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Growth of Mariology: In the earliest days of the Christian Church, sinful men prayed to the sainted martyrs, because they by their immediate ascension to heaven were better fitted to intervene with God, were closer to mere mortals than an awesome Lord. Then, gradually through the centuries, Mary-worship grew. In the catacombs, hunted and persecuted Christians scrawled pictures of the Virgin on the walls (150 A. D.,); it began truly to flourish in the Eastern Church about the 6th Century A. D.†† But it met with continued rebuke, as when the Collyridians were denounced by St. Epiphanius for making sacrificial offerings of cakes to Mary. He said: "Let Mary be held in honor. Let the Father, Son and Holy Ghost be adored, but let no one adore Mary." From 500 A. D. on she appeared increasingly in Christian art; many cathedrals were erected under her dedication.‡
From 1000 A. D. shrines and altars by the thousand were dedicated to Mary. To them the devout brought votive offerings, often silver and gold models of the man or the part of his body saved through the intervention of Mary.§ Those most devout reported that they had seen miracles, seen blood flowing from the statues of the Virgin, seen her eyes weeping in sorrow, seen her head lower or her hand raise in benediction. Over all Europe good Catholics lifted up their voices in "Ave Marias" as they counted out their prayers on well-worn rosaries.
What Mary Means to Catholics: As Mary-veneration grew, from the 6th Century on, Roman Catholics felt more and more that her peculiar relation to the Godhead fitted her especially as a sort of kindly mother before whom unworthy sinners might lay their prayers with the best hopes of a successful intervention with the "remote and awful Godhead." In early times, St. Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople called her "the only bridge of God to man." Even John Wyclif, pre-Reformation "heretic" said: "It seems impossible to me that we should obtain the reward of heaven without the help of Mary." James, Cardinal Gibbons, in modern times wrote: "After our Lord Jesus Christ, no one has ever exercised so salutary and dominant an influence as the Virgin Mary on society, on the family, on the individual. . . . Queen of angels and saints [she] stands 'face to face' before God." He speaks of her as the "mirror of God," urges devout Catholics to pray to her.*
* Dr. Fosdick, pastor of the Park Avenue Baptist Church, Manhattan, attracted nationwide attention recently with his advocacy of voluntary confession for Protestants.
† The Roman Catholic dogma of the ' Immaculate Conception" (of Mary) was defined as "of faith" as late as 1854 by Pope Pius IX in the Papal Bull "Ineffabilis Deus." It maintains that, while Mary was conceived in the manner common to all human beings, the Lord made her immaculate at the moment of conception; in this way her absolute sinlessness was provided for.
* Power of the most high proceeded through natural barriers without injuring them in any way. Mary was not the passive instrument of the Holy Ghost; she cooperated by supplying the matter, her body and her blood.