We held Christ to be our angry judge and Mary to be our throne of grace, where all our comfort and refuge lay, if we did not wish to despair. Was that not that a horrible innovation? Where were the bishops who rebuked such blasphemers and betrayers of Christ who took away Christ's office and gave it to Mary, who taught us to flee from Christ and to fear him as a whipmaster, and directed elsewhere our confidence which we owed to him as the true divine service? -- Blessed Martin Luther, Exhortation to the Clergy Assembled at Augsburg, 1530 [This is actually a fascinating read - I've never had the joy of it before. Luther is massively on target in it]
Yes, Luther is right on target. He would not at all have supported the admonition of Louis de Montfort, "To Jesus through Mary."
ReplyDeleteMost Catholic children were taught that Christ never refuses the requests of His mother.
The sad part is that had they been properly taught what the Gospels authentically teach, they would have found the merciful Christ they sought through Mary, who wisely admonishes us to "do whatever He tells you."
Pope Benedict XVI recently commented that the Catholic church has a Marian dimension without which it could not exist.
Indeed, the Reformation is not yet over.
Two snippets from an RC youth:
ReplyDeleteLovely lady, dressed in blue,
Teach us how to pray.
God was once you little boy,
And you know the way.
As if her little boy didn't teach us how to pray twice over when he gave us the Our Father, which is 1) not at all a new prayer but his version of the Kaddish, now associated with mourners but originally a prayer concluding an Aramaic rabbi's sermon, and 2) stayed within tradition rather than give a new super duper thing to do like he was asked for so his followers would be like everyone else.
And, this apocryphal conclusion to the story of the woman caught in adultery: Then he said, whoever is without sin let him cast the first stone. Whereupon this huge rock came crashing forward. Then Jesus said, AW MOM! (I heard that first from a priest!)
You bet Luther was on target!