The tendency of Rome to exalt Mary to a position where she is blasphemously regarded as partaking of attributes which only belong to the Godhead was evident in remarks recently made by the Pope. Referring to Mary as “the most influential woman in history”, he told his audience of young people at a vigil in Panama, that she had become the “the influencer of God”. The Catechism of the [Roman] Catholic Church enshrines a grossly unbiblical view of Mary, and there we find the statement that Mary holds a unique role of motherhood to all believers in the order of grace and that on being “taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation. . . . Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix.” As one authority on the early Christian Church has remarked concerning Mary: “To her went out much of that feeling which had found expression in the worship of the mother goddesses of Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor . . . . In a measure, she took the place of her Son, as Mediator between God and man” in the thinking of the people.
In this we see the spirit of antichrist at work in formulating such soul-destroying error which denigrates the uniqueness of Christ’s office as the “one Mediator between God and men”. The notion that Mary is needed to influence God’s mind somehow, or change His will, is all-pervasive in Roman Catholic religion. Poor, deluded Romanists are taught that the Father and Christ will only be propitious to them through Mary’s intercession. This is to make God’s grace so dependent on the activity of Mary that the mercy of God in Christ flowing freely in the gospel is hidden from view. Rather than actually influencing God through human merit, the effect of Mariolatry is to shut up all real access to God’s mercy, and this is clearly the underlying intention of Satan in it all.
AWM