Posted on 12/08/2012 2:24:39 PM PST by NYer
Do Catholics worship Mary? This question is as old as the Protestant Reformation itself, and it rests, like other disputed doctrinal points, on a false premise that has been turned into a wedge: the veneration of Mary detracts from the worship of Christ.
This seeming opposition between Mary and Christ is symptomatic of the Protestant tendency, begun by Luther, to view the entirety of Christian life through a dialectical lens – a lens of conflict and division. With the Reformation the integrity of Christianity is broken and its formerly coherent elements are now set in opposition. The Gospel versus the Law. Faith versus Works. Scripture versus Tradition. Authority versus Individuality. Faith versus Reason. Christ versus Mary.
The Catholic tradition rightly sees the mutual complementarity of these elements of the faith, as they all contribute to our ultimate end – living with God now and in eternity. To choose any one of these is to choose them all.
By contrast, to assert that Catholics worship Mary along with or in place of Christ, or that praying to Mary somehow impedes Christ’s role as “the one mediator between God and men” (1 Tim 2:5) is to create a false dichotomy between the Word made flesh and the woman who gave the Word his flesh. No such opposition exists. The one Mediator entrusted his mediation to the will and womb of Mary. She does not impede his mediation – she helps to make it possible.
Within this context we see the ancillary role that the ancilla Domini plays in her divine Son’s mission. Mary’s is not a surrogate womb rented and then forgotten in God’s plan. She is physically connected to Christ and his life, and because of this she is even more deeply connected to him in the order of grace. She is, in fact, “full of grace,” as only one who is redeemed by Christ could be.
The feast of Mary’s Immaculate Conception celebrates the very first act of salvation by Christ in the world. Redemption is made possible for all by his precious blood shed on the cross. Yet Mary’s role in the Savior’s life and mission is so critical and so unique that God saw it necessary to wash her in the blood of the Lamb in advance, at the first moment of her conception.
This reality could not be more Biblical: the angel greets Mary as “full of grace” (Luke 1:28), which is literally rendered as “already graced” (kecharitōmenē). Following Mary, the Church has “pondered what sort of greeting this might be” for centuries. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, ultimately defined in 1854, is nothing other than a rational expression of the angel’s greeting contained in Scripture: Mary is “already graced” with Christ’s redemption at the very moment of her creation.
Because God called Mary to the unique vocation of serving as the Mother of God, it is not just her soul that is graced, as is the case for us when we receive the sacraments. Mary’s entire being, body and soul, is full of grace so that she may be a worthy ark for the New Covenant. And just as the ark of the old covenant was adorned with gold to be a worthy house for God’s word, Mary is conceived without original sin to be the living and holy house for God’s Word.
Thus Mary is not only conceived immaculately, that is, without stain of sin. She also is the Immaculate Conception. Her entire being was specifically created by God with unique privilege so that she could fulfill her role in God’s plan of salvation. “Free from sin,” both original and personal, is the necessary consequence of being “full of grace.”
Protestants claim that veneration of Mary as it is practiced by Catholics is not biblical. St. Paul encouraged the Corinthians to “be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1). Paul is not holding himself up as the end goal, but as a means to Christ, the true end. And if a person is imitated, he is simultaneously venerated.
If we should imitate Paul, how much more should we imitate Mary, who fulfilled God’s will to the greatest degree a human being could. Throughout her life she humbled herself so that God could be exalted, and because of this, Christ has fulfilled his promise by exalting his lowly mother to the seat closest to him in God’s kingdom.
Mary is the model of humility, charity, and openness to the will of God. She allows a sword to pierce her heart for the sake of the world’s salvation. She shows us the greatness to which we are called: a life free from sin and filled with God’s grace that leads to union with God in Heaven. She is the model disciple, and therefore worthy of imitation and veneration, not as an end in herself, but as the means to the very purpose of her – and our – existence: Christ himself.
God’s lowly handmaiden would not want it any other way.
Insofar as they claimed being Catholic and taught heresies.
I don’t see how various attributes of Mary deny the sovereignty of Christ, through Whom she has them. Try again; or if you prefer, pick one of these quandaries and I’ll go over it in detail with you. It would be easier if you read the article first, which speaks of false Protestant dialectic very clearly.
Exactly, so neither he or she were free to marry.
Moral cleanness is indelibly stamped upon hundreds of pages of Luther's writings
What does it have to do with him fornicating with a nun? Or are you denying this historical fact?
Years later I read a report about astronomical observations that revealed that newly formed stars, during some stage of their creation, expel vast quantities of water from their North and South poles ~ this water is under tremendous pressure.
There we are ~ that's what we use to structure our form of life ~ double helix molecules ~ created with the stars.
The double helix structure, and water, give rise to sex itself ~
Life literally erupts from the churning cauldrons of the exploding supernova ~
Way down the line from those halcyon times we get hung up on the tab A and slot D business!
The Renaissance, with all its faults did not desecrate monasteries, burn Holy Icons or "marry" nuns; nor did Michaelangelo start his own "church".
Who is denying it. Luther was horny (most of the time). So was his "wife".
I didn't mean to imply that I thought you personally didn't understand something.
The typical Catholic knee jerk reaction to some former Catholic's exposing the inconsistencies in Catholic doctrine is to accuse them of having never *REALLY * understood the Catholic doctrine, usually due to being poorly catechized by the church. (Something which MANY of us former Catholics have been accused)
I think you may be on to something about the knee jerk reaction though. I've heard one too many protestant sermons of late telling me that it's sufficient to KNOW what scripture says but amending my life to DO what scripture says is optional. Doesn't sit too well when some who are willing to set aside portions of scripture tell me I'm the one relying on loopholes and failing to adhere to Biblical teaching ;) Thanks be to God not all Protestants preach that message but it's the one I'm hearing of late.
Sad to say, I couldn't agree more. I think in large part it's backlash against the works based salvation/legalism which has pervaded the church over the decades.
The problem is, holy living is not really an option for the believer and I think too many churches are throwing out the baby (the holy living to which we are called) with the bathwater (legalism).
The government of W. Bush used waterboarding, a form of torture.
Yeah, iconoclasm happened in Byzantium, equally revolting. Raping of nuns, probably, too from time to time. But in neither case was a new sect started for that, certainly not with the air of righteousness and superiority, so laughable in the Protestants. Catholics are fallible; Protestants made a religion out of their ignorance and their sins.
She was free to do whatever she wanted, just like the rest of us.
The RCC can CLAIM that all they want that they have authority over all people and they can try to back it all they want by appealing to the Scripture they claim they wrote, and they can threaten her with her eternal destiny, but Jesus saves, not the Catholic church. And the Catholic church's claims that they are God ordained do not hold up to close scrutiny when one takes a look at it's reprehensible, corrupt, immoral history.
“attributes”
No, they were attributed to her by those who want to worship a Goddess. Thereby totally ignoring that Christianity is NOT about her. Christianity is about being saved through the sacrifice of Jesus.
Mary was a mortal human being. I am not into Shintoism. I do not worship humans or my ancestors, period. It is not part of Christianity to do so.
So humans get together and declare someone a “Saint” with all the mysticism and unChristian theism that involves. God didn’t declare him a Saint or direct us to worship Saints.
The Prophets of the Bible are messengers. MESSENGERS. We do not worship messengers, because it is about the Message - not the conduit God used to deliver it.
Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us that anyone but Jesus is infallable or is to worshipped or prayed to. Nowhere does it tell us to submit to an earthly bureaucracy that declares itself the “One True Church” (A very cultish claim).
Mary and many others were human beings, FLAWED human beings, whom God used to deliver his wisdom and gifts to humankind. They are the chaff, they are the fluff, they are not the REASON.
We need help ~ everything is not clear, and our sector in this part of the universe is rather violent and destructive ~ we barely hang on ~ in the 4 billion years there's been signs of the most primitive life around here, it's only in the last half billion we've been able to find enough stability to work out the code for making brains and eyeballs!
God sends us messengers and moral teachers ~ and as Jesus reported, it's a tough life ~ so it wasn't our imagination. I can easily see a need for God to use a special mechanism so the messenger may arrive intact and ready to do whatever it is a messenger needs to do. This messenger has to live in our world, not just look at it as apparently do the creatures called angels. So, the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Birth, the Perfect Man ~ the Physical Assumption into Heaven ~ it all sticks together as a great machine that translates the fabric of God's universe to our universe and allows Him to speak to us.
He must think we're pretty special even if we don't think that ourselves.
It is only bad when a new sect is formed from it?
The “crime” against the Church in Rome is much worse to you than all the raping in the world, sounds like. You worship THE CHURCH and not God is what it sounds like.
No one is doing anything to us ~ we do this ourselves, and you can be trained to deal with it. Torture is administered by others. This is not torture.
Sheesh, coming from the church known for it’s pederast priests.....
You know it had to eventually come to this ~ that we'd have Catholics and Protestants and Buddhists and Mormons together, sitting at the same table, figuring out how to convert the Democrats to freedom.
It's a hard job but somebody has to do it, and if not us who, and if not now, when?
The typical Catholic knee jerk reaction to some former Catholic's exposing the inconsistencies in Catholic doctrine is to accuse them of having never *REALLY * understood the Catholic doctrine, usually due to being poorly catechized by the church. (Something which MANY of us former Catholics have been accused)
Ah, I see what you meant. That never crossed my mind actually. You raise an interesting point though. When an exCatholic misstates Catholic doctrine or otherwise misrepresents the Church's position, what are we to conclude? (Not accusing you of doing this, just asking in general as it does happen on this site.) I'm not talking about presenting a position accurately and disagreeing with it. I'm talking about stating something false about the faith. It seems more charitable to say someone wasn't given proper instruction on the topic than to state the other possibility--that it's intentional distortion. Or is there another perspective I'm missing?
Peace be with you.
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