The problem lies in that there are more uses for the term *dispenser* than one. I suppose that if you look at is as her just *dispensing* Christ in a purely mechanical way, that would be correct but it is a rather convoluted way of explaining away the term. However, when talking about people dispensing something, it's generally presumed that it's more straightforward than that.
Saying that Mary is the dispenser of all graces because she dispensed Christ and He is the source of all grace is not what's implied by the statement and sounds too much like trying to explain away the real meaning. There's just too much rationalization going on. Since grace is the thing being dispensed, it is not really accurate to say that she is the one dispensing it.
You start with:
The problem lies in that there are more uses for the term *dispenser* than one.
That is uncontroversial.
But then you reach, without either evidence or argument,
is not what's implied by the statement
If there are more than one uses for the term, HOW do you say one is "implied" and another not?
I would like you to consider the important difference between "inferred" and "implied." And I suggest that non-Catholics come to the language already primed with the idea that we pay divine honors to Mary and then read into "dispense" what is not necessarily in the word itself.
You yourself have recourse to the passive voice, thus:
However, when talking about people dispensing something, it's generally presumed that it's more straightforward than that.
Well, I don't know what is more straightforward than using the word as it has been used since the earliest records of it. But the unanswered and important question is "presumed by WHOM?" Can you show that the writers/speakers intend anything other or more than what the word has meant, simply, for a long time?
For hundreds of years, from the time of Medieval Latin, "to dispense" has meant "to distribute" with related meanings of "to weigh out" and "to manage." In some places a pharmacy is called a dispensary, but nobody thinks any more that the pharmacist whipped up the drugs in the back room. He just hands out drugs which came from somewhere else.
It's not his own money the paymaster dispenses.
The language of these "titles" is not just American English. It is not even just English English. It is usually a translation of a Latin word, or at least is influenced by the Latin language.
So to bring to a phrase a merely American English set of presuppositions, seasoned by the repeated charge that we pay divine honors to Mary, is not necessarily going to produce the most reliable inference.
I think most, if not all, non-Catholics have an immediate negative reaction to these titles. It is "romantic" not Christian to think that one's immediate reactions are somehow oracles of truth.
It is natural to use a slightly artificial language in religious matters. How many Protestant 'free' prayers use the word "just" a little more often than necessary, and how many display an unwonted sensitivity to the conditional tense: "that You would just bless our gathering...." Somewhere there is a hysterical parody of such simple and truly humble (I mean that in the best way, but it still makes me laugh) prayers.
It would be foolish of me to conclude that everyone thought that what they "just wanted to ask" was simple or small, or that everyone understood or even cared about the use of the conditional tense in indirect discourse -- not in an age where no one knows that "might" is the past tense of "may."
It is just that group's language of prayer and praise, and one must take it as it is and as it is intended.
Saying that Mary is the dispenser of all graces because she dispensed Christ and He is the source of all grace is not what's implied by the statement and sounds too much like trying to explain away the real meaning. There's just too much rationalization going on. Since grace is the thing being dispensed, it is not really accurate to say that she is the one dispensing it.
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ABSOLUTELY INDEED.
That kind of slight of intellectual sophistry is as maddeningly devilish as it is maddeningly constant from the RC camp.
THAT is shoehorning Mary into the God-head, pure and simple.
Then when folks point THAT out . . .
OH, WE JUST MEAN she birthed Him who is all grace.
Yeah, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighhhht!
That's why all the whining, wailing and throwing dust in the air--merely--because the mid-wife got brought down a trillion X a trillion X a trillion + notches to her proper station.
IF,
as they claim, it were merely about mid-wifing/birthing He who is all grace
THEN
there'd be no hoopla, ranting, raving, linguistically cutting themselves & slashing out at Proddys over their favorite idol being put back in the closet.
Most telling, that phenomenon.
NOPE!
That RATIONALIZATION SIMPLY WON'T WASH.
It won't wash with most Proddys hereon and it won't wash before The Father.
It won't wash in Mary's face, either. Of all humans, she knows better quite keenly.
What was TOUCH NOT THE ARK all about anyway?
If anything, it was about touching GOD'S GLORY with human hands.
GOD WAS MAKING AN EMPHATIC POINT THAT HIS GLORY WAS OFF LIMITS FROM MORTAL DINKING THEREWITH . . . SUPREMELY OFF LIMITS.
If your goal has been to demonstrably walk tenaciously as close to God as possible . . . and suddenly you begin to see and treat your wife, or child, or pastor or boss as the dispenser of all graces and goodies . . . WATCH OUT! THAT RELATIONSHIP IS HEADED FOR VERY DANGEROUS WATERS.
GOD IS A JEALOUS GOD.
That has been true throughout Scripture.
It remains true, today.