In 1 Kings, Chapter 2, Bathsheba sits at the right hand of Solomon and pleads on behalf of his people. She is our greatest advocate, guiding us ever closer to her Son. And it is principally in souls that she is more glorified with her Son than in all visible creatures, and so we can call her, as the Saints do, the Queen of All Hearts.
Each day, Jesus builds the kingdom of God person by person inside of us. Her own life and example followed this same configuration, patterned after Christ. She is a creature and God is God. Like any Christian, Mary knows her talents and abilities are not for her own sake, but rather to serve others. Her role of queen of our hearts and our souls flows from that role as most humble mother.
After the thousand years of the Millennium, according to Scripture, ". Except for Luke and Revelation 12, the aforementioned texts refer to faithful Christians in general. Yet if they apply to all faithful Christians, then surely they also apply to Mary specifically, especially given her deep union with her Son.
If all faithful Christians are to reign with Christ as "kings" and "queens," it makes no sense to object to calling Mary "Queen," for she, too, is a faithful follower of Jesus — the preeminently faithful follower of Jesus, in fact. Christian royal dignity also comes from one of the underlying principles of discipleship and divine service — the humility of service.
The true disciple humbles himself and puts God first. As a result, God exalts him and honors him 1 Pet This is what the Lord meant when He said, "For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted" Lk and "Let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves" Lk Mary's humble service to God of saying "yes" to the Incarnation and the Crucifixion of her Son established her as "Queen" of the New Covenant, reigning with her divine Son.
One aside worth mentioning: some feminist Catholics defend Mary's Queenship by proposing Mary as the "divine feminine" element needed to "balance out" the "masculine" divine imagery of Scripture and traditional theology, i. This is a serious mistake because it is apt to be understood as confusing the distinction between the Creator and even the greatest of His creations, the Blessed Virgin.
In effect, it confirms all the worst stereotypes of Catholicism. Now we turn to some specific objections often raised against the doctrine. The Queenship of Mary makes her "the Fourth Person of the Trinity," giving her a divine dignity that no mere creature can claim.
But this objection doesn't engage what the Church actually believes about Mary; it is based on 1 a misunderstanding of Marian teaching; 2 a deliberate misstatement of that teaching; or 3 an invalid inference from an exaggerated, distorted practice of some misguided Catholics. Catholicism teaches that only God is King in the absolute sense. Even so, through Jesus Christ, God shares His royal dignity with others, as we have seen, making them a "royal nation" hence "kings" and "queens" in heaven.
By calling Mary "Queen," Catholics claim only a derivative royal for Mary, not an absolute one possessed by God alone. Giving Mary the title of Queen or Queen of Heaven succumbs to the idolatrous worship of a feminine, pagan deity condemned in the Old Testament. According to anti-Catholic Fundamentalist author Dave Hunt, "The only 'queen of heaven mentioned in Scripture is an idol which was worshipped by the pagans and to which the Jewish women gave offerings, bringing the wrath of God upon them" A Woman Rides the Beast, p.
It is true that the Old Testament refers to a false divinity known as the Queen of Heaven cf. Jer ; — apparently the Assyrian-Babylonian fertility goddess Ishtar.
But since the Catholic Church doesn't worship Mary as a deity — whether as Ishtar or any other goddess — the objection is flawed. Furthermore, the fact that a false goddess in the Old Testament was called "Queen of Heaven" does not mean Mary cannot rightly be given the title in an altogether different sense, as the Queen Mother of the King of Kings in New Testament. False deities in the Old Testament were often called "God" or "Lord". Does that mean we cannot invoke the true God by these titles?
The fact that a particular title is idolatrously used in one context doesn't preclude it being non-idolatrously used in another. The fact that the Devil or the wicked King of Babylon, depending on your interpretation is called "the morning star" in Isaiah does not mean we cannot use the same title to refer to Jesus, as in 2 Peter and Revelation Many heathen converts to Christianity in the early Church retained from their pagan roots a need for a feminine deity.
Mary came to fulfill this need and many of titles formerly given to pagan feminine deities were transferred to her. The problem with this objection is that it succumbs to the same sort of reductionism Protestants rightly reject when it is applied to Jesus. If we argue that Catholic doctrine regarding Mary's Queenship is just "baptized paganism," cannot the same be said as it is said by many anti-Christian writers of the Incarnation, death and Resurrection of Jesus? Pagan myths of dying and rising gods abound: Dionysius, Osiris, Adonis, etc.
Parallels can certainly be drawn between them and the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and Redemption. But such parallels prove nothing — certainly they do not prove that Jesus Christ is just one more dying god myth. Sometimes anti-Catholics get so worked up about Marian devotion that things, which should be obvious to them, get missed. For example, in his book Babylon Mystery Religion p. Even this was adopted and applied to Mary, for in almost every Roman Catholic Church on the continent of Europe may be seen pictures of Mary the same way!
Woodrow claims a pagan origin for what, in fact, comes straight from the Bible — the New Testament image of the Queen of Heaven. His anti-Catholic, anti-Marian bent is so strong and he is so eager to find a link between Catholic doctrine and paganism, he misses the scriptural reference.
Regarding the pagan parallel theory, Protestant theologian Karl Barth — no friend of Catholic teaching about Mary — declared: "It is not recommended that we should base our repudiation [of Marian doctrine] on the assertion that there has taken place here an irruption from the heathen sphere, an adoption of the idea, current in many non-Christian religions, of a more or less central and original female or mother deity.
In dogmatics you can establish everything and nothing from parallels from the history of religions Church Dogmatics, Vol. Notwithstanding certain fears Martin Luther had about a misuse of the term, he taught that the title "Queen of Heaven" was "a true enough name and yet does not make her a goddess" Luther's Works, Vol.
Calling Mary "Queen" unduly singles her out; all the saints in glory are kings and queens in Christ. This objection succumbs to the mistake of unnecessarily opposing truths that are complementary, not contradictory. The fact that all the saints in glory have a royal dignity does not mean Mary should not be given the title "Queen," anymore than the fact that in the New Testament all believers are called "holy" means that the apostles cannot be called the "holy apostles" Eph Furthermore, while all the saints in heaven can claim a royal dignity, Mary alone is the Queen Mother of the Messiah in the literal sense.
On one level, this passage points to the next king Hezekiah as a pledge that the Davidic dynasty will continue despite the threats of invading armies. For our purposes we should note how this prophecy links the mother to her royal son. Since the oracle is addressed specifically to the Davidic household and concerns the continuation of the dynasty, the young woman bearing forth the royal son would be understood as a queen mother.
This has implications for our understanding of Mary. Since the mother of the king always ruled as queen mother, we should expect to find the mother of the messianic king playing the role of the true queen mother in the everlasting Kingdom of God.
With this Old Testament background, we can now more clearly see how the New Testament portrays Mary in light of the queen mother tradition. As we saw above, this prophecy links the royal messianic child with his queen mother. Hear the strong Davidic overtones describing Mary and her royal son: a woman from the house of David giving birth to a son who will be the new king whose reign will never end.
With echoes from the queen mother tradition of the Davidic kingdom and the mother-son prophecy of Isaiah , we can conclude that Mary is being given the vocation of queen mother. This title is charged with great queenly significance. Who is this newborn child? He is described as the messianic king exercising his dominion. Her Queenship is basically a sharing in the royalty of her Son. We do not think of two powers, one infinite, the other finite.
No, she and her Son are inseparable, and operate as a unit. In fact her relation to her Son is greater than that of ordinary Mothers of Kings. For she is the Mother of Him who is King by very nature, from all eternity, and the relationship is exclusive, for He had no human father. Still further, the ordinary queen-mother gives birth to a child who later will become king. The son of Mary is, as we said, eternally king, by His very nature. She too is Queen by right of conquest.
We already saw that this title for Him means that He redeemed us from the captivity of satan. She shared in the struggle and victory. Since the Pope expressed her dependence on Him in a threefold way--something we would have known anyway--then it is clear that he did not have in mind any other restriction which he did not express. So, maintaining this subordination, "by right of conquest" means the same for her as it does for Him. The other two titles: 3 She is Queen by grace.
She is full of grace, the highest in the category of grace besides her Son.
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