214. Mary-worship?
214. MARY-WORSHIP?
Do Catholics worship Mary?
Why is this usually the most passionate objection Protestants have to Catholicism?
The Mother of God is a mere creature. Therefore the worship of latria (adoration) is not due to her. Since latria is due to God alone, it is not due to a creature. . . . (Only veneration [dulia, respect] is due to creatures, even the holiest.)
Though insensible creatures are not capable of being venerated for their own sake, yet the rational creature is capable of being venerated for its own sake. (But) the worship of latria is not due to any mere rational creature for its own sake. Since, therefore, the Blessed Virgin is a mere rational creature, the worship of latria is not due to her, but only that of dulia; but in a higher degree than to any other creatures, inasmuch as she is the mother of God. For this reason we say that not any kind of dulia is due to her, but hyperdulia (III,25,5).
St. Thomas, following the Church, is very clear that worship (adoration, latria) should be given to God alone, and not Mary or any other creature.
Veneration (dulia) is very different from worship or adoration. Veneration means two things: first the respect due to all persons because they are made in God’s image and have intrinsic value (as Kant’s famous formula puts it, all persons are ends, not means, and must be treated as such); and second, among human persons some are to be venerated more than others: the good and wise and holy more than the evil and foolish and unholy. The reason the highest degree of veneration is due to Mary is that she was the holiest merely human being who ever lived, the greatest saint.
Because she was the Mother of God, it was very fitting that God did this, i.e., made her the greatest saint. He totally filled her with His grace, as much as a merely human creature could hold. Thus she is “full of grace”. The angel called her not just “favored” by grace but super—favored (Lk 1:28). That’s in the Bible!
All this is very reasonable, and part of unbroken Church tradition. It is not explicitly taught in the Bible, but it is taught implicitly. It is an interpretation of the data in the Bible by the Church Christ authorized to teach in His name and with His authority. There are many other Catholic doctrines and practices that are not explicitly taught in the Bible. Some of them, like the doctrine of the Trinity, Protestants accept, while rejecting others, like Purgatory, which are also based on principles taught in the Bible (that we are sinners; that in Heaven we are perfect; and that there is a very great gap between sin and perfection). But Protestants typically single out the veneration of Mary as the most objectionable one. Why?
I can only confess that this is a great puzzle to me, even though I remember once sharing this prejudice as a Protestant; now, as a Catholic, I simply cannot understand it. Mary is the most beautiful mere creature that God ever made; to exalt her is to exalt her divine Creator, Whose spiritual daughter she was, and to exalt her divine Son Whose human mother she was and Whose humanity she procreated, and to exalt her divine Spouse the Holy Spirit Who conceived Him in her womb. We look at her as the supreme merely human handmaid of the Trinitarian God (Lk 1:38). We look along her at her divine Father, her divine Son, and her divine Husband.