Several years ago, early in Advent, I received an interesting note from the sixth-graders in the church school. “Dear Mr. Buchanan: We have some questions about Christmas. 1) Did the star stand still? 2) Were the shepherds and wise men real? 3) How was Jesus born if his parents didn’t have sexual intercourse? Please meet us next Sunday and tell us the answers.”
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not actually introduced to Roman Catholic people in Latin America because only Marian doctrines are taught to them. That is the main reason that the Protestant church is so liberating to former Catholics—the gospel of Jesus Christ brings freedom from the mistaken idea that we can come to God only through “la Virgen.”
The name of the Theotokos expresses the whole mystery of God’s saving dispensation. —St. John of Damascus (655-750)
In the doctrine and worship of Mary there is disclosed the one heresy of the Roman Catholic Church which explains all the rest. —Karl Barth (1886-1968)