You’ve heard of saying a “Hail Mary”? I’ve said them every morning for years. Nothing wrong with it.
It’s OK to ask the Blessed Mother to intervene on our behalf.
It’s also OK to ask a saint to intervene on our behalf.
And it’s certainly OK to ask Christ, through prayer to help us.
Catholicism has a lot of places to go for help. :)
The problem is, how do you know it’s “OK”? That in fact is the question being debated, and saying it’s “OK” is not an argument.
***Catholicism has a lot of places to go for help. :)***
And we poor Christians have only Christ...
Mary and the Saints died. According to scripture, those of faith who die, including the saints, are "sleeping" beneath the Throne of God in Heaven until the time when Christ's church on earth (all of the believers, alive and dead) are raised up to join with Him in "The Wedding Feast of The Lamb" in heaven. Two quick points here:
1) It makes no sense to pray to someone who is dead, and asleep in Heaven until the Wedding Feast. There is nothing they can do for you.
2) Satan loves when we pray to Mary, or to the Saints, or when we confess our sins to a priest (instead of to God or Jesus, as the Bible tells us to), because those prayers and confessions fall on deaf ears because by performing them, we are being disobedient to God's instructions in the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible are we instructed to pray to Mary, or the Saints, or to confess our sins to a priest.
We ARE told how to pray, and how to confess our sins, but there is no mention of Mary or Saints for prayer or priests for confession.
Instead, in the bible are numerous stories about times when men strayed from God's clear and perfect teachings, and re-invented God's Holy Word making up their own "religiosity" (the "golden calf," Gnosticism, etc). These stories inevitably end very badly for those who so choose.
It is a warning with a clear and often-repeated theme: DO NOT MAKE UP YOUR OWN RELIGION; DO WHAT GOD TELLS YOU TO DO IN THE BIBLE.
The bible warns against repeating prayers over and over "like the heathen," because this makes God very angry. Yet what does Catholicism preach? Say 10 "Our Fathers and 12"Hail Marys" and you'll be forgiven!!??
Get a grip. Catholicism is a Satanic cult created by Satan to fool people into believing they are saved when in fact they are not. There is no pretty way to say it, but the proof is in the pudding. When the Apostles asked Jesus how we can tell the real "church" from all the false ones that would spring up, He gave us two measures.
1) Compare their teachings to His teachings. I've done a bit of this up above here.
2) By their works we shall know them. (Father Porter, Father Gaguen, the list is too long to complete, but you get the point).
:-/