No. Protestants do not honor Mary, the mother of Christ, like they should because they are scared of falling into excessive veneration and mariology as have the Catholics. So, the baby gets thrown out with the bath water to use the old cliche. On the other hand, Catholics venerate Mary to a degree not called for by Scripture and for which she is probably blushing in heaven as we speak…so to say.
Agreed. Calling her
- a quasi-incarnation of the Holy Spirit
- Saviouress
- co-head of the Church
- Coredemptrix
- Mediatrix of all graces
is not a matter of degree within a continuum of praise - it is praise of a wrongful kind, because it is too high for her; for it ascribes the work of Christ to her. She is too little, too lacking in reality, to receive such a “weight of glory”. One might as well expect an ant to carry Mount Everest on its back, as expect a creature to be able to receive what belongs to God alone. Only God can receive what belongs to God alone.
Creatures can be made sharers in the intercession of Christ, but some things that God does they cannot do - they cannot create. This is why the Mormon belief that Mary is a part-creator is impossible - God alone is able to create, because God alone is Omnipotent & Eternal.
IOW - some activity of God is communicable, & some is not. Catholic arguments for the activity of Mary seem never to make this essential distinction explicit - it needs to be explicit, because it is one of the things that distinguish the Infinite & Uncreated Holy God from finite, created, sinful man. Even a sinless creature is utterly other than God - the angels differ from God utterly, by the fact of their being created. Sin merely makes limitation (which is not evil) into a condition of evil.
To be Saviour at all, is as peculiarly a Divine work as is creation, for the same reasons. It requires infinite Holiness, infinite Mercifulness, infinite Power to forgive sins, Infinite power to atone - in short, infinite Love. Mere similarity to God, however great, doesn’t cut it. Jesus saves, and only He. Mary is as much a beneficiary of His saving power as we are - she is not a cause of the bringing of it into the world.
She brought into the world the Person Who brings it - but that does not mean she brings it. Any argument that tries to secure her a place as a cause of salvation, has to include the angel who greeted her, & her parents, and God her Creator, & every other person who was the cause of her being such as she was so that she believed the angel and his word. Which would leave us with her parents, St. Joseph, his parents, their ancestors, & the angel, all being part-authors of salvation. It would even include the serpent who decived Adam & Eve - but does any really believe the devil is in any sense the author of our salvation ? Catholic argument confuses causes which remove hindrances to the human conditions amid which we hear God, with causes which ensure we heed & obey Him. Mary has her place - but not as our Saviouress, nor as our Mediatrix, since mediation is also a work that God alone can do perfectly. At most, she is a mediator like Moses, but nothing more. Jesus is “the pioneer of our salvation”:
[
Hbr 2:9 (
http://forums.catholic-questions.org/cgi-bin/popup.pl?book=Hbr&chapter=2&verse=9&version=rsv) But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for every one.
[
Hbr 2:10 (
http://forums.catholic-questions.org/cgi-bin/popup.pl?book=Hbr&chapter=2&verse=10&version=rsv) For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.
- no one else. Bodily motherhood is in any case nothing without faith (as St Augustine points out).
The best way to honour Mary, ISTM, is by obeying Jesus. Why is her “Do whatever he tells you” not good enough ? Obedience to Mary’s God is surely the truest devotion to Mary, because it is a doing of what she says, and directs us to her Son, Our only Saviour & Mediator.
She is called “Salvatrix” (=Saviouress), & “co-head of the Church”, & “Coredemptrix”,
in this essay, by a priest in good standing:
Ever since Adam Widenfeld, in his
Monita Salutaria (n. 10), recorded his antipathy to the doctrine and the title, giving classic form to the modern bias against it, by quoting our Lady (falsely) as reproving the use of titles such as
Salvatrix and
Coredemptrix, defenders of the doctrine, even after its general recognition as part of the deposit of faith, have been bedeviled by a certain defensiveness about it.
That the author who quotes them could regard such titles as theologically tolerable, says a lot against the case he is making. Advocates for the titles in favour of which Father Fehlner argues, need to say where they stand in regard to the titles which he quotes. There is no room for the Church to have a co-head - it has & can have only one, Jesus Christ the Lord.
As for this:
On the resolution of this objection depends the concrete definition of the extent of her mediation: universal, antecedent to the completion of the work of redemption by the Redeemer, unique in respect to that of the Church and every other Saint; and the nature of spiritual motherhood: proper or metaphorical
- are those who want to see this defined sure they do ? Scripture & most of the Christian tradition since the year 30 knows of Christ Alone as Redeemer. This title is absent from the NT, & the Fathers. And how is she in a any respect less than her Son in his mediatorial work, if her mediation is “antecedent to the completion of the work of redemption by the Redeemer” ? Either people do not know what they are defending when they compare her to a co-pilot, or else her mediation need not be understood as Father Fehlner understands. In which case, what does it mean ?
And how is this to be justified ? :
If Mary pertains intrinsically to the order of the hypostatic union, it is only logical to suggest with del Moral that she pertains intrinsically, as does no other person, to the order of his headship. The appropriateness of Del Moral’s term “
co-headship” (with Christ over the Church) may be argued, for according to some it implies an erroneous coordination of Mary with Christ. But whether this term or some other is employed, his essential point is valid:
with Christ and under Christ Mary forms, in virtue of their joint predestination,
a single redemptive personality. Hence, like him, she is a public person, viz.,
one capable of meriting not only for herself, but for others “de condigno.” And if that merit is redemptive, she is Coredemptrix. We want to stress: Mary pertains in this unique way to the redemptive order in such wise as to merit condignly for others, because she pertains as no other to the order of the hypostatic union.
[my **emphases]
Holy Scripture knows of no redemptive personality but God alone. What is lacking to the work of God, that we must have a creatures as a cause of our salvation in this way ? It is this kind of thing that makes so many Christians look on the CC with disgust & horror
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