I have two simple questions for Protestant, non-Catholic Christians who don't like the term - "Protestant".

[JonNC]

Are you talking about the Book of Concord?
Maybe it’s my Danish tradition setting in, but I do not think of it as binding, and certainly not as being above Scripture (please note that I’m not saying you do either! ). My point is that if BoC calls Mary ever-virgin, it most likely has to do with the spirit of the time; holding fast to the Evangelical basics (the solas), and then, for the sake of co-existence that was still relatively new to Germany (and Europe!!) at the time. No reason to cause any more fuzz than neccessary in a Germany torn by protracted war and unrest.
That might be an explanation, because I’m having trouble finding another. It seems to contradict Scripture, anyway. But yeah, I’m not going to turn the question into an article of faith either

Mark,
Smalcald, Part one, 4. The English is virgin Mary, the Latin is ever-virgin Mary, according to Tappart. As we agree, not an article of faith, and my understanding with all marion beliefs, open to each believer’s faith. I certainly wouldn’t condemn your point of view. It is my pastor’s as well.

Jon

 

[Jimmy_B]

What does not liking the word Protestant have to do with these two questions. I’m confused.

Anyway,

1. We use several, I think my main study Bible is the NRSV, we also read alot out of my husband’s Catholic Bible.
2. This one is harder:
   Mary is the mother of Christ
   She is blessed among women (She is the mother of Christ after all)
   She is a great example of submitting to God’s will, even when it seems really strange. (Virgin Birth, etc.)
   She is also a great example how God works through ordinary people.
   I do think that she was that, and ordinary person, I don’t think she was born sinless, as then why would she need saving. To me it cheapens the story, God worked a miracle though her as an ordinary person, he didn’t have to create her special first and then work his miracle.
   I don’t know if she was an eternal virgin or not, and frankly it’s not that impotant to the overall story, so it doesn’t really bother me either way.
   I think refering to her as the Queen of Heaven is odd, but again doesn’t bother me that much.
   I don’t personally ask for her to pray for me, but my husband finds solace in the rosary, so can’t be all bad, just isn’t something I was raised doing so I’m not that comfortable with it.

Hope that helps.

Again still trying to figure out the connection between not liking the term protestant (which I have no porblem with), and these questions.

Protestants use a different Bible and they disagree on Mary doctrine…

 

[mike00077]

Catechism of the Catholic Church

816 “The sole Church of Christ [is that] which our Savior, after his Resurrection, entrusted to Peter’s pastoral care, commissioning him and the other apostles to extend and rule it. . . . This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in (subsistit in) the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him.”

The Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism explains: “For it is through Christ’s Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the People of God.”

846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.