However, I can tell you that I have not experienced anything like "Mary worship". Even today, the feast day of the Immaculate Conception does not indicate to me a displacement of Jesus. Rather, we celebrate the lives of Mary and all the saints who share in our worship of Jesus.
As I understand it, we ask Mary to pray for us, to intercede on our behalf. I find that no more unusual than offering to say a prayer for a suffering friend. That friend may ask me to say a prayer for them, just as I ask Mary to say a prayer for me.
Also, I say prayers for others who have gone. Whether they are saints or whether they are friends, family or co-workers. I don't expect them to answer a prayer as God would, but rather, it's simply a type of correspondence-a way of keeping them in my mind while I'm here on earth and they are with God.
I find nothing at all unusual or insulting to God that we constantly remember and revere the people who have gone. And never in my brief teachings in the Catholic church have I been led to believe that any of these people are God or Jesus' equal.
As a Catholic of many, many years, Your reply was very, very good. God Bless.
48. Let all, therefore, try to approach with greater trust the throne of grace and mercy of our Queen and Mother, and beg for strength in adversity, light in darkness, consolation in sorrow; above all let them strive to free themselves from the slavery of sin and offer an unceasing homage, filled with filial loyalty, to their Queenly Mother. Let her churches be thronged by the faithful, her feast-days honored; may the beads of the Rosary be in the hands of all; may Christians gather, in small numbers and large, to sing her praises in churches, in homes, in hospitals, in prisons. May Mary’s name be held in highest reverence, a name sweeter than honey and more precious than jewels; may none utter blasphemous words, the sign of a defiled soul, against that name graced with such dignity and revered for its motherly goodness; let no one be so bold as to speak a syllable which lacks the respect due to her name.
When Jesus was asked how people should pray He said “Our Father, Who art in Heaven,” NOT “My Mother, Who art on Earth”!
We are told to pray ONLY to God, not people who are dead.
Ed
Wow! I can’t believe that you have only been Catholic for a few years. You speak with such knowledge!
You have just done an excellent job explaining our faith and how we practice it.
Well done! We need more worshipers like you!
Ditto to your post!
(is also a convert, as of Easter 09)