Posted on 02/19/2010 5:07:29 PM PST by bogusname
Roman Catholic theology often parallels Mary the mother of Jesus with Jesus Himself in His work of redemption. For example, Jesus is born without the stain of original sin, and so is Mary. Jesus lives a sinless life; so does Mary. Jesus remains a virgin all His life; Mary is Ever-Virgin. Jesus is the Redeemer; Mary is Co-Redemptress. Jesus is the one Mediator between man and God, yet Mary, too, is Mediatrix. Jesus is bodily assumed into heaven; so is Mary. Ascribing Christological attributes such as these to Mary historically has been a source of contention between Protestants (who see no basis in Scripture for these beliefs), and Roman Catholics (who emphasize the role of “Tradition” in these matters).
Defining Terms. All of these beliefs, save two, are official Roman Catholic dogmas. The exceptions— Co-Redemptress and Mediatrix—are nevertheless hallmarks of Roman Catholic devoutness that many believe to be ripe for dogmatic definition.
These two titles, often considered as a single role for Mary, are technically distinct. Redemptress broadly involves Mary’s active decision to bring redemption to the world by agreeing to become the mother of Jesus, whereas Mediatrix has to do with Mary’s active work in continually advocating for the salvation of those who take refuge in her. The Roman Catholic teaching for both is summed up well in the document Ineffabilis Deus: “All our hope do we repose in the most Blessed Virgin—in the all fair and immaculate one who has crushed the poisonous head of the most cruel serpent and brought salvation to the world [hence, Redemptress];... in her who, with her only-begotten Son, is the most powerful Mediatrix and Conciliatrix in the whole world;...in her do we hope who has delivered us from so many threatening dangers.”
(Excerpt) Read more at equip.org ...
Why do I get the impression a war is being fomented?
As for myself, I’m staying out of this before I post something that will be reviled and flamed beyond recognition.
< snicker >
You just don't get to have the power to decide other people's intentions.
Not available to you.
Well, Alfred E. Neuman, perhaps you could then explain why Mary is also called (by you guys) co-redeemer...
It makes sense now...Some of the Catholics on these thread make the claim that the Holy Spirit is not a person, but a spirit...
Apparently Mary is the 3rd part of the Trinity...
Only in about 90 what percent of your posts?
Using that logic, than St. Ann and her husband would also have to share in be co-redeemers...since they birthed and raised Mary, and then her grandparents and great grandparents...etc. All were essential in bringing about the birth of Jesus.
God alone is taught to be our Redeemer in holy Scripture, specifically God the Son, Jesus Christ. To try to divide His glory in that title with His mother I am CERTAIN, godly woman that she was, Mary herself would find completely intolerable.
In the accounts of Heaven in Revelation, Mary is never mentioned....unless you want to talk about the apocalyptic vision of the dragon and the woman... In the visions of Heaven where Jesus is praised forever and ever...absolutely no mention is made of Mary. Mary is a created being who needed to be saved by the blood of the Lamb, just like you and I—a very very godly woman for sure, but not goddess-like—or someone we can worship and pray to. Not a word in the Bible indicates otherwise.
May the God of all mercy bring an end to the vile and diabolic cult of the goddess.
Again, you rely strictly on the Bible. But even by this measure, don’t forget that at the key moments of the birth of the Redeemer; His death, and soon after when He appeared to His disciples in the upper room, and again at the time of His Ascension, Mary was there. Mary, as Catholic belief impels, ascended into Heaven both body and soul. For a full nine months the Christ shared her flesh and blood and was of her flesh and blood. St. Ann and St. Joachim her parents did not bear the Christ and this is the defining point of difference.
Calvin pointed out too, that after Constantine, many (many) of the old pagan Roman temples, dedicated to this goddess or that...were re-dedicated to Mary and made Churches. Interesting policy--in that if people were used to a female deity, they'd more likely take to Christianity at the old temples dedicated to a female (near)deity.
If I want to know the very earliest history of the Church... the first 30 years or so, I have to look to the bible, there are no other sources--in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Mary plays ABSOLUTELY no role there. Peter's preaching and work, Paul's preaching and missionary travels..., the First Council of Jerusalem ...as well as ALL the letters in the New Testament, never, (ever) mention Mary.
Ethical issues of all kinds came up with the newly converted ex-pagan Gentiles, and you'd think...if devotion to and co-redemptrix-like status for Mary was a part of the Apostolic Church, you'd find some smidgen of evidence for that in the Acts and the Epistles. Yet you don't--not at all. Not even a word about her by the (supposed) first Pope, that is in Peter's epistles. It seems indisputable that the religion of Saints Peter and Paul did not include any sort of distraction of worshipful devotion to Mary--they were totally given over to her Son (as certainly, after the Resurrection, was she).
So which churches are more apostolic, those that supposedly have a line of succession going back to Peter, that also require belief in pagan-like elements, legends, and practices, or those that actually believe and teach the same things that Peter himself taught?
“So which churches are more apostolic, those that supposedly have a line of succession going back to Peter, that also require belief in pagan-like elements, legends, and practices, or those that actually believe and teach the same things that Peter himself taught?”
“pagan-like elements, legends, and practices”
Maybe then we ought not to celebrate Christmas with Christmas Trees or use Easter Eggs to Celebrate Easter.
Now to the Virgin Mary and the reverence extended her in the early Church.
There are several scholarly inquiries that describe the following.
The first historic indications of the existing veneration of Mary carried on from the Apostolic Church is manifested in the Roman catacombs. As early as the end of the first century to the first half of the second century, Mary is depicted in frescos in the Roman catacombs both with and without her divine Son. Mary is depicted as a model of virginity with her Son; at the Annunciation; at the adoration of the Magi; and as the orans, the “praying one,” the woman of prayer.
A very significant fresco found in the catacombs of St. Agnes depicts Mary situated between St. Peter and St. Paul with her arms outstretched to both. This fresco reflects, in the language of Christian frescoes, the earliest symbol of Mary as “Mother of the Church.” Whenever St. Peter and St. Paul are shown together, it is symbolic of the one Church of Christ, a Church of authority and evangelization, a Church for both Jew and Gentile. Mary’s prominent position between Sts. Peter and Paul illustrates the recognition by the Apostolic Church of the maternal centrality of the Savior’s Mother in his young Church.
It is also clear from the number of representations of the Blessed Virgin and their locations in the catacombs that the Mother of Jesus was also recognized for her maternal intercession of protection and defense. Her image was present on tombs, as well as on the large central vaults of the catacombs. Clearly, the early Christians dwelling in the catacombs prayed to Mary as intercessor to her Son for special protection and for motherly assistance. As early as the first century to the first half of the second century, Mary’s role as Spiritual Mother was recognized and her protective intercession was invoked.
The early Church Fathers, (also by the middle of the second century), articulated the primary theological role of the Blessed Virgin as the “New Eve.” What was the basic understanding of Mary as the “New Eve” in the early Church? Eve, the original “mother of the living,” had played an instrumental, though secondary role, in the sin of Adam which resulted in the tragic fall of humanity from God’s grace. However, Mary, as the new Mother of the living, played an instrumental, though secondary, role to Jesus, the New Adam, in redeeming and restoring the life of grace to the human family.
Let us examine a few citations from the early Church Fathers that manifest this growing understanding of Mary’s spiritual and maternal role as the “New Eve,” who as the “new Mother of the living,” participates with Christ in restoring grace to the human family.
St. Justin Martyr (d.165), the early Church’s first great apologist, describes Mary as the “obedient virgin” through whom humanity receives its Savior, in contrast to Eve, the “disobedient virgin,” who brings death and disobedience to the human race:
(The Son of God) became man through the Virgin that the disobedience caused by the serpent might be destroyed in the same way in which it had originated. For Eve, while a virgin incorrupt, conceived the word which proceeded from the serpent, and brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary was filled with faith and joy when the Angel Gabriel told her the glad tidings.... And through her was he born.
St. Irenaeus of Lyon (d.202), great defender of Christian orthodoxy and arguably the first true Mariologist, establishes Mary as the New Eve who participates with Jesus Christ in the work of salvation, becoming through her obedience the “cause of salvation for herself and the whole human race”:
Just as Eve, wife of Adam, yet still a virgin, became by her disobedience the cause of death for herself and the whole human race, so Mary, too, espoused yet a Virgin, became by her obedience the cause of salvation for herself and the whole human race.... And so it was that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by Mary’s obedience. For what the virgin Eve bound fast by her refusal to believe, this the Virgin Mary unbound by her belief.
The teaching of St. Irenaeus makes evident the Early Church’s faith and understanding that Mary freely and uniquely cooperates with and under Jesus, the New Adam, in the salvation of the human race. This early patristic understanding of Mary’s unique cooperation appropriately develops into the later and more specified theology of Marian Coredemption.
St. Ambrose (d.397) continues to develop the New Eve understanding, referring to Mary as the “Mother of Salvation”:
It was through a man and woman that flesh was cast from Paradise; it was through a virgin that flesh was linked to God....Eve is called mother of the human race, but Mary Mother of Salvation.
St. Jerome (d.420) neatly summarizes the entire patristic understanding of the New Eve in the pithy expression: “death through Eve, life through Mary.”
These references are neither legend nor heretical but historically proven truths.
Thank God Almighty you're not describing the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Only in about 0 percent of my posts.
You offer no proof, just empty charges.
Should I be intimidated by your brazen accusations?
Petronski absurdity #6 strikes.
I’m curious about how aware any of the Roman Catholics et al hereon are
about how quickly heresy can take root in a group.
Certainly we know that some had taken root even as Paul was wandering around on his missionary journeys.
That the Marian hogwash was rearing it’s head early is no great surprise.
Wow! You’re learning to expand the pixel count!
Does that earn you any notches on your Marian white hanky toward getting out of purgatory earlier?
You label this “heresy” despite the unique place she occupies in the practices of the early Church as part of the Apostolic traditions?
I gather you’re talking about the arguable stuff from the Vatican’s rubber histories?
Some of my cohorts would be better at responding regarding that stinking pile of nonsense.
It's pure hate.
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