Undoer of Knots and Guardian of Orthodoxy

I'm still trying to digest the comments in this post. They seem to be in a bit of a tangle. I'm not going to attempt to undo the knots beyond maybe enlisting the help of one who can. Instead, I think I feel another ramble coming on....

I'm relatively confident in saying that it's wise to keep the determination of whether a certain religious belief is heretical out of the hands of any level of government. As a Catholic, I would point to Sacred Tradition, the Magisterium and ultimately the Pope to make any necessary pronouncements upon errors. Of course, the Bishops in union with him, priests, sisters, lay people and even non-Catholic Christians of good will should feel free to join the Holy Father in the extirpation of heresy via prayer and diligent action, always with charity.

So I want to leave aside the political aspects of this for a moment. After all, Mitt Romney is out of the race. I can say honestly in all charity that I hope and pray that all Mormons might see the error of their mistaken beliefs and come back to Christian orthodoxy, preferably Roman Catholicism since it is the fullness of the Christian faith. The best way I can see that this might happen would be through the intercession of the Glorious, Immaculate and Ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of the Eternal Son, Queen of Angels, Seat of Wisdom and as stated earlier, Undoer of Knots.


But, of course, if you have a better idea, go ahead and fire when ready. Meanwhile I'll explain what I'm talking about.

I look at the Mormon teaching of "exaltation" as the core of their aberrancy. As a corrective to that, I offer the belief that the Blessed Mother is exalted as much as any creature can be, yet, unlike Christ, she still remains a human creature. She is the True Mother of Eternal God, but not "Eternal Mother". (Council of Chalcedon, AD 451) Likewise Christ "humbled himself" as it says in Philippians 2 "taking the form of a bond-servant, and coming in the likeness of men" but Christ the Son of God remains Eternal and Divine.

There is a longing for a divine mother figure expressed in all cultures and belief systems. You've probably experienced the Mother Goddess people to some extent or another. They are not all men-hating wackos, some are happily married and pro-life. It seems to me that the Mormon expression of this desire for an exalted feminine being is quite ardent and, although I don't believe they ever use the word "goddess", it is expressed in their belief in an "Eternal Mother" as in the hymn "Oh, My Father" by a famous Mormon, Eliza Snow. Excerpt:

In the heav’ns are parents single?
No, the thought makes reason stare!
Truth is reason; truth eternal
Tells me I’ve a mother there.

When I leave this frail existence,
When I lay this mortal by,
Father, Mother, may I meet you
In your royal courts on high?

The poetic quality is not that of Wordsworth, but the words are sincere and heartfelt like the cloudy yet innocent wish of a child. It makes me think of the first and last verses of this version of the Lourdes Hymn:

Immaculate Mary!
Our hearts are on fire,
That title so wondrous
Fills all our desire.
...
In death's solemn moment,
our Mother, be nigh;
as children of Mary
O teach us to die.

So the desire of the heart might be one of the ways back into Christian orthodoxy. But what of the intellect? Marian devotion seems to many to be a bit unintellectual. Newman understood this point, but ultimately disagreed as can be seen in this essay by John Griffin. Excerpt:

....Yet Newman's own praise, while not poetic in its form, exceeds that of most of his contemporaries, for Mary was the model of faith and the guardian of orthodoxy. In one of his final sermons as an Anglican, Newman made explicit his idea that Mary was at once the patron of the unlearned and the doctors of the church:

She does not think it enough to accept [faith], she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she develops it; not enough to submit the Reason, she reasons upon it; not indeed reasoning first, and believing afterwards, with Zacharias, yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing. And thus she symbolizes to us, not only the faith of the unlearned, but of the doctors of the Church also, who have to investigate, and weigh, and define, as well as to profess the Gospel; to draw the line between truth and heresy; to anticipate or remedy the various aberrations of wrong reason.

Newman's approach to Mary in the above is almost wholly intellectual. The main part of the sermon is directed to the proper understanding of faith, of which Mary is chosen as the perfect model....

Emphasis mine. There would be darkness in both my mind and my heart... as I've said before....

Well, I'm planning to bring up some big problems that Christians like Bubba and I have with Mormons and in some of the national dialogue regarding their religion in a later post. Meanwhile you might want to meditate on what I wrote here, or tell me where you think I'm wrong or why I'm not devoted enough to Our Lady, the last of which will get no argument from me. And next time Mormons come to your door trying to force a Book of Mormon on you, maybe you can try to get them to take a rosary in trade. Or maybe you could bring up the Council of Chalcedon and ask them what they think of the hypostatic union.