Bolds, italics, etc. added for emphasis.
To be read in conjunction with General Deborah’s Teaching, “They Served Idols.”
FAMOUS, TOO, as pilgrimage cities, are Lourdes, in extreme southwestern France, and Fatima, in Portugal. At Lourdes, the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared to a 14-year-old peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, in 1858. When Bernadette dug in a certain place as “commanded” by Mary, a spring of water with curative powers was uncovered.
The Basilica of the Rosary was later erected on the site and every year tens of thousands of pilgrims visit the place in search of cures. Thousands of cures have been claimed, but the Roman Church officially claims but very few. Hardly more than one person in a thousand is actually helped, and those frequently are psychological cures, on the order of those sometimes achieved by the Christian Scientists and other faith healers.
Yet, the Roman church promotes pilgrimages to Lourdes. The place is now highly commercialized, and directly and indirectly is a source of revenue for the church. We notice, however, that WHEN A POPE GETS SICK, HE DOES NOT GO TO LOURDES, BUT INSTEAD SECURES THE BEST MEDICAL HELP AVAILABLE; AS WAS THE CASE WITH THE LATE PIUS XII.
In recent years the shrine of Fatima, Portugal, has become even more popular than that at Lourdes, with as many as 700,000 people said to have visited it in a single month. There, in 1917, shortly before the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, the Virgin Mary [supposedly] appeared to three children, ages from ten to thirteen, who had never gone to school and, curiously enough, in messages subsequently released by the church, gave warnings against the evils of Communism, messages having more to do with present day relations between the Vatican and Russia, than with anything that might be thought to concern children of those tender ages. Rome’s promotion of the Fatima shrine has been coupled with her crusade against Communism.
In our western world, the two most important shrines are Our Lady of Guadalupe, on the outskirts of Mexico City, and St. Anne de Beaupre, in Quebec. After Cortez’ conquest of Mexico, the Romanists practically forced their religion upon the Mexican people. Cortez and his soldiers took Mexico City.
With them were a number of priests. Some of the Indians eventually were converted, despite the greed and cruelty of the Spanish soldiers. But not many could be persuaded to worship the Virgin Mary because she was not an Indian—hence the invention of “The Virgin of Guadalupe,” in reality a Mexican goddess who was absorbed into the Roman system.
Mary as an Object of Worship
The devotions to Mary are undoubtedly the most spontaneous of any in the Roman Catholic worship. Attendance at Sunday mass is obligatory, under penalty of mortal sin if one is absent without a good reason, and much of the regular service is formalistic and routine.
But the people by the thousands voluntarily attend novenas for the “Sorrowful Mother.” Almost every religious order dedicates itself to the Virgin Mary. National shrines, such as those at Lourdes in France, Fatima in Portugal, and Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, are dedicated to her and attract millions. The shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre, in Quebec, the most popular shrine in Canada, is dedicated to Saint Anne, who according to apocryphal literature was the mother of Mary. Thousands of churches, schools, hospitals, convents, and shrines are dedicated to her glory.
IT IS DIFFICULT FOR PROTESTANTS TO REALIZE THE DEEP LOVE AND REVERENCE THAT DEVOUT ROMAN CATHOLICS HAVE FOR THE VIRGIN MARY. One must be immersed in and saturated with the Roman Catholic mind in order to feel its heartbeat. Says Margaret Shepherd, an ex nun:
“No words can define to my readers the feeling of reverential love I had for the Virgin Mary. As the humble suppliant kneels before her statue, he thinks of her as the tender, compassionate mother of Jesus, the friend and mediatrix of sinners. The thought of praying to Christ for any special grace without seeking the intercession of Mary never occurred to me” (“My Life in the Convent,” p. 31).
The titles given Mary are in themselves a revelation of Roman Catholic sentiment toward her. She is called: Mother of God, Queen of the Apostles, Queen of Heaven, Queen of the Angels, the Door of Paradise, the Gate of Heaven, Our Life, Mother of Grace, Mother of Mercy, and many others which ascribe to her supernatural powers.
All of those titles are false. Let us consider just two of them. When she is called “Queen of the Apostles,” is that an apostolic doctrine? Where is it found? Certainly it is not in Scripture. When did the apostles elect Mary their queen? Or when was she appointed by God to be their queen? And the title “Queen of Heaven” is equally false, or even worse. Heaven has no “queen.” The only references in Scripture to prayers to the “queen of heaven” are found in Jer. 7:18; Jer. 44:17-19; Jer. 44:25, where it is severely condemned as a heathen custom practiced by some apostate Jews. This so-called “queen of heaven” was a Canaanitish goddess of fertility, Astarte (plural, Ashtaroth) (Jdg. 2:13). HOW SHAMEFUL TO IMPOSE A HEATHEN TITLE ON MARY, AND THEN TO VENERATE HER AS ANOTHER DEITY!
How can anyone of the perhaps one hundred million practicing Roman Catholics throughout the world—who desire Mary’s attention imagine that she can give him that attention during his prayers to her, his wearing her scapulars for special protection, his marching in parades in her honor, etc., while at the same time she is giving attention to all others who are praying to her, attending to her duties in heaven, conducting souls to heaven, rescuing souls from purgatory, etc.?
The average Roman Catholic acts on the assumption that Mary has the powers of deity. There is nothing in the Bible to indicate that any departed human being, however good, has any further contact with affairs on this earth, or that he can hear so much as one prayer from earth. How, then, can a human being such as Mary hear the prayers of millions of Roman Catholics, in many different countries, praying in many different languages, all at the same time?
Let any priest or layman try to converse with only three people at the same time and see how impossible that is for a human being. They impose on Mary works which no human being can do. How impossible, how absurd, to impose on her the works which only God can do! Since Mary is not omnipresent, nor omniscient, such prayers and worship are nothing less than idolatry; that is the giving of divine honors to a creature.
Nowhere in the Bible is there the slightest suggestion that prayer should be offered to Mary. If God had intended that we should pray to her, surely He would have said so. Worship is accorded to the infant Jesus, but never to His mother. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, wise men came from the East, and when they came into the house, they saw the young child with Mary His mother. What did they do? DID THEY FALL DOWN AND WORSHIP MARY? Or Joseph? No! We read: “They fell down and worshipped him” (Mat. 2:11). And to whom did they give their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh? To Mary? Or to Joseph? No! They presented their gifts to JESUS. They recognized Him, not Mary or Joseph, as worthy of adoration.
Furthermore, in Old Testament times the Jews prayed to God, but never to Abraham, or Jacob, or David, or to any of the prophets. There is never the slightest suggestion that prayers should be offered to anyone other than God. Nor did the apostles ever ask the early Christians to worship, or venerate, or pray to Mary, or to any other human being.
The objections against prayers to Mary apply equally against prayers to the saints. For they too are only creatures, infinitely less than God, able to be at only one place at a time, and to do only one thing at a time…How can Mary and the saints, without being like God, be present everywhere and know the secrets of all hearts?…The endless prayers to the Virgin and to the countless saints cannot bring one closer to God. And particularly when we see all the GAUDY TRAPPINGS that are resorted to in Rome’s distorted version of a glamour queen, the whole procedure becomes, to Protestants, truly abhorrent.
The Roman Church commits grievous sin in promoting the worship of Mary. It dishonors God, first, by its use of images, and secondly, by giving to a creature the worship that belongs only to the Creator. We have here merely another example of Rome’s persistent tendency to add to the divinely prescribed way of salvation. ROMANISM SETS FORTH FAITH AND WORKS, SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION, CHRIST AND MARY, AS THE MEANS OF SALVATION.