Catholics worship Mary
No We don’t
Yes you do
No We don’t
Yes you do…etc.
That accusation can be easily flattened.
Catholics love Mary as a human being, as a mother. They feel quite free to “call her blessed” (Luke 1.48) with a “loud voice,” (Luke 1.41), just as the Holy Spirit instructed (same passage).
For those who say Mary is dead and can’t hear it, I have some words straight from the mouth of Jesus–“God is God of the Living, NOT of the Dead.”
If Moses and Elijah put in an appearance on Mount Tabor and chatted with Jesus about his ministry (as Scripture records), then I’d highly posit that these men were “in the know” through God’s power and not “dead.” Moreover, if the martyrs beneath the altar in the book of Revelation (6:9-11) are appealing to God about things going on across the earth and asking God when he was going to take action, then I’d highly posit that they are NOT dead, either.
Really: to “worship” Mary would require that the intellect makes a firm decision to believe that Mary is Divine or that she created the world. Even the most uneducated catholic, I believe, does not make that kind of intellectual decision. Thus, Mary cannot be worshipped unless a person claims, with full intellect, that she is divine. Case closed.
Otherwise, Mary is loved and appreciated with the same sort of devotion one renders to one’s own beloved mother, for example. Jesus doesn’t get “jealous” or “green with envy” when we “love” our own mothers. There’s no passage in Scripture that forbids us to “love” his own Mother, who was explicitly given to christians as their own mother, as well.
Protestants often make the grave mistake of treating Mary as if she were a mere “vessel” – which is the same thing as saying she was a Petrie Dish that God used and threw away. They also often make the mistake of believing that God “woke-up” one day, yawned, decided it was time to “send his Son to earth,” and then started looking, at random, for the proper “gal” to serve as a temporary incubator.
It is written that God knows each of us from the very moment of conception…“from the womb”…and that God has a plan and mission for each of us and prepares us according to our free will and cooperation with his grace.
God didn’t just “pick” Mary out of some Galileean “line-up.” She was destined, prepared, and graced to be the MOTHER of the Divine Word. Not a temporary “holding-tank.” She gave human nature to the utter, omnipotent “DIVINE,” according to her free will, faith, and cooperation–even to the point of possibly losing her own life, her husband, and her entire world.
Mary’s faith was the ‘contact point’ for the greatest event that ever happened in this universe or any other, the greatest miracle in that thing we humans call “time”-- the Divine becomes part of matter, part of the material “existence.” It gives me the shivers simply to think about the astonishing, mind-blowing reality of it. And Protestant literalists so often toss Mary aside the way they foolishly think that God “tossed her aside” after demanding temporary use of her reproductive organs.
She raised him. Educated him. Nursed him. Shared her own faith with him. LIVED with Jesus for 30 years as mother first in faith, and THEN in flesh. Her grace (given lavishly by God: Luke 1.28) and her free response to that saving grace, made it possible for all of humanity (and creation) to be redeemed by Jesus. It was the greatest “collaborative effort” that could ever possibly be effected or even imagined, through all ages, all times, all places, all possibilities.
Also, if Protestants want to bully Catholics for having sacred artwork, then they had best be prepared to throw their Bibles into the garbage cans. Why? Because every single letter, on every single page, in every single Bible in the world, is an IMAGE. It’s created “material” of ink, made by human beings. Every letter. Do these letter-images convey truth and inspiration? Yes. Just as sacred art does. Protestants should also be ready to throw-out all of their family photo-albums and cherished “films.” All are images.
But some Protestants have a valid point about excessive displays of “reverence” paid by Catholics to statues, pictures, et al. I would personally prefer to see sacred Christian art “considered” rather than “fussed-over.” Statuary and icons may be cherished and revered as material things representing and conveying truths that inspire and teach us, or lift our minds to the Divine (just as the ink letter-IMAGES of scripture do), but I find no point in dressing statues in gowns or jewels and grovelling before them. Christian art can be properly revered without such excess.
We need to pray for vocations, but we need to inspire vocations, too–in proper candidates. This takes a community–from the family to the entire parish.
