Posted on 12/30/2022 4:55:49 PM PST by ebb tide
Editor’s Note: It is my pleasure to reintroduce my great-grandfather Hugo Klapproth and his “new” book, Letters to a Protestant Friend (Available Here). Full disclosure: The book is new only to English-speaking readers living 130 years after it was published in the original German here in St. Paul, Minnesota. Apart from being a thoughtful historical sketch, this little book also makes a considerable contribution to Catholic apologetics. As a convert from Lutheranism and a professional newspaper editor, Hugo Klapproth’s apologetical arguments to his Lutheran friend are some of the most effective I have ever read. Mary “worship,” Faith alone, sola scriptura, the papacy, the “non-biblical” roots of purgatory, and the Sacrament of Confession—all the go-to Protestant arguments are refuted with expert biblical exegesis, considerable historical acumen, and the patient reproach of one old friend to another. Here, then, is an excerpt from Chapter 3 on Mary and Papal Infallibility. MJM
Dear D.,
I now come to the “deification of man in the Catholic cult of Mary and in that of the Saints.” To deify someone doubtless means to place him on the same level as God, to bestow divine honors to him, to adore him. Do you really think that we Catholics do not know the First Commandment?
Honestly, that means that if one charges us with divinizing Mary and the saints, we Catholic not only deny all of Christianity, but that we also degrade ourselves in the sight of the Jews and the Moslems. Admittedly, we venerate her, and we venerate them, but in the measure that God Himself cherishes the both of them.
If an ordinary mother, whose son is respected and has become famous through heroic deeds which he earned on behalf of the well-being of his fellow citizens and his Fatherland, and whose mother is therefore not permitted to be mocked or denigrated or blasphemed or reviled, how much more has Mary earned that highest honor and distinction?
Above all, with respect to Mary, it should indeed be clear to every Bible-believing Protestant that God did not cherish anyone among all his creatures more than He cherished her. This should be obvious. The fact that this actually is not the case is proven, as so often, by the irreverent manner in which Mary is spoken of in the pages of Protestant books and even from orthodox Protestant pulpits.
A clear-seeing Protestant says when addressing this point:
There is a relationship of consistent flight from the Mother of God, a constant fear of her, or of even uttering but a word of the greeting that the Eternal Father sent to her through the mouth of an angel, thereby issuing the first blow against the old curse separating us from Him and His love. We are permitted to call out an ave pia anima as often as we want to any other human person who has gone before us to our eternal home, but not to the Mother of Christ, because that would be—Catholic! (Dietlein, Evang. Ave Maria, Halle, 1863, VII).
I can assure you that the Protestant disrespect for Mary alone would now be sufficient to prove to me that Protestantism cannot be the religion of Jesus Christ. “Every heresy has always ended with a contempt for the Virgin” (Hettinger, Apol., Freiburg, 1869, II, 1, 529).
No, whoever sees and honors the Bible as the true Word of God must look upon and honor in Mary that “blessed among women”; and he must “laud her as blessed through all generations” until the end of time.
In truth, the veneration of Mary is so natural for the Christian who is logical in his belief; it is so completely understandable for every true disciple of her Divine Son, that only a total blindness could misjudge it.
If I call upon the name of Jesus,
I can never speak to Him alone,
After ‘Jesus’ I call upon ‘Mary’
Think first of Him and then of Her!
Who, indeed, is he who separates Mother and Child,
Who after all are so closely bound together?
You who bore for us the Son of God,
Remain for us forever Mother.
By chance, an American leaflet came into my possession today that illustrates the rationality of the Catholic veneration of Mary in a very simple although no less accurate manner. And because Protestantism has impressed upon us precisely such an irrational caricature of the Catholic Marian cult, I wanted to cite a passage from this here:
The Fourth of July takes first place among all the civil holidays of this land. It is the day on which the freedom of this country was born; the day in the year 1776 when a number of excellent, noble and freedom-loving men gathered together in Philadelphia and signed a document which announced to the crowned head of England that the colonists were tired of British tutelage and tyranny and that they were breaking away from it. And so the dawn of freedom broke forth across this entire land.
This day is justly celebrated in a splendid way on account of that fact. Businesses are closed, everywhere one hears the joyful and jubilant shouts of the people, everywhere resound rifles and pistols and the thunder of cannon. In the cities, brilliant parades are held; soldiers in gala uniforms move with shining guns and pistols, accompanied by drum rolls and star-spangled banners through the densely animated streets. In the evening the cities glow with innumerable stars reflecting the manifold colors of the bonfires and the shooting off of rockets. The rattling of the fireworks seem as though they will never come to an end. The houses of the citizens sport festive decorations. A number of homes are emblazoned with the portrait of a noble man who is justly known to every American under the name of the Father of his Country. Not infrequently, one sees next to the painting of this man that of a woman as well. And if one asks who this woman might be, the answer is that she is the mother of George Washington.
Let us imagine someone who might be angered over the display of that picture, mock it, and ask why it was being publicly displayed. After all, what had she done for the country? Had she led the American Army? Did she draw up the battle lines and lead the troops to victory? Did she plunge into the fray with a weapon in her hand to strike the cocky British on the head? No, the answer would be; nothing of the sort. She was nothing more than a common woman, an everyday housewife. ‘Therefore, down with the picture’, the critic might cry out!
What would one say to such a man? Is it not true that he would be told that he had lost his reason and had gone mad? What if he went further; if he picked up stones and mud to hurl at and dishonor and soil the picture of this truly fine and noble woman; what then? Is it not true that in less than no time a hundred hands would rise to avenge the scandal, and the evildoer would later tell of his good fortune if he had managed to get out of the situation by the skin of his teeth?
But who is this woman, this mother, in comparison with the Mother of God? Who is her son, on whose account she is honored, in comparison with the Son of Mary, who freed not only one land, one people, but the peoples and the nations and the men of all lands and of all times, and freed them not from the tyranny of an earthly power, but from the slavery and the dominion of the devil? This woman is someone who re-opened the gates of heaven closed to us through sin and destroyed the sentence of our rejection; a woman who made us the children of the Father of her Son, who is the Lord, God, Creator, and Guide of all things, and His own co-heirs. How ineffably high and exalted must Mary now stand above all other mothers, since her Son so infinitely towers above all other sons of men!
If an ordinary mother, whose son is respected and has become famous through heroic deeds which he earned on behalf of the well-being of his fellow citizens and his Fatherland, and whose mother is therefore not permitted to be mocked or denigrated or blasphemed or reviled, how much more has Mary earned that highest honor and distinction: she, the Mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who has redeemed the whole human race from its sins; she who was the means by which this Redemption came to pass!
How curious this is! Scarcely did I start writing this letter to you, when the American Press reported the unveiling of a Mary Washington Monument in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the accompanying discourse of President Cleveland. This speech forms a kind of counterpart to what I just noted above. The Protestant speaker said, “I believe that the man who forgets a love for his mother is capable of every treason and every deprivation and cannot be trusted. George Washington said: ‘All that I am I owe to my mother.’ Therefore, we should never forget that if fame and honor fall due to a man, a share in that fame and that honor is due to his mother.”
How curious that such an unintended but no less conclusive justification of the Catholic Marian cult should come precisely in this month [May, 1894]; the month that we Catholics are used to dedicating to the special veneration of the mother of our Lord. And, by the way, the mother of Washington was also named Mary.
Still, however much we Catholics honor and distinguish Mary, never has it occurred to us to compare her, a creature, even only distantly, to God; much less to place her on the same level with God. She, for us, is infinitely small and limited with respect to God. We ascribe to her absolutely no power whatsoever other than that which she has obtained from God. And the same holds true for us with respect to the other saints. We pray to God—the Catholic Catechism tells us this—so that He may help us through His Omnipotence; we pray to the saints so that they may help us through their intercession with God.
The living, also, pray for one another, but does anyone think that this somehow cripples Christ’s role as mediator?
But can we not see in this prayer a kind of mistrust of Jesus Christ? No, for we expect first of all grace and eternal life from God’s will alone, through the merits of Christ. We look, secondly to the intercession of the saints, as well as to those of the angels, as can also be seen in Holy Scriptures themselves, as, for example, in the Revelation of St. John (5:8), where twenty-four Elders are said always to be before the Throne of God, unceasingly bringing the prayers of the saints to the All Highest.
The living, also, pray for one another, but does anyone think that this somehow cripples Christ’s role as mediator? However, should you doubt that those dwelling in the hereafter know something of us, and if you still consider the Bible to be valid to look to for God’s Word, then you can easily rid yourself of your doubt if you would glean the message of still further scriptural passages besides those mentioned above: Luke 13:10; Tobias 12:12; Zacharias 1:12; 2 Maccabees 15:12-15.
Even Luther, although he often contradicts himself in this regard as he does in every other matter as well, has testified to calling upon the aid of the saints. Thus, he once admitted: “I say and hold fast with the whole of Christianity that we should honor and call upon the loving saints; for who would contest that in our day, God, through His Holy Name, still visibly performs miracles at the sites of their holy bodies and graves?” (Wittenberg 7, 7).
Testimonies to the invocation of the Saints can be found in Luther, albeit alongside contrary statements, until the year 1541; that is to say, five years before his death.
Here is a passage from a splendid apologetic pastoral letter that the Bishops of Prussia addressed to the faithful of their dioceses from the tomb of St. Boniface, in Fulda, in January of 1889. They wrote:
The crown of all of the distortions of the teachings of the Catholic Faith is the assertion that the Catholic Church…attributes the adoration which is due to God alone to the Virgin Mary and to the saints as well. We reject this assertion with the deepest disgust. We Catholics direct all of our reverence, consisting of our Faith, Hope, Love and Worship, solely and alone to the true, living, Triune God.
To direct this divine worship to any creature whomsoever, however exalted he or she might be in the order of nature and grace, is idolatry in the eyes of every Catholic. The reverence to God is the sole thing that we call worship. That which we direct to the Mother of God is essentially and totally different. Just as little as the honor and love that children render to their parents, or subjects to their princes, contradicts the love due to God—it, in fact, fulfills His fourth commandment—does reverence to the saints contradict the worship due only to Him.
Rather, this arises from that divine reverence and shares in its same goal. We honor the saints as friends of God, as true followers and members of Christ because God Himself honors them this way as well. However, all honor that we render to them we render on account of God and for the glorification of God, who through His grace sanctified them and gave them to us as a model.
This applies in the highest measure to the reverence that we render to the Most Blessed Virgin in fulfillment of the words: ‘Behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed.’ For this reverence has its sole ground and its sole goal in Jesus Christ, in whom we believe as the true Son of the Eternal Father and the true Son of the Virgin Mary. In offering such reverence we are far removed from considering Mary as someone other than a creature.
Yes, she is the purest and most holy among all creatures, but all of her purity and sanctity have been given to her through the merit and grace of Jesus Christ for His honor. We also honor Mary no differently, no more, and no less than God Himself, according to the witness of the Gospel through the message of the angel, who honored her in greeting her as ‘full of grace’; as someone in whom ‘the Lord is.’
If we call upon Mary, the angels and the saints, we do not expect grace and help from them due to their own power. Rather, we expect these blessings through their intercession, from God alone, through their and our sole Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Asking the Mother of our Savior and the glorified saints for the help of their prayers is just as reasonable and Christian as our appealing to our fellow Christians on earth for their prayers.
If Saint Paul in his epistles asks for the prayers of the faithful, should it therefore be wrong if we commend ourselves to his intercession in Heaven? Or should the ‘Our Father’ lose its strength due to the fact that we bring the memory of our Salvation in Christ Jesus to Him through the greeting of the angel, and add the petition: ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, prayer for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death?’
Also, we do not ascribe to the saints either omniscience or any other divine characteristic, but rather trust that God will allow them to have our supplications recognized, so that they can continue in Heaven the work of the Christian love that they practiced on the Earth. The Catholic Church teaches that this reasonable and pious recourse to the saints, which emergences directly from the article of the Apostles Creed regarding the Communion of Saints, is salutary and beneficial, and that it applies in a special way to our own age. For it is indeed beneficial and salutary to oppose to the absorption in earthly affairs and the illusions of transient desires models of heavenly feeling; to set against these, holy lives full of self-renunciation and the eternal Kingdom of Christ and his elect that is also our eternal goal.
In the meantime, your Hugo greets you.
“You are familiar with the sin of presumption, right?”
Who made that up?
“...everyone else who chooses to be baptized and believe in Jesus), “
You’ve got it backwards. FIRST you believe in Jesus, THEN you get baptized. Being baptized doesn’t save you, and it doesn’t get you to Heaven.
If you should die between the minute you accept Christ and the opportunity to be baptized, you’ll still see Heaven. Baptism has nothing to do with the salvation experience.
“Maybe they will hear him say, I never knew you.”
That passage in the Bible has to be one of the most chilling.
Yes it does. I can’t imagine eternity in Hell. I bet the first thought these poor souls have, is how on earth are they going to endure this flame forever? Unfortunately, cultists are going to find out. It’s sad, but it’s their choice.
If baptism was unnecessary for salvation, why did he charge the Apostles with baptizing all the nations in the name of the Blessed Trinity? What would be the point if it were merely optional?
It's one of the last things he says before ascending into Heaven! Per Matthew 28:
"[18] And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. [19] Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. [20] Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world."
Dont forget covid, an entire posse has evolved, way worse than howlin and the harpies, they loved mandatory vax, then jumped immediately on the ukraine bandwagon. If i could i’d ban them all without a second thought.
Hebrews 11:1-2 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation.
Commendation, by God.
Not condemnation, by religious pharisees.
Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
It’s very sad that so many people don’t have enough faith to trust God to do what He promised us He would for us. They have no hope of ever being able to please Him.
God doesn’t want our performance. Obedience to what He directs us in, yes, of course, but our religious works or duties as if they can somehow please Him or negate our sin, no.
But He wants our trust. And trusting someone completely, IMO, is the greatest honor you can give someone.
Jesus and the NT church also did not use the civil authorities and their use the sword of men against theological dissent, while abrogating obedience by RCs to any RC ruler who did not cleanse the land from those she deemed to be heretics, so as to replace him.
The Jews were under promised chastisement, not seeking deliverance from a tyrant, and the American revolution was not a theocracy (nor anarchists) which would disallow revolution, but when the use of arms is allowed, as it was by Jews in the OT, then in principal rebellion has support, such as, "when the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the Lord because of their groanings by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them." (Judges 2:18)
Also, what rulers are supposed to do when the oppressed escape is this:
Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him. (Deuteronomy 23:15-16)
But if you want to support the burning of heretics (or the church which did defend such) while treating the American revolution as if it was a theocracy, then you can do so.
Yes, very.
True. Except Rom 7.
Paul knew.
What’s your personal guess re. Joseph (Mary’s husband) father of a few boys and girls? I know the “he was already much older than Mary and probably died of old age some time after Jesus was 12” theory.
Just curious -
And Happy New Year, brother and saint.
—> It doesn’t matter what the sons of Luther say. They only showed up 1500 years later than us Catholics.
I’ve never met any “sons of Luther” I seem to remember he had one, but he died long ago.
God only has children. Not grandchildren.
All that matters is that one comes to saving faith in Him alone.
I’m grateful to be saved and know Him.
I feel sorry for the deceived, stuck in worthless ritual, pretending to earn their way to heaven…
Yes, I also think that battle was after regeneration, yet as not sinning willfully, but "that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good," (Romans 7:15-16) And he could even say, "Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day." (Acts 23:1) Not meaning as being sinless, but that even in slaying Christians he thought he was actually serving God, which he ever sought to do, thus "I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief," (1 Timothy 1:13) though he considered himself as the chief of sinners in terms of the manner of iniquity, that of persecuting Christ Himself via His body, the church, which is to be the closest manifestation of Christ on the earth, not as an apparent wafer.
What’s your personal guess re. Joseph (Mary’s husband) father of a few boys and girls? I know the “he was already much older than Mary and probably died of old age some time after Jesus was 12” theory.
Where the Bible or history is silent is where we only speculate on such issues, and here the proposition is that Joseph was a widower who had children from before his wife died, and with the other that Mary not only birthed only Christ, but was a perpetual virgin. Which has been dealt with before on FR, as here, as have all the other issues on this thread, and at this stage I think I may mainly post links to such.
But I will as that a consequence of Jesus having siblings is that this would be consistent with His experiential partaking of human existence, as it is supposed to normally include learning how to develop relationships and and deal with conflict others (which unstructured play times can help), as well as be a partaker of corporate discipline, which includes the parental response to the inevitable cry, "Its' not fair" which first began with the devil.
One of the effects of contraception as well as welfare is that of a generation of white liberal children who cannot tolerate disagreements, and expect pampering, as well as one-parent families with children who know little of corporate discipline, and treat such with disrespect. The normative requirement that a pastor married and "that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity" (1 Timothy 3:4) - though they sometime seek to defy gravity - is relevant here as a positive attribute.
However, while the contention for perpetual Marian virginity (PPM) is unwarranted, that Christ had younger siblings is not evidenced, neither would Him having none at all be something that must be disallowed.
How
That’s exactly what I was thinking
Does saying "BINGO" trigger RCCers?
Beautiful pictures, not repulsive.
LOL!
Probably not.
46 And Mary said:[a] “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; 47 my spirit rejoices in God my savior. [Luke 1:] 48 For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness; behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed. 49 The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50 His mercy is from age to age to those who fear him. 51 He has shown might with his arm, dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart. 52 He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly. 53 The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty. 54 He has helped Israel his servant, remembering his mercy, 55 according to his promise to our fathers, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
A wonderful psalm by a blessed virtuous vessel of God, by His Spirit and to His glory.
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