HLI

• Home
• About Us
• International
• Donate
• Español
• Seminarians for Life
• HLI Publications
• HLI Web Sites
• Catalog
• Contact Us

IN THE KNOW

• Get Spirit & Life^®
• Press Releases
• HLI Commentaries
• HLI Special Report
• Take Action Now!
• Media Requests

RESOURCES

• Pro-Life Research Ser.
• Contraception
• Humanae Vitae Priests
• Infertility
• Humanae Vitae
• Guide to Confession
• Couples in Courtship
• This We Believe
• Watch Video
• Helpful Websites
• St. Michael Campaign
• Pro-Choice Violence
• Hannity Controversy
• Pro-Life CD Library
• HLI Mini Sites
• Terri Schiavo
• The Da Vinci Code
• Da Vinci Audio
• Post-Abortion Healing
• Crisis Pregnancy
• Web Resources
• Link with Us!

1. Assumption and Queen of Heaven
2. Mary’s Immaculate Heart
3. The Origin of the Rosary
4. Worshipping Idols
5. Resources

1. Assumption and Queen of Heaven
Q: I am a home schooling Catholic mom, but Mary still presents the biggest challenge for me. When I say the Rosary (daily) I still have trouble with the Assumption and the Crowning of Mary Queen of Heaven. How do we know those mysteries?
(Sent by M. W.)

A: Thank you for desire for clarifications on these questions. The Catholic Church’s Dogma of the Assumption is the philosophical equivalent to the Evangelicals’ teaching on the “Rapture.” This teaching, found in 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17, says that the Lord will come “at the sound of a trumpet” and take His elect up to heaven to be with Him for all eternity. There are various Protestant theories about whether this event will happen before or after Satan is chained up for a thousand years, (cf. Rev 20), but the main point is that a good number of Protestants believe that anyone who is a believing Christian will go to Heaven without having to die.

The Catholic Church does not even teach something so radical about Mary. The Assumption is simply a statement of our belief that Mary, whether She died in the body or not, was saved from the corruption of death and was taken by Her Son into heaven to be with Him for all eternity. We believed that about Mary before the Rapture theory became fashionable among other Christian groups. We also have to realize that the idea of being taken up to Heaven without dying did not originate with Catholics. The Jews believe that Enoch “walked with God” without dying (cf. Gen 5:24), and we know that the Prophet Elijah was taken to Heaven on a fiery chariot without dying (2 Kgs 2:11). Mary is thus in good company.

As for her Queenship, it is easy to see how the Christians of the early Church would have believed in Mary’s Queenship with Jesus in Heaven. We have only to read chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation to see an image of a celestial woman (Mary) crowned with a crown of twelve stars, with the moon at her feet and surrounded in radiance with the sun. That same image appears in the sixteenth century apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Remember that the Bible itself says that this Woman has a crown so we are not divinizing Her or putting her in any place of honor that She has not already been given by the public revelation of the Church.

2. Mary’s Immaculate Heart
It is not Mary's heart which triumphs over sin, but the heart of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior! It is not Mary who does battle against the prince of evil, but Jesus! Jesus is the name above all names, and when we love and work and fight in the name of Jesus, we are doing a greater work than anything done in the name of Mary. It is greater to work in a greater name than it is to work in a lesser name.

Mary's greatness was due to the fact that she was a Christian - a follower of Christ. Why should we settle for being a Marian—a follower of Mary—instead, when even Mary herself did not settle for being a Marian? Jesus calls us to follow him, and Mary calls us to follow him. Jesus never calls us to follow Mary, and Mary never calls us to follow Mary. (Sent by G. S.)

A: Mary is not a replacement for God or an alternative Gospel message. Catholics do not believe that Mary in any way takes away from Christ. Rather, She is perfectly united to Him in a way that no other human being ever could be, and so one cannot be devoted to Mary without at the same time being united to Jesus. “Do whatever He tells you” (Jn 2: 5) are Mary’s last words in Scripture. She was telling human beings like you and me to be one with Him as She was one with Him. She gave Him the flesh of His heart, Her blood is His Blood unless you deny certain facts of biology. A fundamental truth of Marian spirituality is that nothing of authentic devotion to Mary takes away from Christ. To the contrary, Mary is our way to Christ just as Mary was His way to come to us. And She was the one prophesied to step on the head of the serpent (Gen 3:15) remember? Here’s another scripture that sometimes is lost on those who attack Mary: “All generations shall call me blessed.” (Lk 1:48)

3. The Origin of the Rosary
Q: Would you please explain the origin of the Rosary. My Lutheran friend is interested to know more, as they are studying the Rosary in her bible study.

A: A great question and thanks for asking it. This is a thumbnail sketch which may help your Lutheran friend. Since the earliest centuries of monasticism, monks have prayed the 150 psalms as their common prayer, usually divided up over a period of several weeks of community praying. The monks were educated and could read and pray the psalms but the general population could not since up until the modern age illiteracy has been universally high. People, influenced by the monastic traditions, wanted to pray some version of the meditative psalms but could not do it in a written format. They had to find another way to express their devotion.

Thus was developed the Rosary as a form of the common man’s prayer which, up until Pope John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries, consisted of 150 beads to reflect the 150 psalms. It was sort of a mini-psaltery which allowed them to reflect on the mysteries of our faith in a prayerful way through Mary, the one who gave us Jesus. As Pope John Paul was fond of saying, “In the Rosary we don’t so much pray to Mary as with Mary.”

No one can pinpoint the exact date of the devotion, but it is clearly a very old devotion in the life of the Church. The great popularizer of this prayer was St. Dominic who spread the devotion of the Rosary as a form of defense against the Manichean heresy that he was fighting in Spain and France in the 12th Century.

Pope John Paul’s addition of the Luminous Mysteries with the 2004 encyclical Rosarium Virginis added another important element to this devotion. Whereas the Joyful-Sorrowful-Glorious Mysteries sequence focuses on the early and late moments in the life of Jesus and Mary, the Luminous Mysteries focus strictly on His Public Ministry and are all biblical.

4. Worshipping Idols
Q: I would love to be a part of the fight with the exception of one major problem: you worship idols. My Bible tells me that the only advocate to God is Jesus Christ, His Son. Too bad you intermingle idol worship with such a worthy cause. I can continue the fight without the delusion that the Catholic Mary (unlike the legitimate Mary of the Bible) is someone/some thing to be worshipped. (Sent by C.A. F. from NC)

A: The Fourth Commandment should suffice as an answer. Mary is the mother of our Savior, and so She deserves a special place of honor for that reason alone. That is the Mary of the Bible unless you are reading a different Bible than I do. She is not just another disciple. She is also our mother in the order of grace, and we are commanded to honor Her which is all we do.

Honor is not worship. Catholics only worship God. The fundamentalist accusation of idol worship usually comes from those who have never read a Catholic document or teaching on Mary and have never once in their entire lives spoken to a Roman Catholic about our views of Mary. Most fundamentalist Christians are anti-Catholic due to Lorraine Boettner’s highly prejudiced vision of Roman Catholicism in a book of the same name or due to sheer, ugly religious bigotry that is hard to justify in the Christian value system. Please take the time to educate yourself a bit on our understanding of the Virgin Mary, the one who the Word of God says “all generations will call…blessed.” (Lk 1:48)

By the way, a good book you may wish to read is Karl Keating’s Catholicism and Fundamentalism—if you are honest enough to try to see the other side. If not, you will have to hear the truth about Mary when you meet Her Son.

5. Resources
For more technical explanations of these concepts please consult my favorite answer websites at www.catholic.com or www.newadvent.com.