Mary

I love Mary. When I say that among some of my Protestant friends I get odd looks. We have tried so hard to not be Catholic that we flee from anything that even looks like Catholicism. Sure, the Catholics go a little too far in their veneration of Mary, but the answer is not to swing the pendulum so far the other way that we relegate her to a status somewhere below Bartholomew and Thaddeus. She is a hero of the faith, an example to be followed, and a woman worthy of the same respoect we give the other major figures of both Testaments. She appears prominently throughout the Gospels. I am not ashamed to say it. I love Mary.