Letters

Mary in Scripture and history

Allan Choveaux

Contents - Apr 2015 - Buy a copy now Editorial: Welcome! Vocations: Australia's seminaries flourishing in 2015 - Br Barry Coldrey Designer babies: Dolce&Gabbana versus Elton John - Fr Dwight Longenecker Tu es Petrus: From John XXIII to Pope Francis: Four recent stages of Catholicism - Patrick Morgan Contemporary challenges facing Catholicism: Interview with Cardinal Robert Sarah - Élisabeth de Baudoüin Today's prophets: where are they? - Anne Lastman Our homeland is in Heaven - Audrey English Pilate's inscription on the Cross - Andrew Sholl Religious schools may teach the faith: Canada's Supreme Court - AD2000 REPORT Palliative care protects human dignity - Pope Francis EWTN's new app for smartphones and tablets - Peter Westmore Letters: The Holy See's relations with China - Francis Vrijmoed Letters: Critique of secular psychology - Eileen Cronin Letters: Put not your faith in electronic gadgets! - Anne Lastman Letters: Jesus words from the Cross - Robert Bom Letters: Mary in Scripture and history - Allan Choveaux Letters: Children's rights - Arnold Jago Books: MARY: A CATHOLIC-EVANGELICAL DEBATE, Dwight Longenecker & David Gustafson - Michael E Daniel (reviewer) Books: INSIGHTS FROM GRECO-ROMAN TIMES: A Christian Response, by Rex Dale - Peter Westmore (reviewer) Books: THE MASS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS, by Mike Aquilina - Paul Simmons (reviewer) Books: Order books from www.freedompublishing.com.au Reflection: Good Friday Reflection - Fr Raniero Cantalamessa

Dr. Frank Mobbs (AD2000 Letters, February 2015) has exhibited a tendency to cover over truth as found in Scriptural texts. It is called blinkered interpretation.

He undermines the referral by Jesus, to His mother Mary, as woman ("Woman, what is that to me and to thee?" at Cana, and "Woman this is thy son," from the cross) in the Gospel texts, which are of supreme importance to mankind, for Jesus' deliberate and extraordinary action in naming Mary "woman" clearly indicates that she is the woman of Scripture.

Dr Mobbs does no favour to the Church nor to Mary to suggest that these momentous writings from John's Gospel have no special and wonderful referrals to Mary's work in salvation history.

And I refer readers to two other references to the woman as found in Holy Scripture:

"I will put enmity between you and the woman and your seed and her seed: she shall crush your head and you shall lie in wait for her heel" (Gen. 3.15),

"And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars." (Apoc. 12.1).

Different interpretations are given to these momentous verses of Scripture but the Church teaches that both statements definitely refer to Mary.

And so we find that the woman is mentioned at the beginning of Scripture and at the beginning of the New Testament but also at the end of Scripture, being also the end of the New Testament.

One of today's greatest problems within Christianity – even including many Catholics – is the deliberate down-grading of Mary, the Immaculate Conception, the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven, etc., to an obscure role in the supreme work of salvation fulfilled by Jesus Christ, God-made-man.

ALLAN CHOVEAUX,
Flaxton, Qld.

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 28 No 3 (April 2015), p. 11