Santa Maria

When a wise man speaks one sentence in a thousand is meat for hungry newsgatherers. Last week, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, eminent Baptist divine,* spoke at length in the Town Hall, Manhattan, on "Religion and the Modern Mind," landed in newspaper headlines with two sentences on the Virgin Mary.

As he spoke of the Catholic conception of the Blessed Virgin, his admiration of the special love which millions bear to her, he shocked orthodox Protestants. Said he: "I cannot but believe that my Roman Catholic brethren have the right idea. With my Protestant background I would hesitate to kneel before a statue of the Virgin in public, but worse things than that have been done on this earth."

Even liberal Protestants, to whom veneration of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is nothing short of idolatry, were shocked; Roman Catholics, firm in their faith in Mary, Queen in heaven of the hierarchy of saints, might have answered as before: "Outsiders can never understand our faith, our veneration of the Blessed Virgin."

But Christian faith changes; dogma develops and what was once dogma is now rank heresy. Do Christians know what is known, what believed of Mary, mother of the Christ?

Mary, mother of Jesus: Earnest Christians will find little in the Bible of the birth and early life of Mary. The so-called "Protevangelium Jacobi" written in about the 2nd Century A. D. gives more, says that Joachim (supposedly of the royal house of David) was her father, Anna (supposedly of the priestly house of Aaron) was her mother. Late in life, after angelic visitations, to Anna and Joachim was born a daughter, Mary. Roman Catholic dogma says that she was herself immaculately conceived./- Early theologians, while maintaining the freedom of Mary from earthly sin, held that she was born like all mortals with the taint of the original sin. How else, they argued, could she have been redeemed by Christ? From her third to her twelfth year (according to the same source) Mary dwelt in the temple; when she became of nubile age, Joseph was chosen from the widowers of Israel by divine token, to be her guardian. Later, the annunciation took place; when Mary's pregnancy was discovered, she and Joseph were brought before the High Priest protesting their innocence of earthly wrong. They were tried with "the water of the ordeal of the Lord," were acquitted. In Catholic dogma, Mary remained a virgin before, after and during the conception and birth of Christ.* Again, her perpetual virginity, maintained by the Roman Catholic Church, was not the general belief of early Christian writers, who held that Mary and Joseph were the parents of other children, notably James the Less and John./-

Even the Assumption, the bodily ascent of Mary to heaven immediately after her death, which is based upon Apocryphal writings, is observed as a feast by the faithful of the Roman Church, is generally accepted as "of faith."**

Growth of Mariology: In the earliest days of the Christian Church, sinful men prayed to the sainted martyrs, because they by their immediate ascension to heaven were better fitted to intervene with God, were closer to mere mortals than an awesome Lord. Then, gradually through the centuries, Mary-worship grew. In the catacombs, hunted and persecuted Christians scrawled pictures of the Virgin on the walls (150 A. D.,); it began truly to flourish in the Eastern Church about the 6th Century A. D./-/- But it met with continued rebuke, as when the Collyridians were denounced by St. Epiphanius for making sacrificial offerings of cakes to Mary. He said: "Let Mary be held in honor. Let the Father, Son and Holy Ghost be adored, but let no one adore Mary." From 500 A. D. on she appeared increasingly in Christian art; many cathedrals were erected under her dedication./=

From 1000 A. D. shrines and altars by the thousand were dedicated to Mary. To them the devout brought votive offerings, often silver and gold models of the man or the part of his body saved through the intervention of Mary.S: Those most devout reported that they had seen miracles, seen blood flowing from the statues of the Virgin, seen her eyes weeping in sorrow, seen her head lower or her hand raise in benediction. Over all Europe good Catholics lifted up their voices in "Ave Marias" as they counted out their prayers on well-worn rosaries.

What Mary Means to Catholics: As Mary-veneration grew, from the 6th Century on, Roman Catholics felt more and more that her peculiar relation to the Godhead fitted her especially as a sort of kindly mother before whom unworthy sinners might lay their prayers with the best hopes of a successful intervention with the "remote and awful Godhead." In early times, St. Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople called her "the only bridge of God to man." Even John Wyclif, pre-Reformation "heretic" said: "It seems impossible to me that we should obtain the reward of heaven without the help of Mary." James, Cardinal Gibbons, in modern times wrote: "After our Lord Jesus Christ, no one has ever exercised so salutary and dominant an influence as the Virgin Mary on society, on the family, on the individual. . . . Queen of angels and saints [she] stands 'face to face' before God." He speaks of her as the "mirror of God," urges devout Catholics to pray to her.*

* Dr. Fosdick, pastor of the Park Avenue Baptist Church, Manhattan, attracted nationwide attention recently with his advocacy of voluntary confession for Protestants.

/- The Roman Catholic dogma of the ' Immaculate Conception" (of Mary) was defined as "of faith" as late as 1854 by Pope Pius IX in the Papal Bull "Ineffabilis Deus." It maintains that, while Mary was conceived in the manner common to all human beings, the Lord made her immaculate at the moment of conception; in this way her absolute sinlessness was provided for.

* Power of the most high proceeded through natural barriers without injuring them in any way. Mary was not the passive instrument of the Holy Ghost; she cooperated by supplying the matter, her body and her blood.

/- Generally named by later Catholic writers, as the children of Mary of Clopas; this would make them cousins of Jesus, and explain, in their minds, Biblical references to the "brethren" of Jesus. The perpetual virginity of Mary became Church dogma at the Council of Chalcedon, 451 A. D.

** The Assumption, in the Roman Catholic Church is not a dogma, but a "pia opinio" which the faithful may reject without imperiling their immortal souls, but not without "insolent temerity" (Melchior Cana, De Locis Theolog. xii. 10). It is now "proxima fidei."

/-/- According to Syrian MSS. of that period.

/= The Cathedrals at Reims, Chartres, Rouen, Amiens, Paris, etc.

S: Around the neck of the statue to the Virgin Mary at Coventry is hung the rosary of Lady Godiva, famed and saintly lady who rode through the streets naked, on a white horse, to save her starving people.

* If Dr. Fosdick knelt before the image of the Virgin, to pray to her he would not be guilty of idolatry according to Roman Catholic teaching, although the Church has decreed that images of Mary may never be worshiped. They must be respected, however, as symbols of the Blessed Virgin.