Salvation through the Catholic faith is not possible without Mary. Mark Miraville, a leading advocate of Marian theology, states, “It is in the light of Mary’s unique and intimate cooperation with the Redeemer, both at the incarnation…and at the work of redemption at Calvary…that the Church has invoked Mary under the title “Coredemptrix.”

Have you ever been in the position of trying to educate someone on what their particular religion believes and practices? As a teacher of comparative religions for over thirty years, I’ve been confronted with that situation many times. It happens often with Catholics, especially on the topic of Mary.
Today, Mary, the mother of Jesus , is increasingly being given a prominence in Roman Catholicism which finds little or no support in the Bible. When a contrast is made between the biblical Mary and the Mary of Roman Catholic tradition, the result is two very different portraits of Mary. The Roman Catholic portrayal quite often obscures Christ. In many respects, the Mary of Rome is portrayed as a female parallel to Jesus.
For example, consider the following Catholic teachings: Jesus was born without sin; Mary was conceived without original sin. Jesus was sinless; Mary lived a sinless life. Jesus ascended to heaven following His resurrection; Mary was bodily assumed into heaven at the end of her earthly life. Jesus is a Mediator; Mary is Mediatrix. Jesus is a redeemer; Mary is co-redeemer. Jesus is the King; Mary is the queen of heaven.(1)
These things are true with regard to what the Catholic Church believes and teaches about Mary. And while each one deserves much more space than is available in this article, we will concern ourselves here only with Catholicism’s teaching that Mary was sinless along with the practice of praying to her. See here for more information on other points about Mary: https://arcapologetics.org/will-the-real-mary-please-stand-up/(2)
MARY WAS A SINNER
It has been my experience over the years that some Catholics do not understand the “immaculate conception” of Mary. Some have believed that this refers to Mary being impregnated by the Holy Spirit without carnal sex so she could give birth to Jesus. Somehow they have missed that this doctrine is not referring to Jesus’ conception, but rather the conception of Mary herself. However, folk Catholicism is not official Catholicism. The official position is that Mary, in her immaculate conception, was preserved from original sin. As such, she was miraculously preserved from the pollution of sin inherited from Adam. In both body and soul, she is believed by Catholics to be holy, stainless, spotless, undefiled, pure and innocent in every way. In his papal Bull Ineffabilis of 1854, Pope Pius IX defined Mary’s immaculate conception as follows:
[A]ccordingly, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for the honor of the Holy and undivided Trinity for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic religion, by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own: “We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.” (3)
This is not a suggestion by the Pope, rather an edict, something to be obeyed by all Catholics. How serious is it to reject this? The same Pope said, “Hence, if anyone shall dare–which God forbid–to think otherwise than has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith; that he has separated from the unity of the Church; and that furthermore, by his own action he incurs the penalties established by law if he should dare to express in words or writing or by other outward means the errors he thinks in his heart.”(4)
Virtually, all catechisms of the Catholic Church teach the sinless perfection of Mary. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, affirms the same. On page 252, paragraph 966, it says,” Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory,…”(5) Not only does the Roman Catholic Church teach she was without sin, it teaches she never died.
TO PRAY OR NOT TO PRAY TO MARY
It is logical for Catholics to make a connection between Mary’s sinless human nature and praying to her. All Catholics are not necessarily in agreement on all things including praying to Mary. However, we should not kid ourselves about language. Some say they don’t pray to Mary, but they ask Mary to pray for them either to the Father or to the Son. Whether it is asking Mary or the saints in heaven to pray for them, it is still using words that are in fact the same as praying. Asking, beseeching, urging, appealing, petitioning, communing with, talking to, etc., are all used as synonyms for praying.
Although some do not want to admit they are praying to Mary, the Catholic Church openly endorses praying to Mary. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, says, “Mary is the perfect Orans (pray-er), a figure of the Church. When we pray to her, we are adhering with her to the plan of the Father, …We can pray with her and to her. The Church is sustained by the prayer of Mary and united with it in hope.”(6)
Also, consider the following from the third novena of another Catholic source: “O Mother of Perpetual Help, thou art the dispenser of all the gifts which God grants to us miserable sinners; and for this end He has made thee so powerful, so rich, and so bountiful, in order that thou mayest help us in our misery. Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who have recourse to thee.
In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee I entrust my soul. Count me among thy most devoted servants; take me under thy protection, and it is enough for me. For, if thou protect me, I fear nothing; not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them; nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together; nor even from Jesus, my judge, because by one prayer from thee He will be appeased.
But one thing I fear: that in the hour of temptation I may through negligence fail to have recourse to thee and thus perish miserably. Obtain for me, therefore, the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the grace ever to have recourse to thee, O Mother of Perpetual Help.”(7)
RESPONSE
The prayer above confirms what the Catholic Church teaches in regard Mary being sinless and the issue of praying to her. In reference to the latter, we encounter the issue of praying to the dead. There is no Old or New Testament approval of this. Instead, the Bible looks upon this as a pagan practice and equivalent to necromancy (conjuring of the spirits of the dead) which is condemned in Deuteronomy 18: 10-13.
Addressing Mary as ‘the dispenser of all gifts’ is to mean that no salvific benefit can come to us without her mediation. The St. Peter Catechism of the Catholic Church asks, “Did God will to make our redemption and all its consequences depend upon the free consent of the Blessed Virgin Mary?” The Catechism answers, “God willed that our redemption and all its consequences should depend on the free consent of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”(8)
Salvation through the Catholic faith is not possible without Mary. Mark Miraville, a leading advocate of Marian theology, states, “It is in the light of Mary’s unique and intimate cooperation with the Redeemer, both at the incarnation…and at the work of redemption at Calvary…that the Church has invoked Mary under the title “Coredemptrix.”(9) Also, Pope Leo XIII wrote, “Every grace granted to man has three degrees in order: for by God, it is communicated to Christ, from Christ it passes to the Virgin, and from the Virgin it descends to us.”(10)
Granting Mary or any of the saints such a prominent position in salvation means that our Lord has other competitors for His one and only advocacy for us. Having others mediating between Him and mankind is contrary to biblical theology. Scripture says, “There is only one mediator between God and man, and that is the man Christ Jesus” (I Tim. 2:5). It is so because He, not Mary, angels, or saints, is qualified as our only mediator and it is to Him and Him only that we have access to our heavenly Father for salvation.  As Luke says in Acts 4:12, “ And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men[a] by which we must be saved.”
Clete Hux is Director of the Apologetics Resource Center headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. A Teaching Elder in the PCA, he has pastored churches in Alabama and South Carolina.

Ron Rhodes, The 10 Most Important Things You Can Say to a Catholic (Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 2002), 55.
Will the Real Mary Please Stand Up, Clete Hux, https://arcapologetics.org/will-the-real-mary-please-stand-up/
James White, Mary Another Redeemer? (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1998), 37.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), 252.
, p. 644
https://sacredheartparish.net/novena-prayers-to-our-mother-of-perpetual-help/
Peter Catechism (Liverpool: Print Organization, 1972), question 319.
Mark Miravalle, Mary: Coredemptrix Mediatrix Advocate (Santa Barbara, CA: Queenship Publishing Company, 1993), XV.
Pope Leo XIII, Jucunda Semper (1894).

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As Rachel was expiring from childbirth she named her son Benoni: son of my sorrows. And then Jacob’s cherished wife dies. Jacob had worked under Laban’s tyrannical demands for fourteen years in order to claim Rachel as his bride. She’d been barren for long years before bringing forth his beloved son Joseph. And now his bride perished in anguished sorrow. Jacob buried her in Bethlehem (Ramah is relatively nearby to Bethlehem). Rachel had prayed, “Give me children or I die” and it was in bringing forth her second son that she died. This baby boy was both a son of sorrow and a son of his father’s right hand.

The hallmark of Christmas is joy. Ear to ear grins. Hot chocolate mustaches. Gleeful shouts as presents are unwrapped. But your joy, true joy, is given to you by the grief of the Man of sorrows. The story of Christ’s birth, which brought glad tidings and peace on earth, is swiftly followed by a grisly tale of the ravenous wolf of sin. The Advent story, to put it another way, is no Hallmark movie. It doesn’t airbrush away the vileness of depravity, nor does it paper over the weight of our grief & suffering. The Advent story tells us that Jesus had come to engage in fierce combat with that ancient dragon. Christ in the manger is not a story of escapist sentimentality. It is the first jab & parry in the war He’d come to wage on evil.
The Text
Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
Matthew 2:16-18
Tyrannical Brutes
The slaughter of the infants of Bethlehem is staggering. Herod stands in a long line of brutes who use their throne to slaughter the innocent. Pharaoh killed the Hebrew infants. Saul deputized Doeg (an Edomite like Herod) to slaughter the priests in Nob for helping David. Nebuchadnezzar starved the Jews of Jerusalem (during the two year siege, circa 587BC), and then as he marched them off to exile he brutally slaughtered many of them (Cf. Lam. 2:19-22, Ps 137:8-9, 2 Ki. 25:20-21).
The thing which set Herod off was the wise men refusing to cooperate with his design to destroy the Christ-child. Herod had been informed that Bethlehem was prophesied to be the birthplace of the new davidic king (Micah 5:2), and he knew that the star had appeared less than two years before, implying the baby was no older than that. Caesar Augustus is said to have stated that he’d rather be one of Herod’s swine than one of his sons. Herod’s brutality was well-known. But in the slaughter of Bethlehem’s sons, his wicked wrath is put on full and gruesome display.
Adam & Eve submitted to the Serpent, and reduced mankind to the level of brute. The first tyrant bludgeoned his brother. Man’s depravity always leads to murder. It leads to devouring others. The coming of Christ the King is good news, and this is put in stark relief when contrasted with the reign of Man in bondage to sin and Satan. Herod is the City of Man. He is a mirror held up to us to see the depravity of the human heart. But in Christ, the Kingdom of God has come upon us.
Weeping Exiles
Matthew tells us that this slaughter was a fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy in Jeremiah 31:15, “Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.”
When the Babylonians took the Jews into exile, they released Jeremiah at Ramah: “Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had let him go from Ramah, when he had taken him being bound in chains among all that were carried away captive of Jerusalem and Judah, which were carried away captive unto Babylon (Jer 40:1).” Jeremiah then is taken down to Egypt by a remnant of Jewish leaders (Jer. 42-43). Meanwhile, Jerusalem’s young men in particular were being cruelly slaughtered at Riblah (Jer. 52:27). There are echoes of Jeremiah in the story of Joseph whisking his wife and son down to Egypt (in fulfillment of another prophecy, Cf. Mt. 2:15), while Herod’s henchmen slaughter Bethlehem’s boys.
This is the context for Jeremiah’s prophecy. His prophecy had a two-fold fulfillment; first in the events that shortly followed his prophecy. But these events themselves become a type of the slaughter of Bethlehem’s sons. Both Nebuchadnezzar & Herod are non-davidic kings slaughtering the sons of Israel. A theme we’ll revisit in a future sermon. For now, it suits our purpose to simply make mention of it.
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It is the strength of the Lord that preserves and keeps us persevering. In this truth, let us also remember that it is “the joy of the Lord that is our strength” (Nehemiah 8:10) and let us remain faithful to the Lord and his people wherever he has placed us. This, ultimately, is how Calvinism shapes Christian ministry.

Every pastor, at one point or another, stands in a similar position to the Prophet Elijah—looking at the enemies that surround us, the sheep that bite us, and the weakness within us, we often cry out, “I, even I only, am left a prophet of the LORD” (1 Kings 18:22). The trials of the Christian life can feel overwhelming and, when coupled with the dangers of pastoring, it is little surprise that many ministers and stewards of the gospel sometimes feel the crushing weight of despair. Our strength can seemingly fail, our hope grow dim, and our joy dissipate.
Often, we find ourselves like Peter. As the Lord calls us to minister in some extraordinary way (all ministering, at its heart, is extraordinary, whether it be seen by thousands, hundreds, tens, or one), we find ourselves sinking in the waves of fear and doubt. We are like Peter in Matthew 14:29–30 wherein, “[Jesus] said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus.But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, ‘Lord, save me.’”
If it were up to us as Christians to keep ourselves saved, we would daily fail. We would be eternally lost. If it were up to our faith or our works to secure the continuance of our salvation, then none of us would ever prevail. We do not have the strength or power within ourselves to either be saved or stay saved.
Praise the Lord, then, that as tightly as we cling to Christ, he clings even more tightly to us still. If salvation hinged at all on our efforts, then we would not be strong enough to uphold our salvation. But salvation depends not on us. Salvation depends on Christ.
It is not the extent of our faith that saves, but the object of our faith—the Lord Jesus Christ—who both saves and secures us to himself. It not the number of our works that save or secure us, but the finished work of Christ that saves us eternally (Jn 19:30).
The doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints promises that our salvation in Christ is secure, that eternal life is ours and will never be lost, and that God will finish the good work he began within us (Phil 1:6).
Perseverance of the Saints and the Everlasting Certainty of Salvation
Perseverance of the Saints is the final letter of the TULIP acronym, and it outlines for the believer the certain and comforting truth that we who belong to Christ will never be lost by Christ. We who are saved are saved eternally.
Perseverance itself is a word that describes the everlasting continuance of something. It explains how those who have repented of their sin and trusted in Christ, who have been washed by the blood of Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit, been forgiven, redeemed, and saved, will continue within that salvation.
Philippians 1:6 provides one of the most encouraging verses in this regard, as it comfortingly promises, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” God not only began the work of salvation within us, but he will complete the work. The Golden Chain of salvation will  never  be broken. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom 8:29–30). The promise is that God, who foreknew and predestined us unto salvation before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4), elected us to an everlasting salvation.
Indeed, Perseverance of the Saints is the culmination of the other four letters of the TULIP acronym. We are born into this world as  totally depraved  sinners, dead in our trespasses and sins and absolutely incapable of saving ourselves or coming to saving faith on our own. Yet, God, by his gracious and sovereign will,  unconditionally  elected  a number of sinners unto salvation. Those whom God has  unconditionally elected—according to his providential purposes within predestination—he sent Jesus, the Son of God, to this earth to die for. At the cross, Jesus  limitedly atoned  for the sins of those whom the Father had elected and promised to him. At the time appointed by the Father, the Holy Spirit now effectually applies salvation to elect sinners through the preaching of the gospel by drawing them to Christ with an  irresistible grace. Those who are  irresistibly  drawn to Christ will be  kept  and  preserved  by this same sovereign and amazing grace of God.
This means that our salvation, from beginning to end, is a Trinitarian work of God. The Father planned our salvation, the Son purchased our salvation, and the Holy Spirit now applies our salvation. As Jesus promised in John 10:28–30: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
Because of these promises, we can know with absolute certainty that we who are saved are never in danger of losing our salvation. We will be kept by God because we are triply and eternally secure in Christ. Held in the hands of the Son, whose hands are wrapped in the hands of the Father, we are also filled and sealed by the Holy Spirit.
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