You’re right - I didn’t know that you already knew about the apologist’s remarks. It’s a prayer. It’s not anything like the Church’s teaching on why obtaining an abortion is a grave offense. It’s a way to communicate our love to Mary and God and it’s good.
I don’t think we are saying the prayer is wrong. I think what we are saying is that it needs to be clearly defined what it is that we are saying when we pray that prayer. For our conscience can not allow us to give credit where credit is not due. For there is no salvation apart from Christ. It was Christ that was nailed to a cross, not Mary. It was Christ that died for our sins, not Mary. So we have to understand that our life comes from God. St. Paul says we are partakers in the divine nature. Who’s nature? God’s nature. Not Mary’s nature. Mary is a creature just like us. She is a created thing, not divine. Only the trinity is divine. So we are interested in only giving God was it God’s, Mary what is Mary’s, and Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Right, a living member of the Body of Christ and partaker of the divine nature by God’s grace. In other words, no need for false dichotomies.
Okay, this then begs another question that I’m sure many would ask, especially non-Catholics, and that is - Even if it is possible for Mary to be our hope, why would we want Mary to be our hope when Jesus is already our hope? This is a much harder question to answer. Similarly, one could also ask why do we need to even pray to Mary when we could pray directly to Jesus? This is a little easier to answer. But perhaps both answers are related.
Through his saints God reveals his plan for all his faithful creatures: participation in his own life and work. When we look at Mary, we see our own destiny in Christ.
“I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people… This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ… The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ …God has so composed the body… that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”
Amazing-- Fr. Serpa went back and edited his response to me and now agrees with my view on it-- but I never got a notification that he revised his response!
HAIL, HOLY QUEEN, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope!
I disagree that the prayer greets two people, it clearly greets only Mary. The literal translation of the Latin seems better than the traditional english rendering of “Hail Holy Queen”. It seems perfectly OK to understand the prayer as follows:
We bring our trials to her, and she comforts us providing sweetness,
You may be onto something Josh. It certainly appears to be a list of things Mary is mother of when written like that - mother of mercy, life, sweetness, and our hope. But I guess the question still remains is it wrong to think of Mary as those things also since she is bringing Christ? Many people pray that prayer as if it is referring to Mary.
That may have come from a larger work of his, The Glories of Mary, which may be found here. On Part I of the book, St Alphonsus explains each part of the “Hail Holy Queen,” or “Salve Regina.”
The Latin grammar should be revealing enough. Any Latin grammarians among us?