Exposing the Cult of Mary

Yes, we’re familiar with the hoary canard: “We are honouring Mary, not worshipping her!” This is by no means new.

Every false religion has its public defensive cliche.

The Muslims will say: “Islam is peace!”

Mormons would say “We are not polytheists!”

Even Satanists would say “We don’t worship Satan!”

Once you peel off the surface, however, you will see that these claims are empty. What Catholics say to non-Catholics about Mary and what they actually offer to her are miles apart.

Personally, I’ll have to chuckle a bit whenever a Catholic tells me they don’t really worship Mary.

You see, it’s possible for one to master the art of deception to the point that one is not only deceiving others, but also oneself.

Catholic “saint” Alphonsos Liguori, wrote a Marian book, “The Glories of Mary” (fully authorized by the Catholic church) a compendium of all the tributes to Mary going back to the 5th century. Here are some quotes from it:

“So that recourse to Mary is a most secure means to conquer all the assaults of hell; for She, says St. Bernadine of Sienna, is even the Queen of Hell, and the Sovereign Mistress of the devils since She it is who tames and crushes them” (p. 143)

“At the command of Mary, all obey, even God” (p. 566)

“O Mary, sweet refuge of poor sinners. Assist me with thy mercy. Banish me from the infernal enemies and come thou to take my soul and present it to the eternal judge. My Queen, do not abandon me. I give you my heart and soul” (p. 670)

Technically, the Catholic Mary is the ‘most secured means’ of having victory over demons, since she is their queen and perhaps, also speaks their language.

She commands God, replaces Christ and is also the Spouse of the Holy Spirit. In essence, their Mary has stolen away the glory from the Trinity.

If Mary is not being worshipped, why the prayer: “I give you my heart and soul?” Why not give your soul to Jesus? Why to anyone else? Only God demands and deserves one’s “heart and soul.”

How can Catholics give their hearts and souls to Mary and then come out to say they are not worshipping her? Can we get real here?

Some Catholics respond that “Liguori was extreme in some views. But it’s the Church that determines what we believe.” Really? Then why did this “infallible” Church endorse his writings and make him a doctor of the Church?

Maybe these Catholics need to be silent and let their “infallible” Magisterium do the talking on this issue.

On one hand, Catholics deny worshipping Mary, but in reality, the facts indicate that Mary is the chief deity of Catholicism.

I. The emphasis on “Mary”

You can travel the world over to every Catholic church you know. Whether it’s in a massive cathedral or a wayside village chapel, the statue of “Mary” always occupies a prominent place.

I read about an exquisite Catholic cathedral named “Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.” It has depictions of the different forms of “Mary” on each of its bronze doors.

On one is the Virgin of Pomata. On another, the Virgin of Guadulupe, then you have the Virgin of the Cave, the black Virgin, the Virgin of Mercy, the Virgin of the Candlestick, the Virgin of the Rosary of Chinquinqura and a host of them.

Are we to believe one deceased Jewish woman has mutated into a thousand different nationalistic Marys? Of course not. What we see there is a repackaging of ancient goddesses of different cultures to fit into the cult of Mary.

Some apologists of Rome resort to word games. They argue that they offer Mary hyperdulia (special veneration), while other saints are given dulia (veneration) and Christ is offered latria (worship). This is untrue:

(a) According to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Terms (p. 141), the Greek root of the word Douleia from which the word “dulia” is formed, means “bondage” or “condition of being a slave.”

When Catholics say they offer Mary hyperdulia, what it actually means is that they are in super bondage or super slavery to “Mary.” If this is not goddess worship, I don’t know what it is.

(b) The Greek words dulia and latria are synonyms. They do not distinguish worship. Rome’s distinctions are artificial.

They would say “But we venerate our parents.” That may be true, but since Catholics don’t venerate their parents the way they venerate their Mary, this is a false equivocation.

The same gestures Catholics offer Mary are the same pagans offer their mother goddesses, so what’s the difference?

II. Attached divine attributes

a) One of the hymns to Mary in the Baltimore catechism (No. 1, 63) reads:

Daily, daily, sing to Mary
Sing, sing, my soul, her prayers due
All her feasts, her actions worship
With the heart’s devotion true
She is mighty to deliver
Call her, trust her lovingly
When the tempest rages round thee
She will calm the troubled sea

You can see that the Catholic Mary receives the very worship that an angel of God rejected from John in Revelation 19:10.

God is the only One who is mighty to deliver. He says “Call unto me, and I will answer thee…” (Jer. 33:3).

In Psalm 89:10 God is the One who “rules the raging sea; [He] stills its swelling waves.”

So from this hymn it’s clear that the Catholic goddess has replaced God.

b) A Catholic publication dedicated to ‘Our Lady of Fatima’ declares:

“Mary is so perfectly united with the Holy Spirit that He acts only through [her] His spouse … all our life, every thought, word, and deed is in Her hands…at every moment, She Herself must instruct, guide, and transform each one of us into Herself, so that not we but She lives in us, as Jesus lives in Her, and the Father in the Son” (Soul Magazine, November-December, 1984, 4).

Why will the Holy Spirit be acting only through Mary? He has been acting from eternity past before Mary was even born.

Our lives are in God’s hands, not Mary. And we are being transformed into the image of Christ, not of Mary.

It is Christ who lives in Christians, not Mary (Col. 1:27) and we also live in Christ (Rom. 8:1). For Mary to be able to live in every Catholic, she would have to be omnipresent like God.

Obviously, the Mary of Catholicism is not the Mary of the Bible, but a diabolical counterfeit.

III. Marian Devotion

One of the prayers to Mary reads: “Hail Mary … My Queen! My Mother! I give myself, and to show my devotion to thee, I consecrate to thee my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my heart, my entire self. Wherefore, O loving Mother, as I am thine own, keep me, defend me as thy property and possession.”

Nothing here glorifies God or Jesus Christ. Nowhere in Scripture would you find the apostle Paul or Peter teaching people to pray to anyone other than to God.

It doesn’t matter how Catholics slice the cake, they pray more to this “goddess” Mary than God.

Why would God redirect millions of daily prayers to Mary? Or how can a finite mind process millions of prayers in different languages per day? It’s absolutely impossible.

In a publication by the Legion of Mary group which had received “apostolic blessings” from two popes, we read:

“Put thy feet into her fetters, and thy neck into her chains.
Bow down thy shoulder and bear her and be not grieved with her bonds.
Come to her with all thy mind; and keep her ways with all thy power…” (The Legion of Mary, 1975, p. 225)

Though popes have affinity for particular Madonnas as well, Catholics are still far more devoted to Mary than to the pope.

When Mary speaks, Rome must listen. Who is even the pope compared to Mary? When Lucia, (one of the 3 children of Fatima) received three “secrets” from their Lady in 1929, she sent them to the Vatican in sealed envelopes and instructed that they must not be opened until 1960. The pope dared not disobey.

She told Pope Pius XII that “Mary” demands that the whole world – especially Russia – be consecrated to her. He instantly obeyed.

Yet Lucia was just a nun, and was technically subordinate to the pope. But when a nun or even a lay person becomes Mary’s mouthpiece and is channelling directives from the Queen of heaven, who cares about holy ranks?

Once a visionary of Rome has messages from the Queen Mother herself, which he/she can dangle about like the sword of Damocles, the Magisterium must surrender.

For example, if Lucia had said Mary told her Pope Benedict XVI was an anti-pope, who are the Catholics going to side with – a pope or Mary’s mouthpiece?

The entire cult of Mary emanated from ancient paganism. This is why even pagans today see no difference between their goddess and the Catholic Mary.

Many Witches/New Agers believe that their goddess has had many names and forms all through history but has now emerged as the Catholic Mary. A New Ager, Peter LeMesurier, described her saying:

“It was none than the rounded form of the Great Mother, Earth herself, clad in the same flowering robes of the shimmering blue and white that had been those of mother goddesses of earth and sky throughout history and not least his most recent mother goddess, the Virgin Mary herself…” (The Armageddon Script, Element Books, 1981, pp. 245-6).

Further evidence of this amalgam can be seen in some titles used for the Catholic Mary. She is called “stella maris” or “beautiful star of the sea.” This has been the title of the Egyptian Isis.

She is also called “pelagris” which means “star of the ocean.” The Canaanite goddess Asherah was also called ‘Lady of the Sea.’ According to a work:

“Ashera was called ‘the Lady of the Sea’, which links her to the Sumerian Nammu, and to the Egyptian Isis, ‘born in the all-wetness’ … Her other title was the ‘Mother of the Gods’, as was the Sumerian Ninhursag’s, and among her seventy children were her sons Baal and Mot and her daughter Anath. Kings were nourished from her breasts, as they had been by the goddess in Sumeria and Egypt” (Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, Penguin books, 1991, p. 454).

There is no connection between the Mary of the Bible and the sea. Catholics who sing “Ave Maria, O beautiful mother … beautiful star of the sea,” are singing to a big demon, not Mary.

The Bible talks about demonic principalities in the sea (see Ezk. 29:3-4, Is. 27:1, Job 3-8). In Africa, virtually all cultures pay homage to or worship water deities.

It’s not a coincidence that there are references to Mary’s “virginal breasts” in Catholic hymnals. The goddess Diana of Ephesus was pictured as having many breasts as well. It has been an emblem of fertility.

In Catholic art, Mary is often represented as being surrounded by a halo or nimbus. According to a 33 degree Mason, Manly P. Hall, “the oval or nimbus in which the figure stands represents the glorification of the Creative Power as exemplified in motherhood” (The Secret Teachings of All Ages, p. 17).

The same terms Catholics use to address their Mary goddess in prayer sounds just like those used by Witches. Here is an example of a chant in some covens:

Queen of Heaven; Queen of Hell
Horned Hunter of the night
Lend thy power unto the spell
And work my will by magic rite

Some covens invoke her saying:

“Diana, Queen of the night;
In all your beauty; shine on us here
And with your silver beam; Unlock the gates of dream…
I invoke and call upon thee, Mighty Mother of us all, bringer of all fruitfulness … Hail Aradia! From the Amalthean Horn; Pour forth thy store of love; I lowly bend…”

Compare these chants with those prayed to Catholic goddess and you can see that though the names are different, the entity being contacted is the same.

It was this same goddess that ensnared the people of God in Scripture and took their hearts away from Him.

“And they forsook the LORD and served Baal and Ashtaroth” (Jud. 2:13). And God’s response? “And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers…” (vs. 14)

When Solomon’s heart was turned away from God he “went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians…” (1Kings 11:5).

This was God’s response: “I will surely rend the kingdom from thee…And the LORD stirred up an adversary unto Solomon” (vs. 11, 14).

The same continues today. God’s response to those who worship this mistress of the devils and queen of hell has not changed.

Dear friends, renounce her worship and escape from her clutches before it’s too late.