On this day that Catholics celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I can only message that Mary loves us and cares for us all. If you wish to rebuke her love or belittle her in some fashion by denying her importance in the whole Christ Story, you are cheating yourself out of the joy that comes from knowing her along with her Son.
The thinking, "scientific" (in the good old sense) me sees the problem with this. Maybe we are deluded. Maybe it's a snare of the enemy. What possible canon is there to prove that this joy and "consolation" (which, we should never forget, meant strengthening - like comfort - long before it meant "there, there, you poor pitiful dear) is "valid"? I can think of none.
But part of what fuels these Marian posts is precisely the astonished sense we feelthy papists have that not only are we loved by the Lord who created and set into motion the distant stars and the particles which make the atom, but also by His Mother.
And, this is like a mother's love, in our experience.
Today is kind of a big day for American Catholics because we see a, what shall I say, spectacular, incomprehensibly generous gift in this apparition to a, let's face it, conquered peasant. And the sequel, almost inexplicably, is the conversion to Christianity (even if one thinks the Catholic version is a horrible perversion, one still has to admit that they heard bits of the Bible, they heard -- and believed -- a particle of the wonderful news of the astounding love of God.
Even if one thought of that as a poor beginning to something that would be made far better by Protestant ministrations, still it was a magnificent beginning when compared to sullen disbelief.
Today I was at a memorial Mass for a very wonderful woman who died rich in years and yet too soon. Because it was Our Lady of Guadalupe, there was a kind of barely suppressed Marian aspect to the service.
The sermon, whoever, amounted to a flinging of the gauntlet into Death's face. I listened carefully (the priest is a friend) and there was nothing there a Calvinist might not have said.
And yet I was consoled not only by the Gospel Truth, but (for me unexpected) sense that there was a mother's bosom into which I could weep, not just for the lady who had died, but for my own sins and fears and sorrows.
This gratuitous soothing is something I wish all my friends shared. And that wish is at least part of what drives these Marian posts. We have experiences which, at least in my case, we never expected or imagined. TO us it seems undeniable that they come through the loving intercession of Mary. So of course we want to share that.
You suggested that non Catholic men don't know how to treat their Mothers...You are clueless about that and I'm not interested in your religious superstitions...
Apparently unknown to you , millions of us have somehow found our way to Jesus without the intervention of a supposed aborition ...
And from the testimonies I have read, your aborition seems to lead people to itself rather than Jesus...
Thanks but no thanks...Jesus said', Come unto Me'...That's where I went...