Nine questions, some of which are offensive to the Church, to Mary, the Mother of God, and to the Catholic faith

We present to our visitors nine questions from a visitor, Simone Michelangelo Muzzioli from Modena.

As everyone will see, some of them are offensive to the Catholic Church, which is said to behave “arrogantly” “for obvious commercial and power purposes.” The words in quotation marks are those of our visitor.

Others are offensive to Mary, our mother in grace, as our Lord said from the cross to St. John.

According to our visitor, it is “highly probable, given the many similarities, that the figure of the Madonna was used to fill the void left among the population by pagan female icons, such as Venus or Isis herself.” By whom was this manipulation carried out? Evidently by the Church.

For what purpose? According to our visitor, for the sake of “enormous temporal and economic power.”

With such preconceptions and with these offensive statements for those who have taken Mary among the most precious treasures of their Christian life, who live in daily communion with her and experience her constant protection, there would be nothing to comment on. One feels hurt in one’s most cherished feelings for those realities for which we would even be willing to give our lives.

Yet our Lord was very clear from the cross.

But, in addition to respect, what our visitor lacks is charity. Our Lord said: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:35). And he specifies: “as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34).

Tertullian says that pagans were amazed by Christians and said, “Look how they love one another.”

I was hesitant to answer these questions, especially because of the tone in which they are expressed. But in the end, I decided to respond by asking our visiting brother to be more evangelical in his feelings and words, and intellectually to be more humble and more eager to know the truth, without preconceptions.

I would also like to tell him that we have no economic or temporal advantage, none whatsoever.

Given the sentiments he expresses, we are not surprised by the perhaps overly merciful behavior towards him on the part of the priests and seminarians he questioned.

For several questions (nine at once), a little patience would have been enough, and he could have looked in the “The Priest Answers” section to see if these topics had already been discussed. However, I will respond anyway, albeit succinctly.

My answer is always immediately after your question and is in italics.

Hello Father

My name is Simone and I am writing to you from Modena.

I am resorting to dialogue via the internet because, up to now, I have only been met with closed doors when it comes to my doubts about faith and my questions about exegesis.

I asked five priests and a seminarian, three ignored me, two sent me away, and the seminarian just gave me quick, superficial answers.

I’m honestly discouraged and angry with the Church and its ministers.

I’m asking you for answers to my questions, or at least the intellectual and religious honesty to listen to me.

I thank you in advance with all my heart.

I will list some questions that I believe and hope you can answer:

1- Why does the Virgin Mary, on several occasions in the Gospels, such as in the temple, seem not to understand her son’s messianic activity? Yet she is aware of being the mother of a “prodigy.”

Please note: after our visitors have read all the questions, they will realize that this question—apparently without much depth—implies something poisonous. Because the visitor insinuates: since the Virgin Mary knows that Jesus is a “prodigy,” she should not have been surprised by Jesus’ loss. Jesus would have been a superhuman and would have managed anyway!

So, of course, Our Lady was aware that Jesus is a “prodigy,” but not a “human” prodigy, a superhuman who can handle anything. Our Lady, like a true mother, was distressed by his loss. What mother wouldn’t be? Wouldn’t it be surprising if she weren’t?

Likewise, at the foot of the cross, she was certain that Jesus would rise again, but her pain was no less intense.

The same thing happened to our mothers during childbirth. They knew that they would not die and that they would feel great joy at our birth, but this did not make the pain any less intense.

2-Given the many similarities, is it not highly probable that the figure of the Virgin Mary was used to fill the void left among the population by pagan female icons, such as Venus or Isis herself, whose modes of worship are extraordinarily similar to those of Mary?

Highly probable? What documentation do you have to support such a claim? It is not enough to have imagination to reason about events that have unfolded over 2000 years and make things go the way we would like them to have gone. I repeat: documentation is needed. Without evidence, you will not get anywhere.

In reality, the Church started from the facts, and already within the first Christian community, Mary enjoyed a very special position, as emerges from Acts 1:14: “All these were assiduous and unanimous in prayer, together with some women and with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.”

Jesus had entrusted John to Mary, who at that moment represented each one of us: “Woman, behold your son.” And from the beginning, the Church has experienced Mary’s motherhood in grace, and for this reason, it turns to her in everything.

3- In the Gospels, verginitas in-partu et post partum is not attested to. Why is that?

What you say is not entirely true.

Virginity in childbirth is indicated in Luke 2:7: “She gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.”

For a more detailed answer, please read what I wrote in response to a question entitled “Mary’s painless childbirth.”

In addition, there is also the text of Jn 1:13, which according to some very ancient codices should be read in the singular and not in the plural: “who was born not dai sangui (ουκ εζ αιματων), but of God” (Jn 1:13). I sangui is the blood loss that women normally experience when they give birth. According to biblical thinking, this made women impure.

If the verse were read in the singular (and it is not wrong to read it this way, because several very ancient manuscripts have this version), we would have a beautiful attestation of Mary’s virginity in childbirth.

As for virginitas post partum, it is true that there is no decisive evidence in the Gospels, but neither is there any evidence to the contrary.

Furthermore, the source of divine revelation is not only Sacred Scripture but also Sacred Tradition. And this is unequivocal on the subject of virginity after childbirth.

The Church Fathers saw in many images of the Old Testament prefigurations of Mary as ever-virgin.

For example: Mary is the closed door mentioned in Ezekiel 44:1-2 (Ephrem, Amphilochius, Theodotus of Ancyra, Hesychius…), she is the burning bush that is not consumed (Gregory of Nyssa), she is similar to the closed doors of the Upper Room (Hilary, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysologus, Proclus, Gregory the Great) and to Christ’s sealed tomb (Ephrem).

Jerome calls Mary virgo aeterna (Comm. in Ez., 44, 3).

Augustine († 430) affirms the perpetual virginity of Mary, who “conceived as a virgin, gave birth as a virgin, and remained a virgin” (Sermo 51, 11,18).

To say that the holy Fathers had temporal and economic aims, one would have to document it. One would have to know them before passing judgment. Has our visitor read Augustine? Does he know him?

Even atheist philosophers respect Augustine’s thought and figure!

And what about St. Jerome? But let’s stop here.

4- Why should God who becomes man be denied the fundamental experience of the suffering of childbirth?

For the Jews, blood loss was a contamination from which one had to purify oneself. Do you want the Savior of the world, at his birth, instead of liberating, to begin by polluting and making his Mother impure?

5- Why was the term ANEPSIOI not used instead of ADELFOI in the translation from Aramaic or Hebrew into Greek in order to emphasize the real kinship of the children of the other Mary? And why do all the Gospels use the same translation?

The Gospels were not translated into Greek, but were written in Greek. Greek is the original language of the Gospels we have. We have no earlier texts.

Furthermore, we are dealing here with an obvious case of Semitism. Don’t you know that Lot, Abraham’s cousin, is referred to as his brother?

It is universally known that in Semitic texts or texts influenced by Semitic languages, the meaning of the terms “brother” or “sister” is much broader than in our modern languages because it also indicates more distant degrees of kinship.

In particular, since Hebrew and Aramaic did not have specific terms for “cousin, nephew, brother-in-law,” the word ‘brother’ was often used, or long-winded and complicated circumlocutions such as “son of the father’s brother” were used.

6- Why was the dogma of the Immaculate Conception only established in 1854, when most of the Church Fathers had previously expressed negative opinions on the subject and even the Gospel texts do not mention it?

Here, in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, we must recognize that the sensus fidei of the Christian people intuitively preceded dogmatic reflection. The sensus fidei of the people preceded the reflection of theologians. And this is very beautiful.

The sensus fidei of the Christian people has a remarkable value from a theological point of view. It derives directly from the Holy Spirit. Sacred Scripture describes it as an anointing that discerns truth from falsehood and teaches everything from within (1 Jn 1:20-21, 27). .

Furthermore, when Pius IX proclaimed the dogma (1854), belief in the Immaculate Conception had long been universally accepted.

In his encyclical Ubi primum (February 2, 1849), Pius IX asked bishops to ascertain in their dioceses what were “the sentiments of the clergy and the people regarding the conception of the Immaculate Virgin.” In the bull Ineffabilis Deus, defining the Immaculate Conception, he believed he was “satisfying the most pious desires of the Catholic world.”

I will not refer to the connections with Sacred Scripture (e.g., I will put enmity, full of grace…) and the very beautiful testimonies of the Holy Fathers. That would take us too far afield.

7- Often the figure of the Virgin Mary among the common people has even supplanted and obscured the figure of Christ himself. The Catholic Church has in every way fueled her cult since the sixth century, deriving enormous temporal and economic power from it. Is this not a betrayal of the Gospel message and of the mission entrusted to the Church by Christ himself?

Good for you that you are not part of the “common people” and that the Church does not squeeze money out of you to increase its temporal and economic power!

As I said before, bring the documentation!

But I want to tell you one thing: that for Catholics (and I very much doubt that you are one. And for this reason, it would be better to play with your cards on the table, don’t you think?) Mary is the Mother we trust, the Mother we talk to, the Mother who follows us with boundless love.

Don’t you realize that a statement like yours is offensive?

I derive no economic or temporal power from trying to honor Mary and defend her from such gratuitous and insulting statements.

But then, don’t you find it strange that the Church is the first to be cautious when it comes to apparitions? If it were an economic empire, it would rush in without thinking twice.

Look at the case of Medjugorje: it would seem that here the Christian people (the sensus fidei) have already given their answer a long time ago, right from the start. What is missing is the response of the official Church, which is long overdue, even though the faithful would be delighted to have it immediately.

8- The omission or assimilation of the third commandment, on the manufacture of idols of earthly and heavenly things, seems an arrogant act that the Church has carried out for clearly commercial and power purposes. Why? Is this what Christ told us?

You speak of an “arrogant act” by the Church. But don’t you know that since the Old Testament, God, who had forbidden the making of images, commanded that images be made, as in the case of the bronze serpent?

Even a child reading Exodus understands that God had initially forbidden the making of images because the people were devoted to idolatry. Moses had not yet come down from the mountain and already the people had built a golden calf!

But then, once the danger of idolatry had passed, God commanded that images be made.

A little further on, God commands Moses to make images of cherubim and place them on the lid of the Ark of the Covenant.

Now cherubim are angels. They are among those realities that God had forbidden to be depicted, because they are among those who are in heaven.

Why don’t you read Scripture?

Solomon also had two cherubim made of olive wood placed in the temple chamber (1 Kings 6:23-28). In his palace there were also images, such as the statues of 12 oxen made of cast metal (1 Kings 7:23-26).

But, especially with the incarnation of the Word, the image takes on a new meaning. Christ is, in fact, “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). No one is surprised, therefore, if in the early centuries, especially in the catacombs, Jesus is depicted in the likeness of the Good Shepherd.

So what about the arrogant act of the Church?

I’ll give you some advice: before making accusations, humbly ask how things stand, and then you too will be happier.

9- Why did God feel the need to create man if he had already created angels, beings who were also capable of choosing whether or not to serve God?

God did not feel the need to create man. He was perfectly free not to create him.

And then: can God not communicate himself to all creatures who are capable of participating in him?

There are aspects of God’s life that are present in men but not in angels, such as biological fatherhood, creativity through work, merit, etc.

Thanking you in the hope of a reply, I send you my warmest regards,

and may God bless you.

Simone Michelangelo Muzzioli

I have finished my answers. But it is certainly my concern to entrust you to the One to whom the Lord entrusted you from the cross. I do so wholeheartedly and willingly.

And I will do so often.

I am convinced that in the end (hopefully soon) you will thank her when you discover that she is a mediator for the gift of true faith, as she was for the newlyweds at Cana.

I bless you.

Father Angelo

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