The blessed teddy bear

Paul Owen is rapidly becoming your run-of-the-mill apologist for Rome, rehashing the stock, sophistical arguments for all things Papistical.

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Why Should We Call Mary the Blessed Virgin?

1. Because Gabriel is said to have greeted her with the words: “Blessed are you more than any woman” (Luke 1:28; in the Byzantine text).

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The Byzantine text? Is Owen a charter member of the KJV-only club?

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2. Because Elizabeth greeted Mary with the words: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” (Luke 1:42). Notice how freely Elizabeth felt in offering reverence to Mary alongside her Blessed Son. Elizabeth does not even feel worthy to be standing in the presence of the Mother of the Lord (1:43). In other words, Mary’s visit is taken as a conveyance of God’s grace to Elizabeth. Mary, as the vehicle of the Incarnation, is honored as the medium of God’s Immanuelic grace to His people.

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Elizabeth is humbled by the fact that the Messiah would pay her a personal visit through the vehicle of his pregnant mother. From this one cannot draw any conclusions about Mary’s postpartum status.

In addition, Owen is tacitly accentuating “MOTHER of our Lord,” rather than “mother of our LORD,” although, in context, Luke lays emphasis on the Christchild rather than his mother.

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One reason Mary is blessed is because of the role her response of faith has played in the plan of redemption. Her faith made possible the fulfillment of the prophetic word (1:45). Since Mary believed God’s word, there will be “a fulfillment of those things which were” spoken.

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This disregards the fact that God is the author of saving faith no less than authoring the plan of salvation.

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3. Because Mary herself predicted in the Spirit (cf. 1:41-42, 67) that “all generations will call me blessed” (1:48). That is why we call her the Blessed Virgin, and that is why we adore her memory.

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i) The Bible never uses this language as a Marian title.

ii) And if we were to make a titular practice of such usage, then we should apply that honorific title to everyone who reads the book of Revelation (1:3), or everyone to whom the Beatitudes apply (Mt 5:3-11).

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4. Because faithful disciples are to count Mary as their Mother (John 19:27), and we are to honor our father and our mother (Exod. 20:12).

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Notice how Owen rips this verse out of context and universalizes it, as if it were a directive to all Christian, which it obviously is not—unless, that is, every Christian takes Mary home to live with him (19:27b).

Perhaps, though, Owen now has a shrine to Mary, complete with a plaster statue, costume jewelry, votive candles and incense.

Or maybe he has one of those plastic statues of Mary with the light-bulb inside to give it that nimbic glow.

And let us hope that he has invested in a battery-operated model as well so that, in case of power-outage, he will still have someone to pray to and play with and scare away all those things that go bump in the night.

Reminds me of a passage in Willa Cather’s novel, Death Comes For The Archbishop:

“Here in his own church in Santa Fe there was one of these nursery Virgins, a little wooden figure, very old and very dear to the people…She had a rich wardrobe; a chest full of robes and laces, and gold and silver diadems. The women loved to sew for her and the silversmiths to make her chains and brooches…She was their doll and their queen, something to fondle and something to adore.”