Catholics and Evangelicals on Mary

In 1994, prominent members from both groups issued a statement titled “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium.” They've followed it up with other statements over the years.

Recently, their work on Mary was published in First Things. It's a long article, but well worth reading in its entirety if the topic interests. Below, I have provided excerpts from the "common statement"-- rather than each side's statement to the other side.


Since the sixteenth century, the subject of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been a primary point of differentiation, and even conflict, between Evangelicals and Catholics. While figures such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli retained a special reverence for Mary, this dimension of their teaching and piety was largely lost by their followers in the course of growing animosity between Protestants and Catholics. On the Catholic side, the determination to draw a clear line against Protestantism sometimes led to exaggerations and distortions in Marian devotion.

In our time there is among Evangelicals a renewed interest in Mary, and among Catholics a determination to make clear that the greatness of Mary is in her faithfulness to Jesus Christ, her Lord and ours. In the words of the Second Vatican Council, “No creature could ever be counted as equal to the Incarnate Word and Redeemer. . . . The Church does not hesitate to profess the subordinate role of Mary” (Lumen Gentium 62). Whatever is said about Mary is ever and always in the service of what must be said about Christ....

At the announcement of the coming birth of the Savior, the angel says to Mary before she conceives that she is “full of grace.” Because grace is always a gift, that she is full of grace is God’s gift and not her achievement. In her song called the Magnificat, Mary says that “all generations will call me blessed.” She is rightly called by us the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary is the long-awaited daughter of Israel, in fulfillment of biblical prophecy. She stands strikingly between the Old Covenant and the New...

She is the woman through whom that promise is vindicated in the birth, life, suffering, death, glorious resurrection, and promised coming again of Jesus Christ, her son and her Lord....

In the apostolic era and among orthodox Christians of all times, it is clearly understood that the doctrine of Jesus’ virginal conception is based on the apostolic witness and is intimately connected with the belief that Jesus the Christ, the Son of God and son of Mary, is both true God and true man....We are agreed that it is appropriate, and indeed necessary, to call Mary Theotokos—the God-Bearer. Theotokos means “the one who gave birth to the One who is God,” and the title, based on the clear witness of Scripture...

Because Jesus is both true man and true God, and because his human nature and divine nature are inseparable, it is right to call Mary, who is the mother of Jesus, the Mother of God or the God-Bearer. Such language is intended first to exalt Jesus Christ and only then to honor Mary. Indeed, in the Magnificat, Mary glorified not herself but God alone.

...much later, Mary is depicted as praying with the apostles (Acts 1:14), we may imagine that Mary prayed to her son with the words that she had taught him to pray. Contemplating the motherhood of Mary powerfully reinforces—against every form of gnosticism or docetism, whether ancient or modern—our understanding of the full humanity of Jesus the Christ....