Leading US apologist spells out Church’s enlightening doctrines of Mary and their application to real life
By Anthony Barich
National Reporter
THE great myth of our time is that the Catholic Church’s Marian doctrines are “warmed-over paganism”, leading apologist Mark Shea said during a 1-9 February tour of Sydney.
Shea, who launched his trilogy of books called Mary, Mother of the Son in Sydney on 2 February, said that the Catholic Church’s teachings about the Blessed Virgin Mary protect something crucial in our understanding of who Jesus is and of the truth of the Gospel.
During a tour addressing thousands of youth at Roman and Maronite Catholic centres over the past two weeks, Shea defended Marian doctrine from Protestant accusations of being ‘invented’ by the Church. Seattle-based Shea, 51, who has four sons with wife Janet, told The Record on 3 February that the Church’s Marian doctrine, including its four dogmas regarding her, is reflected in Scripture, reinforces faith in Christ and the truth of the Gospel, and is always “a commentary on who Jesus is and therefore on who we are”.
“As Pope John Paul II taught, Jesus doesn’t just reveal God the Father to us, He reveals us to ourselves,” Shea said.
The Church’s four dogmas regarding Mary are that Mary is Theotokos (ie, God-bearer or Mother of God), her perpetual virginity, her Immaculate Conception and her Assumption.
Each of these dogmas were declared during periods when a concept of Jesus’ identity was under threat from a prominent heresy of the time.
In the case of the dogma of Mary as the Mother of God, declared at the Council of Ephesus in 431, an early heretic named Nestorius regarded Jesus as “an ordinary guy” who was occupied by the second person of the Trinity, two separate people occupying the same head, Shea said.
Jesus, however, is one person, with a divine nature and a human nature. Therefore, Mary is the Mother of God. All Marian doctrines, Shea added, come out of the Church’s apostolic tradition while terms like “Immaculate Conception” did not appear until much later. Shea said that the Apostles and Fathers of the Church regarded her as sinless and all-holy.
The doctrines are also based on reflection and logic. “Mary didn’t have any other children; and the Church, reflecting on that fact, saw theological significance in it; it’s the same with her assumption into heaven”.
“So the Church defines them as dogma because they tell us something crucial about Jesus, our relationship with Him, His power to save and so forth,” he said. The first book in his recently published trilogy, Modern Myths and Ancient Truth, looks at the question of “where does the Church get all this stuff about Mary? It is vital to answer this question because many people say it looks like the Church is pulling it out of thin air”, he told The Record.
The second book, First Guardian of the Faith, looks at the four Marian dogmas and shows how Mary acts as the guardian of the faith in these dogmas.
The third book, Miracles, Devotion and Motherhood, looks at the devotional side of Marian life and what the Church teaches about the Communion of Saints and prayer to the saints. He also delves into the devotional life of the Church, using the Rosary as the platform to look at other kinds of devotions and titles for Mary. He further examines the phenomenon of private revelation, including various approved Marian apparitions such as Lourdes and Fatima, analysing how this relates to pubic revelation (the revelation entrusted to the Church by Jesus through the Apostles and closed with the death of John). Public revelation includes the writings of St Paul, who the Apostles themselves called an ‘apostle’.
He distinguishes between public and private revelation and how to deal with a Christian world that at times gets carried away – where “Jesus is showing up on grilled cheese sandwiches”.
Shea, who converted to the Catholic Church from an evangelical Protestant background in 1987, said that Mary is mother of all the baptised, “whether they like it – or know it – or not”. This concept is rooted in Scripture, he said.
“She’s not just a Catholic thing but a Christian thing, she’s mother of the Church. When Jesus said to John (at the foot of the Cross) behold your mother, he’s talking to every baptised person”. “Catholic teaching on Mary is profound, liberating, beautiful, wonderful and exciting,” Shea told The Record.
Shea, an editor for Catholic Exchange, a regular contributor to Inside Catholic and a speaker for Catholic Answers, has written numerous books including Making Senses Out of Scripture, By What Authority? and This is My Body.
The trilogy is available from mustardseed.org.au or call 02 9646 9000. $44.95 (+$7.65 p&h)