Catholics, Protestants, and Immaculate Mary

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.

Thank you so much for your encouragements, dear roamer_1!

It seems all to evident to me that the same reliance on oral law that the Pharisees laid their claim to power in has been repeated point-for-point in the traditions of Christianity.

Indeed. The following is also prophecy:

Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.

Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in.

Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, [take heed] lest he also spare not thee.

Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in [his] goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.

And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again. For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural [branches], be graffed into their own olive tree?

For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.

And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this [is] my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.

As concerning the gospel, [they are] enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, [they are] beloved for the fathers' sakes.

For the gifts and calling of God [are] without repentance. - Romans 11:18-29

To God be the glory, not man, never man.

Baptism is a sacrament that saves (removes past sin) by its own work. Since there is but one Church, there is but one Baptism, the Catholic one...

Your argument is based on one fallacy after the other. That Rome is the one true Church is begging the questions, and it remains that Prot baptism is a denial of Rome, as it attests that born again with personal repentance and faith, not paedobaptism on proxy faith and not cooperation with grace dispensed by Rome from her Treasury of merit, though he/she expresses that faith in baptism and following the Lord.

Excepting wholly irregular baptisms by fringe Protestant groups, or "baptisms" not meant to bring a person to Christ at all,

"Irregular?" The reality is that the idea that baptism makes on born again is the fringe belief, and it is hardly tenable that Rome's broad affirmation of Protestant salvation has simply these in mind, nor does is fit your scenario in which you attempt to make baptized Prots into Catholic in attempting to avoid the charge of self-contradiction.

If he is invalidly baptized, for example, "baptized" a second time, or not using the proper Trinitarian formula... but has a faith experience which he likes to describe as "born again" then he is not Catholic and likely is under a lure. Without an examination of his soul it is impossible to tell if his experience is good for his faith or bad for his faith.

So from Prots not being born again and part of the body of Christ then (when challenged) we go to Prots being Catholic at baptism, to likely not being born again because they did so because they were born again with a salvation experience, often after infant sprinkling (yet it is such converts manifest the most fruit. As for the proper Trinitarian formula, that was a matter of some variation early on.

These evangelical believers are what best fits your description of those whom you tried to make Catholic at baptism, not some Anglican or other minority groups (i can provide figures), and few Prots intend to do what Rome intends in baptism, and or where baptized as Catholic, and thus it remains that most are essentially denying Rome by their baptism.

People do not get "saved" once and for all. They live their entire life and in the end they are judged.

What the Bible teaches that they are now "saved," present tense, having passed from death to life, (Eph. 2:8; Jn. 5:24) so that, like the contrite criminal, the entire church of true believers, if Christ returned, would be forever with the Lord, or otherwise with Him at death. (Lk. 23:39-43; 1Thes. 4:17; cf. 2Cor. 5:8; Phil 1:23) And the Holy Spirit provides for assurance, based on "things which accompany salvation," (Heb. 6:9) that one presently possesses eternal life, (1Jn. 5:13), by which the apostle knew the election of believers. (1Thes. 1:4ff)

Yet, salvation being by a faith that follows, and is rewarded, (Heb. 10:35) they are exhorted against drawing “back unto perdition” in unbelief, (Heb. 10:38,39) and having “an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God,” against which apostasy they are warned. (Heb. 3:12; 10:25-39; Gal. 5:1-5) And thus God chastens wayward believers in working to bring them to repentance, “that we should not be condemned with the world.” (1Cor. 11:32).

For example, if one is baptized validly, but regards it as "a denial of Rome's baptism", well, then his state of grace will last for about five minutes, and then he is lapsed and needs a Catholic conversion, which will use necessary sacraments to put him back in the state of of grace.

Rather, if he does not regards his conversion as a denial of Rome's baptism - which typically never evidenced manifest Scriptural - regeneration, there is doubt of his salvation, while (if i may digress) this issue honestly is an an example Catholic interpretation of Rome.

For behold the gracious words which Rome uses to for ecumenical purposes, speaking of how she "is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian," though they do not "profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter," To whom also God "gives His gifts and graces whereby He is operative among them with His sanctifying power. Some indeed He has strengthened to the extent of the shedding of their blood." "For men who believe in Christ and have been truly baptized are in communion with the Catholic Church even though this communion is imperfect"." And that "Saints come from all the Churches and Ecclesial Communities" and all Christian Communities have martyrs for the Christian faith.

Yet since hardly any of those she so broadly appeals to, such as " honor Sacred Scripture, taking it as a norm of belief and a pattern of life, and who show a sincere zeal" [hardly Anglical types], including those in ecclesial communities [code word for [non-Orthodox, churches)," intend to do what Rome imagines her baptism does, and re-baptized Catholics abound in them, then (according to the traditional view) this field is so minute as to make such words of little to no effect, or theoretical at best.

But who can blame these attempts to define what seems to have been meant to be taken broadly into such a narrow or theoretical sense? For indeed Rome's past autocratic self declaration of her supremacy and exclusion of salvation to all who were not in her bosom and in formal subjection to her can sound so absolute as to sometimes seem to exclude the Orthodox (depending on what not committed to Peter's successors in Rome means). In consideration of such it makes the sedevacantist Catholic schism look honest when they assert there is a contradiction btwn these and other past and present statements.

Other RCs interpret Lumen Getium and like statements more broadly than their traditional counterparts, but the reality is that no matter how much the magisterium is promoted as providing clarity, there is much room for interpretation in its teaching, with parameters of course, but room enough for quite different views on many things, besides the areas in which there is no official teaching (and just what is "official" itself finds disagreement.)

Now I'm certain you don't know much about Catholicism.

When we are talking about issues that are NOT laid out in Holy Scripture, the Catholic Church has used a process of "development" by which they explain just why certain dogmas now defined as "essential" were unheard of in the Apostles' time. Where Catholicism has stayed true to the doctrines of Holy Scripture, and which differentiated Christianity from all other world religions, they were more concrete, but even in some of the explanations of the interpretations, there has been disunity and would be what I described as "fluid".

Perhaps you should read actual Catholic Councils , documents and how dogmatic teaching work from ACTUAL document from the Church rather than opinions of them.

I have read actual Council documents, though not all, as well as the ways the Catholic Catechism has interpreted them so that Catholics are informed about them. Though I reject the entire concept and necessity of indulgences - seeing as there IS no such thing as Purgatory in Scripture and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us of ALL sin - it is incorrect to say the outrage over the abuses was minimal and confined to a few excommunicated clergy. Martin Luther was reacting against indulgences which Pope Julius and after him Pope Leo had issued to help fund the rebuilding of St Peter's. Raising donations for Church projects by dispensing spiritual blessings was a long-established practice, and few people questioned it. That the Council of Trent made specific references to the issue, makes it pretty clear it was an acknowledged abuse that had been allowed to continue - with the revenues generated gladly accepted - that proves it was no small amount of money, nor a minor issue.

The doctrine of Justification by Faith was another one of those "fluid" doctrines and it IS a core tenet of the Christian faith. Much of the Reformation was in response to doctrines such as these which had no Apostolic antiquity or Scriptural warrant.

You might find out how wrong you are and convert back.

There is no chance of that happening. Why would I exchange truth for untruth? Don't save me a seat. :o)

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