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Aug 17, 2005 The Catholics do not think that you are part of His people, His claim is that Catholics worship Mary, and in a sense this is absolutely
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isn't it a lie intended to ruin the Catholic Church?
none in the Catholic Catechism does it say to WORSHIP Mary, so why do people want to believe that Catholics do?
by the way, I thought that in Christianity lying is considered an abomination to God, so why do these people seem to think that spreading lies about the Catholic faith is not considered an abomination to God?
GOD will proclaim, "This is a day when the truthful will be saved by their truthfulness."
On The Day Of Resurrection
[5:116] GOD will say, "O Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to the people, `Make me and my mother idols beside GOD?' " He will say, "Be You glorified. I could not utter what was not right. Had I said it, You already would have known it. You know my thoughts, and I do not know Your thoughts. You know all the secrets.
[5:117] "I told them only what You commanded me to say, that: `You shall worship GOD, my Lord and your Lord.' I was a witness among them for as long as I lived with them. When You terminated my life on earth, You became the Watcher over them. You witness all things.
[5:118] "If You punish them, they are Your constituents. If You forgive them, You are the Almighty, Most Wise."
[5:119] GOD will proclaim, "This is a day when the truthful will be saved by their truthfulness." They have deserved gardens with flowing streams. They abide therein forever. GOD is pleased with them, and they are pleased with Him. This is the greatest triumph.
[5:120] To GOD belongs the sovereignty of the heavens and the earth, and everything in them, and He is Omnipotent.
They are just ignorant of Catholic beliefs and practices. If they would simply read the Catechism of the Catholic Church they would see that the Catechism condemns worshiping anyone but God. I think it all comes down to theological ignorance where they have no understanding of the communion of the saints. Also they do not understand the meaning of pray which in the case of speaking to the saints means to ask and not to worship.
First of all it is disingenuous to state that the practice of praying for each other has no biblical foundation, we are instructed in Scripture to have a prayer life for others as it is part of Godâ s commandment to love one another.
(2Co 5:8 DRB) But we are confident and have a good will to be absent rather from the body and to be present with the Lord.
The Catholic Church does not teach that it is absolutely necessary for one to ask for the intercession of saints for salvation. The Church does teach that prayer to God is necessary for salvation for all believers. For a Catholic it would be wrong to ignore the liturgical worship offered to God at feast days for the saints and the prayers asking for their intercession.
The Communion of Saints is a dogma of the ancient Church and is recorded in the apostles Creed. It simply states that the faithful because of their relationship with Christ are alive even after the death of their flesh and worship with us. To us the Church is made up of the Church militant who represents all those believers living out their hope in the flesh.
782 american ethnologist::
tion do not follow a neat and linear path to some Anthony Buckley and Mary Kenney have not too would want to insist that Catholics and Protes-
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Digg - Dozens blinded looking for Virgin Mary in the Sun::
BeefBaron, on 07/29/2008, -10/+108Yet people insist religion doesn't Why do people need some ***** made up omnipotent ***** to worship when it's
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(Phi 2:12 DRB) Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only but much more now in my absence) with fear and trembling work out your salvation.
(Phi 2:13 DRB) For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will.
It consists of the Church Suffering who are those who are temporarily in need of further purgation from sin so that they may enjoy the presence of God.
(2Ma 12:46 DRB) It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.
Lastly, the Communion of the Saints consists of those who have won the race:
(Phi 3:14 DRB) I press towards the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus.
Their immortal souls are in heaven in Godâ s presence:
(Rev 5:8 DRB) And when he had opened the book, the four living creatures and the four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.
The universal stream connecting all of Godâ s creation is His love, which we take on in our baptism into our journey towards sanctification. This is not an emotional but a desire placed in us by the Spirit of God that endures as a desire for those other than ourselves and this love extends even to our enemies. This is truly a love that comes only from God and is a foreign concept and nonsense to those who have not received Godâ s salvific grace. This desire within our souls does not end with the death of our flesh but continues into eternity where the saints through their intercession in prayer encourage us in our race and assist us to endure unto our union with God.
I think that some people of faith, who do not understand the Communion of Saints, somehow believe that asking saints to pray for us is detracting from our love or our trust in God. In truth it is impossible, if we truly love as God commands and has given us the grace to understand, not to pray to those whom we love and in turn we expect them to return that same love to us by praying for us and presenting our prayers to God.
In Christ
Fr. Joseph
Lynchburgh,
You spent quite a bit of cyber ink creating a straw man representing Catholics and then attacking me undeservedly for doing the same. In your case, I do not believe that you are one of the uneducated rubes that Catholics usually encounter on this forum. You know that you are creating a straw man with your attacks against Christâ s Church. You erroneously say that the Scriptures do not say that the saints forward our prayers but St. Johns Apocalypse says that they indeed forward our prayers in 5:8. While you may disagree it is disingenuous to state that Scriptures do not present a case that our prayers to saints are presented before God. Clearly the Scriptures teach that we are to pray for each other and be intercessors before God and this is taught in Scriptures. If you have ever prayed for anyone then you have been an intercessor. In doing so are you usurping Christâ s role. Certainly not, then how can one say that the saints are doing so? We ask for their prayers because they have won the race and have been justified, sanctified, and are righteous in Godâ s judgment. Can we be so certain that those here on earth are righteous that we ask to pray for us? But we can be certain of those in heaven. The Scriptures say the following about the prayers of the saints and others in righteousness:
Dance at Mass? | Catholic Exchange::
Nov 15, 2008 My question usually comes down to WHY do people insist on . I do not think dance worship is approtiate during mass. however before mass
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(Jas 5:16 DRB) Confess therefore your sins one to another: and pray one for another, that you may be saved. For the continual prayer of a just man availeth much.
Catholics are not prohibited from praying to Christ, in fact, asking for intercessory prayers usually follows going directly to Christ. We just include the saints in our prayer circle just as we would any other Church member.
In the future when attacking Catholics at least research and find out if what you are accusing us of is really what we practice and/or the Church teaches. There is no excuse for doing otherwise as the Catechism is available to all to check to see if what they have been told about Catholics is true. Plus, it may save a lot of cyber ink and intellect that you seem to be wasting. What is Christâ s greatest command? It is to love one another and this is expressed best by prayer.
I'm sorry to say it's b/c some are lazy and don't want to learn anything different to what the believe - some are just stubborn - some are ignorant - and some are full of hate.
All of this saddens me - but there's always room for change - God is gracious and merciful.
You know your worshipping the Lord Jesus and not Mary - how blessed are you to have a deeper knowledge and understanding of God's Word - and a closer relationship with your Savior and Lord..
Blessings
In "Christian Theology, Volume 3", Millard J. Erciksson defines Worship as "praise and exultation of God", "recognizing and declaring his greatness", and "praising and glorifying him" (p. 1057).
When Catholics pray to Mary, they praise and exult her. That's worship.
The mere fact that Catholics pray to Mary is abhorrent to most Protestants. I don't know of a single place in the Bible where we're given the example that we should pray to anyone except God himself.
Let me turn the tables on you. Why do you believe that when Catholics do these things, they are not worshiping Mary?
EDIT - You claim the Hail Mary is Biblical. Please cite the evidence for your claim. Please make sure that when you do, you're not taking any verse out of context, and that in using the Hail Mary as Catholics do, you're using it in THE SAME WAY as the Bible verses you cite. If you can do so, I'll agree that the Hail Mary is Biblical. If you can't, then you're just taking things out of context, which is unnaceptable and, might I add, an extemely improper use of God's word.
Spiritually, a statement is not a lie if there is no intent to deceive. If a person genuinely believes that Marian devotion equates to worship, then for them to say anything different would be a lie. I would being lying if I said that the devotion to Mary I have encountered, whether in my Catholic relatives or in famous figures such as the Pope, looked like anything but worship to my simplistic eyes. Oh, I know all about latria and hyperdulia, the supposed difference in degrees of reverence between Mary and God. I donâ t buy it. Itâ s just sophistry, wordplay, means nothing. That is my honest opinion. I have talked with some Catholic people about this in person who could not look me in the eye. I think they know down in their heart those distinctions are mere rationalizations, that it is really not possible to keep two separate classes of fervent spiritual devotion alive in oneâ s heart, one for Mary and one for God. Jesus said we cannot serve two masters. We will love the one and hate the other. It is woven into the nature of our spiritual beings. Pope John Paul II, when he was shot, kept repeating one name during his trauma â Madonna.â We are designed to worship just one god, and that is ultimately what we all do. For a Protestant, there is only one proper Person to Whom we should pray, upon Whom we should rely for grace and aid in Heavenly places, to Whom we should bend the knee. For us, all these acts are in themselves worship, and can only be given to God. When we see real, third world Catholic peasants offering prayers, bringing gifts, and bending their knees to a dead statue, though it be ever so rich in ornate beauty, we weep to think how they could so easily approach the humble Jesus Himself if their minds were not blighted with the notion that He was less approachable than Mary. I think the lie is not with us who call this idolatry, but with those whose cleverness enables them to parse â worshipâ from â worship,â putting eternal human souls at risk, solely to justify a practice not taught by Scripture.
Edit:
Born Again Catholic, you really have to get over the misconception that the Catholic church was this big smooth uniform monolith until the nasty olâ reformers cam along and spoiled the party. That isnâ t a good view of history. It isnâ t even a good view of the â Fathersâ (though Jesus said we should call no man father), who were more diverse on several key issues than Catholic apologists tend to admit. Athanasius, for example, held to the trinity, at considerable risk to his health, despite a broad consensus against it because he could not justify the alternative view from Scripture. Many other believers (God alone knows how many and where they were, etc.), at all stages of church history, have believed that all doctrine must be grounded in the authority of Godâ s written revelation. With or without the political support of Rome, God knows those who are His, and the Holy Spirit keeps us always in that union of spirit and truth Jesus spoke of when He described the true worshippers of God.
By contrast, the Bible contains no positive examples of bowing before statues of any kind, and many, many prohibitions against such a practice, both Old and New Testament. Furthermore, the Bible contains no positive commands to pray to anyone but God. So if you think we are simply pointing to the ineffective statuary because it â suits our purpose,â you are sadly mistaken. What inferior â purposeâ do you insinuate? You paint it as if we had something to gain personally by deliberately obscuring your subtle distinctions in degrees of worship. Why are you so hardened to the possibility that this is what we really believe, that worship is a fundamentally different kind of thing from honor, and that what Catholics do with statues and other Marian rituals really crosses that line? No, what â suits our purposeâ is to go before God one day at the end of our short little lives and have nothing about which we need to be embarrassed (I am probably closer to that than you are, so this is quite real to me). Having spent our lives substituting Mary as mediatrix for Jesus the only valid mediator between God and His people would be more than embarrassing. It might well be fatal. I have Catholic relatives who do this, so please spare me the â you just donâ t know usâ line. It donâ t fly with me. Sorry.
Velvet, the â Hail Mary,â as Catholics use it, is not justified by Scripture. The angelic greeting of â Hail, thou that art highly favoured,â is not an expression of worship, nor of something just short of worship, but of the outpouring of blessing, as â hailâ here is the word â chiaro,â which in the context of a greeting simply means â be cheerful,â or â be well.â The angel is basically saying, be of good cheer Mary, God has this great blessing for you, and its going to make you a real standout among women. Protestants, even nasty olâ Calvin, regard Mary as wonderful, a key figure in the unfolding of Godâ s redemptive plan. We just canâ t pray to her, because that is worship, and worship is for God only. Believe me, if you really could talk to her, she would understand the limitation, and not take offense. If I ask a friend for a favor, I must do so according to the principles of Scripture. The only spiritual being we are allowed to speak to directly is God. Now, I sometimes do this. Silly perhaps, but I do it. I ask God to get a message to one of my relatives. He can do that. He could turn me down on that request too. But at least I didnâ t do evil that good may come of it. Attempting to communicate directly with those that have passed on is forbidden, therefore it is evil. God has His reasons. We have faith in the rightness of those reasons, because we have faith in Him.
Cristoiglesia, why do Catholics always seem to end up accusing us Protestants of being disingenuous when we disagree with you on a topic? Yes, we do recognize that Christians pray for each other. Put that straw man away. He may catch fire. That does not even get close to answering the real question, which is how does the communion of the saints actually work. You string together a pretty series of quotes, which demonstrate a number of wonderful things, that the deceased in Christ do have an active standing before God, that they are those who have won the race, that a great love binds us all together. What none of your quotes justify is an attempt to forward our prayers to God through any saint who has gone on before us. You cannot so demonstrate because there is no such Scripture. How God relates us with them is not fully explained in Scripture. I am reasonably certain they do pray on our behalf, but I am equally certain they do not usurp the role of intercessor for my prayers, which I present directly to Him via the mediation of Jesus, when I go boldly before the Throne of Grace. To approach prayer in so cowardly a fashion as to rely on mere courtiers of the King is directly opposed to the Scriptural instruction:
â Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.â Hebrews 4:16.
That is not a request. It is a command.
Edit2:
Cristoiglesia, I repeat, why do Catholics always seem to end up accusing us Protestants of being disingenuous when we disagree with you on a topic? God in Heaven knows I am telling you what I believe because this is what I find Scripture to be teaching. "Disingenuous" is just another word for "lying," so you have in effect accused me of lying, but you are wrong. Is this how Catholics show love? With false accusations of lying? But I repeat, it is no lie to say what I believe is true. To say otherwise is the real lie. I think you resort to that tactic simply to discredit me in the eyes of others without addressing the hard facts. So be it. God knows the truth.
As to the hard facts, your reliance on Revelation 5:8 for hard proof of your theory of â prayer-forwardingâ is unfounded. Who are the 24 elders? If they represent 24 specific individuals, then we see that they are holding harps and containers (â golden vialsâ ), and that the containers house odors, which in turn represent the prayers of saints. I donâ t see â prayer-forwardingâ here. What do the vials represent? Why do the prayers not come out of the vials? Why are they not offered to God via agency of the elders at this time? No, they are simply part and parcel of the image of the congregation of the elders. A much less awkward explanation than that of â prayer-forwardingâ is probable here. It is often taken that the 24 elders represent, as a combination of the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles, the full collection of Old and New Covenant saints, the entire body of believers, who do indeed have their true presence as before the throne of heaven. The golden vials are the prayers of these saints and the harps are the music of praise emanating from the church, all of which makes sense if the elders are the church entire, not just the deceased now in heaven.
Furthermore, compare this with Revelation 8:3
â And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.â
So finally we have an actual offering of the prayers to God, as it would appear that the prayers of ALL saints are ultimately offered to God via this mysterious figure of an angel, or messenger, of God. We Know that Jesus is frequently pictured in Scripture as an angelic being, the true messenger of God. We further know that He is the true intercessor for the prayers we offer to God. It is therefore abundantly reasonable (and not at all disingenuous) to suggest that this angel presenting the prayers of ALL saints to God is none other than Jesus Himself, obviating the need for â prayer-forwarding,â except as here pictured, where only this special angel is presented as the one who offers our prayers to God.
Your theory of â prayer-forwardingâ specifically requires that someone ask a deceased third party who is already in heaven to speak to God on their behalf. I repeat: This is not modeled anywhere in Scripture. Period. Except perhaps for the man in hell who spoke to Abraham across the divide. But we both know thatâ s not a good example of your theory, because â prayer-forwarding,â as you describe it, requires an initial offer of prayer to some being other than God, with the hope that other being will use their advantage of position to deliver it to God Himself. I therefore ask that you no longer confuse the issue by mixing this up with other forms of legitimate cooperative prayer. I am all for the saints, both in Heaven and on earth, praying *directly to God* on each otherâ s behalf. But this is not your proposal. Your â prayer-forwardingâ is not the same as me offering a prayer to God and having some angel or other heavenly being complete the connection on my behalf. I offered it directly to God, and relied on the heavenly providence of God to ensure that He heard my prayer. I therefore did not break the rules. You did. Tag â your straw man is now â it.â
people claim that because they are ignorant. that's all.
Because Mary's freakin' hot!
Mary is revered in the Catholic church and people pray to her. There are also sightings of Mary which are not refuted by the Vatican. Why do people pray to her. Additionally there are "miracles" around the world which are ascribed to Mary by the church. Believers are supposed to pray to God. What's the Hail Mary all about. I'm just not comfortable with saints and them being prayed to. There's only one God to whom we owe praise.
If you are hopeless, who do you pray to. To the saint of the hopeless, that's Saint Jude, or to God. Faith is much bigger than belief. Your don't love your cup but the liquid it is carrying, be it tea or water, but you relate with the cup. She bore Jesus but that's no reason why we have to fall at her knees. God uses the most despised of people. She was like you and me. She wasn't divine. Just like Moses who did extraordinary things without changing into some form of being. May The Lord Bless You. Keep in touch because we can learn from each other.
P.S. I used my wife's address. mine is dumiz@yahoo.com
the mal-intent is surprising. and to think that they believe that they're doing it for God is the most appalling of all. may God have mercy on those anti-Catholics.
because they're ignorant.
I'm a moron, but I am Catholic! Those peopel just can't rid right.
The problem is people do not see the difference between veneration and worship. Also, most people beleieve that 'to pray' means 'to worship', while it does not.
Here are a few definitions:
1. to offer devout petition, praise, thanks, etc.
2. to offer (a prayer).
3. to bring, put, etc., by praying: to pray a soul into heaven.
4. to make earnest petition to (a person).
5. to make petition or entreaty for; crave: She prayed his forgiveness.
6. to enter into spiritual communion with God or an object of worship through prayer.
7. to make entreaty or supplication, as to a person or for a thing.
They are right to say there is no Biblical structure for our veneration of Mary to where is says 'and he knelt before her', but if you look elsewhere you will see the veneration given to Solomon's mother by him and his subjects. This is Solomon, one of the greatest kings of history and he bows to his mother. No one thought he was worshipping her though, the people knew the respect and love their king held for his mother and understood what he was doing.
As Jesus is our savior, the Virgin Mary is our spiritual mother. So why shouldn't we give her the respect and honor she deserves? Why shouldn't we ask our mother to help us in our times of need?
People say we pray to her and therefore worship her, but as I showed above, to pray does not mean to worship. We ask for her intercession and for her help, but why is that different from asking your friend the same thing?
If you ask someone to pray for you, people don't think you're worshipping them. If a man bows to a woman, people don't think that's worship. If you kneel before royalty that's not taken as worship. If you kneel before a Christmas tree to put presents under, it's not worship (though I had someone tell me that once). But to bow before our Mother and ask for her help must be, correct?
Worng.
If someone says it's different because she's dead, if you are a Christian and believe in Christ, then you must also believe that Christ destroyed death and therefore they are alive, just on a different plane.
So if you can ask someone over the phone for their help, then asking someone in Heaven shouldn't be any different. Just because we show our respect and love for those who have gone before us, does not equel worship.
The problem is that most Anti-Catholic groups do not wish to lose their ideal image of the 'satanic' Catholic Church. They will do anything to keep it that way.
Because they think they know more about Catholicism than the Pope and all the Catholics.
These people need our prayers. Most of it is hatred of the Church; a lot is well intentioned people who sincerely believe the Church is wrong and that we DO worship Mary, and they mean no harm. This is why we should pray for them, and help them get a little Catholic education to dispell that untruth.
God bless and Merry Christmas.
I believe there are several reasons for this; there are some Catholics who admit to worshiping Mary, not all but some. There are some Catholics including the pope who bow down before statues that are suppose to be representations of Mary. There are some Catholics who admit to praying to Mary. Although many Catholics claim to venerate Mary by doing these things, other people outside of Catholicism see this as a form of worship because these are things done only to God with the exception of bowing down to some statue.
You said the hail Mary is biblical; could you please be so kind to tell me where this is in the bible. I have never seen or know of anywhere in the Word of God where God instructs us to appeal to someone who has died to pray for us at anytime.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death.
because they are asking non-Catholics instead of Catholics
because they are uneducated morons
Velvet, this is just one of the things -- although certainly the most popular -- that Christian believers with Protestant roots like to use in order to underscore and rationalize their separateness from the Church. They concentrate on superficialities (the statues, the rosary prayers, etc.) because it suits their purpose. "But you're on your KNEES in front of a STATUE of MARY, how is that not worship?" Well, it's not what the person in question is doing, obviously, but again it suits them to bear down on what it "looks like" rather than investigate how the reverence we give to Mary honors Christ. Mary, herself, points everyone to Christ; "do whatever He tells you". We do not worship her, and we know it.
When I was in the process of coming home to the Church from an evangelical Protestant denomination, I did have a bit of an internal barrier with regard to Mary. But I came to realize that it was not Catholics who had this wrong -- it was my own evangelical background that was anemic. This was also true of Holy Communion (reduced to a quarterly "ordinance" with grape juice and crackers) and baptism (a dunking in water that was very carefully explained as something that did not "save" us, or accomplish anything more than making a public statement about our belief), among other things I'd been taught. Once I got past the barrier of "Mary worship", it was abundantly clear to me that honoring her takes nothing away from what is owed to Christ. And all of the worship I saw going on was directed only to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
They either don't understand because of what they've been taught, or refuse to listen to explanations of the truth because this is a deliberately held misconception for their own purposes. In the latter case, they insist that they're the ones to define terms (like "born again", and what worship and prayer are supposed to look like) and it is the Church that had it all wrong for 1500 years or so until their heroic reformers came along.
It is a COMPLETE LIE!!! I've been studying MY faith for about 5-10 years now (everyday), I think that I know just a little bit more about what I believe than these Anti-Catholic Protestants do. I mean, they probably never even cracked open a Catechism, and they still think they know what their talking about! Ugh, what a joke. NOT Saying all Protestants are Anti-Catholic, but most Anti-Catholics are just Protestant. Peace.
Don't worry honey. The truth shall prevail.
There is no god.
**It's not a lie. I don't lie.
For those who are supposed to live by that commandment, then yes, it's not only ironical, it's also hippocritical.
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Why do some people insist that Catholics worship Mary? 
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