Is this true about Mary?

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Mary the mother of Jesus became more important to Christians in the Middle Ages, and the popular custom of praying to her using a rosary came to England from churches in Eastern Europe ?

Is this ture ?
 
The oldest known prayer to Mary is the Sub tuum praesidium. It dates from around 250AD. There may be some older but we just don’t know of them.

We fly to your patronage,
O holy Mother of God.
Despise not our petitions
in our necessities,
but deliver us from all dangers,
O ever-glorious and blessed Virgin.


Based on the date of this prayer we can see clearly that Mary was important to early Christianity way before the middle ages.

Mary was important to St. John who wrote the fourth Gospel. She was so important that he used her as bookends - the literary technique of putting something at the beginning of a story and at the end of a story - bookending. In John’s Gospel, Mary is at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry at the wedding in Cana and at the end of Jesus ministry at the foot of the Cross. This shows that she was there always, from beginning to end.

Luke gives us two whole chapters about Mary. The ark of the covenant in the Old Testament is a forshadowing of Mary in the New Testament. Mary is mentioned in the Book of Revelation.

By obeying, she became a cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race." (III, 22, 4)

That’s a quote from Iraneus who was a student of Polycarp. Polycarp learned the faith from St. John, the author of the fourth Gospel himself.

Mary was clearly important in the early Church.

-Tim-
 
So what about that article then ? How do I did prove it ? Why did they say it ?
 
The rosary is a meditation on scripture. The church did not always have the rosary. It developed over time.
 
So what about that article then ? How do I did prove it ? Why did they say it ?
If you want to learn about Mary…here is a book I would recomment…Hail Holy Queen by Scott Hahn.

I recommended it to a Protestant that had difficulties understanding the Marian teachings…and he just PMed me…he is thankful for the book and now understands them.

As for the article, where is the link? But this I would ask first, of any source you are reading:

Is the source Catholic or not?

If not, then what is the purpose of the author in writing the article? Is it to educate? or otherwise…to make one disbelieve the Catholic Church? or some other purpose?
 
The Hail Mary comes from Luke 1:28-32. The rosary was given to St. Dominic by the blessed virgin.
 
So what about that article then ? How do I did prove it ? Why did they say it ?
Thats the second or third time that re:quest site came up on the forums here in the last few days.

RE:Quest seems to be a modern, hip way of saying “Religious Education Quest”.

I did a whois search of their domain name to see if I could discern if the people who own the website are Catholic or not. The search comes back with:

Registrant: Counties Somerset
Trading as: RE:Quest Education
Registrant type: UK Individual

The registrants address is a PO Box in Taunton, Somerset.

It’s difficult to tell if they are Catholic or not. Some of the stuff is reasonably orthodox and they have pictures of a vested priest at the altar elevating a fractured host and similar images. They have educational materials about lent and other topics which Catholics would be comfortable with. There are also pictures of little cups of grape juice like at the congregational churches…

They also appear to run theredirectory.org.uk/, reonline.org.uk/ and refuel.org.uk, and maybe others.

One of their teacher resource sites points to lots of information about all different religions. They don’t seem overtly anti-Catholic and it looks to me as if they are genuinely interested in religious education for all faiths.

What bothers me is that I can’t tell who runs it - the British government, a for profit corporation, a non-for profit institute like the Ford Foundation? :hmmm: It is one of those benign looking websites and no one can find out who runs it. 🤷

To guess at your question, I don’t think they are denigrating catholicism, just making extremely general statements. It is difficult to distill 2000 years of Marian devotion and development of Marian doctrine in a sentance or two. Mary did become more important doctrine developed and the Holy Spirit led the Church, but that doesn’t mean that she wasn’t important to the early Church and that the doctrines are not true.

-Tim-
 
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