Why do Catholics venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary?
A. Roman Catholics do; Anglican and Episcopalian Catholics do not; the Orthodox do. Originally it was not done. The veneration of Mariam which is the real name of Christs mother did not enter the Church until the fifth and sixth centuries from Syria. Maria (and hence Mary) was his aunt. The worship or veneration of Mary was termed Mariolatry and it was originally opposed as blasphemous. It was associated with the cult of the Mother goddess in the east and came in following the Christmas structure, which entered also in Syria at Damascus in 375 CE and Jerusalem in 386 CE. In the first few centuries the Church regarded anyone who said that any one had died and gone to heaven as Gnostic heretic. After the pagan doctrines had weakened the doctrines of the Church by the fourth century these other ideas could enter and break down the original theology. On 15 August 1950 Pope Pius XII declared the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin into heaven. Look at the papers: The Soul (No. 92); The
