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 are saved in the continuous tense. That you believe you have already been saved and that it is already a sealed accomplishments, is a sad sin of presumption, but it is exactly that, sad. It does not disgust, it evokes pity.
(Please do not complain to the Moderator about this one. I do not mean personally you, Boatbums. Not "you". Uh-uh. Do not mean "you, singular". I don't know anything about you, singular. "You" as a woman is not on my mind at all. OK?)
You earlier (3038) said “Jesus asked the possessed Gadarene if he were a JEW”. That He asked for his name, Legion, — I knew.
Jesus portrayed as crucified is called Crucifix.
On balance, yes.
Isaiah 50:6 I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.
Jesus was beat to a bloody pulp, His beard was plucked out, and all his joints were out of joint, dislocated.
That is not an accurate representation of what Jesus looked like, having bled out after being crucified.
Trusting God and believing His word is never presumption. It's demonstrating faith.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
And since when is *presumption* a sin? Book, chapter, and verse please.
The very worst presumption can be accused of being is poor judgment.
Nothing in history, excepting the most recent, is provable in court. A good book on the Inquisition is Thomas F. Madden's Heaven or Heresy: A History of the Inquisition. You can read a short article by the same author here. You can also ask Natural Law what his sources were.
How am I wrong because of John 14:11?
The Last Supper was not seder. Even the day of the week is different.
Show us one person here who *hates* Catholics.
What exactly qualifies as *hate* in your book anyway?
The term is thrown around a lot by Catholics and Mormons, for example, when someone disagrees with them or points out error in their doctrine as compared to Scripture, but that in itself is not hateful.
So, where's the *hate*?
Exactly -- and not the secular government.
I’ve never known bb to hit the abuse button, especially on herself.
Since when did the secular government become our conscience?
Why did you bring it into this discussion? It has nothing to do with it.
every one that exalteth himself, shall be humbled: and he that humbleth himself, shall be exalted (Luke 18:14)
To better understand the word, see Presumption.
Part of our spiritual inheritance under the New Covenant is access to the souls of the justified. “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, AND TO THE SPIRITS OF THE RIGHTEOUS MADE PERFECT, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” Heb. 12:22-24. There Paul is talking to the living, telling them that they have "come to Mount Zion", to the "heavenly Jerusalem" and to the gathering of angels and the assembly of the firstborn and even to God Himself. They, the living people He was talking to, are in the company of Jesus right there in "heavenly Jerusalem". So you evidently post that passage to prove that saints are living in heaven.
You must also then believe that those that Paul was talking to were also there. Your proof that "saints" are alive in heaven and that we also are a part of that "heavenly body" also demands that you believe we also are there, (obviously in spirit).
The question I now have is this. If we are in the very presence of the Father God and Jesus our mediator why do you also say that the saints and Mary have better access and we need to pray through them?
That’s pride, not presumption.
It’s not presumption to take God at His word and believe that since God is truth, that when He tells us something in His word, it is true and we can bank on it.
Actually, it’s presumption not believe God but to think that we know better than He. Pride, too.
Actually, it would be presumptuous to claim something is a sin which God never labeled as a sin.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/presumption
: presumptuous attitude or conduct : audacity
2a : an attitude or belief dictated by probability : assumption
b : the ground, reason, or evidence lending probability to a belief
3: a legal inference as to the existence or truth of a fact not certainly known that is drawn from the known or proved existence of some other fact
I was actually curious about Catholicism until I became a member of FR and saw daily the minds of Catholics displayed on this board.
No more curiousity.
It’s enlightening, isn’t it?
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