Mary: The Key to Christian Unity?

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Indyann said:
archindy.org/criterion/local/2007/06-29/guest.html

This article was recently published in our Archdiocesan newspaper. I did not realize until the end that it was written by a United Methodist minister.

Do you think that Mary is the key?
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Very emphatically YES.

But it might not be through dialogues… I think more people get “lassoed” into/back into the Church through the efforts pious faithful praying their Rosaries than we will EVER understand this side of the Beatific vision.

One rather pious woman I know prays an extra Rosary a day during the season of Ramadan for the conversion of Muslims. She is excited and confident about learning the fruits of her efforts when she moves unto the hereafter. In this life she will never know all the good these prayers have done. In the next, it will be quite clear.

When getting frustrated on this forum and other forums for an inability to come to agreement with a brother in the Lord, do take time to ask Mary for help. Siblings who will not listen to each other will very frequently still listen to their Mother.

Is it any suprise the fervant and strong Marian devotion so many converts gravitate to almost immediately?
 
I think everyone should go by the Bible alone. Then we’ll have the perfect unity prayed for in John 17! :rolleyes:
 
Indyann said:
Do you think that Mary is the key?
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Mary has always been the key. God’s plan to bring Jesus into flesh involved Mary. It is for us to understand the full meaning of this plan. God could have brought Jesus into being in any number of ways; he chose to do it the Mary way. So, this was not accident, or necessity, but rather God’s perfect plan, full of meaning.

I believe that we relate better to Mary than to Jesus. Jesus is not like we are, but Mary is. She is completely human in every respect except for having been preserved from taint of original sin, while Jesus is a very unique, one of a kind, being, the God-Man. We can’t be God-Men, but we can certainly be Marys.

I doubt that Mary is a vehicle for reunion with the Protestants, though. Devotion to Mary is a mark of mature faith. She is their mother as well, even if they don’t recognize her. Those who DO recognize her will probably become Catholic eventually.
 
You’re asking in a forum full of mostly devout Catholics if Mary is the key (even if it is in the non-catholic religions section). You are not getting a good cross section of opinions here. Unless you purposely wanted a specific kind of answer.

I say no, Mary is not “the key” nor is she really all that essential. Christ would be Christ regardless of the woman who bore Him as man.
 
John_Lawrence said:
I say no, Mary is not “the key” nor is she really all that essential. Christ would be Christ regardless of the woman who bore Him as man.
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True “Christ would be Christ regardless” but there is only the one reality, and that is Mary.

Ultimately God didn’t even need a woman. He created Adam without a woman, and built Eve from Adam’s body. So we know that God is well capable of creating human beings outside the process of gestation.

Maybe if Jesus had simply appeared one day in the Temple, fully grown and ready for the cross, things would be simpler and therefore more packageable for Protestants. We think that God has something important to teach by going the full human development route, not merely begetting himself as a God-Man, but placing himself into the hands of a disgraced young woman and dependent upon her for everything.
 
I am not disputing that. I am merely stating that Mary herself is not the important part. It’s the fact that God chose to walk among us AS us and chose to have Himself come into this world AS WE DO whether the woman was Mary or not.
 
John_Lawrence said:
I am not disputing that. I am merely stating that Mary herself is not the important part. It’s the fact that God chose to walk among us AS us and chose to have Himself come into this world AS WE DO whether the woman was Mary or not.
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LOL, I think you’re helping to make my point that Mary in and of herself is not the KEY to Christian unity. She is the KEY to a proper understanding of Jesus, the God-Man, but very few if any people (and I certainly include myself among these) completely grasp the reality of the God-Man.

From a Catholic point of view, your statement that “Mary herself is not the important part” reveals the depth of the confusion. Mary actually IS the important part. We can relate to Mary. Mary is us. Jesus is other than us. There never was a being like Jesus before Jesus, and never will be another like him.
 
Allweather said:
LOL, I think you’re helping to make my point that Mary in and of herself is not the KEY to Christian unity. She is the KEY to a proper understanding of Jesus, the God-Man, but very few if any people (and I certainly include myself among these) completely grasp the reality of the God-Man.

From a Catholic point of view, your statement that “Mary herself is not the important part” reveals the depth of the confusion. Mary actually IS the important part. We can relate to Mary. Mary is us. Jesus is other than us. There never was a being like Jesus before Jesus, and never will be another like him.
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Even if I were to take a Catholic view on this I can not see Christ as being “other than us.” He is God yes of course, but at the sme time He chose to be like us. He was flesh and blood. He breathed and bled and ate and drank, felt pain and suffered and He “died” on the cross. And are we not in His image? Is Mary really all that necesary to have someone “who is us?”
 
John_Lawrence said:
Even if I were to take a Catholic view on this I can not see Christ as being “other than us.” He is God yes of course, but at the sme time He chose to be like us. He was flesh and blood. He breathed and bled and ate and drank, felt pain and suffered and He “died” on the cross. And are we not in His image? Is Mary really all that necesary to have someone “who is us?”
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I appreciate your post…the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth is central to the “incarnation”…He became one of us…I have respect for the mother of Jesus of Nazareth…but the mystery of the Incarnation…Immanuel…God with us…that quiets my soul before the Presence in holy awe.
 
As for respect, oh yes of course whole heartedly, as every mother deserves respect, especially the woman who bore God as man. I just disagree with the Mary in specific aspect rather than the theme as a whole.
 
I just happened to pick up a book by Hans Urs Von Balthasar and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger entitled Mary The Church at the Source.

In this book, which I have just started into, UHVB makes a very insightful observation about Mary in the introduction:

“Mary’s YES to the angel recapitulated (while raising to a new level) the whole Abrahamic faith of the OT, together with the hope that it entails. It thereby signaled the incorporation of the OT into the New, of Judaism into the Church…‘He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy’ sings Mary in the Magnificat, thereby opening great vistas of hope that God will accomplish the work of the world’s salvation through Israel-Church. [Mary] is the indivisible unity of God’s entire community of salvation: Israel-Mary-Church. It is within this overarching framework that we must resituate every esteem for, and veneration of, the Virgin who conceives of the Spirit.”

HUVB, intro, Ignatius Press, 1997.

Obviously these authors concur with the idea in the OP about Mary’s place in bridging, rather than spoiling, the relationship between Christians.
 
Crumpy said:
I just happened to pick up a book by Hans Urs Von Balthasar and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger entitled Mary The Church at the Source.

I am not your super zealous Marian Catholic like many are.

I am so skeptical of the alleged appartitions (even the so-called “approved” ones) of Jesus and Mary.

That Mother Kowalska and all that stuff about the Divine Mercy. Real apparitions or theophanies are very rare in the Bible. I find it so hard to buy into the idea of an apparition where this nun is supposedly told to have people meditate on this image of Jesus.

I find people promoting “private” revelations into the realm of “public” revelation, which the Church says ended with the death of the apostles.

In this book, which I have just started into, UHVB makes a very insightful observation about Mary in the introduction:

“Mary’s YES to the angel recapitulated (while raising to a new level) the whole Abrahamic faith of the OT, together with the hope that it entails. It thereby signaled the incorporation of the OT into the New, of Judaism into the Church…‘He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy’ sings Mary in the Magnificat, thereby opening great vistas of hope that God will accomplish the work of the world’s salvation through Israel-Church. [Mary] is the indivisible unity of God’s entire community of salvation: Israel-Mary-Church. It is within this overarching framework that we must resituate every esteem for, and veneration of, the Virgin who conceives of the Spirit.”

HUVB, intro, Ignatius Press, 1997.

Obviously these authors concur with the idea in the OP about Mary’s place in bridging, rather than spoiling, the relationship between Christians.
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But you’re citing a work co-authored by the present Pope… come on now… you couldn’t find something neutral?
 
John_Lawrence said:
But you’re citing a work co-authored by the present Pope… come on now… you couldn’t find something neutral?
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Whew! I just got done posting that I get ripped so quickly.

I would consider those authors as neutral; it seems that you are the biased one. They spring right off of the words of the gospel. How neutral can anybody be in this discussion? What are the rules?
 
Crumpy said:
Whew! I just got done posting that I get ripped so quickly.

I would consider those authors as neutral; it seems that you are the biased one. They spring right off of the words of the gospel. How neutral can anybody be in this discussion? What are the rules?
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Wow… how is the Pope neutral? He is basically the Church on earth, the CATHOLIC church, so when it concerns Mary, he is NOT NEUTRAL. Nor should he be expected to be neutral. He would not be a very good Pope werehe neutral… You accus me of being bias, but when you only use the gospels and the Pope, it is you who are the bias one. But ad hominem stresses me and I do not wish to get dragged into it any further…
 
There are so many ways in which scripture as a whole, and the gospels in particular, echo the Hebrew Scriptures (OT).

At the beginning, we have a man and a woman, Adam and Eve, who make up the primitive church on earth.

At the time of the Annunciatiion and Incarnation, that 's what we have again. The new Church consists of Mary and Jesus, and the promise of the growth of the Church will be not through genetic lineage, but through discipleship (as B16 points out in the more recent book, Jesus of Nazareth).

Mary is a historical figure and that gives her and everything about her a significance in God’s salvation plan. “unity” in the church must embrace the historical aspects as well as everything else.

Writing Mary out of the script breaks the rules of bible exegesis. You can’t do it on historical - critical grounds, and you can’t do it on sectarian grounds, either.
 
John_Lawrence said:
Wow… how is the Pope neutral? He is basically the Church on earth, the CATHOLIC church, so when it concerns Mary, he is NOT NEUTRAL. Nor should he be expected to be neutral. He would not be a very good Pope werehe neutral… You accus me of being bias, but when you only use the gospels and the Pope, it is you who are the bias one. But ad hominem stresses me and I do not wish to get dragged into it any further…
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I see, so if it agrees with you it’s neutral if it doesn’t it’s not? 🤷 😉 Honestly speaking, true neutality is impossible between Protestants and Catholics. We will bring our biases into the discussion. Your thoughts on this are going to be just as biased as ours will be.

BTW, it’s news to me that Pope makes up the whole Catholic Church on earth. 😉
 
Sabda said:
I see, so if it agrees with you it’s neutral if it doesn’t it’s not? 🤷 😉 Honestly speaking, true neutality is impossible between Protestants and Catholics. We will bring our biases into the discussion. Your thoughts on this are going to be just as biased as ours will be.

BTW, it’s news to me that Pope makes up the whole Catholic Church on earth. 😉
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You misread what I said and I suspect on purpose.

And is not the Pope the link between the Church and Christ? When he speaks Ex Cathedra, is he not “infallible?” Is henot the final authority on church doctrine?

People, please stop treating me like I’m being a jerk and actually try to understand what I’m saying…
 
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