LETTER 87: MARY, MOTHER OF GOD Director Carl J. Kunz, Outdoor Gospel Work, Brooklyn, N. Y. Sir:---You seem to be devoid of the realization that the anti-Catholic leaflets you circulate are anti-Gospel in character. In all of them you set forth a false, and sometimes a perverse, concept of Catholic Church teachings and practices. This being the year during which Catholics are paying special attention to the Blessed Virgin Mary, primarily on account of the blessing she brought to mankind as the mother of the two thousand year predicted and prayed-for Messiah, I deem it fitting to write to you about the leaflet you circulate, entitled "No Mother." Objection therein is made to Catholics "speaking of Mary as a 'mother of God" (as) God has no mother," repeating that as "God has ALWAYS existed, God has no mother." The declaration in the leaflet you circulate, that "Mary would weep broken-heartedly to hear anyone so pervert the truth of God as to call her the mother of her Creator," is based upon a lack of understanding of the fact proclaimed by the Bible itself, that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost created the world. Hence the Father is the Creator, the Son the Creator (St. John, 1:1-4; Nicene Creed), the Holy Ghost the Creator. If the author of that leaflet were to reason rightly regarding Mary, as Catholics are taught to reason by their Church, he would realize that Mary is not held to be the mother of the Divine nature of Jesus which "always existed." She is the mother of the human nature of Christ, with which His Divine nature was united in the time foretold by Isaiah and Daniel. Hence Mary is the mother of the Person, Jesus, as a whole; therefore she is rightly called the mother of God. Before continuing to circulate such misrepresentation, it would be advisable to plant this in your cranium: Jesus was foretold to be a person, "the Emmanuel, God with us," "God the Mighty," as Isaiah said (7:14; 9:6). He was to be different from any other person, in that He was to have two natures, one human that was to come into being through a virgin; the other that existed from all eternity; both united in the Person given the name of Jesus. Mary being the mother of that Person, Who is true God as well as true man, is rightly called the mother of God. Look at the matter with which you take issue from another angle. The author of the leaflet you circulate in your "Gospel Work" is a man (even if he has a befuddled mind), composed of a body which came from his mother; a body that is animated by a soul made by God, in God's image. Yet his mother rightly calls him her son, despite the fact that his soul came directly from God, and is here for the purpose of going back to God; whereas his body will turn to dust. This is somewhat analogous to Mary being the mother of God. Mary IS the mother of Jesus, for she gave Him all that the mother of the writer of the misrepresenting leaflet gave to him, His body. But Jesus is God, the "Son of God," "the Word made flesh," Who came into the world to dwell amongst us, as St. John says in the first chapter of his Gospel. Hence Mary is the mother of God, in His humanity. Surely if your "Outdoor Work" were truly "Gospel Work," you would realize that when Catholics call Mary the mother of God, they are merely echoing what St. Luke says in Chapter 1:31, 36, that the Virgin would "bring forth a Son of the Most High," the "Son of God"; and St. Paul said to the Galatians (4:4), that "God sent His Son, born of a woman," Who remained God after He appeared in His humanity. If you were guided by the Gospel, instead of by a perverse concept of it, engendered by your anti-Catholicity, you and your leaflet writer would realize that Mary's child was designated as God before the first Pentecost Day, when the Catholic Church began to function. St. Luke tells us, in chapter one, that Elizabeth, upon hailing the pregnant Mary, exclaimed, "Whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" Who is "the Lord," but God? And Elizabeth on that occasion was voicing the heavenly announcement of the Angel Gabriel, sent by God, who exclaimed to Mary, "the holy one that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" (St. Luke, 1:35). Is not the Son of God, God? Surely He is to everyone who believes in the Triunity of God. It is an offense to designate as "blasphemous gibberish" the calling of "the bearer of the child Jesus" as "Dear Mary, blessed Mary, holy Mary." Surely her dignity, purity, and submission to the will of God warrant such designations. Mary declared, after the Angel Gabriel, sent by God, said that Mary would conceive of the "Son of the Most High," etc., that "henceforth all generations shall call me blessed" (St. Luke, l). Catholics are proud to have been of those generations throughout the Christian ages who call her blessed, and will so continue till time is no more. The Blessed Virgin Mary belongs, first of all, to the Catholic Church. She was in that Church, praying with the Apostles, at its first assembly, in the Cenacle; and, thank God, Mary never left that Church, in which her Son abides, Sacramentally.   I prayerfully hope that you, and the writer of the blasphemous leaflet, will be blest with a realization of the offensiveness of belittling the praise bestowed upon Mary, the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven, the Supreme Mediatrix. May the grace be yours, of joining with Catholics the world over, during this year set aside for special expression of love of Mary, in voicing the prayer composed by Pope Pius XII, of which this is the opening paragraph: "Enraptured by the splendor of thy heavenly beauty, and impelled by the anxieties of the world, we cast ourselves into thine arms, O Immaculate Mother of Jesus and our Mother, Mary, confident of finding in thy most loving heart appeasement of our ardent desires, and a safe harbor from the tempests which beset us on every side." Sincerely in the name of Our Lord, and His Blessed Mother Mary, the Lily of Israel. Contact Us HOME------------TRADITION www.catholictradition.org/Tradition/goldstein87.htm