My Object all Sublime
I will achieve in Time
A Source of Innocent [?]
merriment
Of Immaculate Maryment? (Apologies to W S Gilbert)
It is now some twenty years since the pope was shot at and injured. At a recent Sunday blessing on the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, which commemorates the series of Marian apparitions to three children in Portugal in 1917, the Pope again credited Mary with saving his life.
Having, at the beginning of the year, promoted Mary and exalted her to ‘God the Mother and keeper of the third millennium’ clearly the pope doesn’t want to come under the woman’s wrath. With the furore in much of the world one wonders whether she is up to the task! She certainly didn’t keep the foot and mouth epidemic out of Catholic Ireland!
Putting her in the place of Christ and usurping his singularly unique position, the Vatican’s blasphemous goings on still abound in the 21st century.
The picture above, of Mary standing on the world in front of the Cross, used in a recent advertising campaign by a church in Knock, Northern Ireland shows the utter crazy extent to which Roman Catholic fable and heresy has grown. Many Roman Catholic church-goers and their ecumenical friends readily accept such blasphemy, holding out against arguments anti this notion while, in the next breath, they will refute a clear Biblical teaching or apart of God’s holy law and claim that such can be adjusted to fit modern trends!
The Pope said, ‘I myself (me, myself and I syndrome?) had the opportunity of experiencing her protection on May 13, 20 years ago’.
As he was still shot at and successfully if not fatally, I do not hold out much hope for the salvific let alone protectorate capabilities of Mary. The pope saw significance in the date of the assassination attempt and his survival. You may recall that last year the pope revealed what he called the ‘third secret’ of Fatima - a prophetic vision of church suffering - that the pontiff said he believed was in reference to the attempt on his life.
Cardinal Winning claimed recently, in his introduction to the Mass at the end of the Annual Catholic Independent Schools Conference, that ‘England used to have such great devotion to Our Lady that it was known throughout the world as "the dowry of Mary"’. He went on to exclaim that he hoped that this would be true again. He said that devotion to Our Lady has always been ‘the hallmark of a true Catholic.’
So is a Catholic not a Christian, for a Christian’s hallmark is Jesus Christ? A Catholic does not even want to be known by Christ’s name, but prefers the term Catholic.
What is it about Mary? Why do people worship her? How can they worship her and say they trust in God when such worship is contrary to his word. Naming Mary God and calling the pope and priests, Father, one has to ask whether the Church of Rome is preaching a new gospel to a god of their own making.
The Church of Rome portrays and represents Mary as more sympathetic than Jesus Christ and has created an elaborate system of Mary devotions and works built on sources entirely outside of Scripture.
It is surprising that the Roman Catholic Church has and continues to lure people with this nonsense when one considers that Mary’s last words recorded in the Bible were spoken at the marriage in Cana which was at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry!
In comparison to the high honour accorded her by the Pope it is notable that apart from being mentioned in Matthew 12:46-50 – when she came with Jesus’ brothers to speak to him - she is not mentioned at all during Jesus’ ministry! She was at the cross and is mentioned in Acts 1:14. That is it!
Noteworthy also is the fact that the apostles accorded her no special honour and there is no record of them praying to her. It is interesting to note that not once is she mentioned in the writings or epistles written to the churches by Peter, John, Paul, or James. Even though John was committed to look after her for the remainder of her life he does not mention her.
For those who have and those who would continue to build a travesty of a system of salvation around her, Acts 4:12 must clearly refute this: ‘Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.’
The term ‘Mother of God’ originated in the Council of Ephesus in 431AD and is used in the Creed of Chalcedon in the following way: ‘Born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to the manhood’, the latter term implying according to the flesh of human nature. The use was not to glorify Mary but to emphasise Christ’s deity to those who, like the Nestorians, would deny his equality with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Catholicism has therefore taken the term ‘Mother of God’ far beyond its original meaning and is used to exalt Mary to supernatural status. But clearly Mary did not give birth to God, nor to Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God. She is the mother of His humanity but not of His divinity for Christ as the second person of the trinity has been from the beginning and was Mary’s creator.
The Church of Rome has maintained a perpetual virginity for Mary, exempted her from original sin and from sin of commission and given rise to her bodily assumption to heaven. Roman Catholics have been brainwashed into believing that she is the source from where all blessings of salvation are sought and expected and that this is where there religious devotion should be directed.
Rome would say, ‘He came to us through Mary and we must go to Him through her’.
The only questions left to ask in response to this would be: what was the point of his coming; surely he didn’t come to glorify Mary; surely he didn’t die that people would worship Mary: and if Mary is acting like God and has the same if not more effect in the world then why did Jesus have to die?
A thought comes to mind. If Rome’s view of Mary was correct (calling her the Mother of God) then Joseph would be God’s step-father; James, Joseph, Simon and Judas were God’s brothers, Elizabeth would be God’s aunt and Adam would be God’s 59th grandfather.
AS CHRIST’S HUMAN NATURE HAD NO FATHER
CHRIST’S DIVINE
NATURE HAD NO MOTHER.
Mariology is simply a Popish travesty that teaches that while Christ demands justice Mary extends mercy. To teach that Christ is lacking in any pity and compassion for His people and that he has to be persuaded to show some by his mother is incredulous. For the Bible is most clear in its showing that when Jesus Christ was on earth it was NEVER necessary for anyone to persuade Him to be compassionate. Rather He was always moved by compassion. He did not need Mary, angels or saints and certainly they are not required as intermediaries today as the Church of Rome would have us believe.
All Hail Emmanuel!
