The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society--the name of the Jehovah's Witnesses' publishing house--is headquartered in Brooklyn and publishes two magazines that appear twice each month: Awake!, which is the one you usually see being offered on street corners, and The Watchtower, which is intended for initiates. Sample copies are given away free.
It doesn't take long, after browsing through a few issues, to learn that the Witnesses have a fixation with Catholicism. They devote an inordinate amount of space in the magazines to debunking Catholic beliefs. On the whole, the debunking is done gently, even indirectly, but it's obvious nonetheless which ecclesiastical organization is seen as (to use the late Ayatollah Khomeini's line) "the Great Satan." Let's look at representative issues.
One issue of Awake! features on its cover a painting of the Virgin and the title "Mary: The Answer to World Crisis?" Inside are seven short articles about Mary and Marian devotion. All but one, a personal story of conversion, are anonymous. The byline for the first, for instance, is this: "By Awake! correspondent in Italy."This same person apparently wrote all six of the anonymous articles.
The New World Translation is universally rejected by non-Witnesses, including secular Greek and Hebrew scholars, and it's been the widespread speculation among Greek and Hebrew scholars and informed critics of the Watchtower that few of the members who served on the committee were experienced as translators or even knew the rudiments of Hebrew or Greek; the New World Translation appears to be little more than a modification of already-existing English versions. If so, the anonymity is understandable.
Why did Pope John Paul II proclaim a Marian year in the first place? Because, "for quite some time, in the more conservative Catholic spheres, there has been concern over the fact that Marian worship seems to have been obscured." The writer says there were other motives--for instance, it was hoped that increased pilgrimages to Marian shrines would result in increased priestly vocations.
Not all Catholics were pleased that a Marian Year had been proclaimed. "Catholic priest Franco Barbero [otherwise unidentified] caused a stir when he publicly declared that he never prayed to Mary. In his 'Letter to Mary,' Barbero states that she has been crushed 'under a mountain of dogmas, relics, devotionalisms, legends, superstition.' The same priest has also stated that even 'speaking of a "year of Mary" could raise legitimate perplexities.'"
He answers, "There are many reasons. Some of them stem directly from doctrines taught by the Catholic Church. For example, since the church teaches that Jesus is equal to God, this leaves no independent intermediary between man and God. God and Christ, surrounded by an aura of Trinitarian mystery, are no longer approachable, and for this reason the role of 'intermediary' between the Divinity and humankind has been delegated to the 'Madonna.'"
These lines may be confusing to those who don't realize that the Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in the Trinity. They believe that Jesus is not divine, is not the Second Person of the Trinity--in fact, that there is no Second Person because there is no Trinity. They believe in the lonely God of Unitarianism.
If Jesus is not divine, what is he? A creature, though the best of creatures. He was the first thing created by God and had a prehuman existence, and it was through him, as an agent, that God created everything else.
What these beliefs of the Witnesses reduce to is the ancient heresy of Arianism, which is nothing new. St. Athanasius battled it a millennium and a half ago. The Witnesses, in condemning Marian doctrines, often come up with reasons of their own, quite distinct from those given by Fundamentalists. Like Fundamentalists, they oppose giving Mary the title Theotokos, "Mother of God." "It does not appear in the Bible," writes the anonymous author. Worse, "she cannot be described as the 'Mother of God' for the simple reason that Jesus was not 'God the Son,' but 'the Son of God.' The Trinity doctrine was no part of ancient Hebrew belief and is not taught in the Bible."
No Fundamentalist would argue like this, of course. He would agree that the notion of Theotokos does not appear in the Bible (and in this he'd be wrong, even though the word "Theotokos" doesn't appear there), but he'd never argue that Mary isn't the Mother of God because Jesus isn't God. (He'd argue against giving Mary the title, but on other grounds.) The Fundamentalist fully accepts our Lord's divinity.
This makes it seem that Laurentin, an expert in Mariology, disbelieves in the perpetual virginity of Mary. Quite the opposite. What he was saying is that the New Testament doesn't say, in so many words, that Mary remained a virgin after Jesus' birth--and it also doesn't say she didn't.
Perfectly good arguments can be made that the New Testament does, indeed, establish her perpetual virginity, but Laurentin was only acknowledging that we won't find in the text a line that says, "And Mary never had any other children." We are left to infer that from other facts given to us in the text.
A recent issue of The Watchtower features a photograph of a cathedral on its cover. Superimposed is the question, "What Traditions Please God?"
Apparently not something like All Souls' Day, which "seems strange or even bizarre to an outside observer." And well it might, since we're told that it and many other "religious traditions are plainly derived from, or at least [are] astonishingly similar to, non-Christian religious rites. For example, All Souls' Day virtually parallels the Buddhist festival of 'Ullambana,' a day set aside for 'the expression of filial piety to deceased ancestors and the release of spirits from bondage to this world.'" The New Encyclopedia Britannica is cited as the source of the last quotation.
The (again) anonymous author asks, "Are followers of such traditions really worshipping in truth?" He refers the reader to John 4:23, "The true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth," "spirit" being the opposite of "tradition," one supposes.
The confusion here is equating mere traditions--customs or ways of doing things--with Tradition, the oral teaching given by Jesus to the apostles and passed through their successors, the bishops.
Vatican II, in this passage, was talking about "upper-case" Tradition, not "lower-case" tradition. Notice that The Watchtower doesn't capitalize "tradition"--but in the official text it is capitalized because it is set on the same level as Scripture, thus we have "sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture."
The writer for The Watchtower tried to pull a fast one here, knowing that the word "Tradition" implies something other than mere "tradition."
All Souls' Day is a custom the Church developed centuries after the apostles, not a doctrine. Yet when Vatican II speaks of Tradition, it refers only to those doctrines and practices which have been handed down from the apostles, either implicitly or explicitly. It is only the latter--those which have come down to us from the apostles--that are automatically accepted. Those invented later can be changed, modified, or even abandoned as needed.
In any event, there is nothing wrong with All Souls' Day. The Bible teaches that we should pray for the dead (2 Macc. 12:45--though witnesses rely on the Protestant canon of Scripture, which cut this book out of the Bible). And no serious historian would claim that All Souls' Day is in any way derived from the Buddhist festival Ullambana!
� 1996 Diaspora Ministry International, Inc. This text may be downloaded or printed out for private reading, but it may not be uploaded to another Internet site or published, electronically or otherwise, without express written permission from the copyright holder.
Last modified May 25, 1996.