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.
We don't give her such attributes. Only Christ can forgive sin or prevent us from sinning; only through the grace of Christ we may be saved. It is only through Christ that the saints can intercede. It is through Christ that Mary has her glory and queenship.
That Mary was sinless follows from the description "full of grace" the Archangel gave her (Luke 1:28). It is scriptural. Nor is she the only one thus described; Noah as well is described as "just and perfect man" (Genesis 6:9), that is, free from sin.
If you read Romans 3:23 (your likely prooftext for the sinfulness of Mary) in its context it is clear that St. Paul writes in generalities. For example, he also says that "none seeketh God", but that clearly is not true of every one.
Luther and his consort were not free to marry therefore it was fornication and not a proper marriage.
A dialog cannot take place until a mutually accepted definition of terms is achieved. There is a fundamental difference between the Protestant concept of freedom and the Catholic concept of freedom. The Protestant belief is centered on the notion that a free person man do whatever they please. The Catholic belief is centered on a person being free from sin and its enslaving encumberances.
Pax et Bonum.
An appropriate quote for this thread.....
“All true children of God have God for their father and Mary for their mother; anyone who does not have Mary for his mother, does not have God for his father. This is why the reprobate, such as heretics and schismatics, who hate, despise or ignore the Blessed Virgin, do not have God for their father though they arrogantly claim they have, because they do not have Mary for their mother. Indeed if they had her for their mother they would love and honour her as good and true children naturally love and honour the mother who gave them life.”-Saint Louis Marie de Montfort
Once again, we find Catholics taking a very minor point made by Luther, and blowing it out proportion.Oathbreaking - his own, a "minor point"
Sigh. And yet his attacks against the very Church he was ordained in and his schism - major assaults on Christian unity - those so many PROTESTants celebrate and venerate. Sorry, Luther and his schism are evil.
This is interesting, but in actuality Jesus got his humanity from Mary, so all the human cells left behind would have been hers ...
Says who?
1Ti 4:1 ¶ Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
1Ti 4:2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
1Ti 4:3 Forbidding to marry, [and commanding] to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
1Ti 4:4 For every creature of God [is] good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:
1Ti 4:5 For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
The word Bishop means overseer
But Rome is not the Nt church, it is not the church "of God"
The NT church had no priest because there is no longer a need for sacrifices..The OT priests were a type fulfilled by Christ.. and so God destroyed the priesthood in 70 ad
Scripture please
No, you are giving them too much credit. There is no rational thinking here that I could detect. “We don’t like monasticism, therefore monastic vows do not exist”. It’s a logic of a five year old. No wonder we have gay “marriage” legal in an electorate formed by Protestant values.
Thank you. Besides, there is a misunderstanding of what “worship” is. A Protestant cannot worship God; he thinks that prayer and praise are acts of worship. So then, he reasons, he who prays to a saint worship the saint. So St. Louis could have said, using native to him baseball idiom, “He who does not pray to a saint does not know how to worship God; he hasn’t gone past the first base yet”.
You seriously think that 1 Timothy 4:1-5 says that anyone should be able to marry anyone?
There are bathhouses of poofters all across America who would love you for their pastor.
I explained it to you more than once. The Church has no Hebrew Levitical priests and their sacrifices. We do have our priests, our "presbytery" and the sacrifice of Christ one for all, that we receive at Mass.
Neglect not the grace that is in thee, which was given thee by prophesy, with imposition of the hands of the priesthood. (1 Timothy 4:14)ordain priests in every city, as I also appointed thee (Titus 1:5)
Let it be stated here that it is a recent revelation that cells, even stem cells, from the children she has borne, are not only in the body of the mother, they are in the brain itself!
My own personal theory is that there's something seriously different about Jesus' DNA that allowed him to receive communication from the Beyond to the Here and Now ~ I arrived at that after years of intense study of the circumstances surrounding the Shroud of Turin.
No one is required to believe that ~ thankfully it's no one's doctrine as yet.
Ohhh Mercy..May God open eyes to see the blasphemy
Yep the odd views of a poster who claims that Catholics are idolaters, that those who celebrate Easter and Christmas are pagans and that claims that the idea of church on Sunday is a man made tradition and apparently not either Christian or Biblical. Given that this is the point of view from which you view the world, why should anyone pay attention to your odd, often incomplete and often misread cut-n-pastes?
I know that last point is not shared by the RCC except where the Pope himself shares it! So we won't go into it.
Hope you caught my reference to Cardinal Carvajal ~ back in the early 1500s. He's the reason there was no Protestant movement in Spain ~ because if there had been he'd been the leader.
It's hardly a delusion
Great anology, I liked that.
...most Protestants consider churches with bishops to be simply Catholic churches under another name.Who are "most"? The largest of the schismatics are the Orthodox, then probably the Lutherans and the various Anglican derivatives, iirc. All of them have what they call "Bishops". Who is left of consequence?
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