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Long a source of division, Mary is being rediscovered by non-Catholics
Long a source of division, Mary is being rediscovered by non-Catholics
FOR MORE THAN 500 years, Catholics and Protestants have been hotly divided over the role of Mary, mother of Jesus.  Protestants accuse Catholics of giving Mary equal status with Christ. But Catholics accuse Protestants of denying Mary the position that is rightly hers as the mother of the Savior.
In his new book, A Protestant Looks at Mary, Dr. Charles Dickson, a Lutheran minister and scholar in North Carolina, insists that devotion to Mary should be a part of any complete Christian faith. “The Mother of God (or Theotokos) concept,” Dickson explains, “was formally introduced into Church discussion at the Council of Ephesus in 431, though the term and its supporters had been part of the Christian community long before that.”
Twenty years later, the Council of Chalcedon reaffirmed that Mary is the Mother of God, and by the end of the fifth century, devotion to Mary had spread widely.
What might be astonishing to both Catholics and Protestants today is the insistence by 16th-century reformers that devotion to Mary was not a peripheral issue. “Luther referred to Mary as ‘the workshop of God.’” Dickson writes. “He openly belittled Protestant antagonism toward Mary as an undesirable result of Church conflict.”
Luther also believed in seeking help from Mary. In 1521, for instance, he wrote a commentary on the Magnificat, Mary’s hymn of praise in Luke 1:46-55, and sent it to Prince John Frederick, duke of Saxony. Luther used the Magnificat itself to explain why a full Christian faith must include devotion to Mary. “The Virgin Mary,” he wrote, “means to say simply that her praise will be sung from one generation to another so there will never be a time when she will not be praised.”
STILL, MARTIN LUTHER worried about any beliefs or practices that would tend to make Mary equal to Christ in the work of Redemption, a caution Catholicism insists upon as well. Nevertheless, in complete agreement with Catholic theology in both his time and our own, Luther saw fit to call Mary “Queen of Heaven.”
Near the end of his life, however, Luther did react to what he believed was excessive Catholic devotion to Mary. “I could wish that the cult of Mary would be completely abrogated,” he said, “solely because of abuse.” All the same, this did not negate his generally positive attitude toward Mary.
Ulrich Zwingli, another Protestant reformer, also advocated praise of Mary by defending the use of the Hail Mary. “The more honor and love for Christ,” he said, “the more also the esteem and honor for Mary.”
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The original Protestant reformers, then, had no wish to devalue the place of the Virgin Mary in salvation history. Only in later centuries did Protestantism oppose Marian devotion. But where the Council of Chalcedon declared the absolute unity of divine and human natures in Christ, most Protestants emphasized Christ’s divine nature. The result was the devaluation of Jesus’ human nature and the devaluation of his human mother, Mary.
And the consequences of this classical Protestant perspective are not only theological but psychological as well. “Protestantism, in general,” Dickson says, “has produced a religious experience with harsh masculine emphasis. Such harshness has been tempered in Catholic experience by the presence of feminine qualities associated with Mary.”
And Mary is not only the model of motherhood, Dickson observes. Only rarely, for instance, have we seen the image of Mary as the independent woman.
MANY PROTESTANTS, DICKSON further notes, are not aware of how devotion to Mary is coupled with faith in Christ in their own most cherished hymns. That Protestants sing many versions of the Magnificat is only a beginning. In one verse of the old French Christmas carol, Angels We Have Heard on High, for example, Protestants ask the assistance not only of Mary but St. Joseph, too. “See Him in a manger laid/Whom the angels praise above./Mary, Joseph lend your aid/While we raise our hearts in love:’
At the Cross Her Station Keeping, found in many Protestant hymnals for Lent, praises Mary for her faith and as a model for all Christians. One verse is particularly powerful: “Who on Christ’s dear mother gazing/Pierced at anguish so amazing/Born of woman, would not weep?/Who, on Christ’s dear mother thinking/Such a cup of sorrow drinking/Would not share her sorrows deep?”
Indeed, through hymns, many Protestants already accept what Catholics believe concerning Mary. “The time has come,” Dickson observes, “to stop quibbling over our differences and begin rejoicing in what we share.”
But Dickson doesn’t stop with simple acceptance of Mary. Protestant churches, he believes, should even adopt the Marian feasts of the Catholic Church. The feasts of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin (September 8), the Presentation of Mary (November 21), the Annunciation (March 25), the Visitation (May 31), and the Presentation of the Lord (February 2) are all biblically based. Since these feasts, ancient in origin, direct us to Christ, Protestants have no reason to not celebrate these feasts along with Catholics.
YET, THE FEAST of the Assumption (August 15) is a special case for Protestants, Dickson acknowledges. Protestants assume that divine revelation has but one source, the Bible. “Because no direct mention is made of the Assumption in the New Testament,” he explains, “Protestants feel they cannot accept any teachings about God taking the Blessed Virgin Mary directly into heaven.”
Dickson, however, asks Protestants to keep an open mind. The Feast of the Assumption, he notes, dates from the fourth century, when St. Germanus of Constantinople wrote of Mary: “Her virginal body is entirely holy, entirely chaste, entirely the house of God.” Even Martin Luther included the Assumption on a list of liturgical celebrations that should, in his words, “be observed among Evangelical Catholics [Luther’s term for Protestants] as a sign of continuity and order.”
Protestants, Dickson points out, in rejecting the Assumption of Mary, fail to recognize what philosophers of religion call the two sources of knowledge: revelation and reason. “The Feast of the Assumption needs to be reconsidered in Protestant practice,” he insists, “because it is based on sound reason. The God-given power of reason should lead all Christians to the realization that the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is based on historical fact …. It is not, as some have accused, an attempt of a later Church to deify the Mother of Our Lord.”
EVEN MORE DIVISIVE between Catholics and Protestants is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8). Again, Protestants reject it because there is no mention of it in the New Testament. But according to Dickson, the feast commemorates “a great truth,” that Mary was conceived in the womb of her mother, St. Anne, without original sin. The grace of her future son’s Redemption came to her from the first moment of her existence.
Further, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was implied in the early history of the Church and denied by no one. Therefore, Dickson concludes, “the formal announcement of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the mid-19th century was not a new idea; rather, it was the natural response to the flow of thought in the Church that existed for more than a millennium. It was also a recognition that the Holy Spirit continues to guide the Church through the ongoing medium of tradition and experience.”
Dickson also insists that the Rosary is a prayer for all Christians. Martin Luther and other Protestant leaders, after all, prayed the Rosary. “It is a biblically based prayer,” says Dickson, though he admits he doesn’t think the practice will become widespread among Protestants in his lifetime.
Still, Protestants and Catholics, Dickson concludes, need to refocus on Mary as a source of unity rather than division. “The Blessed Mother still opens her caring arms as only a mother can do to welcome all her children back into the one family, which is the Church.” CD
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Source: Catholic Digest, March 1997, pp. 57-60.
Source: splendorofthechurch.com.ph