Further, it is so offensive and implies such ignorance to allege that we DO worship Mary that it is extremely difficult to take seriously anything else said by anyone who makes the charge.
To put it another way. If you really think we DO worship Mary, then you have so little an understanding of what we believe and do, no matter what your background might be, that it's a waste of your time to do any further arguing until you do some work finding out what we do in fact believe and teach.
Yep and a WHOLE Lot of Protestants don't know what Catholicism is about either, but they are so sure that they DO know that they simply can't learn what we do teach. They don't want to know, they want to tell us instead. Protestantism did a whole lot of good, but to not return to God's Sabbath makes me wonder what exactly they are protesting?
Hint: they are protesting agains the role of the Pope
You already said you don't know what your church teaches (or the fact that you call yourself Catholic doesn't mean you understand the avalanche or some other colorful metaphor), so what's the big deal? Are you assuming that only Catholics can study Catholicism? Or are you saying that if anyone studies Catholicism, they must ultimately call themselves Catholic? I don't get it.
I say again, If you say I must show a Scripture justifying the worship of Mary, then you have shown yourself EITHER so ignorant of Catholic teaching, practice and thought that it is hard to imagine having a useful conversation with you OR too ready to take a cheap shot and to make an allegation you know to be false -- in which case it's hard to imagine having a useful conversation with you. Nothing personal. If you intriduce the entirely irrelevant as well as false matter of Mariolatry, then it takes up time to explain that no, we don't worship Mary and all that. It's a distraction from your main point. It suggests that you don't really have arguments to back up your main point, so you introduce irrelevancies to hide that uncomfortable fact. It's just not a good use of time and energy.
I thought it was founded in scripture, I read the scripture and found out differently. Then I went on a crusade to find out where that crap came from and how it got into my head. It is an entirely circular set of doctrine that all ultimately starts and ends with "because we say so". I have a whole lot of respect for the Catholics who actually admit this and it ends the debate for me. To me, Catholics who try to revise-in extra-biblical teachings into the scriptures are actually denying the very foundation of their faith.
We're never going to make contact here, I guess. I see another choice, you don't. When the Apostles say in Jerusalem "edoxen gar to pneumati to hagio kai humin ....," a non-believer could say, 'It is an entirely circular set of doctrine that all ultimately starts and ends with "because we say so".' How do we know that it seemed good to the Holy SPirit as well as to them? They tell us so. That's it. If you think God directs the Church in her councils, then you think so. If you don't, then you don't.
The little that Diego has shared on other threads makes me extremely dubious. But whatever day of the week Pentecost was or wasn't doesn't touch on MY point that there was a group of people who professed some faith in the risen Lord and that writings wen through the process I descibed, so the group preceded the Bible. The name "Catholic" is not as important to me as it seems to be to you.
None of them referred to God as being a three-headed Janus, either.
Well that's nice because we don't think God is a three-headed Janus either. You just can't resist insulting, can you?
I will tell you a story: I was in the hospital some 30+ years ago with a virus in my heart. I was in considerable pain, feverish, and doped up pretty heavily. Some entirely unprofessional and bullying Sabbatarian physician came in to my room to argue Scripture with me. It was incredibly inappropriate and cruel. I see this Sabbatarian approach to discourse continues: Insults, sophistries, lies, false accusations made either through ignorance or an excessive desire to win an argument, and gratuitous snide remarks which do not serve to communicate anything but contempt. (The entirely juvenile little basketball thing was and remains despicable, in the strict sense of the word.)
I hadn't made the connection until today. A Sabbatarian type takes advantage of a suffering and drugged seminarian to try to force his opinion on him, no matter that the normal medical opinion is that rest and relaxation are kind of important when you have viral pericarditis. And now I have someone who calls himself a former Catholic asking me to come up with a citation from the Bible to justify my "worship" of Mary? And I'm supposed to take this seriously, or to think that such things come from Christ or His Spirit?
Further, the Day of Pentecost was a Holy Day prior to the one in Acts.
Don't tell me you have to go outside of Scripture to show this.
Look, if there were something other than an appeal to manuscripts which surfaced less then 200 years ago and cloaked in a hail of gratuitous verbal slaps and a haze of sophistries, I might be interested in hearing the argument for Sabbatarianism. At least the doctor (who ought to have lost his license, or at least have been sanctioned - I wasn't even his patient!) had some texts, which I researched when I got back to the Library some weeks later. The case wasn't made to my satisfaction. End of problem.
But what we have here is bizarre and irrelevant allegations about worshipping Mary, insistence that your analysis is the only one you will consider or are able to consider, and then the needlessly insulting characterization of the Doctrine of the Trinity as involving a three-headed Janus.
You don't know what we think. You don't want to know what we think. You do not seem to be seeking understanding or even the effective promulgation of your own view. There's no useful place to go from here.
What that Doctor did to you is absolutely repehensible and wholly inappropriate. That would stick in my craw for a long time, too. We use a Catholic hospital and such a thing has never happened to us in reverse.
On the other hand, this is the Religion forum of Free Republic. If you are easily offended, you don't actually have to come here. The basketball parody is pure silliness on my part. I tend to see the world in ridiculous terms. A8 and I had been going back and forth for weeks (maybe even months) on several threads. That comment was addressed to him, not you.
As I look through the thread, I see that you pinged me regarding my conversation with A8. You pinged me at 127 with a simple question, I replied with a simple answer at 129, then you launched into a thinly veiled attack at 130 replete with inuendos and sarcasm. Now you want to malign me? Good grief. I know what I am getting into even insinuating something is wrong with Catholicism on FReligion. I am in no way playing the victim here. You teed this one up, dude, not me. Perhaps we both could take a lesson from Jesus Christ
Mat 22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Mat 22:38 This is the first and great commandment. Mat 22:39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Mat 22:40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.