And as we to-day try to appreciate the place of Blessed Mary in the life
of the Church of God must we not feel it to be our misfortune that our
past has been so wrapped in clouds of controversy that we have been
unable to see her meaning at all clearly? Must we not feel deep sadness
at the thought that the very mention of Mary's name, so often stirs, not
love and gratitude, but the spirit of suspicion and dislike? We no doubt
have passed beyond such feelings, but the traces of their evil work
through the centuries still persist. They persist in certain feelings of
reserve and hesitation when we find that our convictions are leading us
to the adoption of the attitude toward her which is the common attitude
of all Catholicity, both East and West. When we feel that the time has
actually come to abandon the narrowness and barrenness of devotional
practice which is a part of our tradition, we nevertheless feel as
though we were launching out on strange seas and that our next sight of
land might be of strange regions where we should not feel at home. If
such be our instinctive attitude, it is well to remember that progress,
spiritual as well as other, is conquest of the (to us) new; but that the
acquisition of the new does not necessarily mean the abandonment of the
old.
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