Sin, you and Christ
Category: Catholicism
Quick Apology: Catholics think Mary is divine
This should be the last Marian “Quick Apology” I’ll be doing for a while. After all, I have other things I want to write about! However, before we leave the subject of Mary, I wanted to address the claim that Catholics think that Mary is divine…
Objection
On this blog I’ve received comments like the following:
“Catholics basically think that Mary is divine. It’s like the Trinity has been replaced with a quartet – Father, Son, Spirit and Mary”
How might you respond?
Response
The simplest way to respond to an assertion like this is to ask for any official Church document which teaches this. Can the objector produce a reference in the Catechism, a Council or a Papal Encyclical? I can guarantee you they cannot.
When they are unable to provide the evidence you request, I would suggest that you then point them to the binding teaching of the Catechism:
488 “God sent forth his Son”, but to prepare a body for him, he wanted the free co-operation of a creature. For this, from all eternity God chose for the mother of his Son a daughter of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee…
The Father of mercies willed that the Incarnation should be preceded by assent on the part of the predestined mother, so that just as a woman had a share in the coming of death, so also should a woman contribute to the coming of life.*
[This is a beautiful teaching from the Early Church, where the Fathers referred to Mary as being a kind of “New Eve”]
489 Throughout the Old Covenant the mission of many holy women prepared for that of Mary…Eve…Sarah…Hannah…Deborah; Ruth; Judith and Esther….
Mary “stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from him. After a long period of waiting the times are fulfilled in her, the exalted Daughter of Sion, and the new plan of salvation is established.”
Flat Screen Preachers
I’ve been thinking a lot about Mega Churches recently, the churches where there is a single leader who is the principal figure of not only the main congregation, but of all the satellite congregations, with their sermons being broadcast each week to those remote sites.
A few days ago, I came across a video from the Evangelical show “Wretched”, discussing that very question:
10/15/2014 Update: Mark Discroll has apparently resigned from Mars Hill Church, the mega church found in Seattle.
10/01/2014 Update: Mars Hill is now officially dissolving
Abortion Debate
A while back I advertised a debate between Trent Horn and Cecili Chadwick on the subject of abortion. During the exchange, Miss Chadwick said:
“I think it’s really interesting that every time I have been asked to debate this issue I have been debating a man…”
Trent’s response to this was rather spot-on, but I wanted to advertise an upcoming debate where Processor Chadwick will be debating with a woman! On 27th October, Miss Chadwick will be in a formal debate with my friend Timmerie. All the details are in the Facebook event below:
Quick Apology: Is Mary “Mother of God”? (Redux)
I’ve already written a “Quick Apology” to this topic before, but as I was responding to a recent commenter on this subject, I thought of an even shorter response…
Objection
Here’s the standard objection:
“Mary is not the ‘Mother of God'”
Response
In response to this, you may ask a very simple question: did the child Jesus call Mary “Mama”? Yes or No?
UPDATE: As the more pedantic among the readers have pointed out, Jesus would have spoken Aramaic and therefore called her “Ima”.
Friday Frivolity: Powered by prayer
Christians know that prayer is what gives strength and life to our faith. But how much do we really believe it? Fortunately, we have a young Celtics fan to remind us what it really looks like to be livin’ on a prayer…
Bringing out the best in men
Now, to be honest, I’m not much of a Vanity Fair magazine reader. I guess I’m not really part of their core demographic. After all, it’s not like their articles regularly reference Star Wars, martial arts, Catholic theology or computer programming languages. As such, typical Vanity Fair content is not really my thing.
However, the November issue of Vanity Fair features something that attracted my interest, an interview with Jennifer Lawrence, the star of the popular “Hunger Games” movies.
As you may know, about a month ago Miss Lawrence’s iCloud account was hacked and nude photos found there were released onto the internet. In the Vanity Fair interview she spoke about this invasion of privacy and the trauma she experienced as a result. In the part where she spoke about the photos, she made a comment which I found no less revealing than the pictures themselves. Here’s what she said:
“I was in a loving, healthy, great relationship for four years. It was long distance, and either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he’s going to look at you.”
I’m afraid to say that the sentiment expressed here is one which may well be felt by other women, which makes me very sad.