Is the praise that the Catholic Church gives to Mary hold up to scripture? Mary is worshipped as a goddess by the catholic community, however surprising little is said about Mary in the Bible. According to the Catholic Church, they have declared dogmas of Mary elevating her to goddess (don’t believe me, click on the links all from Catholic sources). Let’s examine
Mary OverviewI have looked at all the 6 Mary Dogmas
So stepping back a bit, what is going on? Why such a fascination with Mary and where is all this going?
First they declare Mary "Mother of God", and then suggest her purity by saying she is virgin always (not that makes her pure or impure) and then say she is sinless, and then she is in heaven sitting on right hand of Christ, being our mother is active in our salvation. This is plainly pagan goddess worship where she now has the attributes of Jesus Christ. Consider the following
- Mary is has title of "full of grace" twisted from the term "highly favoured" (Luke 1:28) which is a term attributed to Jesus (John 1:14)
- Mary is claimed to be "sinless" by the dogma of Immaculate Conception
Mary even has the title of "Queen of Heaven" which the bible clearly shows to be pagan worship (Jeremiah 7:18).
Think about it. How can so much dogma come from Catholic Church where so little is mentioned in the bible? Also consider Jesus never calls Mary mother, instead calls her "Woman"? Goddess worship is pagan and widespread throughout the pagan religions, below lists just a few examples.
- Greek-Roman goddesses Aphrodite, Urania and Venus
- Pre-Islamic worship of Allah and her daughters "Uzza, al-Manat and al-Lat"
- Canaanite goddess Astarte
- Assyro-Babylonian goddesses Ishtar
- Germanic goddesses Freyja
To see the extent of the deception, the Catholics changed scripture to prove their lies as truth! According to the
Catholic EncyclopediaThe first prophecy referring to Mary is found in the very opening chapters of the
Book of Genesis (3:15): "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed;
she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for
her heel."
Compare with the original
Gen 3:15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He will bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.
You see thy changed all references to seed being male, representing Jesus prophesied to crush Satan, to the female to represent Mary! It does not get more deceptive and plainer then that. In this way what scripture applies to Jesus is then twisted and applied to Mary. We know Jesus is sinless and full of grace but we see that these are applied to Mary in the Catholic Church! In this way Jesus attributes come form Mary not from the heavenly Father.
And this is pagan goddess worship. The pagan goddess was derived from Simiramis, the wife of Nimrod. Nimrod started the first world wide false religion which is the beginning of Babylon. Nimrod was killed by Seth and his body torn to pieces as a warning to all. Simiramis claimed that her illegitimate son was Nimrod reborn. In this way the goddess is responsible for the resurrection of Nimrod whom made himself God over the people. When God scrabbled their language each person took their beliefs and continued it in their own nation. Hence the commonality of the pagan religions become apparent as they all originated from the same source. As Nimrod died and was reborn , this started the
Life-death-rebirth deity among the nations. When Christianity came around, instead of converting the pagans to Christians, the Christians became pagan!
So given this, what is next from the Catholic Church. The Heavenly Father is already absent from religious services and replaced with the pope as "Holy Father" (even though forbidden Matthew 23:8-10). Mary is worshipped and mentioned more then Christ, so Mary will increase and Christ will decrease. We see that in the next dogma of Mary as "
Co-Redemptrix". This is not yet accepted but will be. The Pope will likely to include all the other Christians to be included bring them back to the Catholic Church. As she is the "Mother" of Harlots and at end-times there will be a one-world religion I expect that all the harlot churches that branched out of the Catholic Church to return back to their Mother. In this dogma Mary becomes the "cause of our salvation" which is the icing of the cake in kicking Jesus out and making Mary goddess with all power and the way of salvation. This is achieved that as Christ suffers on the cross, Mary too suffers watching and as her son dies, she is also as if she died in that way her heart is joined to Christ forever. In this dogma it is not the Father whom gave up her only son (John 3:16) it is Mary whom gave her only son
As the Blessed Virgin Mary does not seem to participate in the public life of Jesus Christ, and then, suddenly appears at the stations of his cross, she is not there without divine intention. She suffers with her suffering and dying son, almost as if she would have died herself. For the salvation of mankind, she gave up her rights as the mother of her son and sacrificed him for the reconciliation of divine justice, as far as she was permitted to do. Therefore, one can say, she redeemed with Christ the human race
And from the words of Pope Benedict himself
Virgin Most Holy, Mother of the Incarnate Word and our Mother, venerated in the Shrine of Sheshan under the title "Help of Christians", the entire Church in China looks to you with devout affection. We come before you today to implore your protection. Look upon the People of God and, with a mother’s care, guide them along the paths of truth and love, so that they may always be a leaven of harmonious coexistence among all citizens.
When you obediently said "yes" in the house of Nazareth, you allowed God’s eternal Son to take flesh in your virginal womb and thus to begin in history the work of our redemption. You willingly and generously cooperated in that work, allowing the sword of pain to pierce your soul, until the supreme hour of the Cross, when you kept watch on Calvary, standing beside your Son, who died that we might live.
From that moment, you became, in a new way, the Mother of all those who receive your Son Jesus in faith and choose to follow in his footsteps by taking up his Cross. Mother of hope, in the darkness of Holy Saturday you journeyed with unfailing trust towards the dawn of Easter. Grant that your children may discern at all times, even those that are darkest, the signs of God’s loving presence.
Our Lady of Sheshan, sustain all those in China, who, amid their daily trials, continue to believe, to hope, to love. May they never be afraid to speak of Jesus to the world, and of the world to Jesus. In the statue overlooking the Shrine you lift your Son on high, offering him to the world with open arms in a gesture of love. Help Catholics always to be credible witnesses to this love, ever clinging to the rock of Peter on which the Church is built. Mother of China and all Asia, pray for us, now and for ever. Amen!
As you can see the Heavenly Father is being kicked our and replaced with the Mother, as such all the attributes given to Christ by the Father is actually now from the Mother! That’s why this dogma is the icing on the cake. It now removes the Heavenly Fathers role from the Church and replaced with Mary. It is now Mary who offers her son for the world not the Father whom offered his son for the world. The bible warns us true worshipers will worship the Father
John 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
Be warned. Wakeup and see the deception by proving all things (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
God Bless, In Jesus Name
And ye shall know the truth, andthe truth shall make you freeJohn 8:32
Comments (1)
Below I copied and pasted some info on Gen3:15....but in short it wasn't the Catholics who changed this verse it was the PROTESTants who did with their 66 book bible. 6 being imperfect and 6 being of man...Compared to the 73 books of the Catholic bible. 7 being complete or perfect and 3 being of God. I will continue with more reasons the why Mary has been downplayed in the Protestant bibles and how even the earliest of followers of Jesus Honored Mary as well as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli. Rejection that Mary was the mother of God did not come until 429 AD When a heresy was promoted that Jesus was two distinct persons, one divine and one human. and that Mary was only the mother of the human person of Jesus. But we know this is false for Jesus is truly both human and divine in ONE person therefore Mary is indeed the mother of God...to say otherwise is to reject and deny the INCARNATION. You cannot deny that Jesus is indeed God! I could go on and on about this but I have already taken up enough of your space.
http://www.tldm.org/News6/Genesis3.15.htm
In most modern bibles, you will find the second part of this first gospel Genesis 3:15 changed to "... he will bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel." Most definitely this wording works to downplay Our Lady's role in our plan of redemption. The great biblical scholar St. Jerome, numerous Popes, saints and, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, "Many Fathers and Doctors of the Church," have said that the woman in this passage refers to Mary.
During an English persecution, a group of Catholic biblical scholars fled to Douay in what is now Belgium, and produced the famous Douay-Rheims version in 1609. This is a faithful English translation of the bible, the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome. The fact that the Church has canonized St. Jerome, only adds weight to the authority and authenticity of his work. The translation reads, "I will place enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she will crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for his heel."[5] This text reads the same as the Latin Vulgate: "Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem, et semen tuum et semen illius: ipsa conteret caput tuum, et tu insidiaberis calcaneo ejus...." In this Vulgate translation, it is clear that the Latin word ipsa can only mean she. But let us see what our Protestant counterparts did two years later in 1611 with this passage. Do you suppose, with their ideas concerning Our Lady, that they kept the same translation? The King James version produced by men, not by the Church of God inspired by the Holy Spirit, had this to say of Genesis 3:15: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: It shall bruise thy head and thou shall bruise his heel."[6] It is not quite the same.
As we have seen there are different schools of thought concerning this extremely important passage which the Church has declared the first gospel. Modern scholars and Protestant bible experts often say he or it while numerous Doctors and Fathers of the Church--including the great trio of Mariologists St. Alphonsus de Liguori, St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Louis De Montfort--say she. Whom shall we place our stock in? This definitely deserves a closer look.
First, we shall examine the thoughts of three Jewish scholarly giants: Josephus (d. 101 A.D.), Philo (d. 40 A.D.) and Maimonides (d. 1204 A.D.). To begin with, Josephus states, "He ordained that the woman should inflict wounds on his head." This becomes evident that Josephus in his day read the word aute, that is to say, "she."[7] It is important to note, Josephus and Philo both wrote in Greek but also knew Hebrew, so their testimony is a common witness that the Greek of the Septuagint of their day was aute, and that the Hebrew pronoun was pronounced HI or HEE, all meaning "she."[8] Later witness of this fact is given by another Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides, who did not believe in the Messianic or Mariological content of the prophecy but nevertheless had this to say:
"But what must be admired most of all, is that the serpent is joined with Eve, that is, its seed with her seed, its head with her heel; that she (Eve) should conquer it (the serpent) in the head, and that it should conquer her in the heel."[9]
In our own Catholic tradition, the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome stands alone among Catholic bibles, reading ipsa, or "she." It must be noted that the Latin Vulgate was the official translation during the time of Vatican II, and into the 20th century and our generation. Since the Greek and Hebrew versions do not enjoy this distinction, the Vulgate possesses the greatest authority. The Council of Trent declared "that this same old and Vulgate edition, which has been approved by being used in the same Church for so many ages, should be accounted authentic in public lectures, disputations, sermons, and expositions, and that no one should dare or presume to reject it under any pretext whatsoever."[10] Can we not hear the words of St. Augustine telling us, "I would not believe the Gospel were I not moved thereto by the authority of the Catholic Church."[11] Furthermore, "St. Alphonsus contends that when it comes down to a choice between the Hebrew and the Vulgate, as we have here, we should hold with the Vulgate."[12] We--Catholics especially--should hold dear to the word "she," for she is our Mother.
Now, having put this issue to rest, let us resume our study of Genesis 3:15, in its obvious and literal sense. One of the most remarkable minds the Church has ever produced, the convert John Cardinal Henry Newman, had this to say:
"'I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.' The Seed of the woman is the Word Incarnate, and the Woman, whose seed or Son He is, is His Mother Mary. This interpretation, and the parallelism it involves, seem to me undeniable; but at all events (and this is my point) the parallelism is the doctrine of the Fathers, from the earliest times; and, this being established, we are able, by the position and office of Eve in our fall, to determine the position and office of Mary in our restoration."[13]
St. Louis De Montfort writes in his classic book True Devotion to Mary:
"God has never made and formed but one enmity; but it is an irreconcilable one, which shall endure and grow even to the end. It is between Mary, His worthy Mother, and the devil-between the children and servants of the Blessed Virgin, and the children and tools of Lucifer. The most terrible of all the enemies which God has set up against the devil is His Holy Mother Mary. He has inspired her, even since the days of the earthly paradise, though she existed then only in His idea... the humble Mary will always have the victory over that proud spirit, and so great a victory that she will go so far as to crush his head, where his pride dwells."
In another remarkable book, The Glories of Mary, St. Alphonsus de Liguori declares, "Still more was it becoming that God should preserve her from original sin, for he destined her to crush the head of that infernal serpent, which, by seducing our first parents, entailed death upon all men: and this our Lord foretold: I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head."[14]
And St. Maximilian Kolbe tells us, "There is much evil in the world, but let us not forget the Immaculate is more powerful yet, and that she will crush the infernal serpent's head."[15]
With such powerful and forceful words of truth from these Marian saints, could anyone outdo them? Only the popes in their teaching authority. And what a grand role the popes have played in proclaiming Mary to be the woman of Genesis! Pope Pius X on the jubilee of the Immaculate Conception said, "We shrink with horror from saying, as Denis the Carthusian so well expresses it, that 'this woman who was to crush the head of the serpent should have been a daughter of the Evil one.'"
During his reign, Pope Pius XII stated:
"In the first place, the foundation of this doctrine [the Immaculate Conception] is to be found in Sacred Scripture, where we are taught that God, Creator of all things, after the sad fall of Adam, addressed the serpent, the tempter and corrupter, in these words, which not a few Fathers, Doctors of the Church and many approved interpreters applied to the Virgin Mother of God: 'I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed' (Gen. III, 15) Now, if at any time the Blessed Virgin Mary were destitute of Divine grace even for the briefest moment, because of contamination in her conception by the hereditary stain of sin, there would not have come between her and the serpent that perpetual enmity spoken of from earliest tradition down to the time of the solemn definition of the Immaculate Conception, but rather a certain subjection."[16]
Significantly, the great Pope Pius IX, when he defined the Immaculate Conception, used this passage Genesis 3:15 along with Luke 1:28, "Hail, full of grace," as seen in the light of tradition, to support his declaration of Mary the Immaculate Conception on December 8th, 1954, saying indeed she will crush his head. Furthermore, Pope Leo XIII in his prayer of St. Michael, prayed, "The glorious Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, commands you; she who by her humility and from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception, crushed your proud head." And to conclude our journey through the various papal pronouncements, let us end with the words of our currently reigning Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, speaking in a January 24, 1996 General Audience: "In the light of the New Testament and the Church's tradition, we know that the new woman announced by the Protogospel (Genesis 3:15) is Mary, and in 'her seed' we recognize her Son, Jesus..."[17] Therefore we can confidently say, "What is said of 'the woman' in Gen. 3:15 finds its fulfillment only in Mary."[18]