Mr. Maricle’s ontological error about Mary.

his is the lat­est in a series of back-and-forth posts and com­ments between myself and the fakes flops flukes folks over at Bug­gers All. At the start of it all was this dumb post on Feb­ru­ary 6 by Mr. Alan “Rhol­o­gy” Mar­i­cle, who fools no one by his alias. In it Mr. Mar­i­cle described the Rosary and oth­er Mar­i­an prayers as “blas­phe­mous” “vers­es of sheer awe­some­ness” which “mak[e] demons laugh uproar­i­ous­ly.” His ver­bal pow­ers have nev­er been on more windy dis­play. The fact that Mr. Mar­i­cle had heard these prayers from the mouths of “old­er Roman Catholic gen­tle­men” at an abor­tion mill piqued my curios­i­ty about whether such a pro-life con­text was appro­pri­ate for a fit of anti-Catholic blus­ter. I said as much here.

Now, in spite of such a start, the exhange has turned toward the sub­stance and the the­ol­o­gy behind what Mr. Mar­i­cle will insist on call­ing prayers to “the dead.” I had some remarks of my own to such com­ments on his orig­i­nal screed (see this post). Mr. Mar­i­cle, mean­while, added a sec­ond screed, inapt­ly named “Mutu­al Under­stand­ing,” the specifics of which I will be pleased to respond to in a future post.

All this, then, set the stage for the exchange between Mr. Mar­i­cle and me in the com­box of my sec­ond post. What I want to do here is, first, to give a basic sum­ma­ry and analy­sis of the con­tent of those com­ments; and sec­ond, to fisk Mr. Mar­i­cle’s last one.

@THEOTOKOS? @IMMACULATECONCEPTION? @QUEENOFHEAVEN? @VIRGINMOTHER? @DESTROYEROFHERESIES? @UNTIEROFKNOTS? @STELLAMARIS? @KECHARITOMENE?

Mr. Mar­i­cle first com­ment was a reply to my exe­ge­sis of Mark 12:18–27. In that text, Christ answers a ques­tion from the Sad­ducees by remind­ing them that God “is not the God of the dead, but the God of the liv­ing.” For that rea­son, I said, it is wrong to think of Mary as “dead”; “she is just as alive to me as she is to God.” Christ broke the prison bars of death; do not Protes­tants affirm that too? But rather than try to point out how my exe­ge­sis is flawed by pro­vid­ing a com­pet­ing one of his own, Mr. Mar­i­cle clutched with firm grip to a sar­cas­tic and sopho­moric straw man. Here is what he said:

So why not just walk up to her and talk to her? I mean, if she’s just as much alive as you or me [sic]. What’s her Twit­ter han­dle? Where does she live?

I sit here astonied. But leav­ing aside the sur­pris­ing degree of juve­nil­i­ty in such a reply, do you notice the huge onto­log­i­cal error that Mr. Mar­i­cle is mak­ing? I hope you may. More sim­ply, one could call it a cat­e­go­ry error. For the edu­ca­tion of Mr. Mar­i­cle, a “cat­e­go­ry error,” in log­ic, is the error of treat­ing one cat­e­go­ry of things as though they belonged to anoth­er. To say, for exam­ple, that “most bananas are athe­ists” is a cat­e­go­ry error because “bananas belong to a cat­e­go­ry of things that can­not be said to have beliefs.” Sim­i­lar­ly, Mary belongs to a cat­e­go­ry of things that can­not be said to have Twit­ter accounts. That does not mean Mary is not liv­ing, as though life exists only on Earth and not in Heav­en too. Mary belongs to a cat­e­go­ry of things that can­not be said to be bod­i­ly present to us. (Except in the case of rare Mar­i­an appari­tions; which, how­ev­er, occur by God’s per­mis­sion and not because human beings have some­how sum­moned Mary.)

Hence my response to this “argu­ment” was, first, to appeal to Mr. Mar­i­cle to rec­og­nize the straw man in it:

You talk to Christ. He’s alive to you. Why don’t you walk up to him? What’s Christ’s Twit­ter han­dle? The same kind of sar­casm you use to crit­i­cize talk­ing to Mary could be used by an athe­ist to crit­i­cize prayer of any kind. I’ve always been sus­pi­cious of the fact that the same straw man argu­ments that are used by Protes­tants against Catholi­cism are also used by athe­ists against Chris­tian­i­ty alto­geth­er. Don’t you pray silent­ly to Jesus some­times? Or are you always speak­ing out loud because he’s right next to you and you can see him? What’s Christ’s street address? What’s his phone num­ber? Can I friend him on Face­book? I can match absur­di­ty for absur­di­ty all day.

Mr. Mar­i­cle was hav­ing none of this. He insist­ed that he was mere­ly using “reduc­tio ad absur­dum.” But there’s a fine line between that and absur­di­ty all your own. In truth, you can’t use reduc­tio by jump­ing from one cat­e­go­ry of being (the super­nat­ur­al) to the oth­er (the nat­ur­al). You can only reduce some­thing to the absurd with­in the same onto­log­i­cal cat­e­go­ry you start­ed out in. While he admit­ted that it was “fool­ish” to use the same argu­ment against talk­ing to Jesus, some­how he insist­ed that it was quite appro­pri­ate to use it to argue against talk­ing to Mary. Such, dear read­er, are the dou­ble stan­dards of Calvin­ists when they talk about the super­nat­ur­al.

THE DEAD ONTOLOGY OF Rho.

My next response to the “argu­ment” about Mary’s Twit­ter account was to point out to Mr. Mar­i­cle, in more direct terms, the onto­log­i­cal error he was mak­ing.

Because you are a Chris­t­ian, I assume you believe in both the nat­ur­al and the super­nat­ur­al. You also believe, I assume, that there can be com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the nat­ur­al and the super­nat­ur­al. If you did­n’t, you would­n’t believe in the rev­e­la­tion of God, you would­n’t believe in prayer.

But when you try to crit­i­cize the notion that one can talk to Mary by ask­ing such absurd ques­tions about talk­ing to her face-to-face and hav­ing her Twit­ter han­dle, you’re mak­ing the basic onto­log­i­cal error of assum­ing that you can crit­i­cize super­nat­ur­al real­i­ties based on the log­ic of nat­ur­al laws. If it is ‘fool­ish,’ as you admit, to crit­i­cize talk­ing to Jesus on the basis of jokes about his Twit­ter account, then it is equal­ly fool­ish to crit­i­cize talk­ing to Mary, or any­one else in heav­en, that way. It is not that Mary is ‘dead’; she’s more alive than we are. It is, rather, that Mary is in heav­en, and we are on Earth. Mary’s exis­tence is in the super­nat­ur­al, ours is in the nat­ur­al. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion between those two sep­a­rate cat­e­gories of exis­tence does­n’t hap­pen the same way it does with­in.

For rea­sons of his own, which he seems to have no inter­est in explain­ing to us, Mr. Mar­i­cle would not acknowl­edge that I was mak­ing a dis­tinc­tion between those in heav­en and those on earth. Instead he insist­ed on treat­ing the dis­tinc­tion as though it were still between the liv­ing and the “dead.” Mary, he said, is “dead to us”—an expres­sion which makes me won­der whether he is writ­ing her off the way a child would dis­own his moth­er. (Mr. Mar­i­cle, by the way, is mor­bid­ly attached to the word “dead” when it comes to any dis­cus­sion of Mary. It could be the only word in his vocab­u­lary on that sub­ject.) He has a mul­ish refusal to bend, even though I had just point­ed out to him the flaw in that way of think­ing:

The dis­tinc­tion that is applic­a­ble here is not the dis­tinc­tion between the alive and the dead. It is the dis­tinc­tion between those in heav­en and those on earth. Obvi­ous­ly, one can­not talk to some­one who is in heav­en the same way he talks to some­one on earth.

Mr. Mar­i­cle seems to think that the rea­son Mary does­n’t have a Twit­ter account is because she’s dead. In fact, the rea­son she does­n’t have a Twit­ter account, or a Face­book page, or an e‑mail, or a phone num­ber, or a street address, or a blog, or a library card, or a brand new 2013 Ford Fusion, is because she’s in heav­en.

Final­ly, I made some remarks to Mr. Mar­i­cle on the top­ic of what the Bible says about “talk­ing to the dead,” and how our words to Mary dif­fer from that.

God for­bids talk­ing to the dead specif­i­cal­ly in the con­text of occult prac­tices like necro­man­cy, or seek­ing out the advice of the dead in order to tell the future. That’s not what’s going on when some­one says the Rosary. All that’s going on in the Rosary is that we’re ask­ing Mary to pray for us, the same way I would ask my earth­ly moth­er to pray for me. That’s not say­ing that I talk to Mary and my earth­ly moth­er in the same way (it’s an onto­log­i­cal error to assume any such thing); but it is a recog­ni­tion that the saints in heav­en pray for us—they don’t turn their back on us; if they’re tru­ly in heav­en and tru­ly unit­ed with God, then they’re as con­cerned with the sal­va­tion of those who have come after them as God is.

So at this point, then, the stage is set for a com­plete fisk­ing of Mr. Mar­i­cle’s final com­ment.

fisking mr. maricle.

Mr. Mar­i­cle starts off by deny­ing a plain truth: In the Rosary, all that occurs is that we ask Mary to pray for us. Now, I don’t know why that should be so star­tling for Mr. Mar­i­cle to grasp. The first half of the Ave con­sists of two direct quo­ta­tions from the gospel of Luke. The first is, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee” (Luke 1:28); the sec­ond, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus” (Luke 1:42). The sec­ond half of the Ave says, “Holy Mary, Moth­er of God, pray for us sin­ners now and at the hour of our death.”

Pray. For. Us.

But, shock and awe, Mr. Mar­i­cle is not con­vinced.

He replies: “Unbe­liev­able.”

Yes? And how so? The Rosary uses those very words. Is it a fake one? Is there some “real” text of the Rosary that Catholics keep hid­den while trot­ting out this bas­tard child as a cov­er-up?

“You said exact­ly what I expect­ed you to say.”

Yes. It’s fun­ny how Catholics such as myself refuse to pre­tend the Rosary says some­thing it does not say. It’s fun­ny how we refuse to say some­thing dif­fer­ent about it than the Church says. But Mr. Mar­i­cle is shocked and undone by what he expects. He is a mar­vel of psy­chol­o­gy.

“So you com­mu­ni­cate with your [earth­ly] moth­er by (1) going to a church—”

Yes. Of course. If she’s there. But alas she’s still a Pres­by­ter­ian. But as for Mary, I can pray the Rosary in the woods. There is no point of canon law where­by the Ave must be said in a church. Most often, I pray it in my clos­et.

“(2) bow­ing before a stat­ue of her—”

No. I doubt there are any of those. She is a pri­vate cit­i­zen, still on this side of life, and not like­ly to be made a sec­u­lar idol or reli­gious icon. Nor is there any law that restricts the Ave to being said before an image of Mary.

“(3) light­ing a can­dle and plac­ing it before that stat­ue—”

Like I said.

“(4) light­ing incense—”

Sounds like a nice atmos­phere for wor­ship, but I don’t wor­ship my moth­er. Then, nei­ther do I wor­ship Mary. You see, Mr. Mar­i­cle, the pur­pose of incense is to sym­bol­ize the smoke of prayers ris­ing to God (Rev. 8:4), and is used in the con­text of the Holy Sac­ri­fice of the Mass, or in rar­er cas­es the Litur­gy of the Hours. It stands for our prayer ris­ing to God, or Mary’s prayer ris­ing to God, not our so-called “wor­ship” of Mary. Incense very sel­dom burns dur­ing the Ave.

“(5) speak­ing inaudi­bly to her.”

I can’t imag­ine she’d hear me that way. And in any case, do you notice how Mr. Mar­i­cle com­plete­ly ignored this state­ment of mine: “That’s not say­ing that I com­mu­ni­cate with Mary and my earth­ly moth­er in the same way (it’s an onto­log­i­cal error to assume any such thing).”

I do not talk to with Mary and my moth­er in the same way. So for Mr. Mar­i­cle to ask the ques­tions he does shows not only that he did not pay atten­tion to what I had said, but also that he insists on mak­ing the same cat­e­go­ry error I had sev­er­al times point­ed out to him. I talk to Mary, and I talk to my moth­er; but because Mary’s in heav­en and my earth­ly moth­er is alive here on earth, the form of it is nec­es­sar­i­ly dif­fer­ent. Why Mr. Mar­i­cle insists on cat­e­go­ry errors no mat­ter the num­ber of times they’ve been point­ed out to him is a ques­tion on which I con­fess amuse­ment and igno­rance.

Mr. Mar­i­cle con­tin­ues:

“You know that it’s dif­fer­ent with the dead just as well as I.”

Not real­ly. I know that it’s dif­fer­ent with those in heav­en, which is the dis­tinc­tion I was actu­al­ly mak­ing. But Mr. Mar­i­cle will go on using that word “dead” to describe Mary, like a ver­bal tic or urge of mad­ness, in spite of Christ’s words that God is “not the God of the dead.” All this insis­tence on the dead­ness of Mary kills me.

“Bow­ing down before a stat­ue of a dead per­son—”

Mary’s not dead; she’s alive in Heav­en.

“—light­ing a can­dle before it—”

“It”?

“—and speak­ing inaudi­bly—”

No, we can pray the Rosary out loud just as well. We often do. Mr. Mar­i­cle should get out among Catholics more. But aloud, silent: Does it mat­ter? Why he is stuck on this “inaudi­ble” busi­ness is blast­ed odd. Does he mean for us to assume that, when he talks to Jesus, he’s wail­ing at the top of his lungs?—the bet­ter to be heard, you know, par­tic­u­lar­ly from such a dis­tance and with all the oth­er whin­ers and scream­ers who are demand­ing God’s atten­tion at the very same time. And it’s bad news for him if God hap­pens to be talk­ing to some­one else at the moment, or piss­ing, or away on a jour­ney, or fast asleep.

“—in a church and reli­gious con­text, is noth­ing less than an act of wor­ship.”

So tell me. In Num. 21:8, when God told Moses to make a stat­ue of a ser­pent, and that every­one who had been bit­ten by a snake, if he looked upon the stat­ue, would live, was He com­mand­ing the Hebrews to wor­ship a ser­pent? What dan­ger was there that some­one might say he was healed by the pole and not by God?

“Moti­va­tion does not mat­ter.”

So tell me. What did Pope St. Peter mean, at the Coun­cil of Jerusalem, when he said that God knows peo­ple’s hearts (Acts 15:8)? Moti­va­tion would cer­tain­ly seem to mat­ter to Him, what­ev­er our own opin­ion of it may be. It is not for us to judge of such things; the right­eous God, and he alone, tri­eth the hearts and reins.

“God has set out how He will be wor­shiped and He has told us not to talk to the dead.”

Now here Mr. Mar­i­cle just repeats him­self. Ear­li­er I had said that, when God tells us not to talk to the dead (and again, Mary isn’t dead, but let that go for now), the con­text of the com­mand is necro­man­cy and augur­ing. But Mr. Mar­i­cle does not address that real­i­ty once, oth­er than with sen­tences like “Moti­va­tion does not mat­ter”; which not only is not true, but proves noth­ing.

reductio ad rhosurdum

The rest of Mr. Mar­i­cle’s remarks can be dealt with sim­ply. He goes on to employ the same kind of sar­cas­tic reduc­tion­ism that is typ­i­cal with him. He imag­ines a hereti­cal Jew say­ing “Don’t you ask your fel­low Israelites for prayer?” in defense of light­ing can­dles to a stat­ue of Abra­ham. The poor man ought to reread the para­ble of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31)—or read it for the first time, as the case may be. In that para­ble, Christ takes it for grant­ed that one can ask for Abra­ham’s inter­ces­sion. He includes the prayer in his para­ble as though it real­ly were a com­mon and accept­able prac­tice among the Jews.

But there’s anoth­er point to be made. I am sur­prised Mr. Mar­i­cle would not know that the sta­tus of “the dead” before Christ was very dif­fer­ent than the sta­tus of “the dead” after Christ. Before Christ’s Res­ur­rec­tion, the holy dead were not yet present with God. Christ’s redemp­tive act need­ed to be accom­plished first. But after the Res­ur­rec­tion, the dead are present with God, and thus are not dead but, like Christ, “alive forever­more” (Rev. 1:18). Though (of course) we talk to them dif­fer­ent­ly than we talk to peo­ple here on earth, we are still per­mit­ted to talk to them and ask them to pray for us. They are our cloud of wit­ness­es (Heb. 12:1), our heav­en­ly broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ, mem­bers of the Church Tri­umphant. Of course they desire to speak with us, inso­far as that is pos­si­ble between the super­nat­ur­al and the nat­ur­al.

Mr. Mar­i­cle may choose to repeat his clichés and sopho­moric talk­ing points like vain rep­e­ti­tions that mag­i­cal­ly make Reformed the­ol­o­gy true with­out the bur­den of log­ic or evi­dence or proof. How­ev­er many times he chants “Mary is dead” over the beads in his hand, it does not change Jesus’s words in Mark 12:18–27. How­ev­er many times he insists on mock­ing prayers to Mary, it does not change the fact that she is alive in heav­en. The super­nat­ur­al is a dif­fer­ent cat­e­go­ry of being than the nat­ur­al, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the two hap­pens accord­ing to laws of its own—not the laws of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between human beings on Earth.