Allie Beth Stukey whom I've never met, is one of my favourite people on earth because of her public witnessing about matters faith related.
The Blessed Virgin Mary is one of my favourite people in heaven.
It was interesting recently to find footage of Allie Beth, herself a Protestant, debating another internet commentator, a man called Trent Horn who is Catholic, on the subject of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In the discussion Allie Beth suggested that Catholics give the appearance of worshipping the Blessed Virgin Mary, and that there isn't really all that much about the Blessed Virgin in the gospels.
Trent Horn answered her worthily and well although for my money, Allie Beth is a better debater than he is.
My own conviction is that the Blessed Mother is the highest saint of heaven and that the Catholic Church is correct in advising us to seek her intercession with God.
People can pray for other people as God has directed us. The Catholic Church merely discerns that this type of prayer continues in heaven among saints who have departed this life.
I believe Allie Beth sounds a paradoxically timely note in what I consider her mistaken viewpoint, because gentle readers of the internet, the Catholic Church is a target for vexatious infiltrations throughout time, whether satanists, mafiosi or good hearted leftist goons, and for every genuine believer like Pope John Paul the Great or Lila Rose, there is an adventurist or a factioneer, like Bergoglio the Apostate or Candace Owens.
No offence to any apostates or very good looking fruitloops who may be reading this.
What I am saying is that there are some within the Catholic Church who would deify the Blessed Virgin Mary in a second if they could get away with it, some sincere, some evil, some nuts, some all three.
Therefore I am not in the least offended by Allie Beth's points. We don't worship the Blessed Mother but there are plenty of us who would given half a chance and it is important for sincere believers to be watchful with regard to the peddlers of vexation.
As for there being very little about the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Bible, I would beg to differ.
The gospel accounts are very short anyway and most of their salient material consists of the Lord's discourses.
Mary figures in the first of his miracles in the wedding feast at Cana and is with him at the crucifixion.
She also teaches us to pray to God, giving us the Magnificat, a most beautiful prayer according to Saint Luke in his gospel, unparallelled by anything else in the Bible except for the Lord's prayer.
"My soul doth glorify the Lord,
My spirit rejoices in God my saviour,
For he has looked upon the lowliness of his servant.
Behold from now on all ages will call me blessed,
For the Lord has done great things for me.
Holy is his name.
His mercy if from age to age on those who fear him.
He has shown the strength of his arm.
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has pulled down princes from their thrones,
Raised high the lowly.
He has filled the starving with good things,
Sent the rich away empty.
In his mercy and faithful love.
He has remembered his promises to Israel,
To our fathers,
To Abraham and his descendants forever."
Back in 2010, while experiencing what for me was significant pain via a toothache, I resolved to suffer patiently as a mystic might do, in prayer and meditation.
This did not work out quite as I'd hoped. Instead of scaling the heights of spiritual ecstasy, detachment from pain, and so on, I spent a day cursing and shouting and in near mutinous despair.
At evening I turned to the Blessed Mother and said: "If you obtain this for me I will give up coffee tonight and I won't even complain about giving it up."
Before I'd finished the sentence, all the pain was gone.
It dissolved instantaneously.
I stared around me in bewilderment saying something like: "What happened? Where did it go?"
Sixteen years later, I've never quite managed to give up coffee.
She never took back the miracle she obtained.
