I have never thought that you were anything other than honest in your beliefs, and intelligent to boot. At the same time, those who believed in a flat earth which was the centre of the universe were both honest and intelligent too - and quite simply wrong.
Aah, thanks for that ā¦ wouldnāt want to give offense next time Iām hobnobbing with Bill Clinton or anythingJust anote to an Australian sister: Weāre not supposed to do that!! It is totally incorrect. I know, people do it all the time, but itās wrong, & therefore not the best example. There is, & can be, only one President at a time, & only the President in office is to be called āMr Presidentā.
Itās be kind of like somebody insisting on calling an antipope āYour Holinessā. Its a singular title, & belongs to no one except, at present, George Bush (the younger).God help us!!
Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorianism.
Source: orthodoxwiki.org/Nestorianism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theotokos
Relax! No one is angry here and no one thinks you are an idiot! If anyone is an idiot on this thread itās ME! PLEASE! Thank you for sharing your views as best as you were able. Itās hard to express oneself sometimes. Thank you for having the courage to try.
HI Singinbeauty ,
Of course I think about thisā¦ but those who are grounded in the sacrifice of Jesus for us should be able to get along no matter the differences that donāt matterā¦ But it seems as if this cannot be the case.
Your welcome, but I think the Catholics here and will help you try to understand why the Catholics believe Mary is the Mother of God.Hey thanx Manny! Finally, instead of saying I follow that belief someone just offered a little bit of it so that I could read itā¦ AMAZINGā¦
Perhaps the subject of āMother of Godā is just too darn complex to explain here on earthā¦ we shall know in Heavenā¦
And since I have answered the question of the OP I think I am DONE with this threadā¦ Turning to ālurkā statusā¦
I am all for Mary. She can be a role model to females. Many Catholics can ask for her to intercede for them āPray for us sinnersā. There is nothing wrong with discovering who Mary was and what role she played. She is blessed and chosen.
I hope I would not derail the topic.
). Anglican devotion is less varied, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. I blame the Greeks for the inflation of her cultus in the Church: the Roman Liturgy used to be rather restrained in its attention to her, before the Orientals messed things up. That *was *1400 years ago, of course Anglican devotion, like that of other Protestants, never forgets that Jesus Christ, & nobody else, is the Head of the Church. Ideas about the BVM & devotion to her have a tendency to run wild, even if more important doctrines suffer in consequence. 
Itās very simple - what there is for Christ to do is to BE GOD! Mary, greatest of all Godās creatures as she is, important as she was and still is in bringing Christ to the world - and the world to him - is not God! Whatever power she has is through her relation to Him, His power is all His own. And we never forget that, as much as we do love and honour her.Most Catholics donāt have much to say about SS. Peter & Paul: that doesnāt mean they donāt honour them; only that, most of the time, there is no reason to talk about them much.
AFAICS, that is pretty much how most Protestants think about the BVM. Anglican devotion to her is just as liturgical as ours, & there is never any danger that she will swamp everything; Anglicans preserve the āshapeā of Christianity better than we do, IMO. (No Anglican, apart from the very āRomanā ones, would get it into his head that Jesus needs His motherās permission to act
FWIW, St. Paul does not seem to attract much attention among Catholics - yet in Acts 9, Jesus calls him āMy chosen vesselā.
A possible reason for some Protestant coolness on the subject of the BVM is that the Catholic approach seems to concentrate on Luke 1 & John 2 & 19 & to have difficulty with the texts (in Mark, for example) that set Jesus apart from Mary. It glorifies her non-stop, but overlooks her lack of understanding of the Son.
Another reason may be, that she has more or less absorbed the function of the Holy Spirit - this is seen in books like de Montfortās āTrue Devotion to Maryā; & even more in the ideas of Fr. Kolbe, as discussed & quoted by Mark Miravalle:
[http://motherofallpeoples.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=148&Itemid=40 (http://motherofallpeoples.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=148&Itemid=40)
That kind of thing bears no resemblance to the restrained Mariology of Anglicanism; & even less, if possible, to the words of St.Paul; it might almost have been thought up in order to oppose his teaching, which is Christ-centred from start to finish. This kind of distortion makes her the rival of her Son, rather than āthe handmaid of the Lordā.
From the same page:
The Lady, the Virgin Mother, shines as the one who conceived joy for the world. She shines as the meaning of history; the goal of creation; According to the NT, Christ is both - besides, a mere creature (& she is only a creature, nothing more) can be neither. BTW: how can a mere creature be transcendent ?
- ā¦In his 1998 Marian Lenten letter to the Orthodox world, the present Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, writes:
She who made our composition heavenly . . . . She deliberately followed her Son, Himself God, from His Birth to His Passion and Cross. And the God-man from high on the Cross, sent forth His Most Holy Mother to all of us as our Mother in the order of grace.
She supports our life and sanctifies our time . . . . We are purified through her tears; through the divine beauty we are saved; and we keep holy silence in the presence of the overwhelming awe. (7)
After that, it is hard to see what there is for Christ to do or be. She is not a priest, nor God: to sanctify is appropriated to the Holy Spirit; & she has no part in that.
The fact that Mary was without sin is due to Godās grace (via the Immaculate Conception), not anything intrinsic to her - otherwise grace would not be necessary. Maryās main virtue was obedience.
I would not classify that as her main virtue because she didnāt have a main one (if we had to choose, clearly it would be Charity- āAnd now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charityā).