Jonathan Romig's Teaching Archive

Two Sundays ago someone asked my Sunday school class to sum up the Christmas message in as few words as possible. They wanted the Christmas message in a nutshell, and I immediately thought of the single word, “Immanuel.”

The Catholic Church acknowledges three types of respect paid to important figures in the Church. The first, “latria”, is worship and adoration reserved for God alone. “Dulia” is the veneration allotted for all of the Saints, and the last form, “hyperdulia”, is especially for the Virgin Mary. [1] The idea of formal veneration for anyone except God is a foreign concept for Protestants, but Mary has held an unique place in the Church since the Church Fathers. This place of honor expanded from a theological side note to the throne of Heaven during the era prior to the Reformation. This paper will seek to examine the rise of Mary's importance in Western Church doctrine and practice specifically from the second century until the twelfth.