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Dear Mark Shea and others at Catholic Exchange:
I read the viewer letter about “A Crisis of Faith.” After reading the following statement in the letter, “In all of this, of course, the important thing is not whether He was married, or one of many children, but who He was,” I was hoping that the response would really stress that our dogmas flow from our efforts to understand this very thing. Mary was called Theotokos because of who Jesus was. Her perpetual virginity was proclaimed because of who He was. It all starts with Jesus. I know I've seen material with this message on Catholic Exchange before, and I think that viewer and others would benefit form seeing it pulled together in this context.
Nicole Stallworth
Dear Nicole:
Sometimes you have to focus on the major issues and leave the less important ones aside. My reply was already rather long, so I figured I would leave that to another day. When the issue is whether or not Jesus is the Son of God or just some rabbi with the hots for Mary Magdelene, fine points about the Perpetual Virginity of Mary or the Theotokos need to take a back seat. I agree that these matters are important, but the first thing to do was deal with “presenting symptoms.” When the problem is a spiritual heart attack, you do triage there. The hangnails can wait.
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
