Posted on 12/08/2012 2:24:39 PM PST by NYer
Do Catholics worship Mary? This question is as old as the Protestant Reformation itself, and it rests, like other disputed doctrinal points, on a false premise that has been turned into a wedge: the veneration of Mary detracts from the worship of Christ.
This seeming opposition between Mary and Christ is symptomatic of the Protestant tendency, begun by Luther, to view the entirety of Christian life through a dialectical lens – a lens of conflict and division. With the Reformation the integrity of Christianity is broken and its formerly coherent elements are now set in opposition. The Gospel versus the Law. Faith versus Works. Scripture versus Tradition. Authority versus Individuality. Faith versus Reason. Christ versus Mary.
The Catholic tradition rightly sees the mutual complementarity of these elements of the faith, as they all contribute to our ultimate end – living with God now and in eternity. To choose any one of these is to choose them all.
By contrast, to assert that Catholics worship Mary along with or in place of Christ, or that praying to Mary somehow impedes Christ’s role as “the one mediator between God and men” (1 Tim 2:5) is to create a false dichotomy between the Word made flesh and the woman who gave the Word his flesh. No such opposition exists. The one Mediator entrusted his mediation to the will and womb of Mary. She does not impede his mediation – she helps to make it possible.
Within this context we see the ancillary role that the ancilla Domini plays in her divine Son’s mission. Mary’s is not a surrogate womb rented and then forgotten in God’s plan. She is physically connected to Christ and his life, and because of this she is even more deeply connected to him in the order of grace. She is, in fact, “full of grace,” as only one who is redeemed by Christ could be.
The feast of Mary’s Immaculate Conception celebrates the very first act of salvation by Christ in the world. Redemption is made possible for all by his precious blood shed on the cross. Yet Mary’s role in the Savior’s life and mission is so critical and so unique that God saw it necessary to wash her in the blood of the Lamb in advance, at the first moment of her conception.
This reality could not be more Biblical: the angel greets Mary as “full of grace” (Luke 1:28), which is literally rendered as “already graced” (kecharitōmenē). Following Mary, the Church has “pondered what sort of greeting this might be” for centuries. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, ultimately defined in 1854, is nothing other than a rational expression of the angel’s greeting contained in Scripture: Mary is “already graced” with Christ’s redemption at the very moment of her creation.
Because God called Mary to the unique vocation of serving as the Mother of God, it is not just her soul that is graced, as is the case for us when we receive the sacraments. Mary’s entire being, body and soul, is full of grace so that she may be a worthy ark for the New Covenant. And just as the ark of the old covenant was adorned with gold to be a worthy house for God’s word, Mary is conceived without original sin to be the living and holy house for God’s Word.
Thus Mary is not only conceived immaculately, that is, without stain of sin. She also is the Immaculate Conception. Her entire being was specifically created by God with unique privilege so that she could fulfill her role in God’s plan of salvation. “Free from sin,” both original and personal, is the necessary consequence of being “full of grace.”
Protestants claim that veneration of Mary as it is practiced by Catholics is not biblical. St. Paul encouraged the Corinthians to “be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1). Paul is not holding himself up as the end goal, but as a means to Christ, the true end. And if a person is imitated, he is simultaneously venerated.
If we should imitate Paul, how much more should we imitate Mary, who fulfilled God’s will to the greatest degree a human being could. Throughout her life she humbled herself so that God could be exalted, and because of this, Christ has fulfilled his promise by exalting his lowly mother to the seat closest to him in God’s kingdom.
Mary is the model of humility, charity, and openness to the will of God. She allows a sword to pierce her heart for the sake of the world’s salvation. She shows us the greatness to which we are called: a life free from sin and filled with God’s grace that leads to union with God in Heaven. She is the model disciple, and therefore worthy of imitation and veneration, not as an end in herself, but as the means to the very purpose of her – and our – existence: Christ himself.
God’s lowly handmaiden would not want it any other way.
Find one instance in scripture that the apostles taught to communicate with those who have died. Not some “well we are all connected” conjecture.
I am sure she saw it in 1925 at the showing at Columbia University.
Show from scripture that an angel is omnipresent or is that another assumption?
>> Can you read?<<
Uh oh, there we go again!
>> The scripture says "prayers of saints" three times in these two passages<<
As previously shown, the saints are those who have accepted Christ as their savior. Notwithstanding the ill advised contention that they were “called to be saints”. If you believe Christ called us to believe on Him then you must also believe we were called to be saints. Once we do believe we are then saints. Those who have died and now are in heaven are praising Him. Not praying to Him.
CB – “we who have the privilege of going directly to the throne of God”
Annalex – “Yes, and we do, as FourtySeven testifies. We have been photographed doing it:”
So you think the Throne of God is at the front of the church building? Seriously? Scripture says it’s in heaven and has no earthly presence until after the tribulation.
Believe what you will but that is the most preposterous interpretation of that verse I have ever seen. It doesn’t even pass the logic test. I’d be curious as to whether even the RCC would back you up on that interpretation.
>>They were looking at a crucifix.<<
Obviously another conjecture or assumption not to be taken seriously.
Youtch! Another one?
annalex already said this. I see no reason to state anything further.
Your request, "Find one instance in scripture that the apostles taught to communicate with those who have died. Not some “well we are all connected” conjecture.", is basically requesting something much larger which is, " Show me the Catholic Church we see today, with all it's 'bells and smells' in the Bible."
I'm not going to go down that road with you or anyone who is critical of the Church, because it is precisely the reason we have disagreements in the first place. So if thats rhe only thing that can "convince" you, you might as well stop reading here. But if you are interested in the true claim of Catholicism, actually the true claim of Christianity, read on.
We Catholics believe there is also Sacred Tradition, in addition to Sacred Scripture, you do not. Thus demanding we show you every Catholic belief explicitly "in Scripture" is a form of circular reasoning.
If you reject Sacred Tradition, then explain why (other than the usual "rebuttals" such as "man made tradition was rejected by Christ", a straw man argument by the way), and we can proceed from there, if you wish.
My best advice I can give you, and really anyone critical of the Church is, "You won't find the Church as you see it today in the Bible". That's not the claim of Catholicism. When we say the Church is connected to the past, we don't mean it's "found in the Bible" as you see it today. It's actually found in the only way we as humans, as both spiritual AND physical beings can recognize it: IN the world (not OF the world), visible and just as physically present as it is spiritually.
To deny that the Church actually needs to be physically present (visible in the world), to claim some odd, "invisible church" is sufficient for a creature such as us is, quite frankly, to deny one's own humanity. It also denies one's humanity to say, "I don't need help from a Church to come to God, to follow His commands and be the kind of human He wants me to be", precisely because (ironically) Scripture itself says "pride goeth before the fall".
We all need such help, such PHYSICAL help, because again, we are physical beings. Deny this reality at your own peril.
I like what the Catechism says about the necessity of Scripture, "it isn't a collection of dead letters, but rather a record of a living faith still alive today". You can't have such a connection to life without living human beings. This is precisely what Protestants (and other non-Catholic Christians) have in their Bible: A mere collection of dead letters and stories, told long ago to people long dead. No connection to TODAY. No connection to ME today, which is exactly what you get when you divorce Scripture from the Body that recorded it.
Christ is alive TODAY. You either believe that is literally true or not. For me, I can't possibly believe He is alive today if I haven't met Him personally, and that's exactly what the Church gives us: the opportunity to physically meet Jesus today, fulfilling the same human need we were created with, which is a desire to be with God both spiritually AND physically.
You don't get ALL that "showing where people prayed to Saints" in Scripture, or any other request Church critics demand. You get all I described above and more, LIVING the faith in a truly human way, not quibbling over Scripture passages. My faith at least isn't based on Scripture passages alone, it's ALSO based on my own experience.
I will submit this in closing: NO "faith" will truly stand the test of time if it isn't grounded in some way in one's own experience. We can convince ourselves that our faith is "strong" for decades, but it's not, in reality, if one cannot say with absolute certainly "I know for a fact Christ exists as much as I know the sky is blue" and for the SAME REASON. Experience.
Not some "clever" interpretation of Scripture.
Sorry, I forgot my courtesy ping to you for this post that mentions you. Post 2746.
NL >>Of course she is.<<
But I thought Catholics believe that Mary birthed Jesus with no pain?
Revelation 12:1 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: 2 And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
Travail
1. painfully difficult or burdensome work; toil.
2. pain, anguish or suffering resulting from mental or physical hardship.
3. the pain of childbirth.
verb (used without object)
4. to suffer the pangs of childbirth; be in labor.
5. to toil or exert oneself.
How a Catholic can change “travailing in birth” to mean something else is beyond me. The RCC teachings are made up of assumptions, conjectures and misquotes. It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that the Catholic faith is a “false teaching” and that the RCC is most likely the whore of Revelation.
Catholicism is not rejecting Scripture, but Nestorius rejected it. As I stated earlier the Church teaches that because Jesus subsides simultaneously in natures, divine and human, inseperably united in one personhood Mary is rightly called the Mother of Jesus and the Theotokos.
Nestorius wrongly divided Jesus into two distinct persons, one who was Son of Mary, and another, the divine nature, who was not, and taught that were joined only in a moral or accidental union.
Early Christendom was concerned with three things, in this order; Who was Jesus, What did He do and what did He teach. The earliest declared heresies (Adoptionism, Apollinarism, Docetism, Arianism, Monarchianism, Monophysitism, Nestorianism, Patripassianism, Sabellianism and so on) all sprung from those who believed they discovered within Scripture evidence to dispute the true hypostatic union that was Jesus Christ. You are of course free to attempt to resuscitate these long dead concepts but don't expect to gain much traction with knowledgable Christians.
Peace be with you
I am busy with other work, but this whole thing has been dealt with before (see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2637924/posts?page=1078#1078 for one), and even if Rv. 8:3,4 was teaching that prayer go to angels to be delivered, it does not support praying to them.
And it is evident that just as the high priest met with God in the holy of holies, and not thru a saintly secretary, so believers have access to enter boldly into the holiest by the blood of Jesus (Heb. 10:19)
Nor is there any insufficiency in Christ that man needs another intercessor in heaven, and despite the multitude of prayers in Scripture the Holy Spirit provides zero examples of anyone but pagans praying to anyone else in Heaven but the Lord, nor in any instructions on who to pray to “our Father” who art in Heaven, not “our mother..”)
RCs must resort to extrapolating support for PTDS (http://www.peacebyjesus.net/ptds.html) from praying for each other each here, but request to each other is not by thoughts, which God knows, but i know of no instance in Scripture where any communication took place between a being from Heaven besides God and a believer from earth that did not require one being in one of the other.
As for Rv. 8:3,4, the only support for offering prayers, signified by incense, are texts such as Jer. 44:19. But as with them, Rome will do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of her own mouth.
The offering up of incense was an O.T. ordinance, and in Rev. 8:3,4 it appears to be a memorial unto God, and does not signify that the prayers needed an angelic postal service, much less heavenly secretaries. Again, believer are only exhorted and seen praying directly to God, as they now can enter into the holy of holies by the blood of Christ, and do not meed departed saints there, but God, having immediate access, and no other intercessor btwn God and man but the God-man Christ Jesus, who ever liveth to do so. (Heb. 7:25) Thanks be to God.
That's ALMOST it.
"Did Joseph have NORMAL thoughts for a man and wife?", is the REAL question.
Song of Solomon 8:10
I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers. Thus I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment.
IZZAT so?
Oh?
The 10 are a CONTRACT between the JEWS and GOD.
This Gentile is NOT part of that contract.
Have you no concept of what the book of Romans teaches?
Cool!
LOL. For example, several times we read of angels sent by God to St. Joseph; to Mary; rolling back Christ's tombstone, ... -- you are not familiar with these? Or bringing prayers to God is something an angel is not capable of doing while rolling tombstones is? Note I did not say angels are omnipresent, but that they appear anywhere they wish or at least anywhere God sends them.
Notwithstanding the ill advised contention that they were “called to be saints”
You are starting to get comical. You argument here is with St. Paul, so if you think his writing was ill-advised, just ignore that part and leave me at peace. You are Protestant, and ignoring scripture you don't like is what makes you Protestant.
you think the Throne of God is at the front of the church building?
The throne of God is the Altar where He is; in front of the church building are steps and a door, usually.
(next posts) that is the most preposterous interpretation of that verse I have ever seen.
OK, I believe you. You were stunned by the word of God before on this thread. I suppose you can ignore that verse as well, -- Protestant method on display. However, one point: unlike you, I am Catholic; I do not interpret scripture, I explain it.
I explain that in the post you are responding to. I did not change a word, -- I explained that St. John is speaking of the birthing pains of the Church, and there was plenty of that. The text is allegorical altogether: the Assumption of Mary was to heaven and not to the "desert", she was not "given wings" but was snatched up in the body that she had; while the reference is beyond dispute that of Mary, since Jesus did not have any other mother, it is an inspired poetic image and not an historical record. I read the scripture in the key in which it was written and the Apocalypse is written in a poetic, allegorical key.
Good post, thank you.
We are Christians and not Jews. If the Jews want to abstain from pork, cut off their private parts, and not do sacred art, it is their choice.
Because it leads to error as witnessed in the RCC and others such as the Mormons, Muslims and other “religions” that rely on extra scriptural truth. Basically what your entire post says to me is that you agree with Karl Keating. Wasn’t it Keating who said “It does not matter that there is no teaching on the Assumption in Scripture, the mere fact that the Roman Church teaches it is proof that it is true.” Actually it’s come down to “it does not matter that there is no teaching on any matter that it’s not in scripture or tradition, the mere fact that the Roman Church teaches it is proof that it is true” with the attitude in the RCC of “living tradition”.
Catholics today appear to base their salvation entirely on the sola ecclesia of the Catholic Church. Viva voce says the RCC. Whatever we say. Henry Edward Manning stated it well at Vatican II. “But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine. How can we know what antiquity was except through the Church?…I may say in strict truth that the Church has no antiquity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual consciousness. . . . The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour” [Henry Edward Manning, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: J.P. Kenedy & Sons, originally written 1865, reprinted with no date), pp. 227-228.]
They don’t even care if it’s in scripture or if it was historically taught. Whatever the RCC says today is truth.
I for one will never trust my salvation to an institution or teachings of those who put themselves above God’s word.
So His throne in the Catholic Church got relegated to the back of the church? Oy!
>>I do not interpret scripture, I explain it.<<
ROFL!!
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