William Wordsworth on Mary, Our Tainted Nature’s Solitary Boast

Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied;
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature’s solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven’s blue coast;
Thy Image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in Thee
Of mother’s love with maiden purity,
Of high with low, celestial with terrene!

William Wordsworth – Our Tainted Nature’s Solitary Boast

Pope Benedict XV on Devout Appeals to Mary

To Mary, then, who is the Mother of Mercy and omnipotent by grace, let loving and devout appeal go up from every corner of the earth.

Pope Benedict XV – 1917 A.D.

Pope John Paul II on Mary our Mother

The Mother of Christ, who stands at the very center of this mystery…is given as mother to every single individual and all mankind.

Pope John Paul II – 1987 A.D.

St. Bernadette Soubirous on Loving

I shall spend every moment loving. One who loves does not notice her trials; or perhaps more accurately, she is able to love them. I shall do everything for Heaven, my true home. There I shall find my Mother in all the splendor of her glory. I shall delight with her in the joy of Jesus himself in perfect safety.

St. Bernadette Soubirous

St. Maximilian Kolbe on having Mary Immaculate for our Mother

Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin Mary too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did. If anyone does not wish to have Mary Immaculate for his mother, he will not have Christ for his brother.

St. Maximilian Kolbe

Tim Staples on the Importance of Marian Theology

When we understand that all that we are, we are because of Christ, and all that Mary is, she is because of Christ, and her relation to Christ, being in Him, with Him, and through Him, all of a sudden the blinders fall off, and…this is why Marian theology is so important for us as Catholics to know, because in Mary, we see, re-echoed, all of the most important dogmas of the faith, as Vatican II said.

Tim Staples – Called to Communion

Tim Staples on the Blessed Virgin Mary as our Hope

Mary keeps our theology from becoming an abstraction, because in Mary we see (faith) concretized, lived out through her whole life, and she’s gone before us, perfected, hence she’s our hope. Jesus, of course, is the hope of glory, but Mary is our hope in as much as what Jesus promised has been fulfilled in her and we can look at her and see that God fulfills His promises, and in that sense she becomes our hope, and we also see in her our own dignity.

Tim Staples – Catholic Answers Live

Speak the Truth in Love on Trusting the Catholic Church in the Marian Dogmas

When Catholics talk about Mary they don’t keep repeating that she is the handmaid of the Lord and that everything she offers us is from God through Christ. It is understood and made clear in Catholic theology. But not all the Marian prayers say that explicitly. It is implicit in all of them. That is just a matter of trust. Trusting the church that she is not trying to hook you into some idolatry. Trusting Mary that she really is going to bring you closer to Jesus.

Randy (Speak the Truth in Love) – comment on Called to Communion

Taylor Marshall on Mary as Co-Redemptrix

Adam = Peccator
Eve = Co-Peccatrix

Adam was responsible for it all, but Eve sure did play a part in it, didn’t she?

Jesus = Redemptor
Mary = Co-Redemptrix

Jesus was responsible for it all, but Mary sure did play a part in it, didn’t she?

Taylor Marshall – comment on Called to Communion

Catholic convert Joe Palmer on Mary as a stumbling block

Mary was a stumbling block, but the Church’s doctrines/dogmas regarding her were not the major stumbling block. Once I had the separation of Protestants and Catholics narrowed down to the question of authority and the nature of the Church, I had come to the conclusion that “if the Catholic Church’s claims are true, and the Apostles and their successors had authentic sacramental authority granted by Christ, then I would have to submit to that authority regardless of what I thought in order to be authentically Christian” and that Catholicism meant humbling oneself instead of placing one’s opinion of matters on a pedestal, I began to take the approach of reading Church teaching from the eyes of a Catholic, so-to-speak (lending some level of trust to it). Not because I was submitting to the authority of the Church at that time, but only because I realized that unless I tried on the Catholic glasses, I’d never be able to understand it from a Catholic point-of-view. It was only by God’s Grace and by giving the Catholic view a chance, that I began to see how necessary, beautiful, and Christological the Marian doctrines and dogmas are. Also, from a historical standpoint, there is no doubt that these doctrines and dogmas were represented in various devotions, writings, and quotes from the Early Fathers. So, aside from my conclusion on the importance of the authority question that led me to seek an understanding of Marian doctrines, I also came to realize that the anti-Marian Protestant position I had been raised to hold did not gel with historical Christianity at all, but was a rather new development.

Joe Palmer – comment on Called to Communion

Rt Rev Mgr Canon Moyes, D.D. on the Glory of Mary

If the reward which our God has prepared in heaven for even the least soul that enters there is above all that eye hath seen or the heart of man can conceive, it is plain that all that Catholic preachers or writers have ever said or written about the glory with which God (the Son) has crowned His Mother (the Mother of God – Theotokos), so far from being excessive, must ever fall utterly short of that reality.

Rt Rev Mgr Canon Moyes, D.D. – Why Catholics Pray to the Blessed Virgin

Martin Luther on the Immaculate Conception and Sinless Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary

It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin.

“On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God,” – Sermon by Martin Luther 1527, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Scott Hahn on Christian churches that diminish Mary’s role

The breakaway Christian churches that diminish Mary’s role inevitably end up feeling like a bachelor’s apartment: masculine to a fault; orderly but not homey; functional and productive – but with little sense of beauty and poetry.

Hail, Holy Queen by Scott Hahn

John Henry Newman on the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary

I consider it impossible then, for those who believe the Church to be one vast body in heaven and on earth, in which every holy creature of God has his place, and of which prayer is the life, when once they recognize the sanctity and greatness of the… Blessed Virgin, not to perceive immediately, that her office above is one of perpetual intercession for the faithful militant

John Henry Newman