“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, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me" (Exodus 20:4-5) |
John Paul II: Mary's in Life and in Death by David Cloud
Though widely praised by evangelical Protestant and even Baptist leaders, the late Pope John Paul II lived and died for Rome’s mythical Mary.
Engraved in his wooden coffin, viewed at what has been called “the world’s largest funeral,” was a large letter M for Mary (The Evening Standard, London, Apr. 8, 2005).
Thus his papal career ended as it began. When elected Pope in 1978, Karol Wojtyla of Poland dedicated his papacy to Mary, taking as his episcopal motto the Latin words “Totus Tuus,” meaning “Totally Yours” (“John Paul II’s Devotion to Mary,” Inside the Vatican, special insert, May 1996).
He had these words of devotion to Mary embroidered on his papal robes. In his 1994 autobiographyCrossing the Threshold of Faith, which sold four million copies in the first year alone, he said: “TotusTuus. This phrase is not only an expression of piety, or simply an expression of devotion. It is more. During the Second World War, while I was employed as a factory worker, I came to be attracted to Marian devotion. ... Mary is the new Eve, placed by God in relation to Christ, the new Adam, beginning with the Annunciation, through the night of his birth in Bethlehem, through the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee, through the Cross of Calvary, and up to the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Mother of Christ the Redeemer is the Mother of the Church. ... the Mother of God shares in a unique way in the Resurrection and in the Glory of her own Son...”
John Paul II venerated Mary on every occasion, private and public. It was his custom to pray the Rosary before an image of Mary on the first Saturday of every month. The Madonna of the Immaculate Conception was brought from the Vatican collection for the occasion.
John Paul II worshipped at Marian shrines throughout the world, from the Black Madonna in Jasna Gora, Poland, to Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, to Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico.
He continually exalted Mary in his sermons. We are told that on his trip to Latin America in 1996 he “ended every speech by exalting Mary” (“John Paul Woos Straying Flock,” Christianity Today, April 8, 1996, p. 94).
John Paul II dedicated papal encyclicals to Mary. In the one in March 1987, titled Redemptoris Mater, he stated that his objective was to awaken and deepen Marian devotion and he called on all Christians to look to “our common Mother” as “a way of bringing about unity between the divided churches of the world.” In the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, published in March 1995, John Paul II said that Mary is the “mother of all who are reborn to life” and that by bringing forth Jesus into the world “she in some way brought to rebirth all those who were to live by that Life.” He concluded by praying, “O Mary, bright dawn of the new world, Mother of the living, to you do we entrust the cause of life.”
READ MORE: http://www.wayoflife.org/index_files/john_paul_II_marys_in_life_and_death.html
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