Peter Sean Bradley…

manfully attempts to reason with people who are singularly resistant to reason on the subject of alleged “worship” of Mary. Some Protestant folk are so terrified of her that they simply cannot stop telling Catholics what they believe long enough to ask Catholics what they believe. It’s really rather weird.

For some reason, Catholic discussions of the distinctions between latria, hyperdulia and dulia strike quite a number of Evangelicals as some sort of subterfuge for “Mary worship”. But the fact remains that people *are* going to give honor to other things besides God. These things include, not just the Blessed Mother, but baseball teams, actors from the cast of Stargate SG-1, that guy who is retiring from your company this Friday, and your mom. You may depending on the circumstances, be asked to do any number of things which “look like worship” to somebody else: including lighting candles, asking them to remember you, and looking adoringly into their eyes even kneeling before them (if the creature you are honoring is somebody you are giving an engagement ring).

You may also express honor for creatures by honoring graven images like, you know, bowling trophies–statues in honor of Robert E. Lee or Dwight Eisenhower.

So whatcha gonna do when I declare to you that I don’t care what you tell me about how you aren’t worshipping these things cuz it sure looks like worship to me and that’s all I need to know.

Don’t bother your head trying to think up an answer with your inadequate theological vocabulary of Bible proof texts. Instead, let me help you. The ideas you are looking for are “latria” and “dulia”. You see, the Bible never forbids giving honor to creatures. It tells us to honor our father and mother, to honor the king, to honor all who are worthy of honor. The only thing we are forbidden from doing is honoring creatures more than we honor God. So as long as you are not intending to give more honor to some creature than you give to God, you are just fine. Indeed, if you do *not* honor creatures according to their rightful due, you are, in fact, sinning against God (as, for instance, when you neglect the command to “Honor your Father and your Mother”).

Now, a question arises at this point: namely, are there different kinds and degrees of honor we give to creatures. And the answer is, “Obviously.” So we honor our mother more than we honor the mailman. We honor the general over the buck private, etc. But this leads to another question: what creature is due the greatest honor you can bestow on a mere creature? And the answer of the tradition is: Mary, whose “yes” made possible the Incarnation and the salvation of the world. So she is accorded “hyperdulia”: the greatest honor you can give a creature, but still distinct from latria, the honor due only to God.

The only way to avoid this logic is to just shout it down, which is more or less what Peter Sean Bradley’s interlocutors have to do because they are in too much of a rush to be bigoted and frightened to actually think through their own position.

If only somebody would write a big ol’ trilogy of books called Mary, Mother of the Son that would address such matters–especially in a third volume subtitled “Miracles, Devotions and Motherhood”!

Meanwhile, bravo to Peter Sean Bradley (and Victor Reppert for the post that started it all)!