20 Answers- Mary by Tim Staples

Author:Tim Staples [Staples, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catholic Answers Press
Published: 2016-06-21T05:00:00+00:00

13. Doesn’t the Bible condemn the idea of a “Queen of Heaven”?

Earlier we saw multiple reasons why Catholics honor Mary with the title Queen of Heaven and Earth. This dignity gifted to Mary by God is deeply biblical and has been understood in the Church for 2,000 years, but many Protestants I speak to cannot get past one biblical text from the Old Testament that casts a shadow over this topic. And that text is Jeremiah 7:18:

Do you not see what they are doing in the streets of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger.

In Roman Catholics and Evangelicals—Agreements and Differences, Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie claim, “To call Mary ‘Queen of Heaven,’ knowing that this very phrase comes from an old pagan idolatrous cult condemned in the Bible (cf. Jer. 7:18), only invites the charge of Mariolatry. And Mariolatry is idolatry.”34

I can certainly sympathize with their thinking here. I once thought the same. But the truth is: this text has absolutely nothing to do with the Blessed Mother as Queen of Heaven, for at least three reasons:

1. Jeremiah here condemns the adoration of the Mesopotamian goddess Astarte.35 She is in no way related to Mary. In fact, “she” did not and does not exist in reality. Mary, on the other hand, was a real historical person who was—and is—a queen by virtue of the fact that her son was—and is—the king, as we have seen.

2. Jeremiah condemned offering sacrifice to “the queen of heaven.” In Scripture, we have many examples of the proper way we should honor great members of the kingdom of God. We give “double honor” to “elders who rule well” in the Church (1 Tim. 5:17). St. Paul tells us we should “esteem very highly” those who are “over [us] in the Lord” (1 Thess. 5:12–13). We sing praises to great members of the family of God who have gone before us (Psalm 45:17). We bow down to them with reverence (1 Kings 2:19). We carry out the work of the Lord in their names (Matt. 10:40–42, DRV), and more. But there is one thing we ought never to do: offer sacrifice to them. Offering sacrifice is tantamount to the adoration that is due God alone. And this is precisely what Jeremiah was condemning. The Catholic Church does not teach—and has never taught—that we give Mary the adoration due to God, or that we should offer sacrifice to her.36

3. To Geisler and MacKenzie, and to millions of Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, the mere fact that worshipping someone called “queen of heaven” is condemned in Jeremiah 7 eliminates the possibility of Mary being the true Queen of Heaven and Earth. This simply does not follow. The existence of a counterfeit queen does not mean there can’t be an authentic one. This reasoning followed

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