LOL! Sooo... If we would see her as a "pez dispenser" instead of a "vat" we'd have it right, then?
Well, one of the brightly colored ones, maybe. And I have a little problem with the whole plastic thing ...
The often encountered non-Catholic 'argument' leads me to think that the reason you all shy from "philosophy" is that it's a lot less work to just hurl off ridiculous retorts than to think about how arguments really work.
The title "Dispenser of All Grace" is not meant to be exhaustive, to convey all of what Mary is, any more than the title "Empress of India" exhausted what Queen Victoria was.
Rather, like all metaphors and similes, it addresses ONE aspect of what Mary is.
The criticism of "Vat" as a metaphor is that a vat doesn't care what comes out of it. And non-Catholics SEEM to suggest that, while motherhood changes most non-pathological mothers, Mary was unchanged by her contact, more intimate than that had by any other human, with our Lord. They depersonalize her. Indeed, they make her motherhood LESS than that of any other psychologically normal mother.
A dispenser doesn't care much either. But there are other "titles" to deal with other aspects of Mary's motherhood. Dispenser is, as I said, not meant to be exhaustive, but to refer to one aspect of Mary's role in the coming of Grace to earth.
Generally comparisons are not meant to be and cannot be exhaustive. When I say (as I so often do), "My love is like a red, red, rose," I do not mean that my wife is deep red in color, or has aphids (though she can be thorny), but that she delights me as a rose delights the eye and nose. She is "like" a rose with respect to the delight she occasions -- and pretty much only in that respect.
Mary is 'like' a dispenser in that Jesus, so to speak, popped out of her as a PEZ candy pops out of the PEZ dispenser.
PEZ dispensers MAY have some value to people who like to collect the artifacts of pop culture. But to sane people, they only have value because of what they dispense.
Similarly, on her own, Mary is nothing much. But because of her motherhood, she is quite a lot.
This kind of understanding of comparisons is a 101 course to those who spend a little time with Aristotle. But those who fear that getting too close to Greeks because they don't know what Paul means by "philosophies" end up making silly objections to comparisons, and ham-stringing their own communication skills.
Love it.
At least an incrementally improved description.
Dispenser of all M & M’s.
Dispenser of chocolate kisses.
Dispenser of white hankys.
NOT Dispenser of ALL graces . . . THAT’S STRICTLY GOD’S TURF.