Our brother Bosco commented about my post on the Blessed Virgin:

Good brother Chalcedon, re read the passage. Gabe didnt ask Mary if she would do this. She was told she was going to be with child. Then she said…be it unto me…..thats saying, …well, Ok if thats the deal. If im going to have the baby, so be it.
The CC has turned it into Mary working with god. Mary didnt know her bottom from a hole in the ground. She was a pesant. The CC makes her out to be some deity. And you better bow down and worship her. No Jesus, just Mary. Satan wins. If you are on your knees befor a female graven image….Satan wins.

The first think which stuck me here was the implication, surely unmeant, that God forced himself on the Virgin Mary.  In ordinary life, if a woman does not consent we call an ugly deed by an ugly word, and I am going to assume that Bosco had not thought that one through before writing as he did.

If God could simply force us to love and worship Him, there would have been no need for the Fall, the Incarnation and resurrection, and indeed, no need at all to give us free will. But we have free will. If Bosco is suggesting that Our Lady had no free will, he is denying one of the most fundamental tenets of our faith; that we have the free will to accept or reject Christ’s offer of salvation.

In typically pithy style, Bosco implies that Our Lady was ignorant. Well, let us think about that for a moment. How likely is it that the Almighty would choose the DNA of someone like that for His own?  There is no reason in Scripture to suggest that Our Lady was of below-average intelligence or character, and every reason to suppose that God would have entrusted the Incarnate Word to a loving earthly mother.

Then we come to the allegation that the Church says the Blessed Virgin is ‘divine’. It would be good if Bosco could offer some evidence of this. There is nothing in Catholic teaching which says this. At the risk of giving him some homework, Bosco might care to read what the Church really teaches about Mary. He won’t find anything approaching what he claims.

Let me say that there are some Catholic publications, not least those published in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which use such extravagant language about Our Lady that one ignorant of what the Church teaches might be led to believe what Bosco believes; but we do not determine what a Church teaches by such means, but by looking at the reality of that teaching. We believe that Our Lady was a woman, like all women, in need of redemption, like us all, but that by the Grace of her Son, she was cleansed of sin, and thus the first fruit of the redemption for which we all hope.

Catholics, like all Christians, worship the Triune God alone.  Those who, in the face of official teaching persist in denying that and claiming we worship Mary thereby spread false witness; now I am sure a Bible-believing chap like Bosco can fond a verse in Scripture about that.

I am always left puzzled by one thing in all of this?  Why do some Protestants feel the need to use language which insults the mother of Jesus? Do they suppose He is going to thank them for that?