The Mother, of God, Mother of Jesus, wife of St. Joseph, and the greatest of all Christian saints. The Virgin Mother “was, after her Son, exalted by divine grace above all angels and men”. The belief that Mary’s body was assumed into heaven is one of the oldest traditions of the Catholic Church. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception - that Mary, as the Mother of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, was free of original sin at the moment of her conception was proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854 . Pope Pius XII dedicated the entire human race to Mary in 1944. The Church has long taught that Mary is truly the Mother of God . St. Paul observed that “God sent His Son, born of a woman," expressing the union of the human and the divine in Christ. As Christ possesses two natures, human and divine, Mary was the Mother of God in his human nature. Because of this role exemplified by her acceptance of Christ into her womb, her offering of him to God at the Temple, her urging him to perform his first miracle, and her standing at the foot of the Cross at Calvary Mary was joined fully in the sacrifice by Christ of himself. Mary is entitled to the title of Queen because, as Pope Pius XII expressed it in a 1946 radio speech, “Jesus is King throughout all eternity by nature and by right of conquest: through him, with him, and subordinate to him, Mary is Queen by grace, by divine relationship, by right of conquest, and by singular election.” Mary possesses a unique relationship with all three Persons of the Trinity, thereby giving her a claim to the title of Queenship. She was chosen by God the Father to be the Mother of his Son; God the Holy Spirit chose her to be his virginal spouse for the Incarnation of the Son; and God the Son chose her to be his mother, the means of incarnating into the world for the purposes of the redemption of humanity. This Queen is also our Mother. While she is not our Mother in the physical sense, she is called a spiritual mother, for she conceives, gives birth, and nurtures the spiritual lives of grace for each person. As Mediatrix of All Graces, she is ever present at the side of each person, giving nourishment and hope, from the moment of spiritual birth at Baptism to the moment of death. The confidence that each person should have in Mary was expressed by Pope Pius IX in the encyclical Ubipriinum : “The foundation of all our confidence. . . is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. For God has committed to Mary the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is his will, that we obtain everything through Mary.”
The United Methodist Church has no official stance or teaching on the Virgin Mary other than what is in Scripture and in the ecumenical creeds: the Apostles' and the Nicene. We affirm her role in God's gift of Christ to the world -- being the mother of Jesus, her care and nurture of him and her being a disciple. The Articles of Religion and the Confession of Faith, the doctrinal statements of The United Methodist Church, include statements of belief that Jesus was conceived and born of the Virgin Mary.
The Immaculate Conception is different from the Virgin birth. It is a teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that the Virgin Mary was conceived without any stain of original sin. It is a belief about Mary, not about the birth or conception of Jesus.
The Protestant and Catholic views differ on saints as well. The Catholic Church believes that saints are ordinary and typical human beings who made it into heaven. In the broader sense, everyone who’s now in heaven is technically a saint. Saints are human beings who lived holy lives in obedience to God’s will and are now in heaven for eternity. The classification or title of saint, however, is a spiritual pronouncement that the faithful can be morally certain that this particular person is indeed in heaven; prayers to and from the saint are considered efficacious. Instead of seeing or portraying saints as superheroes, Catholicism wants to present them as just heroes — ordinary people who made it to heaven. The idea is that if they could do it, so can others.
The Methodist Church takes a different meaning to the word 'saint'.
United Methodists believe in saints, but not in the same manner as the Catholic Church. We recognize Matthew, Paul, John, Luke and other early followers of Jesus as saints, and countless numbers of United Methodist churches are named after these saints. We also recognize and celebrate All Saints' Day and "all the saints who from their labors rest." All Saints' Day is a time to remember Christians of every time and place, honoring those who lived faithfully and shared their faith with us. On All Saints' Day, many churches read the names of their members who died in the past year. However, our denomination does not have any system whereby people are elected to sainthood. We do not pray to saints, nor do we believe they serve as mediators to God. United Methodist believe "... there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human who gave himself a ransom for all" (1 Timothy 2:5-6). United Methodists call people "saints" because they exemplified the Christian life. In this sense, every Christian can be considered a saint. John Wesley believed we have much to learn from the saints, but he did not encourage anyone to worship them. He expressed concern about the Church of England's focus on saints' days and said that "most of the holy days were at present answering no valuable end."Wesley's focus was entirely on the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
John Wesley's belief was that Christianity should be Christ-centered. Explicitly, Methodism denies Purgatory, veneration of saints, relics, and prayer to saints—considering them to be distractions from the Christ-focused life and unfounded in Scripture. The Twenty-Five Articles of Religion states that "The Roman doctrine concerning...worshiping, and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant of Scripture, but repugnant to the Word of God."
