Queen Mary | All Along the Watchtower

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Blessed Mary, Mary (mother of Jesus), Queen Mary

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In September of 2016, Spaniardviii published (Part 1) Mary: A goddess In Disguise (link at bottom of page), an article summarizes the usual heretical claims Protestants make against the Mother of God.

Quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, he says:

“966 ‘Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death.’

“I’m sorry but the Mary of the Bible was stained with original sin (Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God), (Luke 1:49-47 46 And Mary said: My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, 47 and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior,). Only Jesus Christ was free from all stain of original sin (1 John 3:5 You know that He was revealed so that He might take away sins, and there is no sin in Him.“

“For all have sinned, and have fallen short of the glory of God.”

Is this a rule with absolutely no exceptions? Everyone has sinned? Well, no “Christian” would say that Christ sinned. He is a major exception. What of children below the age of reason, those who do not know what sin is? Have they voluntarily sinned? Have aborted babies sinned? Have the mentally retarded sinned, even though they cannot comprehend sin itself? There seems to be many exceptions to what Paul is saying. It appears that there are exceptions to this rule. The only point here is that, with all obvious exceptions to “all have sinned”, one cannot conclusively say that it is impossible for Mary to be free of sin.

The Immaculate Conception does not mean that Mary did not need Christ as her Savior. All men, after the Fall needed Christ as their Savior, including Mary, as she says in Luke 1:47.

Catholic Apologist Tim Staples explains:

“Not a few Protestants are surprised to discover the Catholic Church actually agrees that Mary was ‘saved.’ Indeed, Mary needed a savior! However, Mary was ‘saved’ from sin in a most sublime manner. She was given the grace to be ‘saved’ completely from sin so that she never committed even the slightest transgression. Protestants tend to emphasize God’s ‘salvation’ almost exclusively to the forgiveness of sins actually committed. However, Sacred Scripture indicates that salvation can also refer to man being protected from sinning before the fact:

‘Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you without blemish before the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and for ever.’ (Jude 24-25)

“Six hundred years ago, the great Franciscan theologian Duns Scotus explained that falling into sin could be likened to a man approaching unaware a deep ditch. If he falls into the ditch, he needs someone to lower a rope and save him. But if someone were to warn him of the danger ahead, preventing the man from falling into the ditch at all, he would be saved from falling in the first place. Likewise, Mary was saved from sin by receiving the grace to be preserved from it. But she was still saved.” (1)

Spaniard goes on to say:

“The Catholic Church is trying to exalt a created creature of God to the same status of Jesus Christ the creator. Now they claim that Mary was taken up to heaven the same way Jesus was taken up to the Father but there is no evidence in scripture to support this outrageous claim (Acts 1:9-11 9 After He had said this, He was taken up as they were watching, and a cloud took Him out of their sight. 10 While He was going, they were gazing into heaven, and suddenly two men in white clothes stood by them. 11 They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you have seen Him going into heaven.’) I’m sorry but Mary does not have the same qualities as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who is the creator of heaven and earth.”

Actually, no my friend. Catholics do not claim that Mary was taken to Heaven the same way as Christ. Christ ascended into Heaven through His own power. Mary was assumed into Heaven by Christ’s power, not her own. You are correct, Mary is not almighty like God the creator of Heaven and earth.

Spaniard continues:

“Mary was not and is not exalted by the Lord as Queen of heaven. Jesus Christ was and is exalted at the right hand of God the Father (Mark 16:19 Then after speaking to them, the Lord Jesus was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.) The title “Queen of Heaven” (pagan goddess) is actually a demonic title as seen in Jeremiah 7:18 which says, ‘The sons gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods so that they provoke Me to anger.’ The Lord has nothing to do with demonic titles.”

Again, Tim Staples explains:

“But the truth is: this text has absolutely nothing to do with the Blessed Mother as Queen of Heaven for at least three reasons:

“1. Jeremiah here condemns the adoration of the Mesopotamian goddess Astarte (see Raymond Brown, S.S., Joseph Fitzmeyer, S.J., Roland E. Murphy, editors, The Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1968, p. 310). She is in no way related to Mary. In fact, “she” did not and does not exist in reality. Mary, on the other hand, was a real historical person who was—and is—a queen by virtue of the fact that her son was—and is—the king.

“2. Jeremiah condemned offering sacrifice to “the queen of heaven.” In Scripture, we have many examples of the proper way we should honor great members of the kingdom of God. We give “double honor” to “elders who rule well” in the Church (1 Tim. 5:17). St. Paul tells us we should “esteem very highly” those who are “over [us] in the Lord” (1 Thess. 5:12-13). We sing praises to great members of the family of God who have gone before us (Psalm 45:17). We bow down to them with reverence (1 Kings 2:19). We carry out the work of the Lord in their names (Matt. 10:40-42, DRV), and more. But there is one thing we ought never to do: offer sacrifice to them. Offering sacrifice is tantamount to the adoration that is due God alone. And this is precisely what Jeremiah was condemning. The Catholic Church does not teach—and has never taught—that we should adore Mary (see CCC 2110-2114; Lumen Gentium 66-67; CCC 971). Catholics offer sacrifice exclusively to God.

“3. To the Evangelical and Fundamentalist, the mere fact that worshipping someone called “queen of heaven” is condemned in Jeremiah 7 eliminates the possibility of Mary being the true Queen of Heaven and Earth. This simply does not follow. The existence of a counterfeit queen does not mean there can’t be an authentic one. This reasoning followed to its logical end would lead to abandoning the entire Christian Faith! We could not have a Bible because Hinduism, Islam, and many other false religions have “holy books.” We could not call Jesus Son of God because Zeus and Hera had Apollo, Isis and Osiris had Horus, etc. The fact that there was a false “queen of heaven” worshipped in ancient Mesopotamia does not negate the reality of the true queen who is honored as such in the kingdom of God.” (2)

Spaniard concludes with:

“The doctrine of the Catholic Church has replaced Jesus Christ as the only true God to be worshiped for Mary, as their new god. The Catholic Church is paganism repackaged with Christian terminology.”

Um, no, sorry. No true Catholic worships Christ’s mother. Catholics worship the Trinity, in case you didn’t know.

— Patrick E. Devens

Source: (Part 1) Mary: A goddess In Disguise

(1) https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/hail-mary-conceived-without-sin

(2) https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-there-a-queen-in-the-kingdom-of-heaven

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Catholic Church, Catholicism, history, Music, Queen Mary

I have been listening to one of the most sublime recordings of ELizabethan music I have ever heard. It is by Gallicantus and can be heard on Radio 3 here for a short while yet. Called ‘Queen Mary’s Big Belly’, it celebrates that short period in 1554 when English history could have taken an entirely different route; on the basis of that one event, everything could have changed.

Mary, the first queen regnant in English history, was the eldest daughter of Henry VIII, and the only surviving child of his first (and longest-lasting) marriage to Catherine of Aragon. As a woman, her younger brother, Edward, took precdence, but when he died without an heir in 1553, she came to the throne. There was an attempt by Edward’s ministers to stop her, because, unlike Edward and Henry, Mary remained a faithful Catholic. Even though she was, at one stage, disinherited, and even though it could have cost her the throne, Mary remained faithful to the Church. Her advent to the Crown transformed the position of the Catholic Church in England. Altar-pieces and reredos and statues which had been carefully hidden away under the iconoclastic reigns of Henry and Edward, were brought out, dusted off, and restored, and the old Missals were also brought back into the light of day; much had been destroyed by the philistine Protestants, but new Church plate was made, and England, which, for the most part, had consented sullenly to the religious policy of Edward, happily went back to the good old ways.

Mary was 37 when she came to the throne, and already, by the standards of the day, elderly to be contemplating pregnancy. She married quickly – her cousin, Philip II of Spain, and in 1554 it was announced that she was pregnant. The child, if it had been male, would have been the heir to the throne of England and Wales, and to the great Spanish Empire; any son of that union would have been a figure of world importance. For a while it seemed as though God was smiling on Queen Mary and her husband, and the music on the album reflects the music created in that environment, such as Thomas Tallis’s Missa puer natus est along with the fascinating interaction between the choirs of the English Chapel Royal and the Spanish Capilla Flamenca. But it was not to be. The pregnancy was a phantom one, and when Mary died in 1558, at the age of 42, she died childless; the throne went to her Protestant sister, Elizabeth, and with that all hope of England returning permanently to the Catholic fold vanished. Under the logn Protestant ascendency, Mary’s reign was portrayed as one of great violence against the Protestants, when, in fact, it was no more so than that of her successor or two predecessors; but history, was we know, is written by the victors.

In fact, by the final year of Mary’s reign, the number of trials and burnings was declining, and Eamon Duffy is of the opinion that the relatively small rump of ardent Protestants had either decamped to Holland, or decided to weather the storm; the majority of the population seemed quite content to see the old religion back again. But it was not to be, although it took a campaign of State enforced terror during Elizabeth’s reign to ensure that was the case; not, of course, that anyone ever called her ‘Bloody Beth’.

Whatever one’s views on the history, I recommend the music – which is sublime.