Quix: If I believe Christ . . . as I do . . . loving Mary is no MORE important than loving my enemies vis a vis Salvation etc.
Amen! Besides, how does one go about loving a dead person anyway??? I mean, we can miss dead people, we can have love in their memory because we knew them, and we can look forward to seeing them again, etc., but how does the Bible tell us to actively love a dead person today, especially one we have never met? Honor and love are different things. Perhaps this is part of that extra information that God absentmindedly forgot to put in His original revelation.
In addition, think of the implications we are being asked to accept. We are being told to expect that our salvation itself is DEPENDENT on loving departed Mary from the grave. Oh wait, my father told me that when he was born Mary had a grave, but that since then the Church has taken it away. :) But in any event, I think we need to know what the REAL rules are, not the incomplete ones in the Bible. If I now have to somehow figure out how to actively love a woman who left this earth 2,000 years ago, perhaps ALONG WITH loving God, are there any other people or things to which I owe something?
I think the Catholics would say that all the rituals they perform to gain their salvations (for themselves or others) are done with love for God, but this is a new requirement, to love someone ELSE in the supernatural realm (e.g. satan, demons, angels, or departed saints) who is NOT God. (???)
Kinda boggles the mind, huh? I’m sure Mary never thought all this would happen to her memory. Sigh.
FOREST KEEPER: I think the Catholics would say that all the rituals they perform to gain their salvations (for themselves or others) are done with love for God, but this is a new requirement, to love someone ELSE in the supernatural realm (e.g. satan, demons, angels, or departed saints) who is NOT God. (???)
Yes, it seems the RCC adds to the Gospel regularly which is really subtracting from the Gospel since receiving God's grace through faith in the Gospel of Christ is the only thing required for our salvation. To add to this singular requirement detracts from the glory of God's plan of salvation by mercy and not debt.
No Protestant whom I know "loves Mary" in the way Catholics "love Mary." Are we really in danger of "losing our salvation" because of this distinction, stfassisi?
To conclude she is dead is to reject eternal life.
There are mysteries in Scripture . . .
but all this pile of extra Mary caricature stuff is a convoluted intellectual rat’s nest lots of tribal peoples and children would be embarrassed to think anyone of their cohorts believed.