In the Catholic Church, veneration of Mary, mother of Jesus, includes prayer, pious acts, visual arts, poetry, and music devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Popes have encouraged it, while also taking steps to reform some manifestations of it. The Holy See has insisted on the importance of distinguishing “true from false devotion, and authentic doctrine from its deformations by excess or defect”. There are significantly more titles, feasts, and venerative Marian practices among Roman Catholics than in other Christian traditions. The term hyperdulia indicates the special veneration due to Mary, greater than the ordinary dulia for other saints, but utterly unlike the latria due only to God. “Mariolatry” is a Protestant pejorative for perceived excessive Catholic devotion to Mary.
Belief in the incarnation of God the Son through Mary is the basis for calling her the Mother of God, which and was declared a dogma at the Council of Ephesus in 431. At the Second Vatican Council and in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris Mater, she is spoken of also as Mother of the Church.
Growth of Roman Catholic veneration of Mary and Mariology has often come, not from official declarations, but from Marian writings of the saints, popular devotion, and at times reported Marian apparitions. The Holy See approves only a select few as worthy of belief, the latest being at diocesan level as far back as 1665.
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Author: Wikipedia
Keywords: Mother godess, Mary mother, Mary mother of Jesus, Mariolatry, Marialatry, Worship of Mary, Virgin Mary, Virgin Mary worshipped, Mary worshipped, Mother of God, Theotokos, Virgin mother, Great Mother, Protectress of Sailors, Spinner of Destiny, Earth Goddess, Black Virgin, Perpetual Virginity, Perpetual Virginity of Mary, Dormition, Mary Dormition, Immaculate Conception, Immaculate Conception Mary, Bodily Assumption, Bodily Assumption of Mary, Queen of Heaven, Mary Queen of Heaven, Ashtaroth, Ashtoreth, Astaroth, Cybele, Aphrodite, Demeter, Astarte, Isis, Hathor, Inanna, Ishtar, Queen of Martyrs, Mary Queen of Martyrs, God bearer, Artemis, Protestant views on Mary, Catholicism, Catholic, Roman Catholic, Roman Catholicism
Bible reference(s): Jeremiah 7:18, Jeremiah 44:17-19, Jeremiah 44:25, Matthew 1:18, Matthew 2:11, Matthew 12:46, Matthew 13:55, Mark 3:31, Luke 2:34, Luke 2:48, John 2:5, John 19:25-26, Acts 1:14, Acts 19:24, Acts 19:27-28, Acts 19:34-35
Source: This article uses material from the Wikipedia article “Veneration of Mary in Roman Catholicism,” which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
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