Tim Staples and the Marian Dogmas

So I was going to be focused upon—oh, I'm getting the microphone somewhere near me. Right as I was getting ready to start the program—well, there was already the thing about California and going after the folks that exposed Planned Parenthood, and Matt Walsh has commented on it, and I tell you, the hypocrisy, the evil, the culture of death, there's nothing they won't do.

There is absolutely nothing they won't do. Yeah, you're right. It did change all the colors, didn't it? Real warm. Yes, I don't look that orange. No, are you trying to make me look like Trump or something?

California, Planned Parenthood, and the Culture of Death

Hey, all I know is I turned the thing on, and that's what it looked like, and I didn't have time to mess with it. You know, you used to sit around talking about how good you were. I'm good. I'm good. Remember that?

Remember those days? Got quiet in there. Okay. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. State of California going after the folks who exposed Planned Parenthood, and remember everybody was like, oh, this is it.

This is going to do it. We've got them now, and I'm afraid I sat back at the time, and I didn't want to disappoint people, and I didn't want to rain on their parade, but I said to folks near me, I said, this could do anything.

I could do a thing, and I don't want to rain on people's parades. You know, there's lots of folks running around about how we're winning, and do forgive me, but I see a society so absolutely in love with the culture of death that the high priests and priestesses of the culture of death can get away with anything and do anything, and nobody will do anything about it.

Your money and my money is still going to Planned Parenthood, and I don't care what you say. It helps to murder babies. You can say, well, it's not used. I'm sorry. I don't buy it. I don't buy it for a second.

I don't trust those people as far as I can throw them. They have absolutely no morals. Well, they do. They're just immoral morals. They will lie about anything. They are the very essence of the culture of death, and people who are in love with the culture of death do not worry themselves about truthfulness, honesty, anything like that.

It's just promoting death. That's what they do. That's their God. It's religious fundamentalism is what it is. And so when that stuff was happening, I'm like, yeah, well, you know, if I saw some evidence, something was going on in our culture, repentance, something like that, then yeah, maybe something like this would, but I don't see that.

It's like after 9 -11, oh, boy, everybody goes, God bless America. And I'm just like, well, let's see if six months from now there is some kind of serious change in the society. No, there wasn't. So we all saw that.

Anyway, so already pondering the insanity of the state of California, which and somebody was telling me that the people that were involved with Brexit have signed up for not not Cal Exit, but now there's something about splitting the state of California.

Well, that would be interesting. I would love to split off Sacramento and the North. And I vote for donating it to North Korea. That would be good. That would be. Sorry for all of you who live in that area.

But you all know that there is a moral and intellectual black hole called Sacramento. There still are a few of God's people there, Figgy and the gang up there. There are still some Christians there, but they may end up being like a lot and needing to need to flee without turning back.

And poor Micah up in that area as well. They're just going to have to run because it just needs to anyway. Anyway, yeah, the insanity of of California and then right. Like 60 seconds, 60 seconds before the program starts, Jonathan on Twitter sends me a link.

Goes back to 29th of January. So I guess we missed this. But the the British Medical Association has said pregnant women should not be called expectant mothers. As it could offend transgender people, instead, they should call them pregnant people.

So as not to upset intersex and transgender men, the union has said. The advice comes in an internal document to staff outlining a raft of common phrases that should be avoided for fear of causing offense.

It just it just strikes me that sometimes I want to just say, please stop the world. I want to get off because the level of insanity. It's just I don't want to I just don't want to hear any more of this.

And it's not just insanity. I mean, we can just dismiss this as, oh, this is the British Medical Association. And it's like I said on the last program, it's this isn't this isn't some kind of side issue, this is evil.

It is absolutely positively evil to so disrespect womanhood, to so disrespect motherhood as to be worried about offending some transgendered person, which is in its of itself an utter fantasy. Now, the very fact that said that.

Will very quickly, I think. And our opportunity, we're going to have to you have to be thinking about other ways of getting this program to people, because you saw the article from Michael Brown yesterday about Vimeo locking out a group that ministers to former homosexuals.

I think they say 85 or 850, I forget, videos gone, deleted all because we are totalitarians. The the left that is taking over in this country, they are totalitarians. They do not believe in liberty. They are the enemies of the historic United States.

This nation has fallen. It's been a bloodless so far bloodless. It won't remain that way. Bloodless revolution. And we will be obviously someone when I signed into Facebook yesterday, somebody had tagged me for spam.

And I think I know I made one comment because of everything I had to go through and say, yes, that's mine. Yes, that's mine. Of everything I had to go through. There was one where I linked to the New Zealand weightlifter and all the only comment I made was the end of women's sports.

And you're starting to see these stories almost all the time. Some guy can't make it in men's sports, decides he's a chick and now is holding all the records in the women's sports. And if Vimeo is doing it, YouTube is trying to shut down.

What's that guy, Crowder? Louder with Crowder, that guy. Did you see when he dressed up as a drag, as a transgender? Could say anything he jolly well wanted to. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, they're trying to get rid of him.

And it's obvious, it's plain, it's clear, it's prejudice, it's discrimination. But no one's going to, the system's corrupt and no one's going to do anything about it. Somebody was mentioning Twitch, have you heard of Twitch?

I said we ought to be on Twitch instead of YouTube. So I don't know. I don't know. How long ago, it wasn't all that long ago that I was saying that we're going to be pushed out into the quote unquote Christian ghetto.

Isn't that what I've been saying? And we are. And it's coming faster. And we keep saying it, but until it happens, then once it happens, you can't find somebody anymore. What do you do then? So yeah, it's all around us.

And it's not just insanity. It is, it's evil. It's rebellious, rebellious evil. No two ways about it. So anyways, I was going to be more focused on something else, but I thought I would start with that, but I only did the first 11 minutes.

So I suppose that's good. Yesterday, after the program, I was, I had an appointment with my, with the greatest chiropractor in the world. I have said before, I would be a royal mess. I was so thankful.

I forgot to thank the, I've spent a lot of time at Antioch Bible Church down in Johannesburg. And I just sort of on a whim this last time said, you don't happen to have a chiropractor in the congregation, do you?

I like to ask that because I'm gone for a long period of time. Sleeping on beds other than your own and airlines and all that kind of stuff messes you up. Well, lo and behold, they did. And what was really cool was I put him on the phone with my chiropractor here in the States.

And I was just sort of listening and she's going through all this stuff and, and then they, they hang up and he starts examining me. He's like, yep, yep, yep. Wow. She really does you well. Yep. Yep. She was right about.

Yep. All the way down the line. And given the riding, running and rowing that I do, I would, I would be, I'd be a cripple if I did not have access to good chiropractic care. Anyway, I was leaving and I switched on Catholic Answers Live and they were just starting the second hour with Tim Staples.

And so as I listened to the beginning of the program, I was like, I got to talk about this. It's, it's 2017. It's been a few weeks since we did anything about Roman Catholicism. And here is a discussion right at the top of the hour that really illustrates because there's so many people today who are sitting here going, you know, that doesn't, are the differences, do they really matter all that much anymore?

I mean, given what's happening, you know, the Catholics are being attacked by the secularists and, and, you know, we're all going to be being pushed into a smaller and smaller space and we're going to be, we're going to be, you know, having to deal with one another.

And shouldn't we just stop talking about our differences and just focus upon our similarities? And there's a lot of, just a lot of people that are going to go that direction and say, yeah, that's what we need to do.

We need to focus upon our similarities. Let's just minimize the differences and focus upon the things that we, you know, that we can agree on. Well, they started off, let me show you my Kindle here. I don't have, I don't have this book.

I was looking at my Roman Catholic library section. Man, I've got a lot of books on Mary because there are a lot of books published by Roman Catholics on Mary. Just bunches. Mark Shea put out three volumes.

Every Roman Catholic apologist has to put out a book on Mary. And here's, I don't have the paper version, but there you go. See, Behold Your Mother, A Biblical and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines by Tim Staples.

There I have it on my Kindle Voyager, which by the way is just, I know the purists are, when you travel as much as I do, this is gold. It really, really is. Anyway, they were talking about Tim Staples' book, which they were promoting and had a special offer on and stuff like that, which started a little conversation.

And what I wanted to, I wanted to play it. And I didn't know if they dropped the podcast fast enough for me to be able to do it, but they did. And you spell that B-R-E-A-T-H-E. When you're talking about...

No, no, no, you're not distracted. You spelled it twice. If you're telling them to breathe, that's breath, just in case you... Anyway, something going on in channel. We have some people in channel that don't like Kindles.

And one guy's nick is Book. And so we were just trying to tell him, be warned, I'm saying terrible things because I'm mentioning the Kindle. Anyway, I was listening to this, I've said many times that sometimes I'll be listening to Patrick Madrid or someone like that, especially when they're talking about cultural issues.

Well, the morning Roman Catholic drive time programs tomorrow, I can guarantee you, are going to be talking a lot about this California thing. In fact, they're going after... Was it Diladin was his name?

Something like that. Diladin, whatever it was, the guy that was behind the Planned Parenthood recordings. And we're going to be saying a lot of the same things. And when I did the dialogue with Peter D. Williams on Unbelievable, hasn't aired yet, don't know when it will air, but sometime between now and October, we talked a little about pro-life stuff.

And we were absolutely lockstep in what we said about the evil of abortion. And yeah, there it is. David Diladin. Yeah, someone was writing to Kamala Harris, who, wow, she replaced Barbara Boxer, right?

Kamala Harris. I didn't think it'd get worse than Boxer, but you can. Wow. There is a train wreck if I've ever seen one. Is the David Diladin case based on narrow legalisms? Yeah. Remember, she said she couldn't support Gorsuch because he went with narrow legalisms rather than people or something.

In other words, as a judge, he actually judged based on the law. And again, when you have senators like Boxer and Feinstein and now this Harris and if that doesn't show the nation's been given over, I don't know what would.

Anyway, I'll be listening to these folks. And we say the exact same stuff. We're on the exact same page when it comes to abortion and life and stuff like that. And I'll be listening to them going, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

And then all of a sudden, they'll hang a hard left or a hard right, depending on, I'm not trying to make a political statement there, but they'll hang a, just completely lose me because. And so we need to pray to Saint so-and-so, to the Immaculate Heart of Jesus.

We need to ask Mother Mary to, and it's just sort of like, wow, it is definitional. It is definitional. And I thought this conversation, which was really, it wasn't meant to be some kind of deep theological thing, but just like in the New Testament, some of the deepest theological statements, some of the most demonstrative statements are made in passing because they demonstrate what is the common understanding of the author and the people to whom he's writing.

If you can say something in passing, then it's assumed that it's a standard belief of yours and a standard belief of the people to whom you're writing. Because if you just make it a statement in passing and then don't stop to explain it, if you stop to explain it, then that clearly indicates that you can't assume that your audience already understands what you're saying.

But if it's said in passing, then you can. This was sort of just a little conversation between Tim and the new guy who's the host of Catholic Answers Live. And it's just sort of meant to be an advert for the book, but it ended up being more than that.

I think you'll see as we listen to it. So let's listen, and I am playing it a little fast, as I always do. Let's listen to yesterday's open forum, the very beginning, with Tim Staples on Catholic Answers Live.

Mary as Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix in Catholic Teaching

Fantastic. Great book to read, in fact, during Lent, especially the section on co-redemptrix, mediatrix of all grace. Talk a lot about, you know, Simeon's prophecy, Luke chapter 2, verses 34 and 35. Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many, and to be a sign of contradiction, which I'll be spoken against, which of course is the cross.

That St. Paul tells us is foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews. That's the cross. But then he says, and a sword will pierce your soul, not body, but soul, that the thoughts of many hearts would be revealed.

Who are these many? The same many that Jesus died for is the same many that Mary would suffer for. And Pope St.

No, no, I just, I have to stop this because so many of us listen to this and we don't hear what's being said. In fact, he speaks so fast, I'm going to back it down to normal. So, here's a book that you should read during Lent.

Okay, why? Well, especially the chapter on Mary as co-redemptrix and co-mediatrix. Now, sadly, for most non-Roman Catholics, as soon as the Roman Catholics start using Latin, our eyes glaze over because we don't study that anymore, unfortunately.

But you need to understand what they mean by that. I wrote a book back in, what was the year for this? I think it was, what, 98? Yep, 1998. It's on Kindle, and it's also in digital format elsewhere. I think PC Study Bible, maybe?

I know they had it for a while. I'm not sure if it's in the Logos Collection or not. Really don't. Mary and Other Redeemer. What You Should Know About the Controversial Movement to Name Mary as Co-Redeemer with Christ.

Wow, that's almost 20 years old. Yikes. I'd like to maybe redo it or something because this was focused upon John Paul II, and he's been gone a while. But in there, I define very carefully and accurately what the movement, this is called the Fifth Marian Dogma, and it is a teaching that, as Tim Staples was saying right there, has been taught by popes for at least 150 years, maybe getting up to 170 years.

But there's a difference between doctrine and dogma. A dogma is something you must believe de fide, by faith. It's definitional of the Roman Catholic faith. Doctrine, you can disagree with. And so popes can teach something as doctrine, but you may be foolish to disagree with them, but it is not something you have to absolutely believe.

And so there have been millions, millions of signed petitions turned into the Vatican asking that the pope define the Fifth Marian Dogma, that Mary is co-redemptrix, co-mediatrix for the people of God.

So co-redeemer in the feminine form and co-mediator in the feminine form with Jesus. That does not mean equal, but that she participates in a particular fashion with Christ in his, well, they say in his unique work of mediation and redemption, but by joining her with it, doesn't really remain unique anymore.

That's the problem. Anyway, that belief is what he's talking about there. So he's saying this is a good book to read during Lent where you focus upon this section of Mary as co-redemptrix and co-mediatrix.

So for Tim Staples, this is not mere pious speculation. This is part and parcel of his faith. He believes that Mary is co-redemptrix and co-mediatrix. He can't say that you have to believe that as a dogma, but he believes it as a teaching of the church and of the teaching of the popes.

And you just heard him use Luke 2, 34, 35, and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel and for a sign to be opposed. Dash, and a sword will pierce even your own soul.

Dash, to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. The final, to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed, goes back to the rise and fall of many in Israel, a sign to be opposed.

It's all talking about Jesus. But you must remember in Roman Catholicism, if Mary's anywhere nearby, if Mary can be read into the text, she will be. Because there is so precious little about Mary in the New Testament.

And yet Rome has created a mountain of dogma about Mary, the first four Marian dogmas. And so, you know, the woman in Revelation chapter 12 becomes Mary and everything is turning to Mary. And when Jesus commits Mary to John at the foot of the cross, well, that becomes Jesus committing the entire church to Mary and angelic greetings end up with 14 volumes worth of dogma crammed into him.

They have to. It's just to come up with Rome's teachings, you don't have any, don't have any way of doing it. And so, what you heard him say there was, though, to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed, all of a sudden, we have this wild eisegesis that connects the alleged suffering of Mary.

And a sword will pierce even your own soul. So, he says, well, that happened at the cross. She's at the foot of the cross. That's what happened. It might be. I was looking at a commentary from Dr. Bach over there.

He has a huge two volume set. I guess you can't see it from that angle, but he has two volumes set on Luke. And he gave nine or ten different interpretations, some by Roman Catholic scholars, on the meaning of a sword will pierce even your own soul.

But what you got there from Staples was this happens at the foot of the cross. She enters into the suffering of Jesus. And you have this participation concept. Now, never mind, the early church had no concept of this.

Never mind, you don't have sermons for hundreds of years of anyone coming up with this. Hey, as long as you accept the Newman development hypothesis, as long as you can find something about Mary somewhere, well, that was the seed.

And it just, it grows by the ministry of the Spirit over time until it develops into the tree and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that's what you got. So I want you to hear that again. Now we've defined some of the terminology.

Talk about a lot about, you know, Simeon's prophecy, Luke chapter 2, verses 34 and 35. Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many. And to be a sign of contradiction, which I'll be spoken against, which of course is the cross that St. Paul tells us is foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews.

That's the cross. But then he says, and a sword will pierce your soul, not body, but soul, that the thoughts of many hearts would be revealed. Who are these many? The same many that Jesus died for is the same many that Mary would suffer for.

Now, so the same many that Jesus would die for is the same many that Mary would suffer for. Now, that wasn't Luke's intention. I don't really think that you'll find Roman Catholic exegetical work substantiating that.

It's just not there. It's just not there. But it doesn't have to be there because you've rejected the Sola Scriptura. You've rejected that teaching. So you don't have to find it there. It's no big deal.

But what I want you to hear and understand is one of the things you see over and over and over again in reading, for example, the Universal Catholic Catechism. I guess the lights didn't do that. There we go.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, the international bestseller. I don't know. It strikes me as strange in front of a catechism. But anyway, big book. What you will see over and over and over again in a book like this is the assertion of universal atonement and hence universal redemption.

And the result of that is a mindset. Well, we've seen it in Pope Frankie. We've seen it in Francis in a latent universalism, minimally inclusivism. The idea that any move toward God, any move toward any God is a move toward the true God.

And therefore, you don't have to have explicit faith in Christ. That's inclusivism. Many, many, many Roman Catholic prelates are going there. Or universalism, that we're all going to get there. You know, when he tells atheists, just be good and they'll get there.

That's troubling as far as where he's going. But at the basis of all this is a fundamental acceptance of a concept of universal atonement. There is no concept of substitution. Once you don't have, once the atonement becomes impersonal, where it is a universal thing that just simply makes grace available, and then you work the system, you work the sacraments, so on and so forth.

There are consequences to these things. And you could not have these Marian dogmas if you still had a biblical commitment commitment to such things as substitutionary atonement, the penal substitutionary atonement, PSA is what it's called these days, under a tremendous amount of attack.

And especially the specificity of the atonement. What I'm talking about is the dreaded doctrine of limited atonement. But that's just simply specific or definite atonement. The idea there's actually consistency between what the Father decrees to accomplish, the Son dies to accomplish, the Spirit comes to apply that which has been accomplished.

This idea of the actual Trinity being glorified in the gospel. Yeah, that idea. Pretty unusual. But still, if you had that kind of theology, you couldn't have all this Marian mumbo jumbo. But when first book...

Huh, look at that. Don't have it down there. That's a shame. I guess it's because it's out of print. Well, it's in Kindle. But the first book I ever... Every author remembers the first time you open a box and find your first published book.

And I remember where I was. It was in the old offices on Camelback. And it was back when we had the double office that the windows got smashed out on. Then we had to close that up eventually after Black Monday.

What? Yeah, I know. It's gone. Oh, it's train station? Yeah. Well, anyway, I remember opening that box and it was a book called The Fatal Flaw. And one of the arguments I made in that book was that to provide...

And I made this argument at G3 just a few months ago. That to provide the strongest, most consistent, gospel-rich response to Rome's doctrine of the mass as a perpetuatory sacrifice requires you to have an appropriate biblical New Testament reformed doctrine of the atonement, which is a specific atonement where Christ's death actually accomplishes the intention for which it was intended.

And that is the salvation of God's elect. And that will make sure that many a door is slammed in my face. I can't even care about it. It's just a fact. You can ignore it if you wish, but it's fact. This kind of stuff simply could not exist if you had a meaningful foundation, which Rome does not.

So we go back to what Tim Staples was saying.

Pope St... In the book, I quote Pope St. John Paul in Salvafici Dolores, I believe it's paragraph 25, that great line where Pope St. John Paul talks about how the sufferings of Mary... That's the prophecy of Simeon, that it would be fulfilled at the foot of the cross, that the sufferings of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the foot of the cross were so intimately and intricately interwoven with the sufferings of Christ that they became a participation in the redemption of all.

Did you get that?

So see, once you have this universal idea, then redemption becomes... Everybody's redeemed. Everybody's redeemed. And it's just a matter of working out your redemption through the sacramental system. So redemption actually isn't redemption.

It's not an accomplished thing. But by the way, that was through all the St. John Paul... That's just John Paul. He's been turned into a saint. That was the whole reason we put this book out when we did, is that there was a lot of speculation that for the millennial celebration, that he might go ahead and define this document because he was so dedicated to this belief.

He plainly believed it, as that document makes clear. Now, on the one hand, Rome tries to say, we absolutely believe in the unique nature of Christ's suffering. And then they say this, you can't put the two of them together.

You're contradicting yourself. And you can try to say that you're... No, I'm not really... But you are. And the easy result of this is just simply to walk into almost any Roman Catholic church in Mexico City and look around and find out if the people who follow you are making the same very careful distinctions you try to make.

And they're not. They're looking to the Lady of Guadalupe. Mary is so much more. An intimate part of their religious experience than Jesus could ever be. Could ever be. So this actually came up, interestingly enough.

We got onto this in the dialogue with Peter D. Williams. I actually got to read that Marian prayer on the program, which was good. It got us to... We were talking about the Reformation. And my point was, we are now farther apart than we were at the time of the Reformation.

Because see, Rome had not defined the last two Marian dogmas, let alone the third, the fifth. So immaculate conception and bodily assumption were still in the future at the time of the Reformation. So now we're...

If the fifth one were to be dogmatized, that would be three dogmas on Mary defined since the time of the Reformation, which just drives us farther and farther and farther apart. And so I did get to bring that up.

Was there something you were saying? Well, yeah, yeah, papal infallibility was too. Yeah, there's been three dogmas since the Reformation.

Powerful text there. But I always like to point out to folks, especially if you get my book, Behold Your Mother, is this is not just about Mary. Although, of course, in the first place, it is. But all of us are called through the intercession of the Blessed Mother.

And during this season of Lent... He didn't finish his thought there.

And I do that all the time, too. I'm not good at a lot of things. And that's one of the things I mess up on. But I'm not exactly sure what he was saying there. But listen to it again.

But all of us are called through the intercession of the Blessed Mother. And during this season of Lent... To do what? We're called to do exactly what? Pray to our Blessed Mother. Ask her to help you to enter into the mystery of Christ's suffering.

Because nobody did, even close to the degree that Mary did.

So you're supposed to enter into Christ's suffering. Now, again, this is... If you understand their abuse of Colossians 124, if you understand the idea of purgatory, if you understand the idea of satis passio, the suffering of atonement, if you understand what was behind Mother Teresa's activities and the idea of the goodness of suffering, then you get an idea of what's being said here.

The problem is, all of this ends up fundamentally altering and perverting the uniqueness and the purposefulness and the successfulness of Christ's suffering in a perpetuatory fashion upon the cross.

That's where the problem comes in. But it's through, basically, the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus were joined on the cross at the foot of the cross. Did you catch that?

So the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus are joined at the cross. Now, when you hear this type of thing, you now know why at the end... why I couldn't help but almost gasping at the end of the debate at G3.

When fellow staff member Trent Horn stands in front of that audience and says, we should derive our theology from the Bible. I'm like, what? Because I can guarantee you, if Trent Horn was on this program, he'd be going, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

And I can guarantee you, you're not going to get these guys to do actually a formal debate, let alone even a discussion, on how this is seriously what Luke or any of the writers of the New Testament were actually intending to communicate.

Because there are too many Roman Catholic theologians that we could cite who would honestly recognize this is development, this is later, this is not a part of what you have in the New Testament. That's painfully obvious.

So that's why I was like, need to get your theology from the Bible, huh? Well, you ain't getting this theology from the Bible. That ain't what Luke was talking about.

But there you go. Resulting in the redemption of all. Well, you and I are called to enter into that mystery, resulting in our own salvation as well as those around us. So it's a powerful, I think, source of meditation for this Lenten season or any time, of course, of the year.

So check out Behold Your Mother.

Amen, brother. She teaches us how to be Christians, really. She's the teacher of how to follow Christ fully.

She is the model. Now, just think about this for a second. There is no question that Mary is presented to us in Scripture as a very special woman. But there is also no question that the New Testament writers have no interest in focusing upon her after the birth of Jesus.

She appears only incidentally, only incidentally. She is before the cross. She's in the upper room. That's it. So the idea that it was the intention of the apostles to teach the church that she becomes the model, again, you see why Rome has to deny sola scriptura, because this kind of serious exegesis of the text of Scripture, any honest analysis, and any honest analysis of the early church, for that matter, that it's stunning.

So there you go. One of her many titles, The Model for Christians. She is our icon. She is our hope.

We've talked about that before. To catch that, she is our hope. Oh, yeah, I didn't bring it in here. I could have stacked a stack, yay high, of my books on Mary. Easily. But the glories of Mary, I've read from it over and over and over again over the years, but the glories of Mary, our hope, our hope, our hope, entrust yourself to her, entrust yourself to her, our hope, over and over and over again.

Not what you have in the New Testament, not what you have in the early church, but it's what you have in modern Roman Catholicism. She is our hope.

In what sense? Christ is our hope. Of course Christ is our hope, but she's our hope, and as much as in her we see fulfilled, incarnate, if you will, all the graces of God perfected in her, and we can have the hope to know God did it for her, he will do it for us.

So this imaginary Mary that Rome has made up, how much do we know about Mary? We have a chapter and a half, maybe, grand total, and then a little snippet, a little snippet, a little snippet, and that's it, and yet somehow she's a model, and we're supposed to see in her all the graces of God fulfilled, and if God can do it for her, of preemptive application of the sufferings of Christ, so she's protected from the stain of original sin, and how does that make her a model, I wonder, but anyway.

How do we see how Mary handled Christian persecution? She didn't. Everything we know about Mary is from before the cross. We see her in the upper room, and then that's it. We're not given anything more.

You can get away with this as long as your audience doesn't have the idea of sola scriptura. As long as the audience has a subjugated view of scripture, then you can get away with this.

And behold, your mother, too, I should say, it would be a really nice Easter gift.

For your mother, maybe. Amen, and Christmas is only nine months away.

It's remarkable, nine months away from the Feast of the Annunciation, which was Saturday. And so if you want to give it to your mother, until midnight Wednesday, 40 off.

Wow, 40 off, all right, right there, giving them an advertisement, if you want.

Just go to catholic .com and put in the code, the promo code MOTHER, and you can have that 40 off.

Want to go to calls, Tim? So he goes, I was thinking about going to the first caller, because the first caller was really, really interesting. Let me just summarize it. The first caller raised the issue of the canon.

And basically, Staple's argument was that the Pope called a council in Rome in 382 and, in essence, defined the New Testament books. And then, though that was not an ecumenical council, the councils of Hippo and Carthage, which also were not ecumenical councils, just followed whatever the Pope said.