Conversation with a Protestant

(Our Lady is not Optional, She is Our Mother)

Some time back, I offered this comment concerning a video describing the conversion of a “Church of God Christian” to Holy Mother Church:

“For the last two minutes you have been describing how Church of Christ was a big part of your life, and your social community. Which is precisely why I advocate nurturing an authentically Catholic Culture, and insist that families boycott secular holidays like Thanksgiving and highlight feast days like today, December 8th, feast of the Immaculate Conception. Make the Liturgical Year Great Again!”

To which was appended just two words and a question mark: “Immaculate conception?”

And so I elaborated: “The Immaculate Conception of Our Lady has been held by all the Fathers of the Church, especially of the East. In the early 1800's, Our Lady appeared to St Catherine Labore and instructed her to have a medal struck, which now goes by the name of the Miraculous Medal. On the front is the inscription: ‘O Mary Conceived Without Sin, Pray for Us Who Have Recourse to Thee.’ This was before Pius IX proclaimed the dogma. Somewhat later, circa 1870, at Lourdes, Our Lady did the pope one better, when she told Bernadette Soubrious: ‘I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION’, a statement that sounds utterly blasphemous, had it not come from Our Lady herself. So, as you can see, the Catholic Church is admirably consistent.”

The reply was skeptical: “All the Church fathers agreed on this?”

Now it is true that none of the Church Fathers specifically used the term “Immaculate Conception”. I said at that time “While it would take some exhaustive research to demonstrate the essential agreement of the Fathers on this topic, noting the usual outliers, there is not one instance of any Father explicitly stating that Our Lady had any spot of sin or stain on her soul. They all agree she was most pure. Moreover, no statement that I am aware of says explicitly she was "Immaculately Conceived. Rather, the Church Fathers seem somewhat at a loss to explain exactly how Mary was born among men. Finally, there is extensive debate on who exactly the Fathers of the Church were. (I for one do not count Origin and Tertullian as Fathers, for example.)” I would add here that perhaps the word “conception” has too carnal an implication, and perhaps the Fathers hesitated to use it in conjunction with Our Lady, whom they held as being most ethereal and sublime and whose idea they did not want to pollute with worldly and fleshly underpinnings.

The reply was a question: “Why does Mary need to be immaculately conceived anyway?”

To which I appended a lengthy response: “I do think, dear sir, that you have the thinking all backwards. God, of course, is infinite, omnipotent, and the very essence of Being. In our way of looking at things, God really does not ‘need’ to do anything. Our Lord Jesus Christ changed water to wine at the Wedding Feast of Cana without going through any type of process that even the most intelligent of the angelic seraphim could discern. Once upon a time, I studied higher mathematics. But in all the partial integrals and boundary values I never found answers to very simple questions such as what is nine divided by zero. All I could do was study the thinking of earlier men and be astounded at the properties of very ordinary numbers.

“Now, if that which is accessible to our reason can so confound and astonish, just think of how much more astonishing must be He who is inaccessible to our reason, who created all things, not just material, but spiritual and ethereal. Even now, the Creator is busy painting the coats of all the animals- horses and dogs and pigs and cats and bears and mice and moles- (or perhaps you believe in the myth of ‘DNA molecules’)- and so wondrously keeping creation arranged. ‘My Father worketh even now...’ -Our Lord Jesus Christ in the gospels.

“So, I would suggest rephrasing the question thusly: WHY was Mary immaculately conceived? After all, when it comes to discerning the Will of God, we must be careful of trying to make God fit our parameters and bounds occasioned by our life experiences. This is summed up well by the prophet Isaiah when he asked ‘Does the pot say to its maker, “why formest thou me?'" Our approach to the Truth must be one of humble submission, and not bold questioning, as though we were the ultimate arbiters of what is true, beautiful, and good. We must recall, that as St John says in his epistle, that all in the world is the concupiscence of the Eyes and of the Flesh, and the Pride of Life, the three primordial wounds inflicted upon us by original sin.

Like Paul on the road to Damascus, we are blind and groping. And we should be eternally thankful to God for sending His Son to give us the Deposit of Faith, entrusted to Holy Mother Church, to be a lamp at our feet- to paraphrase the psalmist- so that we might wend our way through this vale of tears, poor exiled children of Eve that we are.

The Fathers of the Church all agree that Our Lady is God's absolute masterpiece, and that, concerning Our Lady's virtues, we can never say enough. The early Fathers, Sts Polycarp and Iraneus, studied at the feet of St John the Apostle, to whom Our Lady was committed by Our Lord at the Foot of the Holy Cross, as recorded in the gospel of the same. So, naturally, the school of the Fathers bears salutary witness to the admiral traits of Our Lady, so that we all might imitate her purity, her obedience, her docility, her piety, her courage, her promptness to virtue, her contemplation, ... to be continued.”

He replied, before I could continue the response: “Interesting speech. You didn’t answer the question. Unless your answer is ‘we don’t know.’ And how do we know she was immaculately conceived?”

But I continued: “(I did say my post would be continued.) At any rate, we know that Our Lady was Immaculately conceived because she said so twice, to St Catherine Labore and to St Bernadette Soubrious. We also know she was immaculately conceived because this has been the constant teaching of Holy Mother Church since Apostolic Times, even if the doctrine was not couched in precisely those terms. The proclamation of Pius IX is merely a reiteration of what has been taught at all places and all times, even if certain church luminaries, such as St Thomas Aquinas, wondered how such a doctrine could be couched in terms of what St Paul taught concerning all having been conceived in sin, and Our Lady giving homage to God her savior, as recorded in the Magnificat in the Gospel of Luke.

“Pius IX, enlightened by the Holy Ghost, supplied that Our Lady was saved from falling into the Original Sin, rather than having to be cleansed of it in the Waters of Holy Baptism. This makes perfect sense when we consider that Our Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word, is Purity Itself and willed to come down from Heaven into an environment of absolute purity- the womb of His most holy mother. From there, he began His passion, his first recorded suffering being his circumcision eight days after His nativity.

“Our Lady is very important in the Divine economy. Through her hands we receive every grace Our Lord won for us on the Holy Cross. Moreover, her merits at the Foot of the Holy Cross were in a certain sense infinite, because all the Fathers hold that she suffered all that Our Lord suffered correspondingly, if only interiorly. For this reason we refer to her as Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces. If any Protestant gets to heaven, he will be profusely thanking Our Lady for all eternity, because it was through her intercession, even without him knowing it, that he gained salvation and that his prayers to Jesus were heard, who granted him a good heart, akin to His Sacred Heart.

“Protestants who belittle Our Lady do not realize their spiritual impoverishment, nor their stunted condition that may be remedied only by many years in the fires of purgatory. Even many Catholics are scarcely aware of how much they owe Our Lady, and how next to Our Lord, they should be in admiration of her perfections and her love for souls.

“Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us. You are our only hope!”

And so he gave his longest rebuttal: “We know it because some random person said they were told by Mary that was the case? Couldn’t I just say something happened to Mary and it be accepted as doctrine? How does that work? And why would I thank Mary for getting me to heaven? I don’t pray to her at all. I don’t think she hears prayers and I most certainly do not think she is an intercessor as it is written there is one mediator. If you respond, please try to keep it short. I have a hard time following really long responses in comment sections.”

He wanted a short, tart expanation. He got it: “Read the history of the Miraculous Medal and the Apparitions at Lourdes. Read the accounts of all the skeptics like yourself who had a subsequent conversion. Read the accounts of the miracle of the sun that occurred on October 13th, 1917 in Fatima Portugal. You say that all this was the work of ‘some random person’?

“Well, tell people you had a vision of the Blessed Mother and make up a doctrine and see what happens. I bet you are laughed out of the forum in five minutes flat. The same thing happened to Bernadette and Lucia of Fatima. They were scorned, ridiculed, arrested, faced the ‘inquisition’, were denied by their pastors... And yet, the Apparitions prevailed.

“Like doubting Thomas, be not unbelieving, but believe.”