O Mary Conceived Without Sin, Pray For Us Who Have Recourse to Thee.
Not an ecumenical thread boys...so have at it!
Just another heresy by the RC church. Nothing new.
I guess you did not read the Holy Tradition handed down from one person to another on the other thread.
Your source here is non-Catholic, hence it has no bearing in my opinion.
"Never apologize for the Blessed Virgin Mary!"
~~Mother Angelica
O Mary Conceived Without Sin, Pray For Us Who Have Recourse to Thee.
If Mary was conceived without original sin, then she would have borne no stain of sin from the time of her conception and would therefore have not been subject to any characteristics of the fallen nature of the human race since the fall of Adam and Eve. One of the consequences of the fall of Adam and Eve was that humans by their very nature would be subject to physical/bodily death and the natural decay of their physical forms over time.
If Mary was conceived without original sin, then by her very nature she would not have been subject to these consequences related to a natural physical/bodily death.
If you want to contest the Catholic doctrine of the Assumption, then by definition you must question the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Which means she could not have died a "natural" human death as anyone else would.
And if the Immaculate Conception was not a true, historical fact, then I'm not sure you can even say with any definitive authority that Jesus Christ was Divine.
Thanks EVER so much for posting information about my church from people who totally reject it. So informative.
The article isn't 'well researched' if it believes that the Catholic Church worships Mary.
William Webster is either ignorant of Catholic teaching or lying about it.
The same can be said, with the additional sting of irony, about the man-made dogma known as sola Scriptura.
Why would being in heaven with one’s body, be a good thing?
Ah yes, the old veneration of Mary to all the attributes of Goodhood. A more freindly version of Jesus, rendering Jesus just some alsoran in the story of redemtpion where one need not even communicate with Him, just go right to mary. After all, just like Jesus, she can intercede tot he father and just like Jesus, she can forgive sin, and even better than Jesus, she didn’t have sin and judgement heaped upon her with all that messy beating, scourging and nasty crucifixion thingy. She had SO much more favor fromt he father that she just was, well, assumed! Right into thin air! SO cool. So much better than Jesus.
Compare Maryology to the worship of all the fertility goddesses of the idol worshiping religions and note the similarities. Oh, that’s right, you gotta kiss the feet of the statue (idol) of mary too! Meh...just a coincidence.
but, but, but, whatever you do, don’t call it mary-worship!
That wouldn’t be right.
Might offend someone.
And the last thing one would want to do is offend.
Hate speach and all...
Bzzt. Stop right there.
Cute of the author to mix his own little speculations in here. First of all, was it really a "Gnostic legend"? Was there an early Church Father who said..."The Gnostics have this legend about the Virgin Mary which we deny...."? Nope. The author or the scholars he cites BELIEVES it was Gnostic, but I have yet to see any positive evidence for making that sweeping claim.
And about this nonsense "it was regarded by the church as a Gnostic and Collyridian fable"...Ok, then prove it. Find me one ancient source that says so. I have never ever in my own reading on this come upon any Church Father who condemns this idea as either Gnostic or Collyridian. Again, this is modern speculation about the origins of the idea superimposed on the relative silence of the Fathers.
Another problem....the Transitus Mariae manuscript tradition is older than the author seems to realize. The texts go back to the 3rd century.
I'll check out the fact of Gelasius on the Transitus--but looking at the Latin it explicitly says the book is apocryphal and DOES NOT SAY the idea is heretical. Even a declaration of heresy against the book DOES NOT mean everything in it is heretical. It just means that SOMETHING in the BOOK is heretical. Suppose I took the Gospel of Mark and added a line "Christ is not the son of God." That would make the whole version heretical, even though there's only one wrong thing in it. It does NOT mean, though, that all of the other stuff in Mark is not authentic.
Another line in the author I'd also like to call out:
At least a score of Transitus accounts are extant, in Coptic, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Armenian. Not all are prototypes, for many are simply variations on more ancient models (Juniper Carol, O.F.M. ed., Mariology, Vol. II (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1957), p. 144).
Really? A heretical Gnostic idea spread this fast across all the various Churches spread all over the world--was translated into all these languages--and NO ONE saw fit to complain about it until the Reformation? No one said hey wait a second here? The Ethiopians, the Syrians, the Copts, the Armenians just went along with the idea? Not even any Church councils to resolve the issue? Just widespread acceptance?
Here's the main point. There is silence on the question of the Assumption for a few hundred years. Epiphanius even says he doesn't know what happened. Then basically all the Churches proclaim the idea. No one brands it--the idea, not the book!--as heretical. It's widely accepted and translated. Now, is it easier to assume here that we have
A) a heretical idea that was suddenly accepted
or
B) an orthodox idea that was suddenly popularized?
I'm going with B.
I’ll never understand why Mary, the second most remarkable human who ever lived, must also be accorded all of these super powers. Wasn’t it enough that she gave birth to the Son of the Living God? That she raised Him, stood by Him through all His trials, to the very end? Frankly I would find it even more miraculous that she did all this as a flesh and blood human whose body returned to the earth when she died.
William Webster.
Didn’t he flee the muddy, turbulent waters of the Tiber?