Word: marian
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...solemn pontifical Mass concelebrated by Pope Paul VI and 24 other bishops, and a demand for speed by council officials. To help nudge matters along, the popular coffee bars on each side of the aula were not opened until 11, two hours after the morning sessions begin. But the Marian question may not be easily resolved, since the council fathers are closely divided between "maximalists" and "minimalists...
...Mexican Bishop Sergio Mendez Arceo dryly pointed out that if Mary were to be titled "Mother of the Church," which is the mother of men, she becomes everybody's grandmother. And Augustin Cardinal Bea, of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, argued that any title implying a new Marian doctrine would do grave harm to the cause of ecumenism...
...Mary stands at the very inception of Christian revelation as sign and representative of the human context in which the Christ-event is received, then and now." In the interdenominational Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Harvard's Heiko Oberman, a Dutch Reformed pastor, warns Protestants against a totally negative "Marian minimalism." He argues that there is Scriptural warrant for revering Mary as "the elect instrument of God's work of redemption" and as "the prototype of the faithful...
Flesh of Our Flesh. Lutheran Jaroslav Pelikan of Yale believes the time is long past when Protestants could content themselves with sneering at Catholic Marian idolatry. Now, any criticism of Roman doctrine must be "accompanied by a positive discussion of the mother of our Lord as viewed from a Biblical and evangelical perspective." Pelikan argues that Mary cannot be ignored because she is the "warrant for the Christian declaration that our Lord was a true man, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone." She also has a significance for the church: "the brief description of her career...
...Testament witness. Thus the emerging Protestant interpretation of Mary is considerably more modest than her exalted place in Catholic teaching. Nonetheless, says Chicago's Sittler, Mary may be "a center from which we could penetrate one another's thoughts," since Rome is in the midst of a Marian reconsideration all its own. Recent Popes have warned against excessive devotion to Mary that obscures the uniqueness of Christ, and many Catholic thinkers are earnestly seeking to relate their church's Marian doctrines to Biblical theology. And in one of the key votes of the Vatican Council...