The Mother of the Son: The Case for Marian Devotion

CatholicEducatorsResourceCenter.org ^ | 2004 | Mark Shea

[Jaded]

mark for later. Should that be St. Mark for later?

BTW, I have used your statement to protestants over the Mary issue, they still don't get it. It's still intercessory prayer.

[Conservative til I die]

Everything a Catholic believes is readily available at the Vatican website.

Nah, dude. Everything a growing Protestant needs to know about the Papists is at www.chick.com

[Conservative til I die]

My problem is that talking to the dead is not supported by Scripture.

The dead are dead only in body. Their spirits live on, either in Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory.

And anyway, Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide, the cornerstones of Protestantism, are not supported by Scripture.

[ScottM1968]

Protestants can go to heaven after they die, as anyone who is a true Christian will do.

Protestants do believe in asking fellow living people to help pray for them.

They just don't ask the dead to do so nor expect the dead to be able to intercede on the living's behalf. Such "dead intercession" is not in Scripture and is wrong.

[Jaded]

If they are in heaven the aren't really dead, now are they? If they are dead who are the folks mentioned in Revelations? They're not all angels.

[No_Outcome_But_Victory]

Nah, dude. Everything a growing Protestant needs to know about the Papists is at www.chick.com

LOL! I remember as a kid, I would go out trick or treating, and some grinning zombies would actually put chick tracts in my candy bag. @#$#@#$!!

I got this:

But I wanted this:

[Conservative til I die]

That last one is a doozy. Notice that the things this man asks Mary to do are the very same things that the word of God tells us Jesus can and will do.

Doozies like this:

"We promise to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, your Son, to proclaim His Good News of God's love for all people, and to work for peace and justice in our world."

"We pray for the Church, for our family and friends, for the poor and abandoned, and all the dying."

"May we serve Jesus with fidelity and love until death. Help us and our loved ones to attain the boundless joy of being forever with our Father in heaven. "

[ScottM1968]

The dead cannot be talked or through.

Unless you are into Channeling. But then, you aren't exactly Christian then, either.

[ScottM1968]

Sola Scriptura is indeed practiced by the Catholic church. Otherwise, the Catholic's bible would have Canonized the many edicts passed down from their Popes over the years.

As it is, the Catholic church takes the Pope at his word but can't see to put it as God-inspired Scripture for the Bible. Of which, I agree with the Popes over the years on this one. So why can't you?

As for salvation through faith alone, this is practiced by the Catholic church to the same extent as that of Protestants. Priests console dying people all the time. Through this time, some patients cannot make it to be baptized, so the priests fulfill their saving graces on site. Such practices are meant to be complete preparation and acceptable to God as salvation. Consequently, without the ability for the newly saved to show much "works", the person is still capable of entry into heaven according to the tenets of the Catholic faith.

It is all very simple to see.

[AAABEST]

Protestants do believe in asking fellow living people to help pray for them. They just don't ask the dead to do so nor expect the dead to be able to intercede on the living's behalf. Such "dead intercession" is not in Scripture and is wrong.

You say such because you don't understand.

The world of the living and the dead may seem distinct in our eyes, but there is little distinction in the eyes of God. Being alive in this world doesn't somehow trump being alive elsewhere under the purview of the Almighty.

As Catholics we view these worlds as God does, therfore are in communion with those who have died. Which is why we not only pray for them, we ask them to pray for us. Logically speaking, asking those who exist elsewhere in God's kingdom to pray for us makes at least as much sense as asking a total stranger on an internet board.

[No_Outcome_But_Victory]

Here is St. Irenaeus' argument in Against Heresies (circa 165 A.D.):

Chapter XIX.-A Comparison is Instituted Between the Disobedient and Sinning Eve and the Virgin Mary, Her Patroness. Various and Discordant Heresies are Mentioned.

1. That the Lord then was manifestly coming to His own things, and was sustaining them by means of that creation which is supported by Himself, and was making a recapitulation of that disobedience which had occurred in connection with a tree, through the obedience which was [exhibited by Himself when He hung] upon a tree, [the effects] also of that deception being done away with, by which that virgin Eve, who was already espoused to a man, was unhappily misled,-was happily announced, through means of the truth [spoken] by the angel to the Virgin Mary, who was [also espoused] to a man.168 For just as the former was led astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she had transgressed His word; so did the latter, by an angelic communication, receive the glad tidings that she should sustain (portaret) God, being obedient to His word. And if the former did disobey God, yet the latter was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order that the Virgin Mary might become the patroness169 (advocata) of the virgin Eve. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin; virginal disobedience having been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience. For in the same way the sin of the first created man (protoplasti) receives amendment by the correction of the First-begotten, and the coming of the serpent is conquered by the harmlessness of the dove, those bonds being unloosed by which we had been fast bound to death.

[Mr. Lucky]

It would be interesting sometime to participate in a thread where Catholics don't justfy their faith by denigrating Protestants and Protestants didn't denigrate their faith by denigrating Catholics (and other Protestants). I have no trouble finding plenty of support in Scripture to confirm Sola Scriptura; if you don't and your belief in the Petronical succession is what sustains your faith, OK.

[NYer]

There is nothing in Scripture to support dead people throughout time as being able to now pray on our behalf. They are dead and Scripture shows no way for those in Heaven to speak on our behalf.

Scripture indicates, those in heaven are aware of the prayers of those on earth. This can be seen, for example, in Revelation 5:8, where John depicts the saints in heaven offering our prayers to God under the form of "golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." But if the saints in heaven are offering our prayers to God, then they must be aware of our prayers. They are aware of our petitions and present them to God by interceding for us. Prayers are not physical things and cannot be physically offered to God. Thus the saints in heaven are offering our prayers to God mentally. In other words, they are interceding.

[NYer]

Notice that the things this man asks Mary to do are the very same things that the word of God tells us Jesus can and will do.

In Genesis 3:15, God prophesied that the Mother of the Messiah would be at emnity with the devil: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise they head, and thou shalt bruise his heel". Mary is forever on the same side as her redeeming Seed in the struggle against evil, sin and death.

Isaiah prophetically called the Messiah the "servant of the Lord". At the Annunciation, Mary called herself the "haidmaid of the Lord": "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word" (Luke 1:38). "Handmaid" is the feminine equivalent of servant. If the Messiah is the Lord's suffering Servant, then His Mother stands with Him as the Lord's faithful Handmaid, with a subordinate role to play in the Redemption of mankind.

[SaltyJoe]

Maybe I went offtrack about talking in prayer to dead relatives and I apologize for that.

Mark 12:24-27

24 Jesus said to them, "Are you not misled because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God?
25 When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven.
26 As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, 'I am the God of Abraham, (the) God of Isaac, and (the) God of Jacob'?
27 He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are greatly misled."

---

Out God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. People in Heaven are more alive than we could possibly imagine. If we had photographs of St Mary, surely we'd keep one of them framed in all our Churches. If we had photos of the Holy Family, surely we'd keep a set of them for ourselves and one in our wallets.

Jesus hates divorce too (but not divorced people). I think that there are some that have abused annulments. You're not alone if you elevate the sanctity of marriage for the Sacramental vocation it is.

If Catholics elevate Our Blessed Mother (The Comfort of Christians), then one must recognize how much higher we elevate the Holy Eucharist, Christ Himself. Not because the Church says so, but because He "is"...less we argue with a former president over the what definition of "is" is.

http://www.ccel.org/bible/kjv/Matthew/26.html
(King James Version)

Matthew 26:26 - And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.

(note that Jesus never said that His breaking and sharing was never a "symbolic gesture". It is He. Thus is the power of God's Word made flesh, and the Word made for us a Grace giving Sacrament.)

[PleaseNoMore]

But, we aren't to pray to angels are we?