Devotion to Mary generally does not result in idolatry
4 min • Digitized on May 9, 2023
From A Defense of the Teachings of Mary, page 96
By St. John Henry Newman
3. And thus I am brought to a third remark, supplemental to your accusation of us. Two large views, as I have said above, are opened upon our devotional thoughts in Christianity; the one centering in the Son of Mary, the other in the Mother of Jesus. Neither need obscure the other; and in the Catholic Church, as a matter of fact, neither does.
I wish you had either frankly allowed this in your Volume, or proved the contrary. I wish, when you report that “a certain proportion, it has been ascertained by those who have inquired, do stop short in her,” p. 107, that you had added your belief, that the case was far otherwise with the great bulk of Catholics.
Might I not have expected it? May I not, without sensitiveness, be somewhat pained at the omission? From mere Protestants indeed I expect nothing better. They content themselves with saying that our devotions to our Lady must necessarily throw our Lord into the shade; and thereby they relieve themselves of a great deal of trouble. Then they catch at any stray fact which countenances or seems to countenance their prejudice.
Now I say plainly I never will defend or screen any one from your just rebuke, who, through false devotion to Mary, forgets Jesus. But I should like the fact to be proved first; I cannot hastily admit it.
There is this broad fact the other way;—that, if we look through Europe, we shall find, on the whole, that just those nations and countries have lost their faith in the divinity of Christ, who have given up devotion to His Mother, and that those on the other hand, who have been foremost in her honour, have retained their orthodoxy.
Contrast, for instance, the Calvinists with the Greeks, or France with the North of Germany, or the Protestant and Catholic communions in Ireland. As to England, it is scarcely doubtful what would be the state of its Established Church, if the Liturgy and Articles were not an integral part of its Establishment; and, when men bring so grave a charge against us as is implied in your Volume, they cannot be surprised if we in turn say hard things of Anglicanism1.
In the Catholic Church Mary has shown herself, not the rival, but the minister of her Son; she has protected Him, as in His infancy, so in the whole history of the Religion. There is then a plain historical truth in Dr. Faber’s words which you quote to condemn, “Jesus is obscured, because Mary is kept in the back-ground.”
1 I have spoken more on this subject in my Essay on Development, p. 438, “Nor does it avail to object, that, in this contrast of devotional exercises, the human is sure to supplant the Divine, from the infirmity of our nature; for, I repeat, the question is one of fact, whether it has done so. And next, it must be asked, whether the character of Protestant devotion towards our Lord, has been that of worship at all; and not rather such as we pay to an excellent human being. … Carnal minds will ever create a carnal worship for themselves; and to forbid them the service of the saints will have no tendency to teach them the worship of God. Moreover, … great and constant as is the devotion which the Catholic pays to St. Mary, it has a special province, and has far more connexion with the public services and the festive aspect of Christianity, and with certain extraordinary offices which she holds, than with what is strictly personal and primary in religion.” Our late Cardinal, on my reception, singled out to me this last sentence, for the expression of his especial approbation.