My point, and I do have one,
Usually!
is that the word "prayer" means more than making petitions. It's an imprecise word which is used to convey many things. We speak of silent prayer, prayer of adoration, even wordless prayer.
Oh good grief, MD! We are a modern American English diverse group here. I find it an EXTREMELY GROSS GROPE to try and stretch those uses of "prayer" from an archaic form of English into this issue and context.
To me, the lengths you go to do that highlight the absurdity of it.
I rarely use DAFFYINTIONARY with you out of respect for you and our relationship and usually because I don't have to as much as with some others. However, in this case, you leave me no choice, imho. I'm embarrassed for you that you'd use such a rationalization.
While the word and the words it translates seem to have started out with a sense of petition, they now mean far more.
In fact, it's hard to make a clear distinction between "pray" and "communicate", when we think of prayer in the broadest sense.
NO! "WE" PRODDYS AND MOST OTHER modern English speakers in this context and around the world DO NOT!
When MOST of US Proddys, atheists, agnostics, Hindus, Buddhists, Muzzies, et al use the terms "pray" and "prayer" in English, we mean a petitioning communication to God or gods--and/or at the very least a communication with God or gods exclusively.
We may realize that the legal profession uses the word otherwise but this is not that context.
So to lean on such a gross rationalization to buttress your perspective, is, to me like leaning on quick-sand to support a skyscraper.
But even with petitionery prayer, it seems to me entirely plausible that Jesus asked Mary to help him with his sandals when he was a toddler just learning to speak.
UNMITIGATED NONSENSE.
Even at age 12 Jesus knew who He was. He was not at all about the business of PRAYING TO MARY AS A GOD FOR ANYTHING. HE WAS ABOUT HIS FATHER'S BUSINESS!
You see, the arguments against the intercession of the saints just don't make sense to me.
And that is still utterly mystifying to me, given your fine mind.
It seems they are always based on an unspecified but firmly held meaning of prayer,
Not unspecified to me. Nor is it to most of the Proddys I know. PRAYER FOR US = COMMUNICATION WITH FATHER GOD, SON, SPIRIT. PERIOD.
ANYTHING else, is, for us, idolatrous, blasphemous. Scripture is full of exhortations to SEEK GOD in prayer. NO WHERE, that I can recall, IS THERE A SINGLE EXHORTATION that we should seek help from mortals in prayer--ANYWHERE in Scripture.
What is so BRAZENLY DIFFICULT FOR RC'S TO TAKE BIBLICAL EXHORTATIONS, ORDERS, CRITERIA, BOUNDARIES, EVEN HINTS AND NUANCES--SERIOUSLY? It's like y'all NEVER GET IT!
It's as bad as the UMPTEEN cases where CHRIST DECLARED AS A POINT OF AUTHORITY "IT IS WRITTEN!" YET, RC'S ABJECTLY REFUSE to take such exhortations of Christ remotely seriously! And y'all seem to think that GOD DOESN'T NOTICE OR CARE ABOUT THAT???? GOD HAVE MERCY! GOD NEVER REPEATS HIMSELF EVEN TWICE WITHOUT IT BEING EMPHATIC. On that issue He repeated HIMSELF MORE THAN 2 DOZEN TIMES! WHAT KIND OF HANDWRITING ON THE WALL DO RC'S !DEMAND! BEFORE they pay the least bit of attention to TO !!??GOD ALMIGHTY??!!
LIKEWISE with prayer. There's scant example in Scripture of mortals petitioning mortals who've graduated from this life. IN EVERY CASE, GOD IS NOT AMUSED! IN EVERY CASE, GOD DOES NOT AGREE TO THE PETITION!
Where is the mental disconnect that RC's REFUSE to take the Biblical hint?
I submit that it is rooted in the rebellious-against-God-in-preference-to-the-!!!TRADITIONS!!!-of man heretical hogwash that saturates the Vatican edifice for 1600 centuries now.
The 'man foisted' lofty Magicsterical affirm it so GOD HAS TO AGREE WITH OUR COMMITTEE! [BARF! GOD HAVE MERCY!]
"Besides, if God doesn't agree with our MAGICSTERICAL COMMITTEE, MUMMY ISHTAR-MARY WILL NAG HIM UNTIL HE DOES! [Mega barf!] So we exclusivist RC's got it covered! We got God manipulated into our very useful tidy little boxes just where we want Him!"
SUPER MEGA-BARF!
a denial of the oneness of the body of Christ and of the Spirit which makes us one, and a careless reading of our Lord's teaching on prayer.
UNMITIGATED NONSENSE.
It is reasonably clear from Scripture that the "oneness of the Body of Christ" is NOT MAXIMIZED NOR ANYTHING NEAR MAXIMIZED--AT PRESENT--between earth bound mortals and graduated saints.
To be honest, there is SOME SLIGHT VAGUE HINT that Heaven bound saints, CAN ON OCCASION, OBSERVE as a "cloud of witnesses" SOME events on earth. THAT'S THE MOST, imho, that can be said about that; with the least degree of confidence.
Concocting from THAT the rationalization that therefore, earthbound mortals can go running to Heaven bound graduated saints with their petitions IS AN INSULT TO SCRIPTURE AND AN INSULT TO CHRIST'S DEATH AND SUFFERING ON THE CROSS as well as A HIDEOUS AND GROSS INSULT TO HIS ROLE OF EXCLUSIVE INTERCESSOR BETWEEN EACH MORTAL AND THE FATHER.
NO OTHER BEING IN ALL CREATION DIED ON THAT CRUEL CROSS--CHRIST ALONE!
NO OLD TESTAMENT BIBLICAL PATRIARCH DIED ON THAT CRUEL CROSS--CHRIST ALONE!
NO NEW TESTAMENT BIBLICAL STAR DIED ON THAT CRUEL CROSS--CHRIST ALONE!
MARY DID NOT DIE ON THAT CRUEL CROSS REGARDLESS OF VATICAN CULT SHOE-HORNED-IN EMBELISHMENTS, RATIONALIZATIONS AND HERETICAL NONSENSE ABOUT IT--CHRIST ALONE!
And Christ Himself is so quoted in one Heavenly visitation noting just that fact--with some evident indignation.
RC's NOT taking the Biblical evidence to heart and FANTASIZING OTHERWISE are tempting God's wrath--pure and simple--YES--GOD'S WRATH! They seem to have NO CLUE of the SUPREME MULTIVERSE PRIORITY THAT GOD THE FATHER PLACES ON THE BLOOD AND SUFFERING OF CHRIST ALONE! . . . AND ON THE OFFICE, POSITION, STATUS, AUTHORITY, RANK--RESULTING FROM THAT CRUEL DEATH ON THAT CROSS--THE FULCRUM OF ALL HISTORY!
NO WAY is The Father going to allow ANY interloping ANYONE to encroach THE SLIGHTEST on that RANK, POSITION, STATUS OF CHRIST ALONE!
CERTAINLY AUTHENTIC MARY HERSELF WOULD NEVER DARE TO IMAGINE DOING SUCH A THING! What an insult to her understanding of God and HIS PRIORITIES it is to fantasize anything else!
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The usual way to proceed in such a case would be to identify the differences on which the disagreement is built and to discuss the meanings of the passages and the words used in them.
From the beginning of my 11 or so years here--in one incarnation or another--10 as Quix--I have observed a certain changeable collection of RC's SLAM, ACCUSE, PERSONALLY ATTACK, STAB-TO-THE-HEART, . . . in the most haughty, ostentatious, exclusionist, punitive, harsh, ruthless of terms--often relentlessly.
The attitude has been that THEY HAVE THE POSITION, THE AUTHORITY AND THE RIGHT to be such scoundrals and Proddys can just lump it and know their place. HARUMPH!
Wellllllllllllll, LA-T-DA! NO THANKS! AS for me and my house, We are NO LONGER PLAYING THAT GAME. NO THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
In my EXPERIENCE, the ONLY thing that has had any significant effect in moderating the intensity and frequencies of such horrifically insulting assaults by certain sorts of RC's IS TO SPEAK A SIMILAR EMOTIONAL LANGUAGE to them in response. It's the only thing they seem to notice or respond to in any functional way at all that indicates something has registered on their consciousness from our stimulus as demonstrated by their response.
So from my perspective, your cohorts have brought it on all of you. And I mostly have no apology for groping around until I found a more or less equal emotionally intense language that seemed to register above near 0.000% on the RC consciousness.
But so many are so interested in winning or in showing the other side up, that this exercise, which could be done in fellowship and charity is ignored for accusations of idolatry and the dangerous fun of thinking oneself more righteous and more blessed that others. ( I did not say"wrong"; I said "dangerous".)
Some of us, including me, are still willing to engage RC's in fellowship and charity when that's what we get from the RC side.
If your plea is to be able to have dialogues without accusations of idolatry--THEN STOP THE IDOLATRY!
Certainly--IT APPEARS that it MAY WELL BE the case that SOME RC's do not engage in idolatry re Mary. For perhaps a majority and certainly a significant percentage hereon--IT IS OBVIOUS THAT MANY DO ENGAGE EXACTLY IN HORRIFICALLY BLASPHEMOUS FORMS OF RANK IDOL WORSHIP OF THE WORST SORT.
Insisting that Proddys take such a perspective off the table is insisting that we avoid dealing with reality in such a discussion. Not going to happen as long as this Proddy has breath, energy and opportunity to stand up for Biblical truth.
That would be somewhat akin to Proddys demanding that RC's quit mentioning the Magicsterical as a source of anything in any discussions between us. I don't expect that any RC would agree.
Jesus communicated with Mary. That, to me, is equivalent to prayer except that neither party has died yet. And Jesus probably asked Mary for something. So we have petitionary prayer.
NO! "WE" DO NOT! HAVE petitionary prayer. We have a mortal Jesus asking mummy for his sandals. End of story.
All we ask her for are her prayers, while at other times (scattered lightly in the daily prayers of Catholics) we ask God to hear Mary's prayers.
We realize that a great number of RC's hereon seem to have absolutely blindness in seeing the HORRIFIC INSULT THAT IS
2. CHRIST THE SON'S SACRIFICIAL CRUEL DEATH!
3. AUTHENTIC MARY'S HUMBLE ADHERENCE TO 1 & 2 ABOVE!
All this clap-trap about asking Aunt Minnie to pray for our sick child with a fever is the same thing as asking Mary in Heaven to pray to the Father in our behalf is utter nonsense. What a farce!
Where are the statues to Aunt Minnie?
Where are the Rosaries to Aunt Minnie?
Where has the Magicsterical decreed infallibly that Aunt Minnie is a Co-Mediatrix?
Where has Aunt Minnie been declared in the Catechism or other official writings, to be in "hypostatic" union with--sharing in--THE GOD-HEAD! MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON SUCH BLASPHEMY!
Please don't insult Proddy intelligence with such a farce of a rationalization! We may be thick-headed at times but we are NOT !THAT! STUPID!
If that's "brainwashed", then I'm brainwashed. I think the idea that, even after the Transfiguration and the Resurrection, communication with those who have 'gone before' is impossible is itself unBiblical, for surely Moses and Elias went before, and sure we are one in the Spirit.
Grope! Grope!
So, you take an extremely unique miracle in the NT and try and shoe-horn/ slam it into a GENERALIZED FARCICAL SPIRITUAL/!!!RELIGIOUS!!! LAW!???!!
Let's look at THAT VERY miracle.
Peter, in his usual brash way suggests building tabernacles, willow type booths for the three.
WHAT WAS THE FATHER'S RESPONSE?
THE FATHER'S RESPONSE WAS:
“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!”
All Peter had suggested in his grasping impetuous way--was to HONOR the 3 of them more or less equally. There was NOT ANY HINT of establishing a prayer dogma to the other two.
Nevertheless, even that mere hint of equality between the 3 was SOUNDLY REBUKED BY ALMIGHTY GOD THE FATHER.
“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!”
As we have seen, it seems that most RC's have a built-in resistance to TAKING GOD AT HIS EVEN EMPHATIC WORD!
Given that--what chance does a mere mortal Proddy have to scratch any surface of any RC with any increased insight or perceptiveness? Y'all won't listen to God--you sure won't listen to mere Proddys--particularly if we grovel around in our communications with a wimpy, muffled, whisper that doesn't begin to rise to y'all's typical emotional levels and intensities of communication.
No thanks. Not this kid.
Nevertheless, I greatly appreciate your spirit and attitude as a rare RC example. And, I try hard to respond in kind--to you--and anyone else who approaches me with anything close to your mutual respect.
That doesn't mean that I'm likely to be gentle or kind to a long list of RC sensibilities and preferences, however.
For me, there's a HUGE difference between respecting you as a PERSON vs respecting outrageous-to-me things you believe.
Nevertheless, I wish you well in your spiritual journey. And I love and care for you deeply.
Even supposing you are correct, I am not aware of stretching anything. This is the way I use the word and I hear it used. I may sit on my couch or kneel or sit in the chapel and just "be with" God. I may internally verbalize some stuff, or I may not. I may "focus like a laser" on the Blessed Sacrament, or I may even allow myself to doze. (I figure once you're over 60 it's okay.) Yesterday after I nagged the Lord about some stuff I read John of Damascus in chapel -- as if to say, "There's no way I'm going to understand this stuff without your help."
In common parlance (I think) Before I do these things, I end my conversation with someone who wants to become catholic by saying, I'm going to go pray now."
You know I find words interesting and edumicational. And I've read a book. So I hear Jesus in Bach's Matthew Passion telling Peter and the sons of Zebedee to "stay here and pray" and I notice the German word is kin to 'bid' and remember that the word "beads" derives from the same root. And there's that petitionery sense. But we have bids in auctions and "heaven forBID!"
But discourses on old words that have grown and expanded HAVE to be long. To claim that their necessary length indicates falsehood makes no sense. The simplest things always take the most words to explain. E.g. Explain a quark. Then explain an automobile. Which was easier?
Where is the mental disconnect that RC's REFUSE to take the Biblical hint?
You will, no doubt, be astonished to find I look at it a different way! :-)
As Pentecostalists 'claim' certain gifts and act on them, we also claim and act on (or think we do) what we read in the Bible. We claim, as Peter says, that we are kings and priests in Christ. In Christ we make intercession for the world and for one another. And in Christ we not only interceded but ask for intercession, as even our Lord seemed somehow to want the prayers of Peter and James and John, and was grieved not to get them.
Whatever depth of history 'your side' claims, the more one gets into Catholicism one finds, as I did yesterday with John Damascene, that one is in a conversation of more than a millennium in duration, in fact, as we view it, a conversation that began with the ipsissima verba of the Lord and continued as the bumbling disciples said, "What do you think He meant by that?" And the quality of the conversation, we think, was elevated by the promised gift of the Spirit so that even oafish Peter could suddenly preach the archetypal Evangelical sermon with great power.
Claiming the cross and resurrection and the gifts which follow, we pray to one another and for one another. Claiming the word that those who believe in Christ will never die, we pray to those who have gone before. That is uniting those who are far off and those who are near in Spades, doubled, vulnerable! But we think and claim and live in the confidence that in the Spirit that union is more than real, not less.
So, it's not that we don't read Scripture, though many of us don't read it enough. It's that we read it with what Chesterton calls "the democracy of the dead", i.s. "tradition" and take advice and help from Justin, Damascene, and Charles Lwanga and the other martyrs of Uganda (Anglican as well as Catholic) who died as on this day, tortured and burned alive by the King of Uganda.
We BELIEVE, and act on that belief, that we are in the Body, united with Christ in the Holy Spirit,and that's why we have confidence to pray as we do.
One more, at the end of the long prayer of consecration, which is full of pleading and praise, thanks and intercession, and during which (in my parish, anyway) 'the people' are on their knees, we stand to pray the Lord's prayer. We call God "Father" and we stand in his presence because Jesus gave such assurances to us that, though humble, we are also bold.
Busy day. I will de-colorize and de-fontify your, if time allows, and give a less cursory response mo' later.
Have a beautiful New Mexico day! I love that state!