Early in the Church's history, it became necessary for the Church to address the various heresies by proclaiming the true teaching about Jesus Christ. Many of these early heresies held incorrect teachings about the humanity of our Lord. In addressing one heresy in particular, Nestorianism, the Church also proclaimed Mary as the Mother of God or Theotokos which means God-bearer. This brief excerpt from the Catechism provides an explanation of why we can refer to Mary as the Mother of God.

466   The Nestorian heresy regarded Christ as a human person joined to the divine person of God's Son. Opposing this heresy, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the third ecumenical council, at Ephesus in 431, confessed "that the Word, uniting to himself in his person the flesh animated by a rational soul, became man." Christ's humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it and made it his own, from his conception. For this reason the Council of Ephesus proclaimed in 431 that Mary truly became the Mother of God by the human conception of the Son of God in her womb: "Mother of God, not that the nature of the Word or his divinity received the beginning of its existence from the holy Virgin, but that, since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word of God united to himself according to the hypostasis, was born from her, the Word is said to be born according to the flesh."

Catechism of the Catholic Church

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