The Blessed Mother – Honor vs Worship

It’s time once again for us Catholics to celebrate a memorial honoring our Blessed Mother.  This coming Monday, May 13, is the day we celebrate Our Lady of Fatima each year.  You may know that my wife and I had the privilege of visiting the site of the Fatima apparitions this past November.  The photograph I took that is accompanying this post is of the Basilica of the Holy Rosary, which was built near the exact spot where the Mother of God, aka., Our Lady of Fatima, appeared to the three shepherd children in 1917.  You may also know that Pope Francis canonized two of the children on May 13, 2017.

If you are a Catholic reading this post, you are likely well aware of the story of Our Lady of Fatima (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_F%C3%A1tima), so I won’t repeat it here.  However, my thoughts this Thursday are about the practice of honoring the mother of Jesus in this and in other ways and some of the objections that non-Catholics have about it.

The most common objection is the belief that Catholics worship Mary and not just honor her.  The official Catholic teaching is that we do, in fact, honor her and not worship her.  Worship is something that is reserved only for God.  If a Catholic does, in fact, worship her, then that would be a serious error on the part of that Catholic.  Honor is something we do for men and women who have distinguished themselves in some particular way.  The Catholic Church honors people; the Protestant Churches honor people; the U.S government honors people; foreign governments honor people, etc.

These and many other organizations honor people by sculpting statues of them, by naming churches and other buildings after them, by hanging photographs of them in certain locations, etc.  We even honor family members by naming our children after them or hanging photographs of them in our homes.  There are many ways in which we honor our people.  Because the Blessed Mother played such an important role in salvation history, the Catholic Church honors her in these ways more than any other saint.  And, by the way, that is what she is … a saint, and not a god.  But that may also be why many people have mistaken impressions that Catholics worship her – because they hear about her so much.  Indeed, we honor her more than any other human being in our history.  Why?  Because she gave birth to the Savior of the world.  We believe she is in heaven, body and soul, and intercedes for us when we offer prayers to her.  But, even when we do that, we are honoring her. 

One final word … I would venture to say that no other organization honors women more that the Catholic Church honors women through their high regard for the Blessed Mother.  So the Catholic Church should be respected by all women because of this mind-blowing devotion to her.  But a discussion of this would be more appropriate for another edition of MTT.  Amen!