The Protestant PTSD

Catholic Derangement Syndrome

post-reformation PTSD

Protestant: calling something a “god”, even while it has a differing meaning

  • psa 82

Protestant:

  • Mary isn’t talked about
  • ornamentation is sparse

Catholic:

  • refusal to believe it’s all God’s grace that saves us
  • if it’s His grace, then NOT believing it has no soteriological risk

there’s something about mary

Mary DID have a type of authority

  • the “queen mother” was the mother of the king, so her authority was imbued by association

however, it has disappeared with our political fashions

  • it is similar to what happened to poetry: academics ruined poems as dry recitations, and the experience has been lost that “poet” basically meant “musician”

the spirit of Mary’s authority is shared by all believers, but she had the convenience of position

  • in many ways, ALL Christians as children of God have this same authority (though they don’t act it)
  • however, she DOES have an authority driven by location: she is the mother of the King of Kings

this is difficult for modern fashions to capture

  • there is such a push for equality that the idea of being born into a role of nobility or that birth gives some sort of implicit privileges/rights is almost [taboo]
  • however, that’s how people ALL thought up until America

this is why the Catholic tradition maintains Mary as divinely placed, and they’re not wrong

  • the issue is the same type of thing we have with Enoch: it’s a different worldview that implies our “everyone is equal” axiom may not be as correct as we assume it to be

of course, you’ll never hear good dialogue among Christians about this

  • Catholics have their theology baked-in so hard that most of them have zero idea why they believe what they believe
  • Protestants have too much (PTSD)[protestant PTSD] about the Catholic church that they assume that it’s ALL wrong because the Bible doesn’t reference it

in truth, it’s how 15 centuries of Christians all talked and thought, so we shouldn’t discredit the entire “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1)

  • who knows? maybe modern Western thinking isn’t entirely right, right?