Does Mary Obscure Christ?


“If we look through Europe, we shall find, on the whole, that just those nations and countries have lost their faith in the divinity of Christ who have given up devotion to His Mother and that those, on the other hand, who had been foremost in her honor have retained their orthodoxy.

Contrast, for instance, the Calvinists with the Greeks, or France with the North of Germany, or the Protestant and Catholic communions in Ireland. . . . In the Catholic Church Mary has shown herself, not the rival, but the minister of her Son; she has protected Him, as in His infancy, so in the whole history of the Religion. There is then a plain historical truth in Dr. Faber’s words [in the preface to his translation of TD], which you quote to condemn, ‘Jesus is obscured, because Mary is kept in the background.’”

John Henry Newman

A Letter Addressed to the Rev. E.B. Pusey, D.D. on the Occasion of His Eirenicon, in Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Considered, new ed., London, New York, and Bombay 1900, 2:24, 92f.

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