The Quadrinity

[dominosNbiscuts]

**mrS4ntA **and **Catholic4aReasn

**First and foremost, accept my heartfelt apology if my choice of words offended you. I intend occasionally to be ‘provocative’, but never offensive. I guess I’ve somehow ended up with one of Karl Keating’s ‘bad’ genes!

Now as to Mary. I’ve always had a warm spot in my heart for Mary. I can’t imagine what she must have experienced in being told that the Holy Spirit would impregnate her at the very time when she’s was already pledged and legally bound in marriage to Joseph. Sure threw her wedding planning into a frenzy!

Then too, being the mother of a fellow who at 30, starts collecting disciples and declaring himself to be the ‘son of man’ – throwing the Pharisees into an industrial sized hissy fit – could not have been comfortable.

But above all, having the rest of her kids run off, leaving her without the comfort of family at the foot of the cross as her first son Jesus was being crucified must have been overwhelming. No wonder Jesus chose to leave His mother in the care of John rather than entrust her to his spineless siblings. John was the only follower of Jesus who followed Him all the way to the cross! And His mother deserved the best!

As the mother of my Lord and Savior, the Virgin Mary will always have a warm place in my heart. And while I don’t worship her, I do remember her, and look forward to that day in heaven when I can thank her as I ought.

Now, as to my claims about the church’s excess with regard to Mary. Since it was established by Constantine (?), the Catholic Church has ‘changed it’s understanding’ of Mary many times, and has progressively proclaimed her:

• Mother of God, and began worshiping her in 431
• Ever-Virgin in 649
• Immaculate Conception in 1854
• Assumption in 1950
• Queen of Heaven in 1954
• Mother of the Church in 1964
• Spouse of the Holy Spirit in 1980

And the church is about to proclaim her Co-redemptrix, Mediatrix of all graces, and Advocate.

In response, I ask what many people in the church have been asking over the years: if this isn’t Marian Idolatry what is it? At least it’s Marian excess!

And in asking I mean no disrespect to Mary or to my Catholic Christian friends.

God bless you,

DB

 

[dominosNbiscuts]

RobedWithLight:

Quite unlikely. Declaring Mary as Co-creatrix, fully sharing in the deific work of the Father, simply cannot be justified from either scripture or tradition. There is simply no basis for it.

Gerry

Robed,

With all of the ‘untaped’ apocrypha out there, together with yet another ‘new understanding’, anything is possible!

 

[Exporter]

You start this thread with “some of your Orthodox friends” said a “sect” of Catholics said… .

Well, you got second hand information, if it was that, from “friends” who have no reason to support the Roman Catholic Position.

Maybe you should ask for something written so you could pin down just who said this preposterous statement. You should have known better.

 

[dominosNbiscuts]

RobedWithLight:

On this score I agree. Like a piece of rock being 100 percent hard and 100% rough. An admittedly crude analogy but which gives us an inkling of the truth.

Gerry

Thanks for your supportive post.

Yea, someone this side of heaven might be able to understand ‘fully God’ and ‘fully man’. But it’s sure not me!

 

[mlchance]

**…**the Catholic Church has ‘changed it’s understanding’ of Mary many times, and has progressively proclaimed her:

• Mother of God, and began worshiping her in 431

Are people expected to take you seriously when you post the most blatant of lies as if they were true?

The Catholic Church does not now nor has she ever condoned the worship of anyone or anything other than God.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[mrS4ntA]

dominosNbiscuts:

Robed,

With all of the ‘untaped’ apocrypha out there, together with yet another ‘new understanding’, anything is possible!

It is simply not possible: the Church is protected from err by the Holy Ghost.

 

[mrS4ntA]

dominosNbiscuts:

…
Now, as to my claims about the church’s excess with regard to Mary. Since it was established by Constantine (?), the Catholic Church has ‘changed it’s understanding’ of Mary many times, and has progressively proclaimed her:

The Bible was compiled and canonised also at a Conciliar, post-Constantine Church. Would you say the Bible is “an excess”?

• Mother of God, and began worshiping her in 431
• Ever-Virgin in 649
• Immaculate Conception in 1854
• Assumption in 1950
• Queen of Heaven in 1954
• Mother of the Church in 1964
• Spouse of the Holy Spirit in 1980

And the church is about to proclaim her Co-redemptrix, Mediatrix of all graces, and Advocate.

For your information, the proclamation of Mary as the Mother of God. (or Theotokos, God-bearer) was done to counter the Nestorian heresy who stated that Mary was not the mother of the divine Jesus, but the human Jesus. The Council responded by reasoning: Jesus is one Person with two natures. Jesus’ Person is the Word: the second Person of the Trinity. Jesus is God. Mary is His mother. Hence, Mary is the Mother of God. By no means that this title is supposed to be understood as if Mary beget God. As if she existed “before God”. No. We DO understand she is a creation.

St Louis de Montfort, one of the Church’s greatest advocate of Marian devotion, said, “I attest with the whole Church that Mary, being a mere creation, is but an atom, or even nothing at all, compared to the glories of God.”

Another thing: we have only 4 Marian dogmas.

 

[Catholic4aReasn]

**mrS4ntA **and Catholic4aReasn
First and foremost, accept my heartfelt apology if my choice of words offended you.

I’m unclear as to what I may have said to lead you to believe that you had.

But above all, having the rest of her kids run off, leaving her without the comfort of family at the foot of the cross as her first son Jesus was being crucified must have been overwhelming. No wonder Jesus chose to leave His mother in the care of John rather than entrust her to his spineless siblings.

Spineless or not, Mary’s other children would have been obligated to care for her. That notion is lost in our culture of nursing homes. Leaving his mother in the care of a non-relative when there were siblings to care for her would have been unheard of not to mention ridiculously insulting. Jesus certainly chose his last words very carefully. He would not have spent his dying breath horribley and publically insulting his brothers.

Now, as to my claims about the church’s excess with regard to Mary. Since it was established by Constantine (?), the Catholic Church has ‘changed it’s understanding’ of Mary many times, and has progressively proclaimed her:

• Mother of God, and began worshiping her in 431
• Ever-Virgin in 649
• Immaculate Conception in 1854
• Assumption in 1950
• Queen of Heaven in 1954
• Mother of the Church in 1964
• Spouse of the Holy Spirit in 1980

The fable that Constantine established the Catholic Church is only held in anti-Catholic circles. The vast majority of Protestants understand that to be a faulty view of history.

Development in the understanding of Mary does not equate to a change in understanding. The Church has never changed an official teaching on anything in 2000 years.

And the church is about to proclaim her Co-redemptrix, Mediatrix of all graces, and Advocate.

Titles do not change anything.

In response, I ask what many people in the church have been asking over the years: if this isn’t Marian Idolatry what is it? At least it’s Marian excess!

That may be and is certainly a matter of opinion. In any case, the pope has spoken out against excessive devotion to Mary.

In Christ,
Nancy

 

[dominosNbiscuts]

mlchance:

Are people expected to take you seriously when you post the most blatant of lies as if they were true?

The Catholic Church does not now nor has she ever condoned the worship of anyone or anything other than God.

– Mark L. Chance.

Awe ML,

No way did I mean to ruffle YOUR feathers! But on the other hand, you seem to have fallen a bit behind the discourse to date. I originally began the thread “Hoo’s on First!” with a question about the difference between that very Catholic word ‘veneration’ and it’s more familiar synonym ‘worship’.

I think we finally sorted things out using a definition provided by your highly CATHOLIC bretheren at newadevnt.com who supplied the definition quoted by me on post #15 of that thread. (see that thread for the bitter details.)

Summarizing the just of their position, they noted the following which I have carefully extracted from their tome:

There are several degrees of this worship:

As the Blessed Virgin has a separate and absolutely supereminent rank among the saints, the worship paid to her is called hyperdulia (for the meaning and history of these terms see Suicer, Thesaurus ecclesiasticus, 1728).

** (Note that I inadvertently lent my copy of Suicer, Thesaurus ecclesiasticus, 1728 to a friend a while back, and he never returned it. And it was autographed by Suicer himself! As a result I’m at the mercy of New Advent here.)

So in answer to your rather pointed question: “Are people expected to take you seriously when you post the most blatant of lies as if they were true?”, the answer is an unequivocal: "YES I DO!"
What’s more, it seems, according to that very reasonable yet highly Catholic definition, the Catholic Church has always condoned the worship of, not only Mary, but also a couple gazillion saints too!

**But don’t worry, it’s our little secret and I ain’t telling nobody!

**God bless us all as we struggle to understand fully His wonderful truth,

DB

**

 

[davidv]

porthos11:

Don’t confuse the two. To say Jesus is a human person is outright heresy. The orthodox Catholic teaching is this: that Jesus Christ is two natures hypostatically united in one Divine Person.

Please explain your distinction between nature and person. To my layman’s perspective they seem the same.
Thanks,

 

[mrS4ntA]

davidv:

Please explain your distinction between nature and person. To my layman’s perspective they seem the same.
Thanks,

Consider this:

A persona called “H2O”.
At one time he flows. His nature is “liquid.”
At other time he is sturdy. His nature is “solid.”
Yet, his “person” is the same throughout. He is “H2O”

Hope that makes sense.

 

[porthos11]

mrS4ntA:

Consider this:

A persona called “H2O”.
At one time he flows. His nature is “liquid.”
At other time he is sturdy. His nature is “solid.”
Yet, his “person” is the same throughout. He is “H2O”

Hope that makes sense.

A fine analogy.

A nature defines the “whatness” of an entity. What is Jesus Christ? He is Human and Divine.

Person corresponds to a being’s “who-ness”. Who is Jesus Christ? He is the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. He is a divine Person (only).

Hope this makes sense too.

 

[Character_Zero]

DB, no offense bro, but your last few posts exemplify the reason why I’ll rarely take seriously a Protestant opinion of Catholicism. You simply do not know what you are talking about.

 

[RobedWithLight]

davidv:

Please explain your distinction between nature and person. To my layman’s perspective they seem the same.
Thanks,

To put it simply, person is who you are. Nature is what you are.

If you were asked who are you? You would answer David.
If you were asked what are you? You would answer, I’m human!

Gerry

 

[davidv]

RobedWithLight:

To put it simply, person is who you are. Nature is what you are.

If you were asked who are you? You would answer David.
If you were asked what are you? You would answer, I’m human!

Gerry

Thanks,
After my post, I did a little more digging in the Catholic Encyclopedia and have a much better appreciation for the distinction and its implication, particularly when in comes to some of the heresies involving the denial of Jesus’ divinity or humanity.

 

[mtr01]

Summarizing the just of their position, they noted the following which I have carefully extracted from their tome:

There are several degrees of this worship:

As the Blessed Virgin has a separate and absolutely supereminent rank among the saints, the worship paid to her is called hyperdulia (for the meaning and history of these terms see Suicer, Thesaurus ecclesiasticus, 1728).

(Note that I inadvertently lent my copy of Suicer, Thesaurus ecclesiasticus, 1728 to a friend a while back, and he never returned it. And it was autographed by Suicer himself! As a result I’m at the mercy of New Advent here.)

So in answer to your rather pointed question: “Are people expected to take you seriously when you post the most blatant of lies as if they were true?”, the answer is an unequivocal: "YES I DO!"
What’s more, it seems, according to that very reasonable yet highly Catholic definition, the Catholic Church has always condoned the worship of, not only Mary, but also a couple gazillion saints too!

But don’t worry, it’s our little secret and I ain’t telling nobody!

God bless us all as we struggle to understand fully His wonderful truth,

DB

DB, I see you’re getting hung up on semantics over the word “worship”

If you look at the etymology of the word (from dictionary.com), we find:

[Middle English worshipe, *worthiness, honor

, from Old English weorthscipe : weorth, worth; see worth1 + -scipe, -ship.]So, as you can see, worship (in its oldest form) means simply to honor someone. Thus, even today, judges in England are referred to as “Your Worship”, while here in the US, we call them “Your Honor”. It’s kind of the same thing as worshipping a king or a queen. No one would ever suggest that one considers a judge or a king as divine.

In quoting the Catholic Encyclopedia, you glossed over the term you should have focused on, *hyperdulia. *The Catholic Church recognizes 3 kinds of worship: *latria, dulia, *and hyperdulia. Latria is the worship given to God alone, whereas *dulia *is veneration paid to the saints. *Hyperdulia, *reserved for the Blessed Mother alone indicates that she is to be honored/venerated in the same way as the saints, but to a higher degree. It is a level of “worship” designated for her alone. However, as you can see, it is different from *latria: *the worship given to God alone. It is qualitatively different.

The confusion arises due to the fact that in Modern English, worship has come to be equated with dulia exclusively. The Catholic position, however, is based on the older meaning of the word. The qualitative differences are still preserved by referring to *dulia, hyperdulia, *and latria.

Thus, by your own quote, you have refuted the notion that Catholics “worship” Mary in the same way we worship God.

 

[mtr01]

As a (somewhat later) continuation of my previous post, in case one thinks that *dulia, hyperdulia, and latria *are some kind of artificial way of justifying Marian “worship”, I found a couple of quotes from Church Fathers which specifically reference *latria. *

From St. Augustine:

It is true that Christians pay religious honor to the memory of the martyrs, both to excite us to imitate them, and to obtain a share in their merits, and the assistance of their prayers. But we build altars not to any martyr, but to the God of martyrs, although it is to the memory of the martyrs. No one officiating at the altar in the saints’ burying-place ever says, “We bring an offering to you, O Peter! or O Paul! or O Cyprian!” The offering is made to God who gave the crown of martyrdom… **What is properly divine worship, which the Greeks call *latria, ***and for which there is no word in Latin, both in doctrine and in practice we give only to God. [Emphasis mine]

Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, Bk. 20, Ch. 21

From St. John of Damascus:

We adore only the Creator and Maker of things, God, to whom we offer latria since God is to be adored according to his nature. We also adore the holy mother of God, not as God, but as mother of God according to the flesh. We also adore the saints, the chosen friends of God, by whom we have easy access to him. [Emphasis mine]

*Against Those Who Destroy Sacred Images, Or. 3, 41 *

As is evident the Church has been honoring saints and the Blessed Virgin since the earliest days. However, as these Fathers make clear, the honor is not the same as the worship we give to God alone.

 

[_MM]

Its sounds like people misunderstand the role of Mary in salvation history. This is bad they are in serious error this sect. There was, is and will be only Most Holy Trinity-- One God in Three Persons… Father, Son and Holy Spirit!!! AMEN!

Curious…what role DOES Mary play in salvation??

mtr01
DB, I see you’re getting hung up on semantics over the word “worship”

If you look at the etymology of the word (from dictionary.com), we find:

Quote:
[Middle English worshipe, worthiness, honor, from Old English weorthscipe : weorth, worth; see worth1 + -scipe, -ship.]
So, as you can see, worship (in its oldest form) means simply to honor someone. Thus, even today, judges in England are referred to as “Your Worship”, while here in the US, we call them “Your Honor”. It’s kind of the same thing as worshipping a king or a queen. No one would ever suggest that one considers a judge or a king as divine.

In quoting the Catholic Encyclopedia, you glossed over the term you should have focused on, hyperdulia. The Catholic Church recognizes 3 kinds of worship: latria, dulia, and hyperdulia. Latria is the worship given to God alone, whereas dulia is veneration paid to the saints. Hyperdulia, reserved for the Blessed Mother alone indicates that she is to be honored/venerated in the same way as the saints, but to a higher degree. It is a level of “worship” designated for her alone. However, as you can see, it is different from latria: the worship given to God alone. It is qualitatively different.

The confusion arises due to the fact that in Modern English, worship has come to be equated with dulia exclusively. The Catholic position, however, is based on the older meaning of the word. The qualitative differences are still preserved by referring to dulia, hyperdulia, and latria.

Thus, by your own quote, you have refuted the notion that Catholics “worship” Mary in the same way we worship God.

So why is it the the 3 hebrew boys would not bow to the king and “worship” him if it means so little? Because God alone is worthy of worship.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Todd Easton:

St. Irenaeus, writing about A.D. 189, said:
That the Lord then was manifestly coming to His own things, and was sustaining them by means of that creation which is supported by Himself, and was making a recapitulation of that disobedience which had occurred in connection with a tree, through the obedience which was [exhibited by Himself when He hung] upon a tree, [the effects] also of that deception being done away with, by which that virgin Eve, who was already espoused to a man, was unhappily misled,–was happily announced, through means of the truth [spoken] by the angel to the Virgin Mary, who was [also espoused] to a man. For just as the former was led astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she had transgressed His word; so did the latter, by an angelic communication, receive the glad tidings that she should sustain (portaret) God, being obedient to His word. And if the former did disobey God, yet the latter was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order that the Virgin Mary might become the patroness (advocata) of the virgin Eve. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin; virginal disobedience having been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience. For in the same way the sin of the first created man (protoplasti) receives amendment by the correction of the First-begotten, and the coming of the serpent is conquered by the harmlessness of the dove, those bonds being unloosed by which we had been fast bound to death. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 5, Chap. 19)

That is still a very long way from saying that she has a vocation in the purposes of God to be the advocate of the entire People of God.​

Besides, she is not really the advocate of Eve - she did not stand by Eve as her mediatrix or her defending counsel . The point is the similarity yet difference between the two, as the passage shows.

Besides, what has happened to the Spirit’s office as our Advocate ? ##

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Cosmo:

If he’s fully (100%) God and fully (100%) man, doesn’t that make him a 200% person? How’s that possible?

Wouldn’t 50% man and 50% God make more sense?

If we were talking of something liquid, or some other tangible, material, thing, that would be a valid objection - because two tangible things can’t occupy the same space: where one is present, the other will be absent; the one, would displace the other.​

To be God, and to be man, are not material realities - they are metaphysical realities: a bit as our thoughts are. They don’t occupy space - so where one is, the other can also be. So the man Jesus, can also be God, without ceasing to be fully and entirely human. Metaphysical things can’t be measured by percentages, because that is sort of measure is inappropriate to the kind of thing they are - just as one wouldn’t find a Saint’s holiness, if the Saint were dissected: again, holiness is not a material thing, so what is appropriate for measuring matter won’t be any good for measuring what is not material.

Besides - God is transcendent, not confined to space and time: the nearest we get to escaping from space and time, is by exercising our spiritual faculties. Our bodies are confined to space and time; our souls, and what they do, are not. So God can be God, and modify the way in which He is present in a particular creature, by taking on the nature of that creature - He remains God, yet He has become a particular man as well; who does not cease to be a man, even though He is God Incarnate. So:

• The Incarnation neither limits nor changes God
• God is not limited by becoming a man
• The man Who is God is limited (Jesus is not omnipresent as man)
• The change is in what is born of Mary: which would have been merely human, like its mother, had Mary not been chosen to be the mother of the Incarnate Word.
• God is not affected by what is created - what is created, is affected by God.