Mary and the poorly catechized

[Contrabass101]

Dear brothers and sisters,

A friend og mine raised this issue some time ago.

I explained the Catholic teachings on Mary, focusing on her role as queen-mother and Ark of the new covenant, and demonstrated how the Catholic faith is Biblical, is rational and above all is **not **idolatrous.

My friend didn’t seem to object much to the Catholic position thus presented, but argued that while, surely, well-catechized Catholics and “official Catholicism” is not idolatrous, the same can not be said for instance about many Catholics in Latin America (no disrespect to Latin American Catholics in general).

My friend argued, that it is better to avoid “causing scandal” by cutting off one’s hand, than to do something that might cause a brother to stumble into idolatry.

How would you reply to this?

• CB

 

[puzzleannie]

I would reply to this by pointing out the glaring logical fallacy in his thinking. By his logic no one should ever get married because some people ignore marriage vows, commit adultery or abuse their spouses. No one should have children because some people are bad neglectful abusive parents. No one should practice any religion because some people do not know or do not follow the precepts of the faith they profess.

 

[CentralFLJames]

Your friend sounds pretty “extreme” if you ask me. Here he is saying one should cut off one’s hand and offer it up as a pound of flesh to the god of doubt in the event somone might find something one does scandalous. I might wonder if offering such ridiculous advise is itself scandalous and if he might “do the right thing” and move up the hiearchy to cut away at the neck the real scandalous thing at work here - and that is his overly scrupulous brain and tongue.

With respect to his complaint that there are some in the Latin countries that seem to have a zealous and over stated devotion to Mary there is no doubt both some truth and some reasons for this perception. I suspect that the majority of it however can be attributed to sociological differences between cultures that have a paternalistic vs a maternalistic history and tradition that shapes some of their mores and outlooks. Also, lack of priests to oversee the development of fringe area Christians has something to do with those cases where there are clear abuses.

For example in Southern Mexico a lot of early Christian converts came from the Aztec descendants. These cultures had a stronger maternalistic outlook and the Aztec reverenced a large number of female pagan deities (e.g. Chalchiuhtlicue, Chantico, Chicomecoatl, Chihucoatl, COYOLXAUHQUI etc.). It would not be unusual for certain of these people to have a stronger devotion to Mary than perhaps the average European descendant Christian. That does not in itself make it wrong though - as long as they are going to Mass and worshiping only Christ as our Catholic liturgy does.

There may be a few isolated cases where Marian worship is practices by laity - but NEVER in a Catholic parish overseen by an active priest. These are simply not Catholic if they do so since its not our teaching.

But I doubt its wide spread and I doubt your friend has ANY first hand knowledge of what someone is putting in his head as anti-Catholic propaganda. Certainly any that are part of a parish with an active priest would be corrected by the priest if he witnessed any inappropriate worship (but full time priests are rare in parts of Mexico since its so large and spread out a country and there are proportionally so few relative to the population).

James