Leslie Rumble - Q.A. Quizzes to a Street Preacher: Virgin and Statue Worship

Virgin and Statue Worship Quizzes To a Street Preacher

Fr. Chas. M. Carty
&
Rev. Dr. L. Rumble, M.S.C.

IMPRIMATUR:

Joannes Gregorius Murray

Archiepiscopus Sancti Pauli

Written by

Fr. Chas. M. Carty
&
Rev. Dr. L. Rumble, M.S.C.

Copyright 1976 by TAN Books and Publishers, Inc.

Originally published by

Fathers Rumble and Carty
Radio Replies Press, Inc.
St. Paul, Minn. U.S.A.

Complete and Unabridged

TAN Books

Charlotte, North Carolina

www.TANBooks.com

1976

VIRGIN AND STATUE WORSHIP QUIZZES TO A STREET PREACHER

1. Why do you Catholics worship Mary as a goddess?

It would be mortal sin for any Catholic to regard Mary as a goddess. If a Catholic expressed such a belief to a priest in Confession he would be refused absolution unless he promised to renounce such as an absurd idea. If you wish to attack Catholic doctrine, at least find out what Catholics do believe before you begin. We Catholics do not give worship to Mary, the Mother of Christ, but what we do give to her is the best that we can in the giving, namely, homage, veneration, reverence, but never worship. We have enough intelligence to know that Mary the woman who gave human bone, human flesh, and human feature to the Savior of Mankind was not a goddess but a human member of the human race. Although she is a member of our race we hail her as the First Lady of Heaven and of Earth.

2. The genealogies of Christ as given by the Gospel afford one much difficulty. If Jesus was not the son of Joseph, why is His genealogy traced through Joseph?

Jesus was not the natural son of Joseph. But Mary, who was the Mother of Jesus, was related to Joseph, whose genealogy was also her own. It was a Jewish custom to record descent only through the male line.

3. If you call her Queen of Heaven do you not do her an injustice in refusing to her the title of goddess?

It would be the greatest possible injustice to regard her as a goddess. It is just to honor her even as God has honored her, which we Catholics do. Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords, and His mother certainly possesses queenly dignity, holding the highest place in Heaven next to her Divine Son. But that does not, and cannot change her finite and created human nature. To regard her as a goddess would be absurd.

4. Yet you insist that she is the Mother of God!

Jesus Christ is true God and true man, and as He was born of Mary she is truly the Mother of God. The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was born of her according to the humanity He derived from her. She is not a goddess, for God did not take His Divine Being from her. But she is the Mother of God since the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was truly born of her in His human nature.

5. How could Mary be the mother of the One who created her?

Mary owed her being, of course, to God, but this under the aspect of His eternal nature. Subsequent to her creation that human nature was born of her which the Son of God had assumed to Himself. She was, therefore, the mother of Christ. But Christ was one Divine Person existing in two natures, one eternal and divine; the other, temporal and human. Mary necessarily gave birth to a being with one personality and that divine, and she is rightly called the Mother of God.

6. Does not the Catholic Church insist also upon the biologically impossible dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary herself?

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary has nothing to do with biology. It does not mean that she was conceived miraculously in the physical sense. She was normally conceived and born of her parents, Joachim and Ann. But in her very conception her soul was preserved immaculate in the sense that she inherited no stain of original sin, derived from our first parents.

7. According to Catholic doctrine the Sacrament of Baptism destroys original sin. Would you say that Mary did not need Baptism?

Mary did not need Baptism insofar as that sacrament was instituted for the destruction of original sin. She received that sacrament in order to participate in its other effects, and chiefly in order to receive the Christian character which that sacrament impresses upon the soul. Mary was not the only one born into this world free of original sin. Jeremias, the prophet, picked out by God to preach penance to the Chosen People of God, was sanctified by the action of God, whilst being carried in the womb of his mother so that when he was born he was free of original sin. Jer. I, 5. St. John the Baptist was likewise sanctified in the womb of his mother Elizabeth because he was picked out by God to point out to mankind the Lamb of God, the Messiah, Luke I, 41. Jeremias and St. John were conceived in original sin but before birth were cleansed of original sin. Mary was never conceived in original sin and thus it is only by this privilege that she was never under the dominion of the evil spirit. It is only by the privilege of the Immaculate Conception that Mary can be the woman of whom God speaks in prophecy to Satan after the fall of the first parents, Adam and Eve, when He says to the serpent: "Because thou hast done this.... I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." Gen. III, 14-15.

8. If Mary was sinless she could not have needed redemption! Yet is not Christ the Redeemer of every child of Adam?

Insofar as the sin of Adam involved the whole human race in condemnation Mary needed redeeming. But there are two ways of redeeming. God could allow one to be born in sin and then purify the soul by subsequent application of the merits of Christ, or He could, by an anticipation of the merits of Christ, exempt a soul from any actual contraction of original sin. Thus He exempted Mary from any actual inheritance of the sin, and she owes her exemption to the anticipated merits of Christ. In other words, she was redeemed by Christ by prevention rather than by subsequent purification.

9. Is there any evidence in Scripture that Mary was indeed never actually subject to original sin?

Yes. In Gen. III., 15, God said to Satan, "I will put enmities between thee and the woman... thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." The radical enmity between Satan and that second Eve, the Mother of Christ, forbids her having been under the dominion of Satan, as she would have been had she ever contracted original sin in actual fact. In Lk. I., 28, we read how the Angel was sent by God to salute Mary with the words, "Hail, full of grace." Grace excludes sin, and had there been any sin at all in Mary she could not have been declared to be filled with grace. The Protestant version translates the phrase as "thou that hast been highly favored." But the Greek certainly implies "completely filled with holiness." However, complaints that our doctrine exempts Mary from the contracting of original sin are becoming more and more rare in a world which is tending to deny original sin altogether, and which wishes to exempt everybody from it.

10. St. Paul says that one died for all, and therefore all were dead. 2 Cor. V, 14-15.

Such texts must be interpreted in the light of other passages where God reveals that Mary was never under the dominion of Satan. Mary is included in these words of St. Paul