Church Mariology making me nuts!

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For mathematicians … the TRIANGLE IS THE MOST PERFECT FORM. …& GOD is the ultimate Mathematician
 
Recall the charge against Christ by Jews …not that he claimed to be the Father, but that he claimed to be God…which Christ would not deny !!
 
Perhaps. …
But, I made steady progress on the 98% …its that final 2% that become the rub !! It just doesn’t meet the ‘high hurdle’ proof standards that Sacred Scripture demands !
Luckily, some of the 2% is optional …& appears for our edification or inspiration …& not essential to salvation.

I will testify that Catholicism is far & away superior in its understanding of scripture to the various Protestant interps. So, I keep researching the 2% …hoping to resolve the final conundrum I face.
Sugar, it’s the last 5 pounds that are hardest to take off, and it’s always darkest before the dawn.

The only things you have to worry about are the essentials. (But it is true that the Immaculate Conception IS necessary for salvation. It is defined dogma, infallible truth).

Perhaps it would help if you think of what it truly is --it is not ‘about Mary’; it is about Jesus. If Mary is what the Church says she is, then that speaks a truth not about Mary but about Jesus. If Mary is NOT what the Church has defined (under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) then not just ‘this teaching about Mary’ but the entire edifice of Christianity dissolves. Because Catholicism doesn’t just have ‘more truth’ than ‘other Christians’. It has all truth.

You don’t have to believe in the apparitions. You don’t have to pray the rosary. But you DO have to believe what God (not ‘the Catholic Church’ but GOD speaking THROUGH the Church by the guidance of the Holy Spirit) tells us is true.

And nowhere did God say, “Everything you need to know is in the Book”. He DID say that Scripture (which at the time the author wrote it meant what we now call the Old Testament) is PROFITABLE, but He also said that the pillar and foundation of the Truth is the Church, not "St. Paul’, not "my conscience’, not even "what my priest or bishop say’–if what they say is against what The Church, through the Holy Spirit, the Pope, the bishops in concert, and the Magesterium, teach.
 
brb3;10101625:
So then with a “not-equal sign between each corner and its neighbor corner” that would mean that the Son is not equal to the Father. That then denies “consubstantial with the Father” as stated in the Nicene creed.

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Nope … it means ONE in being … not ONE & SAME PERSON.
 
Guys …
Me thinks u are reading way too much into this OT scripture !!
Mary said “Do whatever he tells you”. So, did Christ teach us to go thru Mary … to reach him?

Rather, he gave us the Lords Prayer …where we are taught to pray directly to the Father…no Meditrix or Queen mentioned.

St Paul knew the OT Scriptures much better than we…and he never taught this Queen Mary idea or Mediatrix of All Graces gospel !! To the contrary, Paul taught the early Christians to test & reject any message not c/w that early First Century one.
St. Paul was not expecting there to be a ‘second century’. The early Christians thought they would live to see the second coming.

And St. Paul would not need to teach that Mary was queen of heaven, because to the Jewish people, that would be a given. Everybody knew that the mother of the King was the Queen. The Old Testament says it. There was no change by the time of Jesus.

It would be like complaining that St. Paul didn’t come out specifically and teach that abortion was wrong… . because the Jews (and early Christians) already knew it was wrong. Why would you have to teach something everybody already accepted? St. Paul didn’t have to rewrite the 10 commandments. He didn’t have to rewrite the history of the Jewish people. He could refer people to Scripture, and then point out where Christ had made certain points (such as ‘no divorce’) clear, but he didn’t have to say that Christ had upheld teachings such as no fornication, no lying, no stealing, etc. because everybody expected Christ to uphold those truths.

And remember, we are promised by Christ Himself that the Holy Spirit would come and lead us to all truth. We are not told that the Spirit would lead us, but **only until the end of the apostles’ lives, and then we were just to ‘hold on’ and not accept any further truth! **
 
Put yourself at one corner of triangle … lets say at the Father’s place. Hold your arms out forming two sides of triangle. CHRIST would be at the Father’s RT. Hand & the H.S. would be at his Lt. Hand spot. Together, their 3 Persons constitute the Unified Godhead.

Now, my question for Catholics … where is Mary sitting in this pictorial ?
Well, when the Son took flesh and acquired a human nature, “he became what he was not” and yet the Trinity was neither enriched nor diminished by this.

However, the Son did take flesh. And He took flesh from Our Lady. And His flesh became the living bread he gave us all to partake from, so that all who partake of the Living Bread become members of one body, the very body of Christ, of which Jesus, the Son, is Head.

So look at the corner where the Son is: there will you find Mary above all other saints (for from her came His flesh), and then the rest of the Church, Triumphant, Penitent, and Militant. Indeed it is a truth taught by ALL the Church Fathers that “Christ became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is”, that is, “to deify us”: “For He was made man that we might be made God”.

These teachings are all found between the year 100 and the year 300, and I directly quote the Apostles, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Augustine of Hippo, but I could go ahead much more.

I could, for instance, quote Thomas Aquinas who wrote: “the gift of grace… is nothing short of a partaking of the Divine Nature”.

I could quote John of the Cross, the great mystic, who wrote:
For as the Father and the Son
and he who proceeds from them
live in one another,
so it would be with the bride;
for, taken wholly into God,
she will live the life of God.
Therefore understand that Our Lady is in Christ, and that so are all the members of the Church - the Church itself is the Bride and Body of Christ, for it is God’s will that when two spouses unite, they become one flesh. Remember:
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery–but I am talking about Christ and the church.
Now, who is the mother that St. Paul is speaking about?
 
Put yourself at one corner of triangle … lets say at the Father’s place. Hold your arms out forming two sides of triangle. CHRIST would be at the Father’s RT. Hand & the H.S. would be at his Lt. Hand spot. Together, their 3 Persons constitute the Unified Godhead.

Now, my question for Catholics … where is Mary sitting in this pictorial ?
"Now, my question for Catholics … " This is what protestants say. It is obviousto me that you identify yourself with them rather than with “us” Catholics. But to answer your question, Mary isn’t in the equation because you eliminated her in the first place. Now if you want to know where Mary enters into the equation, the answer is easy and can be answered in one word. The word is “Incarnation”.
 
Well, when the Son took flesh and acquired a human nature, “he became what he was not” and yet the Trinity was neither enriched nor diminished by this.

However, the Son did take flesh. And He took flesh from Our Lady. And His flesh became the living bread he gave us all to partake from, so that all who partake of the Living Bread become members of one body, the very body of Christ, of which Jesus, the Son, is Head.

So look at the corner where the Son is: there will you find Mary above all other saints (for from her came His flesh), and then the rest of the Church, Triumphant, Penitent, and Militant. Indeed it is a truth taught by ALL the Church Fathers that “Christ became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is”, that is, “to deify us”: “For He was made man that we might be made God”.

These teachings are all found between the year 100 and the year 300, and I directly quote the Apostles, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Augustine of Hippo, but I could go ahead much more.

I could, for instance, quote Thomas Aquinas who wrote: “the gift of grace… is nothing short of a partaking of the Divine Nature”.

I could quote John of the Cross, the great mystic, who wrote:

Therefore understand that Our Lady is in Christ, and that so are all the members of the Church - the Church itself is the Bride and Body of Christ, for it is God’s will that when two spouses unite, they become one flesh. Remember:

Now, who is the mother that St. Paul is speaking about?
Wow RC …

ANOTHER SUPERB ANSWER on Mary…positionally speaking.
I need u as my CAF, spiritual advisor …to keep me on sound doctrinal grounds.
 
Wow RC …

ANOTHER SUPERB ANSWER on Mary…positionally speaking.
I need u as my CAF, spiritual advisor …to keep me on sound doctrinal grounds.
You are too kind, I am glad you benefit from my answers 🙂 I’ll try to keep an eye if you start new threads, but do feel free to keep in touch 🙂
 
You might look at Carl Jung, who wrote (long ago now) that the Catholic uplifting of Mary was due to a psychological need for balance…so much of the Western way of thought neglected the feminine principle…
course once you try to balance things, you can overbalance too…
and of course in Jungian terms it’s the unconscious upwelling, so it’s not like a purposeful conscious plan…completeness, balance, fulfillment, it may arrive against our wishes.

It doesn’t make it wrong, but neither does it make it right…Jung also said the unconscious is the last resort. We should work vigorously with our conscious mind for self-development.

some Protestants have declared that Mary makes a Deistic Quaternity in Catholic thinking–don’t think so.
one told me to my face, (hissing): We don’t pray to a human. OK, fine…I guess we do.
one told me to my face, why should I pray for Gary (husband who recently died)? I pray to Jesus alone. Well? I dunno. In his case, it’s probably not a problem. Let the Lord handle it?

alright…if you read Betty Jane Eadie’s book, you learn little Indian children were disciplined in church with a long pole with a tennis ball on the end, bonking their heads…which shamed her and scared her, having already been abducted from her family with her sister, off the reservation, and forced into a Catholic missionary school at governmental behest.

We don’t need no stinking tennis balls on poles…we don’t want to be the poker, or the pokee. yes?
 
Christ never said he was the Father. But, he said they were ONE

… That he was the Image/The Reflection/The Essence of the Father. Thats what Consubstantial means.
No that is not what consubstantial means at all. Although you get partial credit for ‘essence’. Here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about “consubstantial”:

253 The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the “consubstantial Trinity”. The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: “The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God.” In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), “Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature.”

Each member of the Trinity has a full measure of the divine nature of God.
 
Nope …

The HS is !!
And the Father at his Left.
All you have to do is show the evidence of where this is stated in scripture or in the Oral Tradition of the church. Without that then it is mere personal opinion.
 
For mathematicians … the TRIANGLE IS THE MOST PERFECT FORM. …& GOD is the ultimate Mathematician
WOW! Where do you come up with these things? Actually a triangle is not the most perfect form since it is only two dimensional. A sphere has it beat.
 
You might look at Carl Jung, who wrote (long ago now) that the Catholic uplifting of Mary was due to a psychological need for balance…so much of the Western way of thought neglected the feminine principle…
course once you try to balance things, you can overbalance too…
and of course in Jungian terms it’s the unconscious upwelling, so it’s not like a purposeful conscious plan…completeness, balance, fulfillment, it may arrive against our wishes.

It doesn’t make it wrong, but neither does it make it right…Jung also said the unconscious is the last resort. We should work vigorously with our conscious mind for self-development.

some Protestants have declared that Mary makes a Deistic Quaternity in Catholic thinking–don’t think so.
one told me to my face, (hissing): We don’t pray to a human. OK, fine…I guess we do.
one told me to my face, why should I pray for Gary (husband who recently died)? I pray to Jesus alone. Well? I dunno. In his case, it’s probably not a problem. Let the Lord handle it?

alright…if you read Betty Jane Eadie’s book, you learn little Indian children were disciplined in church with a long pole with a tennis ball on the end, bonking their heads…which shamed her and scared her, having already been abducted from her family with her sister, off the reservation, and forced into a Catholic missionary school at governmental behest.

We don’t need no stinking tennis balls on poles…we don’t want to be the poker, or the pokee. yes?
I didn’t know that tennis was a game invented by Native Americans!
 
No that is not what consubstantial means at all. Although you get partial credit for ‘essence’. Here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about “consubstantial”:

253 The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the “consubstantial Trinity”. The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: “The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God.” In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), “Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature.”

Each member of the Trinity has a full measure of the divine nature of God.
But, the Son is not the Father …and vice versa. One doesn’t pray to themselves …and, we know Christ prayed to the Father …
 
Here we go, my friend…my last sage words of advice, since they boomeranged on me and bonked me in the head:

The little coerced Indian girl was a victim in the sense that the “well-intentioned” interference in her family’s life had no reciprocity. They was no give-and-take, and the metering out of discipline was discipline her “betters” were not receiving themselves. Would they have allowed themselves to be corrected with a tennis ball bonk on the end of a long pole, ever in their life?

And as far as sharing and honoring Indian culture–no. Magic slated all that. We have ALL the answers! you? none.

I was beat at a Catholic school with a belt and paddle…it took me a long, long time to realize I resented it severely…why? Didn’t I have it coming? The disciplinarians did not subject themselves to the same program. Nonetheless, “forgive us our trespasses…”

Why bring this up? Because we can have a relationship with Mary that is reciprocal, even overbalanced in her favor. She was, is and will be better than I…you? That could make a person resentful, until we see the Pieta: Mary signed up for a whole bunch of pain and deprivation we will thankfully never know or face. (And Joseph too, a neglected story!) Of course Jesus, the worst story ever told, from a human point of view. Of the greatest suffering a person could receive, he deserved it the least.

How is our relationship with Mary reciprocal. She said yes to Life Itself…and suffered greatly. The consolation is her Assumption into Heaven. “All generations shall call me blessed.” Not gonna happen for me, friend…you? These prayers to Mary thank her for saying yes to Life, for “holding these things in her heart,” because we can follow her example.

Religion is a way, maybe the only way, to get past “it’s all about me.” “Be it done unto me according to Your Will…” yes?
 
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