A Protestant Convert's View of Catholic Teaching About Mary, Mother of God

I became a Catholic when I was almost 40 years old.  My parents raised me as a Southern Baptist, and in college I became an Episcopalian, so my journey to the Catholic Church was a gradual one with a few twists and turns along the way.  But this post is not about that.  Rather, it is about how I as a Protestant convert have come to see the Church's teachings about Mary, the Mother of God.

Most Protestant converts struggle with Catholic teachings about Mary.  For me, the biggest challenges were (and are) the teachings concerning the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, and Mary's Perpetual Virginity.  There are also Catholics who believe that Mary is the dispenser of all graces, but I am not concerned here with that particular belief because the Church has carefully avoided declaring this to be an infallible teaching (even though we have had Popes who believed it); that is, Catholics are not required to believe it. 

Before I get too deeply into this post, I should take a moment to clarify what these three challenging doctrines are and why they are hard for Protestants to accept.

The Immaculate Conception is the idea that Mary, unlike everyone else, was conceived free of original sin and during the course of her life was protected from ever committing a sin.  I recently heard a priest take this idea a step further to declare that it was actually impossible for Mary to sin.  This teaching is tough for Protestants to accept because (1) it is explicitly stated nowhere in Scripture, (2) it seems to be explicitly contradicted by Paul in Romans 3:23, and (3) Catholic apologetics aimed at showing how the doctrine is implied by Scripture seem rather complex and certainly non-intuitive.

The Assumption of Mary is the teaching that although Mary died a natural death as everyone does, she was immediately taken body and soul into heaven.  Her assumption into heaven is why Mary can physically appear in the various apparitions that have been attributed to her.  Protestant objections to this teaching are that, again, it is (1) found nowhere in Scripture and (2) contracted by the Bible's teaching that the resurrection will take place at the end of time.  Catholic apologetics in defense of the Assumption as rooted in Scripture are again complex, arcane, and unintuitive.

Mary's Perpetual Virginity entails three separate ideas.  First, Mary conceived Jesus as a virgin through the power of the Holy Spirit rather than through the normal way.  Second, when Jesus was born, her physical virginity remained intact; that is, Jesus was born without actually passing through the birth canal in a normal physical birth.  Third, Mary remained a virgin her entire life even though she was married.   Liberal (so-called mainline) Protestants object to all three of these ideas because they reject the idea of miracles in principle.  Conservative Protestants reject only the second and third.  The problem with the second is (again) that it is found nowhere in Scripture and (more seriously) seems to contradict the idea that Jesus was fully human -- a baby that can pass from inside to outside Mary's body without passing through the birth canal is, it would seem, a magical being and not a human baby.  The problem with the third is that it (1) seems explicitly contradicted by Scriptural references to Jesus' brothers and sisters (for example, Matthew 13:55-57) and (2) requires us to believe that Joseph and Mary never consummated their marriage -- something which frankly most of us find so unbelievable that one wonders why we are even discussing it!

So these are the three Marian doctrines with which Protestant converts must struggle the most.  Notice that I have not mentioned the title "Mother of God".  Although many Protestants do in fact object to this title (because, after all, God can not logically have a mother), that objection merely reflects a simple misunderstanding.  Catholics call Mary the Mother of God because Christians believe that Jesus was God in the flesh:  he was fully human and fully God from the moment of his conception.  Once Protestants realize the title Mother of God is nothing more (and nothing less!) than an affirmation of the incarnation, the substance of their objection to this title vanishes.

Now I must confess that I have read several apologetic arguments by writers such as Scott Hahn in defense of these three Marian dogmas and generally remain unimpressed.  The fact that one can construct complex logical arguments in favor of these challenging doctrines does not prove the doctrines true or Scriptural.  Ultimately, these apologetics prove only that the apologist is very clever.  It takes more than a clever argument to prove a counter-intuitive assertion.  Nevertheless, Scott Hahn and other apologists have successfully demonstrated that reasonable Scriptural justification for these doctrines is at least possible.  Such demonstrations do give Protestant converts Scriptural cover, should they feel the need for it.

But there may be another way to look at these various Marian doctrines.  The problems and objections above are all with respect to a literal interpretation of these doctrines.  If we are faced with a binary choice between literally true or literally false, then the objections remain.  But suppose the choice is different.  Suppose the choice is between what these teachings mean being true or false.  What then?

So let us look at what these teachings might mean to a Protestant convert.

The Immaculate Conception.  The way Catholic teaching about the Immaculate Conception is formulated is this:  Mary was redeemed from sin by her Son by virtue of his death and resurrection just like everyone else, the only difference from everyone else being that for Mary this occurred prior to her conception (CCC 490-492).  The key is that she was redeemed by Jesus' death on the Cross and his Resurrection; her immaculate conception is not about her but is rather all about her Son.  So if we think of Mary as a prototype for all human kind, as the new Eve, the mother of all the living (an idea that goes back to at least Justin Martyr in the second century; see this article from the University of Dayton), then the Church's teaching of the Immaculate Conception is nothing more and nothing less than an affirmation of Christ's redemption of humanity through his death on the Cross.

Mary's Assumption into Heaven.   Here again the key to discovering the meaning of Mary's Assumption is to be found in the Catechism (CCC 966):  "The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son's Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians."  So again, if we allow Mary to represent all of us as the New Eve, the mother of all the living, then the doctrine of the Assumption is not about her but about our hope: it is an affirmation of our own future Resurrection.

There is another aspect of the Assumption that is also quite important -- and generally neglected by nearly everyone, Protestant and Catholic.  And that is this (again from CCC 966):  upon her Assumption, she was "exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things," or as Catholics often say, she was crowned Queen of Heaven.  The central meaning here has nothing at all to do with Mary other than that she is the mother of Jesus, the Messianic King.  For Scripture's model of the Messianic Kingdom is the Davidic Kingdom, where the queen is always the king's mother (see for example 1 Kings 2:19).  In other words, to call Mary "Queen of Heaven" is to affirm simply that Jesus really is the Messiah, the fulfillment of all God's messianic promises to David and the Hebrew prophets.  So naturally we call his mother Queen.

Mary's Perpetual Virginity.  With the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, the crucial significance of these doctrines is found by seeing Mary as the representative for all humanity, as the New Eve, the mother of all the living.  The meaning behind her perpetual virginity is not so easy; if we look for it there, we are not likely to find it.  Rather, the central meaning is to be found in history, particularly the history of the first century where the story of Mary's virginity originated, and by the end of which her perpetual virginity was very likely established as a common or at least growing belief (see the interesting article on Catholic Answers).

The story of Mary's virginity first appears in writing with the New Testament gospels of Matthew and Luke.  In both cases, the story derives its meaning from the context of Imperial Rome.  The emperor Caesar Augustus was the son of God, Lord and Savior of the World, born of a virgin (see Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan's fascinating book on this subject.)  The story of Jesus' virgin birth was simply the first move in a new narrative, the point of which was to say that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not.  This theme runs through the entire New Testament from Matthew through Revelation.  And it is the point of the Virgin Birth, the first of the three aspects of Mary's perpetual virginity.

The second and third aspects likewise derive their meaning from the historical context in which they developed.  For the event of Jesus' birth was so fundamentally earth-shaking and transformative that merely telling the same story as any pagan emperor hardly did it justice.  The point of Mary's perpetual virginity and of Jesus' miraculous birth without passing through the birth canal was that this event was something more than merely special but utterly unique in human history, something far beyond that which any pagan emperor could claim for himself or his predecessors.  It drew attention to the utterly transcendent otherness of the Incarnation where the Infinite Creator of all that is, visible and invisible, emptied himself of his Divinity to become one of us, as Saint Paul so wonderfully put it in Philippians 2:6-11.

Conclusion

So there you have it: this is how one Protestant convert has resolved the difficulties and challenges posed by Catholic teaching about Mary.  Are these teachings literally, physically true?  I know many Catholics who are convinced that they are.  And of course God can do anything at all (except deny himself; 2 Timothy 2:10-13).  The question in my mind isn't whether God could have done these things; only whether he did.  Perhaps he did, but I think that focusing on whether he did or didn't is to completely miss the point.

What matters to me is what these Marian teachings mean.  For me, the Church's teachings about Mary mean that the Incarnation was a special event, unlike anything else that has ever happened or will happen again in human history.  God came into the world and redeemed us, all of us.  And because he did so, we all have a wonderful future before us, a future in Christ because of his death and resurrection.  For although we do not yet know what we shall be, we know that we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2).