marriage.

Since the tradition of the Church (including virtually all the early Protestant reformers, by the way) included the perpetual virginity of Mary, there is no reason to prefer an explanation that contradicts that belief, which was universally held until VERY recently (I think the religious wars in England is the first place the rejection of Mary's virginity crops up, among the Levellers and Fifth Monarchy men).

But, seriously, would YOU touch the Ark of the Covenant in that way? Remember what happened to Uzzah . . . .

[cotton]

The quote says “explicitly”, meaning no direct statement, but touched by some writings. And do you not realize that all Scripture is Tradition?

[stfassisi]

This is a good start if you want to understand

Love Begins With a Dream
by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
http://www.catholictradition.org/Mary/dream.htm

“But God not only thought of her in eternity; He also had her in mind at the beginning of time. In the beginning of history, when the human race fell through the solicitation of a woman, God spoke to the Devil and said, “I will establish a feud between thee and the woman, between thy offspring and hers; she is to crush thy head, while thou dost lie in wait at her heels” (Gen. 3:15). God was saying that, if it was by a woman that man fell, it would be through a woman that God would be revenged. Whoever His Mother would be, she would certainly be blessed among women, and because God Himself chose her, He would see to it that all generations would call her blessed.

When God willed to become Man, He had to decide on the time of His coming, the country in which He would be born, the city in which He would be raised, the people, the race, the political and economic systems that would surround Him, the language He would speak, and the psychological attitudes with which He would come in contact as the Lord of History and the Savior of the World.

All these details would depend entirely on one factor: the woman who would be His Mother. To choose a mother is to choose a social position, a language, a city, an environment, a crisis, and a destiny.

His Mother was not like ours, whom we accepted as something historically fixed, which we could not change; He was born of a Mother whom He chose before He was born. It is the only instance in history where both the Son willed the Mother and the Mother willed the Son. And this is what the Creed means when it says “born of the Virgin Mary.” She was called by God as Aaron was, and Our Lord was born not just of her flesh but also by her consent.

Before taking unto Himself a human nature, He consulted with the Woman, to ask her if she would give Him a man. The Manhood of Jesus was not stolen from humanity, as Prometheus stole fire from heaven; it was given as a gift.

The first man, Adam, was made from the slime of the earth. The first woman was made from a man in an ecstasy. The new Adam, Christ, comes from the new Eve, Mary, in an ecstasy of prayer and love of God and the fullness of freedom.”

[Tao Yin]

I like Mary. I’m in awe of Mary. She gets a pink candle for Advent. She was a Godly woman, who accepted a calling and a blessing. But just as the wise men worshiped and gave presents to Jesus, I do not give prayer, praise, or worship to Mary that is due to her son.

This article correctly implies that Marian Worship will never be accepted by Protestants until tradition is accepted. I do not believe tradition will be accepted by Protestants, so Marian Worship faces a big hurdle.

Appreciation of Mary is another thing all together. Every Christmas season we are reminded of Mary’s acceptance of and submission to God’s will.

The revulsion of Marian Worship is sometimes miss directed at Mary, the mother of Jesus, when it should be directed at the idea of Mary, the Queen of Heaven.

During my Grandmother’s funeral, I was looking around at the mosaics in the Catholic Church. I was disturbed by the image of Jesus bowing to Mary, offering her a crown while on His knees. I don’t see anyway to support this image based on scripture or the creeds.

[AnAmericanMother]

Catholics do NOT worship Mary! (I don't know who started that ugly rumor!)

Remember that when Christ was made man, he made himself subject to Mary and to Joseph. Luke 2:51. He knelt at their feet, obeyed them in all things, and served as a child serves.

J.R. Herbert, "Christ Subject to His Parents at Nazareth"

Because he humbled himself in all things, even unto death on a cross. Philipians 2:8.

[NYer]

Mary matters to me because Mary mattered to Jesus.

Bears repeating! Thank you for posting that simple truth!

I try to look at what we have in common rather than points of contention

Absolutely right! In the current climate of secularism and relativism, now is the time for us to join forces on those areas we share in common. BTW - If you have not yet done so, I think you would enjoy the Roy Schoeman conversion story, posted at one of the comments above.

Wishing you a blessed weekend!

[AnAmericanMother]

That's not a typical iconography of the Coronation of the Virgin, by the way. Don't think I've ever seen one. These are more typical: