S1E7: The Blessed Virgin Mary (Catholic or Protestant: What's the Difference?)

For Episodes 2-10 we'll be diving into the 9 key differences between Catholicism and Protestantism in a series called Catholic or Protestant: What's the Difference?

In today’s episode we’ll be talking about the Blessed Virgin Mary—the difference between veneration and worship, why the Church has Marian dogmas, what those various dogmas and doctrines are, and the purpose of Marian devotion.

Bible Passages Quoted:
-Leviticus 19:30
-Luke 1:35
-Philippians 2:6-7
-John 19:26-27
-Luke 1:46-49
-Psalm 93:5
-Galatians 4:26, 31
-Ephesians 5:31-32
-Psalm 132:8
-Revelation 11:19
-Psalm 16:10
-Revelation 19:7
-Sirach 4:13-18

Resources:
An Honest Proposal To Christians... | Theology of the Body Institute
Assumptions About Mary | Catholic Answers
Mary, Mother of Salvation | Catholic Answer
How We Know Mary Was a Perpetual Virgin | Catholic Answers
More Reasons for Mary’s Perpetual Virginity | Catholic Answers
Why Do We Call Mary "Mother of God?” | Theology of the Body Institute
Mary Saves | Catholic Answers

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Transcript

·         Veneration vs. Worship

o   Latria = worship – “something that has ultimate worth” (due only to God)

§  dulia = honor due the Saints; hyper-dulia = exalted honor due to Mary, still dulia and not latria.

o   “Reverence my sanctuary; I am the Lord” (Lev. 19:30) 

§  We reverence Mary out of obedience to the Lord, the one whom we worship.

o   Mary is the embodiment of the Church, and therefore, the mother of the Church. Everything God has done for her, he wants to do for each one of us if we will just allow Him to. God has given us a concrete vision of our destiny in Mary, his first disciple.

§  He clothes her in his divinity (which is also our destiny) – Eastern iconography: Mary is portrayed as in a blue tunic draped in a red robe, symbolizing that she is a human draped in divinity. Jesus, on the other hand, wears a red tunic and blue robe, as He assumed our humanity.

·         “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Lk 1:35)

·         “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance” (Phil 2:6-7)

o   “To be devoted to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means therefore to embrace this attitude of heart, which makes the fiat—‘your will be done’—the defining center of one’s whole life.” (Ratzinger, Commentary on Third Secret of Fatima, LSF, p. 147)

o   “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.” (Jn 19:26-27)

§  She is the first and greatest disciple and experienced unitive suffering with Christ on the cross. Many theologians say that the labor pains she was spared of at the birth of Christ were experienced in superabundance at the birth of the Church, the foot of the Cross. We are the Church, she is our mother.

·         Everything the Church teaches about Mary has one goal: to safeguard everything the Church teaches about Christ. – “What the Catholic Faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.” (CCC 487)

o   “Catholic Doctrine – Christology, Mariology, Eucharistic theology, and moral theology – is a tightly interwoven tapestry; to cut away one part is to ruin the whole. The history of Protestantism is living proof of this thesis. The Reformation’s rejection of Mary and the Mass has been followed, four centuries later, by the widespread abandonment of Christian morality and faith in God incarnate.” (Fr. John Saward, Redeemer in the Womb)

o   Mary herself is not the ending object of Catholic Marian devotion, rather, she is always pointing us to her Son, the Lord of whom she says: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness; behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed. The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name” (Lk 1:46-49)

·         Theotokos – The Mother of God

o   “What the Catholic Faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ” (CCC 487) you don’t just give birth to a nature, you give birth to a person. You don’t have to contribute every element of a person to be their mother. (i.e. the human soul – comes from God, not the matter of the parents)

o   The doctrine of the Theotokos is a direct safeguarding of Christ as not only true God, but true man.

·         Immaculate Conception

o   The Immaculate Conception is the fact that Mary was saved by Christ in advance and conceived in the womb of her mother, St. Anne, without the stain of original sin. 

o   God works outside of time. He has the ability to work outside of our chronological timeline and save Mary by keeping her from falling rather than picking her up once she’s fallen.

o   “Holiness is fitting to your house” (Ps 93:5)

o   “The Jerusalem above is freeborn, and she is our mother… we are children not of the slave woman but of the freeborn woman.” (Gal 4:26, 31)

o   Though it was not officially declared a dogma of the Church until December 8th, 1854, it was commonly believed by the faithful for centuries prior.

·         Perpetual Virginity

o   Mary’s virginity is in no way, shape, or form a negation of human sexuality. The whole purpose of marriage on earth is to point us to the marriage of Christ and the Church. (Eph 5:31-32)

o   Mary skips the earthly sign, the sacrament, because she is already living the reality – the fulfillment of human sexuality as being a radical, complete gift of self to the Lord! 

§  If she were to have engaged in the marital embrace, she would be choosing the sign over the reality. (When you go to Las Vegas, sure the sign is cool and you may get a picture with it, but nobody goes to Vegas just to see the sign. You go to experience Vegas itself.)

o   “brothers and sisters of Jesus” – no specific term in Hebrew or Aramaic to express “cousin”

·         Bodily Assumption

o   “Arise, LORD, come to your resting place, you and your mighty ark.” (Ps 132:8)

o   “Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple.” (Rev 11:19)

o   Assumption vs. Ascension – difference in causality – Christ causes his own Ascension into heaven, whereas Mary is not lifting herself up, she is being brought up by God. 

o   Mary is the origin of the human body of Christ, therefore “you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.” (Ps 16:10) is very fitting for Mary

o   Mary holds the highest degree of perfection a human being can attain by the merits of her Son. What Christ has done for her gives us great hope and further reason to believe in the Resurrection of the Body.

§  Rev 19:7 – “Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory. For the wedding day of the Lamb has come, his bride has made herself ready.”

§  Mary’s destiny is our destiny – everything he has done for her, he wants to do for us.

·         “…the mystery of the Assumption proclaims the supernatural destiny and dignity of every human body…By looking at Mary, the Christian learns to discover the value of his own body.” (JP2, Theotokos)

o   Though it was not officially declared an official dogma of the Church until 1950, like the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, it was also commonly believed by the faithful for centuries prior.

·         Co-Redemptrix

o   A subordinated type of redemption which is totally dependent upon the redemption Christ already won for us. 

§  It is a testimony, not an affront, to the power of Christ (the greatest teachers form their students into teachers)

o   We would not have a redeemer without her consent to the incarnation and unique cooperation.

·         Mediatrix of all graces

o   “God permitted the Redemption of mankind to depend on the free-will decision of a human being. Whether or not we would have a mediator was dependent on Mary’s “yes.” Had there been no “yes” from Mary, there would have been no mediator. Thus the graces that come through Jesus may be said to come to us, in a secondary way, via Mary—not as the origin of the graces, but as a conduit.” (Catholic Answers)

o   The Wedding at Cana shows us that Mary is sensitive to the needs of her children. Our sufferings and our needs move her heart to intercede for us and bring us to the foot of her Son. 

§  “Mary places herself…’in the middle,’ that is to say she acts as a mediatrix not as an outsider, but in her position as mother…Mary intercedes for mankind…she also wishes the messianic power of her son to be manifested…” (JP2, Redemptoris Mater)

·         St. Louis de Montfort uses the image of casting a figure in a mold to describe Marian devotion. In referring to her womb, the place of the incarnation, he says, “Mary, the great and unique mold of God, was made by the Holy Spirit to form the God-man, the man-God. In this mold, none of the features of the Godhead is missing. Therefore, whosoever is cast into it, and yields himself to the molding, receives all the features of Jesus Christ.” (The Secret of Mary, p. 15-16)

o   “He who holds fast to her inherits glory… he who harkens to her dwells in her inmost chambers… she comes to bring him happiness and reveal her secrets to him.” (Sir 4:13-18)

·         To have a devotion to Mary, the Mother of God, is to place yourself in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, where our salvation is brought to birth.