Destroyer of Heresy
As a bulwark protecting orthodox belief, Mary has long held the title of Destroyer of Heresy. Through the ages, Marian devotion repelled early Church conflicts considered heretical even up to our present age.
In the early centuries, proposed doctrines attacked Christ’s divinity that denied Mary as the ‘God-bearer’ (Theotokos). Such beliefs like Adoptionism claimed Jesus was only human until God ‘adopted’ him later as Son. In Nestorianism, Christ had a separate human and divine identity only joined.
These were forcefully condemned at Catholic Councils like Ephesus in 431 A.D. which formally upheld Mary’s irrefutable status as Mother of God (not just Christ’s human half). Such debates highlighted the incarnational paradox - because Jesus is fully human and fully divine without division or confusion between Christ's two natures, then logically Mary in giving birth to this Person could rightly be called Mother of God.
In the Middle Ages arose other errors. Some like the Albigensians practiced an extreme dualistic spirituality that denigrated the body and physical world as creations of Satan rather than God. This preached complete detachment from anything material, considering it corrupted including marriage, family and sacraments. As Jesus’ earthly entrance point, Mary represented the goodness of human flesh and intimacy with divine purposes. Her motherhood of Christ affirmed material creation as Holy not evil.
Later Protestant Reformers reacted against exaggerated Marian cults but their purging zeal also diminished Mary’s veneration overall and her Eucharistic connections. Catholicism reasserted her centrality against these Protestant-introduced innovations at the Council of Trent including presenting her sinless uniquely graced Immaculate Conception as the ideal Typology of the Church - the spotless Bride of Christ.
In 1854 came an infallible Papal declaration of this Marian doctrine countering Enlightenment-born doubts in human reason, science and faith. The 20th century witnessed Mary boldly appearing in apparitions like Fatima calling for prayer and penance against a “Russia”-spread materialistic atheism.
She presented herself as the Woman foreseen in Revelation (and Gen. 3:15) divinely empowered to crush Satan and defeat anti-religious communism by re-converting Russia specifically back to her Son as the 1984 consecration of the world to her Immaculate Heart precipitated soon after.
Now in our secular modern era comes a subtler “dictatorship of relativism” weakening absolutes of morality, philosophy and religious claims to truth. This allows a fluidity of belief evidencing an indifferentism threatening faith tenets.
Here too Mary emerges as bulwark guarding doctrine. In defending her perennial sinlessness, Catholics must articulate Biblically an orthodox anthropology against postmodernity’s tendencies to deny human nature as flawed or perfectible at all.
Upholding Marian ideals also buttresses sacred foundations, lifting holy beauty against utilitarianism or vulgarity. She reminds that not all is permitted or advisable. In her quiet dignity, she calls to higher Yearnings and to ordered Virtue grounded in Love Himself.
Thus across 20 centuries, Marian belief repels errors both obvious and subtle. She advances the faith by drawing men to correct thinking about Christ’s full identity and humanity’s fullest possibilities when perfectly graced. Truly she has been called the "Destroyer of Heresy.”