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I think the problem is that, sure from one aspect, God does NOT ask permission.
In all respects Mad Dawg. You don't see it. So far, Revelation 3 is the only scripture that has been brought up to imply that He does, and it doesn't contain a question at all.

and He doesn't get caught by surprise either. But from another aspect He does seem at least to engage in a dance where HE does this and then WE (by His grace) do THAT and so there is something very like asking permission.
Up until the last moment, I was with you. There is a tension. God is sovereign. Nothing happens without his knowledge and allowance (whether it is permissive or directive will is another theological issue that sometimes is best not to dwell on). So, he is never taken by surprise (which actually cool, since it also means we can never disappoint God since He knew what we were going to do anyway- another issue). Now, the dance you speak of is really a well orchestrated plan. I do not believe that a person can ultimately thwart God's plan. How much lee-way we have is really not articulated. We know that as far as God's plan for humanity, there really isn't a plan b. It's not like God watches to see what we will do. Hence, He doesn't ask permission. He gives directions. God is not toodling along and saying "OH NO!!!! Mad Dawg just screwed up my plan for humanity" He knows ever move we will ever make and it all works out towards His plan and glory, and if we are Christians, our good (even to the point that the best good for us is to be taken home). So, all that is to say, that there is this observational tension that we really can not understand as humans. But, there is nothing in us that God must rely upon in order to accomplish His plan. Rather, if we weren't His tools for accomplishing His will, the Rocks themselves would cry out.

Now, the idea of "Credit" for doing good. A couple of things. First, I'm going to turn your statement around to read, If they do something bad then there's plenty to blame, but its like nobody gets any "credit" for doing good [either]. For the first part, there is no "IF" there. We all do bad. We all deserve Hell. Period. Now the second, nobody gets any "credit". You're absolutely right there. Salvifically, any "righteousness" which we do is as filthy rags before God. They are nowhere near His holiness and are as filthy, stinky, dirty rags in comparison. Filthy rags deserve nothing but being burned in the fire. Nevertheless, as Christians God has set up a system of rewards (as well as stripping of reward) for those who do good works. The good works in no way save us. But, they are all a part of what God expects of us and designed us to be as His chosen vessels. As Ephesians 2:8-10 says " 8For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9Not of works, lest any man should boast. 10For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." In other words, our salvation rests in His grace by faith alone- exclusive of works. But, His salvation will absolutely produce good works because it was all a part of the reason that He saved us to begin with. He gives us the ability to do those good works, and graciously gives us rewards for those things we did with a motivation to please Him. I've said it before, I know we can not do anything to thwart God's plan for the ages at all. He will keep us from doing that. But as Christians, we are creatures whom He has given TRUE free will (unlike the will of the lost who willfully enslave themselves in the chains of sin and love it). We obey or we disobey. The lost only ultimately disobey. Their motivation is NEVER towards pleasing the one true God. Ours often is. Sometimes it isn't. Christian works with bad motives will be burnt up and we will have no reward to speak of. We will be in heaven, but saved "as by fire." Now, as the to the "Mother of God" comment, let me ask you this. Let's say you have been chosen to escort a prisoner on death row to the execution chamber. He is in his shackles and you are to walk beside him, get on an elevator, and then walk him to the chamber door to never see him again. This man is a notorious sinner, who was never exposed in any depth to Christianity and really doesn't even know who Jesus is. As you are travelling on the elevator alone with him, he looks down and sees a miraculous medal lapel pin on your jacket. All of this time, you have been burdened to try to share the gospel with him. Suddenly he turns to you and says "Who is the lady?" and nods towards your lapel. You have about 10 seconds before the elevator doors open. Honestly, will your answer be, "a)She is Mary, the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven and I love her" or b)"She is the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ who was God and came down as God to save those who were lost. Would you like His forgiveness?" Which would be your choice Mad Dawg?

It never occurred to me that saying "Mother of God" meant that Mary was the REAL god, and that Trinity stuff was just a parvenu. From the time I was 19 with no instruction I knoew that the "middle term" was "Jesus, who is God".
I don't think that anyone would say that the title means she is God. Rather, I think the confusion comes in with her preceding God. She didn't. The imprecise term "Mother of God" implies that she did.

The boss-lady and I sort of blend our Rosary with our daily and occasional intercessions, and there is no "hiccup" in going from "We pray to the Lord" "Lord hear our prayer" after one of us gives a whole telephone book full of the people we're praying for.
Do you not ever wonder if what you are doing with the Rosary is spoken of in Scripture when Jesus said "Matthew 6:7- But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking."

"The Lord's Prayer" was not a prayer for us to repeat over and over and over and over again as a formula. It was a model of how we were supposed to pray. Remembering in our prayers to praise God (Hallowed be thy name), yield to His will (thy kingdom come, thy will be done), Make petition (give us this day), Ask forgiveness (And forgive us our trespasses) while releasing others from any debt owed to oneself (as we forgive those who have trespassed against us), ask for protection against Satan's ways (lead us not into temptation but deliver us from [the]evil[one]), and again into praise. It was the ideal prayer. It was a model. It wasn't a rote formula. The rosary is a formula. Say this and you will get protection from Mary against temptation. Say this and you will earn grace. This is not biblical, rather it was the instruction of an apparition of Mary which has grown to a normal ritual in Catholicism.

It's just a non-starter. The only people I KNOW of who have a beef with the term are people who came into the conversation not only with a beef against the Catholic Church but with a firm resolve NOT to believe that Church's account of itself without a (sometimes nasty) fight. It was never easy to think this possible misunderstanding was our problem or our fault and it's getting harder and harder.
The people who have a beef against the Catholic church have a beef against it because we believe its teachings are not biblical and its gospel is a different one than the one found in Scripture. I believe that there are Catholics who are saved in spite of the church's teachings. I believe there are Baptists who are lost in spite of my church's teaching. It isn't at a personal level that this judgment is made. Rather, it is at a top level of "is what is being said in harmony with Scripture?" If not, the "fervor" you see may not be nastiness but frustration because someone thinks you have missed it on the gospel. It is a show of love. Of course, this isn't always the case. Some folks just like to argue without really having any purpose in mind. As a matter of fact, many of us can basically be looking at these discussions with love but occasionally lapse into just being argumentative for arguments sake. Anyway, objection to the Catholic church isn't just a case of hatefulness and obstinancy.

You know there are some people on this thread who, if they got a notarized letter from God saying, "Surprise, the papists are right!" would take a VERY long time and much heartache to come around.
I would submit they would reject the letter because they would have tested the spirit with Scripture. God isn't a cheerleader for the papists. He is a cheerleader for his truth. Where the papists get it right, He is pleased. Where they don't, He is not. Ditto with the Protestants. God will not cheerlead things which run contrary to His word.

This is like what Rush says about Democrats advising Republicans how to be better Republicans. A lot of us have taken the objection seriously and looked at it from all sides. At this point after 7500 posts on this thread alone, it's going to take more than a sampling of one store -- a sampling which evidently didn't count crucifixes as images of Jesus (or note that nearly every rosary has an image of Our Lord which is usually larger than the image of our Lady) to get me to think that there is a plague of mother worship sweeping the land.
All I say to that Mad Dawg is...

[Mad Dawg]

The paragraph which ends:

. So, all that is to say, that there is this observational tension that we really can not understand as humans. But, there is nothing in us that God must rely upon in order to accomplish His plan. Rather, if we weren't His tools for accomplishing His will, the Rocks themselves would cry out.

I don't see the above as in conflict with anything I said or think. If the tension is such that we can't' understand it, then why can't there be an aspect which is LIKE (as I said) waiting for permission. It won't be EXACTLY like. Nothing we can articulate about God is exactly like the truth.

I think there's a truth-discerning and a spiritual problem with your discourse on merit. It comes down to picking out and seeing potential bad stuff and feeling perfectly justified in going on and on over and over again incessantly without end about how bad OTHER PEOPLE (like papists) are and the on and on, etc, about how truthful the doctrine one is advocating is. I wasn't so much talking about credit in God's reckoning as credit as we give credit in conversations such as this.

As to the condemned man, of course I'd open door B, the Jesus door. SO what follows? If a letter form the governor came, and the guy said,"Tell me more about this Jsus," I would. Then, down the road, when he'd made a commitment t Christ and started taking some responsibility for his prayer life, I might talk about devotion to Mary.

If mother of God implies that Mary preceded God it does so only to those predestined to Hell. What would be the answer to that?

I reporting on my experience as a Protestant say that from my experience, on the ground in the real world it never struck me for a minute as meaning that Mary pre-existed God. What it meant was the God is just mind-blowingly amazing. I entertained the possibility of the misconstruction you seem to fear other players, to be designated later, might make, because usually I try to understand the view of the people with whom I am talking. But when I look at reality, I just don't see it happening. After a while, you have to go with reality over conjecture.

It's like you guys don't want us to enjoy the wonder of our religion, to be exuberant about it, to scatter praise, to enjoy having our human categories blown wide open by the miraculous grace of God or to use with confidence the access to the mystery His Work gives us. You all talk about God's grace, and we talk about how there are miracles everywhere, and you all scoff at us as credulous. You say God is wonderful and powerful. WE say God is so amazingly wonderful and powerful and loving that He makes a Jewish girl the Mother of God. And you all go ballistic! When we pipe you all want to play funerals, when we mourn you all want to play Senior Prom!

You all don't "get" "courtesy titles", and that to me is one of the clearest suggestions that some Protestantism is historically and culturally conditioned, relying on printing presses and the concept of the nation state and a particular family of political theories (with most of which I happen to agree.)

One of the things that bugged me when I started going to Mass as an outside was the absence of "prayer books". Then I realized that the Church got by for more than a millennium without prayer books.

Re: the attack on the Rosary. Two things: (a) can we fight on one front, or do we have to fight the entire war in each post? (b) Duh! Yeah! I grew up not only Protestant but the kind of kid who would read his Bible under the covers with his flashlight. And the kid of kid who condemned RCs for praying the Rosary. One of the ancillary causes of my being open to Catholicism was the sense that some Protestants have that anybody who disagrees with them must be a stupid illiterate unaccustomed to reading Scripture. I don't like closed minds on any side of an argument, and am suspicious when the demonstration of the closed mind is to make ridiculously condescending statements about others.

(Yes, I AM feeling feisty this morning.)

The heart of the Rosary is NOT the repetition, it's the meditation. Also there's no trace in me of thinking I will be heard because (or in anyway secondary) to the number of Hail Mary's I say. I say them because I am already heard, not to be heard. I say them as much to listen as to speak. And I don't say the Rosary to "get" something as if I were putting a quarter in the divine slot machine.

Shall I say that every Protestant who carries a Bible to church is a hypocrite because Clintoon made a point of being oten seen with his Bible? (Of course, he just had a bible cover and the latest Playboy inside but who's counting?) YES, maybe some Catholics are trying to cook the books with God by praying Rosaries. Certainly many Protestants of my experience think the Bible, the physical concrete one(s) I have is/are a sacred object. What other book comes with zippers? (I'm red-green color-blind. Somebody once gave me a VERY nicely bound and printed red-letter Bible. I didn't even know! All the letters looked black to me ...)

My glib retort, which doesn't convey much, is that Jesus was talking about VAIN repetitions done to impress God. MY repetitions are full, not vain, and not done to impress anybody. Moving right along ...

The people who have a beef against the Catholic church have a beef against it because we believe its teachings are not biblical and its gospel is a different one than the one found in Scripture.

It's a whole lot easier to think that when one doesn't learn what the teachings are and embraces (as is done a LOT on this forum, though not much by you) false, sometime grotesquely false parodies of them.

It is a show of love.

I heard that excuse in Juvenile and Domestic Relations court. YES there are some pretty snotty folks on the RC side, and I WISH they'd take a chill pill. But for ANYBODY to suggest to me that I haven't read and considered our Lord's sayings on prayer and to try to teach me those passages again at worst borders on the incredibly offensive, and at best is boring. Do you REALLY think I'm unaware of that passage and haven't had it thrown in my teeth about a kafillion times before?

I see the pictures. They may be worth 1,000 words, but even those words have to be taken in context. If we're going to take stuff out of context, I'll just get my white sheets and take American Protestantism right the heck out of context. What a silly game that would be!

I'll bet a nickel that at the humongo Marian convention (which is what I assume that big crowd is) they say Masses. A priest buddy is going to Medjugorje (I am NOT responsible for Yugoslavian spelling. If they can't decently give their villages good English names, I can't be expected to write in their "vain bibble-babble".[Twelfth Night, Shakespeare]) I'll bet he'll say a Mass every day. When I go our parish Church for Rosary, the Rosary takes 20 minutes and is followed by a mass of, say, 45 minutes. On Fridays there is a devotion to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament - maybe 20 minutes, a Rosary, then a Mass. maybe 65 minutes for God Almighty and 20 minutes for the Rosary, which as I said, while Marian, is more Christo-centric than "Mario-centric". But no amount of evidence and context setting will help my point. This is where you all would haul out the "Eyes to see, but seeth not" stuff.

Who do YOU think put Mary on the toast? (I suspect Photoshop, but that's just me.

(Did you get my Freepmail with the joke?)