Replies

Repent of the blasphemy that makes idols of dead men and fools of living ones

There is the wonderful word ‘dead’ again. You have yet to deal with Matthew 22:32, other than terming this portion of the word of God ‘flimsy’ and I seem to be an occasion of sin for you, at least by my understanding of
Matthew 5:22.

Nowhere in Scripture are we told to pray to anyone but God who alone hears and answers our prayers.

1. Concerning that ‘God alone hears’

In Revelation 8:3-4 an angel is given incense to mingle with the prayers of the saints and ‘the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God.’
The angel is aware of the prayers of the Saints, and is allowed to present them before God. This is not to say that God was not aware of the prayers before and needed the angel to enlighten Him—He has been aware of the prayers from all eternity—but He allows creatures to partake in His Divine governance. Indeed, it is Catholic teaching that even our own prayers are not done for the sake of enlightening God, who is aware of what we need before we need it, and aware of what we will pray before we pray it—not only because He is omnicient but also because we cannot truly pray without first being prompted by His grace—but because God has ordered that certain things be caused through prayer so that we will be more fully aware of the supernatural order in general, and our dependence upon it in particular. Having others pray for us helps us to realize that we are one body in Christ.

2. “God alone answers”
In a certain fundamental sense yes, just as God alone is the author of life. But again, God allows creatures to participate in His governance, and so allows them to be part of answering prayer. In Luke 22:43 the Father answers Our Lord’s prayer by sending an angel to strengthen Him. God chooses to answer even His own prayer through a creature.

We are commanded to pray for our fellow man and to the Triune God alone.

Yes—which is why we ask Mary to ‘pray’ (that is the to the Triune God part—earlier in the Hail Mary we recall that Jesus is God, and thus it is fairly obvious that He is the one we are asking her to pray to, though because we don’t say ‘if you are tempted to pray to Baal don’t do it’ there might be some room for misunderstanding—still, it would be hard to imagine that the mother of Jesus would be tempted to pray to some random deity.) The part in paragraph 2677 that immediately follows the section that you redded highlights this—though I suppose one might twist Luke 1:38 and claim that Mary was worshipping Gabriel. It is, however, Catholic teaching that Mary’s answer to prayers is nothing more than variations on John 2:5—do whatever He tells you—and it is fairly clear that the He is Jesus.

Other people might be more inclined to direct our requests to their own end—indeed we ourselves are often inclined to pray for our own will to be accomplished rather than the will of God. By having Mary pray with us, God’s grace reminds us that prayer is about creatures conforming their wills to God, not having God conform His will to theirs.

Such trust in the Will of God is especially necessary at the hour of death—only a fool would want to go before God clinging to having things done his way rather than God’s way. God gave Mary the grace to conform to His will, and she did not reject it, which is why Gabriel said ‘hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you (Luke 1:28), and because she continued to cooperate with God in Luke 1:38, the Holy Spirit says of her, through Elizabeth in Luke 1:41-42 ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’

I am inclined to trust the judgment of the Holy Spirit and of Gabriel concerning Mary and her character. I would like to have my will conform to God’s will as perfectly as her will conforms, and so I ask her to pray with me.

Of course, for you, there is the obstacle that you think she is dead.

Which brings me back to the statement of yours in post 266 which is what I have been interested in having you defend for some time, asserting that people such as Our Lady are dead. I have put forward arguments to the contrary, summarized in my third point in post 436. Your response to the third point in 437 consists in using the word dead again. This is not a reply, it is repeating.

Are you going to deal with Matthew 22:32 beyond calling Our Lord’s arguments flimsy? In point 3 of post 436, I think I do a reasonable job of showing that scripture supports Him.

If you don’t care to defend and discuss this point, I would be happy to discuss your charge of idolatry if you would do me the favour of precisely defining what you understand the word idol to mean.

However, if you are not interested in having a dialogue on
a fixed topic, but merely wish to diverge onto some other track and ignore what I say, I do not see much point in saying any more.

Ora pro nobis.
(For the moderator—that is: pray for us)

Your crass defense of praying to dead people and the Scripture you mangle to try and support it does more than any post I could make to show the paucity of your argument.

Mary is dead. She is in heaven. She was a simple Jewish girl who was graced by God to carry the Christ child to term.

She was a sinner, just like you and me, born in sin and dead in sin, forgiven those sins by Christ's work on the cross.

The blasphemy that Rome has surrounded her with is ungodly. Repent of it.

Excellent posts. Extremely well done, grounded in Scripture, and closely reasoned.