Mary: Fourth Person in the Trinity?

By Dr. Daniel R. Galassini

Is the Virgin Mary of Catholicism an icon, an idol, or a satanic deception?

There is a movement afoot to make Mary, Christ's mother, "Co-redeemer." -LA Times

"Petition Urges Pope to Proclaim Mary as a 'Co-Redeemer'" -John Rivera,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: May 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9798890418395

Dr. Daniel R. Galassini

Dr. Galassini is a lifelong resident of New Mexico, and there he attended Catholic school for twelve years. He received his Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degrees from Kansas State University and practiced for thirty-eight years in Albuquerque. He was a lay minister in his church for a number of years, during which time he began a serious study of Scripture. He and his wife (of fifty-seven years) have four children and seven grandchildren.

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Mary

Fourth Person of the Trinity?

By Dr. Daniel R. Galassini

Trilogy Christian Publishers

A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

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Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Daniel R. Galassini

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture texts marked NAB in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

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Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 979-8-89041-838-8

ISBN 979-8-89041-839-5 (ebook)

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Acknowledgment

I am indebted to my high school sweetheart and wonderful wife, Jerryl, for the many hours she spent reading and rereading this text and for her encouragement and prayers during the process of getting this book published.

I also wish to thank the many people at our church who read, prayed for, and encouraged the completion of this book, and a very special thanks to our pastors Mike and Lee and to my brother in the Lord, Tom, who critiqued this text on a very short notice.

Finally, I wish to thank the wonderful people at Trilogy Publishing for their masterful work and encouragement throughout this process.

Introduction

The thrust of this text is to alert the reader about a movement that is taking place to make the mother of Our Lord a Coredeemer. From the time of Pope John Paul II to the present pope, many petitions have been presented to urge the pontiff to proclaim Mary Coredeemer as dogma. Numerous articles and books have been written advocating this doctrine and pushing for its proclamation. A cursory search on the Internet will avail one to the many websites devoted to this issue. Though vehemently denied by many of the clergy and advocates in the Catholic Church, this new accolade is, in essence, making Mary equal to Christ concerning one’s salvation.

I hope to make the reader aware of how, over the centuries, Christ’s mother has been given such a high position in the Catholic Church that she has usurped many of the powers and honors that belong to Christ alone—dispenser of all grace, intercessor, and mediator, to mention a few.

Could the worship of Mary that the Catholic Church refers to as hyperdulia (a special form of honoring Mary as opposed to dulia, which is the honor given to other saints as denoted by the Catholic Church) be a form of idolatry? Could the apparitions of Mary that are being reported all over the world in increasing numbers be a satanic deception?

Catholic literature is replete with reports of visions of supernatural beings, be they angels, Jesus, or departed saints. But from the eleventh and twelfth centuries on, when devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus, began to gain broad acceptance, Marian apparitions dominated these reports.

Reports of Marian apparitions declined during the sixteenth century, possibly due to the Inquisition and the Reformation, but it was during this time that a major apparition took place in the New World, namely, the appearance of Mary to Juan Diego in Mexico and known as the Lady of Guadalupe.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have brought forth a new revival and interest in the supernatural, and reports of Marian apparitions have accrued in number and public interest and have continued into the twenty-first century. In the past 200 years, the apparitions seem to be of a more public nature (i.e., the visionaries are surrounded by people as they are in a state of ecstasy) as opposed to private visions.

There are a few major apparitions that I will deal with in an attempt to discern the validity of apparitions in general in relation to biblical teaching. They include Guadalupe, Mexico; La Salette, France; Lords, France; Fatima, Portugal; and Medjugorje, Yugoslavia.

I propose to take what Mary is reported to have said during these apparitions and scrutinize these messages with what the Bible says. The messages are presumed to be accurate translations by those who have taken the task of transcribing them and documenting them. I have sought to verify what the visionaries have said from more than one source when possible.

What I hope to be able to show the reader is that there are inconsistencies in the messages with what the Bible says, that these inconsistencies are obvious and perhaps even heretical, and thus, if it is not biblical and therefore not of God, then it is of Satan. A house divided against itself cannot stand, Jesus said (Matthew 12:25). I realize that there are many miracles associated with these apparitions, and this would be considered as good fruit. But are they from God?

The author wishes to cast no aspersions at the many devotees, as he once was, of Mary or at the mother of our Savior. I do ask that you, the reader, read with discernment and not take anything I might say as truth but that you test the spirit. That is, do as the Bereans did and test the spirit and search the Scriptures. If it is the truth and faithful to the Scriptures, then I give the credit to the Holy Spirit. If I err, then I take the blame. My hope is that this text will help guide those who wish to use it as an apologetics tool with their Catholic friends, and for the Catholic reader, I hope that this will help you to discern if the many devotions and the many appearances and visions that we read about are of God. I take this task seriously and with love; I hope that I can convey this to the reader throughout this text.

I was raised Catholic, attended Catholic school for twelve years, and was taught to have a devotion to Mary. I have said hundreds of rosaries and was taught that Mary was the way to Christ and thus to God. I was always a little uncomfortable with the many devotionals and veneration practices that were associated with Mary and with the other saints and relics and icons that permeate Catholic ritual. I certainly was one who, if asked, would have said that I did not worship Mary but simply venerate her out of respect for Our Lord. But as we shall see, this act of veneration has taken on a whole other meaning to the extent that there is a movement in progress today to make her the Co-redemptrix for the salvation of mankind. This is, in my opinion, not only heresy but an affront to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, whose finished work on the cross is diluted if not upstaged.

When I began to study the Word in depth, I began to realize that there really was something wrong with making her a coredeemer. I realized that we have a jealous God who said:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I the Lord your God, am a jealous God.

Exodus 20:1–5

Yet we see at the many shrines dedicated to the Virgin Mary people literally crawling on their hands and knees to the altars that are dedicated to her. Mary takes first place, and Christ is hard to be found in all this. Oh yes, we are told by the clergy that there is a distinction between veneration and worship, but where is it, and how does one reconcile the difference in light of Exodus 20?

Mary, it seems, as we progress through the centuries, takes on her own agenda and has her own plan for salvation, even to the extent of holding back the hand of Jesus so that He would not bring destruction to the world. The reader will see this documented in many of the messages given to the seers of the various apparitions that follow in the chapters of this text.

I cannot argue with the fact that many miracles are associated with these apparitions, but are they of God? Satan is said to be disguised as an angel of light, the most beautiful and most powerful of God’s creation. He can and has duplicated many of the miracles of God as we see throughout the Bible. Is he not capable of performing the many miracles that people see associated with the many apparitions observed all over the world? He was, for example, a serpent when he appeared to Adam and Eve. In Egypt, he, through Pharaoh’s priests, changed each priest’s staff into a serpent and duplicated many other miracles. Satan has powers beyond our imagination. He can take on many forms and produce not only miracles but also devastation as we see with poor Job.

I hope to show how Mariology has evolved through the writings of many of the theologians of the Catholic Church over the centuries, how one error has given way to the next, and how the Roman Catholic Church has not only given its blessing to these ideas but has encouraged them and made them dogma (a doctrine that is required to be believed under pain of mortal sin—a sin that is serious enough to send one to hell). We shall see how the next major accolade given to her will be that of Co-redemptrix, and if it was a dogma, this would make her, in essence, the fourth person of the Trinity.

This text is intended to be an aid to Protestants who have Catholic friends whom they wish to inform. It is intended to help former Catholics who are having a hard time understanding what their relationship should be to Mary with regard to the traditions of the Catholic Church, but, more importantly, in light of Holy Scripture. Finally it is intended to help those Catholics who are having doubts (as I once did) about traditions and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church concerning Mary. My hope is that all will find a true understanding of Mary, Christ’s mother, and a renewed love for our Savior, Jesus Christ.

All I ask of the reader is to pray for guidance and discernment.

Chapter I: Why Are So Many Drawn to Mary? A History

Mary’s motherly qualities are especially emphasized in Catholicism. A mother is best able to rescue her children from disaster, they say. This is a beautiful concept. It is appealing to think that the Virgin Mary, Christ’s mother, the Mother of God (as she is referred to in Catholicism), the one who is so very close to and beloved by God, would be appointed by God to intercede for us and to intervene in history to change a predetermined course of events, especially if those events were of chastisement, punishment, and doom.

It is accepted and taught by the Roman Catholic Church and understood by the laity that this ability to intercede involves an explicit transfer of power from God to Christ’s mother. God represents divine law, and Mary represents divine mercy. This is appealing if one views our Father and Jesus as judgmental instead of loving and forgiving. This is not the God I know, and it is not the God of the Bible. Mary is said to be so loved by God that she is bestowed this privilege and given this power. There is thus an interplay between a judgmental God and a merciful mother.

At the apparition of Mary at La Salette in France, God is portrayed as an angry God. Mary is to have said to Melanie and Maximin (the seers) that the arm of her (Mary’s) son was so heavy and pressing that she could no longer restrain it, that only her unceasing entreaties had thus far held back the chastisement, and the people would never be able to repay her for this. What is wrong with this picture? In the first place, God is perfectly capable of holding back His own hand, though we certainly may well deserve punishment for sin; secondly, the apparition figure here says that the people could never repay her for her effort. That is what grace is all about. It is a gift, and it is not required that it be repaid, or it is no longer a gift and, therefore, no longer grace. Paul expresses it this way, And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace; otherwise work is no longer work (Romans 11:6).

At San Damiano, Italy, in 1960, Rosa (the seer) said the Heavenly Momma told her that the Eternal Father was tired of her (Mary’s) children down there. The Eternal Father wants to do justice! I repeat it! Why do you not reflect? Why do you not examine your consciences.¹ Again, it is Mary who is worried about us, not God.

At La