Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Free the Deity! Unshackle the Almighty!


There's a riot goin' on at The Boar's Head Tavern over the Virgin Mary. It's relatively civilized as interdenominational clashes go, but has been following the usual pattern for these things.

The lineup is the usual token Catholic guy and a couple of sympathetic non-Catholics versus 1,234,568 Protestants (approximately) who seem to think that the woman who was extraordinary enough to bear Christ couldn't have been extraordinary in any other way at all.

Ever virgin? FEH!

Queen of Heaven? IDOLATRY!

Mother of God? DOUBLE-DOG IDOLATRY!

Praying to Mary because she has pull with her Son? AAIIIIEEEEEEEEE!!! DISSIN' THE ALMIGHTY! HE WANT DA PRAYAZ! HE. WANT. DA. PRAYAZ!

Here's a sample of what I'm talkin' about:

I’m coming late to this discussion (after all, some of us have to work for a living), but here goes:

How can Mary be “Mother of God” if God (YHWH), “I Am That I Am” existed before Mary? To call Mary “Mother of God” seems to me to indicate there was no God before Jesus was born.

How can one with confidence say that Mary was a perpetual virgin when, honestly, there is no way of knowing? Did she just go around talking about it and it caught the ear of Peter who passed it down to the other popes?

And I’ve heard the old rationale of praying to Mary, which seems to indicate that Jesus is such a jerk that he won’t hear your prayers and his mother has to talk him into doing anything. I find that idea rather offensive.

Don’t get me wrong. If I were a pastor I’d preach a sermon every year during Advent honoring Mary. But, as Audrey said to Ellen when she started her “eulogy” for Aunt Edna by telling the Lord that “we love this woman with all our hearts,” “Let’s not overdo it, Mom!”
I DO COMMEND the panel for keeping the debate pretty genial -- at least for these types of disputations -- but it's going to end like every other forum in which a token Catholic has to be the one guy to answer every challenge and be the lightning rod for 500 years of Reformational grievances against corrupt popery. Rhetoric will get hotter and hotter, epistemological blood will be shed, consensus will be elusive -- except when it's nonexistent -- and sooner or later the Catholic guy will say "(Expletive) this (deleted)," and that will be that.

And everyone will lament the fact that the Catholic guy was such a touchy sorehead.

BUT, JUST FOR THE RECORD . . .

Is Jesus the second person of the Holy Trinity? Yeah? Well, that makes him God. Mary gave birth to Him. Thus, Mary is the Mother of God -- the God who has existed forever and created the universe . . . and Mary.

Of course, that makes no sense . . . to us. We Catholics call that a Mystery, with a capital "M."

Just like Mary being conceived free of original sin, otherwise known as the Immaculate Conception. We Catholics believe it impossible for a sinless, perfect Savior to be born of a flawed, originally sinful woman. To us, that just doesn't make any sense. So Mary must have been the first beneficiary of Jesus' saving grace . . . at her conception.

And, frankly, Catholics are offended by the hardline Protestant notion that Jesus would be pissed off about someone asking His mother -- or any saint -- to put in a good word for us earthly schlubs.

And to continue in this frank vein, that kind of always-offended-and-looking-to-smite deity seems to me to have more in common with the Allah of Ibrahim and Ishmael than the God of Abraham, Issac and Joseph. C'mon, give God some credit for being almighty enough to not get His Divine Nose out of joint . . . and to accept our procuring lobbyists to grease the Judgment Seat!

For Pete's sake, let the Holy Trinity out of solitary confinement, already!

Or, as Flannery O'Connor once put it:

Whatever you do anyway, remember that these things are mysteries and that if they were such that we could understand them, they wouldn’t be worth understanding. A God you understood would be less than yourself.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Enjoyed your rant, Mighty. I'm not Catholic, but I heartily agree with you. Sometimes you just have to feel sorry for the benighted masses who have been brainwashed by fundamentalism. Fundamentalism does NOT explain everything.

Anonymous said...

Allah of Ibrahim and Ishmail? You know you're just translating, right? Have you read the Qur'an? Maybe you should. Sounds like you've got it all backwards here. Reassess your sources, insha'Allah (God willing). :-)

PS- Notice the hijab on Mary