Mary in Scripture and Tradition - A Catholic Presentation of Marian Doctrine
Introduction What a Christian makes of Mary reveals more about his theology than almost any other question he can be asked. This is not because Marian doctrine is central to the Gospel. Catholics do not claim it is. The disagreements about her turn out, on inspection, to be disagreements about almost everything else: the nature of Scripture, the authority of tradition, the scope of redemption, and the communion of the living and the dead. Indeed, Catholics themselves have not always presented Marian devotion well; exaggeration and romanticism can obscure what the doctrines are meant to protect. For many Protestants, Marian doctrines appear to have little biblical foundation and are an elaborate edifice built on human tradition rather than Scripture. For Catholics, these doctrines are grounded in Scripture, illuminated by apostolic tradition, and developed across centuries of theological reflection. Most Protestant challenges are not disputes about individual texts. More often, they a...