Posted on 08/17/2016 5:58:08 PM PDT by marshmallow
Catholics do not need permission from a priest to pray Catholic prayers in a Catholic church. The pastor may not like it, but he has no authority to silence people. In fact he has a duty to protect them from being disturbed. This is like the kneeling issue, and reflects the new clericalism. If no devotions or sacraments are interrupted, any Catholic has a right to pray - not a institutional or civic right, but a God-given right.
Ironically, I don't think the priests at my parish have a particularly clericalist mind-set, but many of the laity do. They (we) revert to this habitual deferral and diffidence: "Oh-oh, better ask Fr. Pete."
As Servant of God Dorothy Day rightly said, "You don't need permission to perform the Works of Mercy." And -- thank you for reminding us --- you sure don't need permission to pray Catholic prayers in a Catholic Church!
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‘We’re not “co-opting God’s servants” since sometimes they bring a message which requires an answer. See for instance, the angel Gabriel’s message to Mary to which she gave the answer..”be it done unto me according to thy word....”.
That answer was conveyed by the angel to God.’
Why would Gabriel have conveyed Mary’s message back to God? You can’t imagine God didn’t already know the answer. God is omniscient. He knows the end from the beginning. He knew you, all your thoughts, all your words, and all your actions since before the foundation of the world. He certainly knew Mary’s as we)ll.
The idea of God sitting anxiously in heaven, waiting to hear how Mary replied to Gabriel, is pure projection. God is not like us. He knows the future as if it were the past. He did send His messenger to Mary with an announcement. He wouldn’t have put Gabriel through the meaningless busy-work exercise of conveying Mary’s words back to Him, however. God knew what Mary would say before she was born.
This is another reason to pray directly to God. He hears your every prayer anyway. The idea that he needs to hear you express your prayer to an angel first, and then needs to hear the angel repeat to Him what he just/already heard, makes no sesense.
Free will. Do we have it or not?
Of course we have freewill. God knowing in advance what decisions we will make in no way impacts that. This is the conceptual issue faced by mortals in the face of the transcendent. We imagine that if someone—it could only be God—knows the future, it limits our choices. It doesn’t. Our choices are as free as ever; it’s just that God already knows what those freewill choices will be. I.e.: we live linearly, but God sees the complete picture—as the Psalmist said, God knows the end from the beginning.
You're getting ahead of yourself. Back up.
God has no "need" of angels, period. He doesn't "need" a courier service to deliver messages.
Yet he chooses to work through angels. Frequently.
Doesn't he?
He’s the patron saint of police officers.
My son has worn the medal for almost 24 years.
.
St. Michael the Archangel
~ PRAYER ~
St. Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle
Be our protection against the wickedness
and snares of the devil;
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
Cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen
+
Thank you.
.
The fact that angels are God’s servants, who execute His commands, is not really at issue, is it? No one, afaik, has disputed that angels are at God’s beck and call, to carry out His will whenever required.
You would need to ask God why He sometimes uses an angel as a messenger, sometimes uses dreams, and sometimes communicates firsthand. No doubt He has His reasons.
[Perhaps God’s need of an angelic messenger is so as to be less intimidating. Let’s not forget how Isaiah reacted to the presence of the Lord Himself:
Isaiah 6:5
Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”]
Um....yes it is.
You've spent an entire post (#43) telling us what God does and doesn't need. You've told us he doesn't "need" angels to convey our prayers to him (despite Revelation clearly saying they do) because he already knows our prayers.
Therefore if "need" is the focal point of your argument, we should state that God does not "need" angels at all, does he? If he doesn't need angels to bring our prayers to him, he similarly doesn't need angels to carry his messages to us. Yet he works through angels. Frequently. Why? We don't know but God uses them as messengers and not only messengers. In Scripture, they're shown consoling, leading, strengthening. This, therefore, clearly shows that "need" is not a valid basis on which to refute angelic intercession.
Despite God having no "need" of them, throughout Scripture angels are ubiquitous. They interact with humans continuously. They clearly are an important part of God's plan. He uses them to communicate with us, right?
However, if I understand you, the communication through angels is one-sided and rather similar to those one-way email messages which appear in our in-box from time to time and are labeled "do not reply". Angels can bring messages from God to us but we're not allowed to send messages to God via the same route. We have to go directly to the top.
To use a phrase of yours, that "makes no sense". It's irrational and God is not irrational.
This is a perfect example of what I mean about a divergence in definitions, which gets in the way of communication.
Talking with an angel is precisely prayer --- it is one of the MANY forms of mindfulness, honor, communication, interaction and contact which constitute part of our prayer life.
But it is not idolatry, because idolatry would involve giving to some created being the supreme adoration which is due to God alone; or adhering to an entity who is a rebel against, or a rival to, God.
The many intermediate forms of honor which we accord to our mothers, our fathers, our spouses, our patriot forebears or national founders, our military heroes, good people of all sorts, godly teachers, venerable grandparents, saints in this world and saints in the world to come, angels, etc. --- all in due measure --- are not occasions of rebellion against God or rivalry against God; but rather, these "intermediate honors" are pleasing to God, since He Himself is honored when we recognize the mighty works He has done in all of these His creatures.
He loves them. We love them, and Him.
That's why we pray to the good Angels: because we love them. And why? Because they love and serve God.
If you make an assumption that honor = worship, or prayer = worship, or veneration = worship, or kissing an object = worship, or bowing/curtseying/ formal forms of respect = worship, you're going to get the whole idea of this honor and love, completely wrong.
The difference in degree between veneration and adoration is not slight; it is not even merely 'great': it is infinite. And more: there is not just a difference in degree, but a difference in kind between the veneration of angels and saints, and the adoration of God.
We feel very free to give honor ---all in due measure --- to angels, because they are glorious servants of the Almighty.
I already mentioned that a keyword search at BibleGateway will revel dozens, if not hundreds, of instances of human persons interacting with angelic persons in a way that is pleasing to God. If you say you didn't find "prayer," it's only because your definition of "prayer" is, in this instance, too narrow. It is framed in such a way that it will exclude every example! You didn't know what you were looking for. Here are just a few of many prayer experiences:
Genesis 15: angel and Hagar
Genesis 19: angels and Lot
Genesis 22: angel and Abraham
Genesis 28, 31, 32: angels and Jacob
Here's a particularly good one, for which I provide two translations: Genesis 48:16
NASB
The angel who has redeemed me from all evil, Bless the lads.NCV
He was the Angel who saved me from all my troubles. Now I pray that he will bless these boys.Jacob (Israel) prays to the Angel to protect and bless the boys --- Joseph's sons --- Ephraim and Manasseh. And notice that Joseph bows to the ground before Jacob (Israel.) Veneration. Not adoration.
There are dozens, scores of examples of all this in the OT, some in the NT, and it extends clear to the Book of Revelation, where it is revealed that it is the angels who offer to God the prayers of the faithful!
Revelation 8:3-4
And another angel came and stood at the altar,
having a golden censer;
and there was given unto him much incense,
that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints
upon the golden altar which was before the throne.
And the smoke of the incense,
which came with the prayers of the saints,
ascended up before God out of the angel's hand.
I asked you to provide a verse that commanded or demonstrated praying to angels.
I note that in more than 30,000 verses of Scripture, you found one verse in the Hebrew Scriptures that seems to you to say someone prayed to an angel. This is false, but we'll get to that.
Your attempt to list verses as support that we *should* pray to angels rests on changing the meaning of pray to talk. This equivalenc is also false.
Inside this argument you are smuggling a few ideas into our conversation as asumptions:
1. That talking to an angel that is physically present and talking to you is identical to praying to unseen angels.
2. That an angel can hear you.
3. That it pleases God to pray to anyone but Him alone.
4. That praying to anyone other than the Father has any influence at all.
5. That it is a New Testament Church practice to pray to angels or saints.
Each of these is an assumption without evidence. They are simply unspoken claims.
In the New Testament, we find no:
1. Example of an Apostle ever praying to an angel
2. Example of any believer ever praying to an angel
3. Any instruction to pray to an angel
4. Any story of praying to an angel
5. Any instruction to pray to anyone other than God
Like so many deeply believed Roman Catholic practices, this one has no Biblical support and no evidence it happened in the Church before 100ad. As such, it was added later. It is not a Christian practice.
This leaves the two single instances you are saying demonstrate people prayed to angels:
Your "strongest evidence" in Genesis 48:16 is one of the difficult passages in Scripture because it ties in Yahweh with the Angel of the Lord. Many commentators believe they are identical. In this passage, Abraham ties them together.
Fortunately, we do not even need to discuss Hebrew or systematic theology in the Hebrew Scriptures regarding the Angel of the Lord!
The reason is simple. Abraham was not praying. He was laying his hands on his grandson's heads and blessing them as he recounted his testimony of Yahweh's faithfulness.
No prayer involved.
This leaves just Revelation 8:3, which has been discussed on this forum recently and has nothing to do with praying to angels.
This passage gives no indication at all that anyone prayed to an angel. Zero. This passage is dealing with a moment in the future end times and there is no reason to assume it has always happened or will happen after that time. We can assume that saints (unidentified) prayed to God, as commanded.
In other words, using this passage carries assumptions that are not identified, but which are without evidence. I've written more extensively on this passage on recent threads. I will not take time to rehash it here.
I have a meeting to get to MDO, so I will close. I did want to answer you. I hope you have a good day.
‘However, if I understand you’
You really don’t, and I wonder if this even matters to you? Communication can proceed, in general, on one of two lines. First, you can do your best to truly understand what the other person is saying. Or, second, like a prosecuting attorney you can skip the meaning entirely, while simply hunting for a word or phrase to hurl back at the witness, in hopes of indicting him or her.
You have missed my entire main point as well as my secondary point. I have no way of knowing if this was on purpose or not. But I’m not here to reiterate the same points over and over, particularly if you have no desire to hear them.
So I will ask. Are you genuinely interested in what I’m saying? Do you sincerely want to understand it?
Or are you only looking for angles from which to attack and discredit me?
Not that discrediting what I’m saying would be invalid...IF you first understand it. Discrediting it without bothering to grasp the main points is invalid. Discrediting it after fully understanding my points would be completely valid, if you could do it.
I’ll await your reply.
Your first underlying assumption, which there is no reason for me to share, is that if a practice is not commanded or authorized in the Bible, it is not to be done. None of us actually follows this wrong-headed precept (e.g. I am assuming that you don't think church weddings are wrong, although they are in no way exampled or commanded in Scripture -- and I could mention many other such practices universal throughout the Christian community) --- but it always forms the bog-like bottom layer for this kind of discussion.
And it is quite mistaken.
Second, the assumption is that if something is not mentioned in the NT, it was not present in the early churches. There is no reason whatsoever to think this.
The earliest churches were instructed first and principally by the oral preaching and example of the Apostles, and only later --- sometimes decades, sometimes generations later --- by portions of that oral teaching and example which had been transcribed into text.
In other words, you are lacking a great deal of what was handed on to us by the Apostles. And yet you are assessing Christian Church practices based on your incomplete retrieval of true Apostolic customs, doctrines, and practices.
The NT Church depended on Oral Tradition long before there was a written NT:
Acts 2:42
And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.
... and that, I think, is why your understanding of "doctrine" and "the breaking if bread" and of "prayers" is unfortunately so limited.
That is why many of our brothers and sisters in Christ are quite bereft of the "input" which St. Paul insisted was necessary. We went over it before here (link) rather recently, and unfortunately the lack remains.
You still lack that "fellowship" to which St. Paul calls us:
Ephesians 2:19
Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God.
But you sadly lack this sense of fellowship NOW with the angels and the saints, with whom you will (hopefully) spend eternity!
Third, you still confuse "prayer" with "adoration." God never condemns the kinds of prayers said by all of Christendom --- the Christendom which is still in the Apostolic Tradition.
Following the example of Jacob/Israel, I say: May your Guardian Angel bless you. May ALL the Angels and Saints bless you! And may Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!
There! I prayed for you.
The feeling's mutual.
Angels are our friends. Think about that.
So you prefer to misuderstand what I said, and let it go at that? Do not your honesty and integrity as a Christian desire a better resolution?
Please summarize the one or two most crucial points that you believe me to have misunderstood. Thank you in advance.
Russia has been Christian for a thousand years. It has also endured the most bloody persecution in the history of Christendom. The Orthodox Church is building new churches and reopening closed ones all the time.
Your first underlying assumption, which there is no reason for me to share, is that if a practice is not commanded or authorized in the Bible, it is not to be done. None of us actually follows this wrong-headed precept (e.g. I am assuming that you don't think church weddings are wrong, although they are in no way exampled or commanded in Scripture -- and I could mention many other such practices universal throughout the Christian community) --- but it always forms the bog-like bottom layer for this kind of discussion.
You lump everything done in Christianity into one pot that makes them equal. I find this to be clearly wrong.
We know some things are commanded of us in Scripture.
We know some things are taught as normative Christianity via the Scriptural record of recording example narrative (what they actually did), instruction (what the Apostles wanted us to learn as Christianity), and what warnings (what we should not do - which includes principles).
Against this authoritative truth, we have practices like church weddings. The Scripture records none. No services, no sacramental value, no specific words. We do have the principles: God created marriage and it is good. He created marriage between a man and a woman - one of each. We see that in the Old Testament, we have this recorded version of marriage:
Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.
So does it matter if a bride wears white, gets married in a specific geographical location, has traditional vows? Not according to the teaching of Scripture. Do whatever you like, assuming it is one man and one woman.
Your critique equates things that are commanded or taught with things that are preference. Perhaps that is not your intent. If not, I suggest you sharpen that part of your argument a bit.
The issue is not whether we have differences in areas where Scripture does not command, teach or warn, but whether our preferences go beyond the claim of just preferences.
This is where the conversation on this thread falls. For this reason, I don't find your first argument persuasive. It creates a false equivalency between revealed and preference that doesn't exist. It also ignores that preference is judged by God's revelation. It can't just add to God's revelation with authority. Again, that is where this thread exists.
Second, the assumption is that if something is not mentioned in the NT, it was not present in the early churches. There is no reason whatsoever to think this.
Actually, there are many things not recorded and we can at least agree on that. The unrecorded things do not rise to the level of authority of inspired Scripture and are judged by that - assuming we have any idea what they are... and we do.
Personal preference was present, as Paul states when giving guidelines for love in the local assembly:
One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.
Note that neither is correct. It is an opinion in the heart of the person.
Where this veers into error is exactly when it is proscribed as Truth which equals Scripture and is to be obeyed by all - exactly what Paul warned against.
The earliest churches were instructed first and principally by the oral preaching and example of the Apostles, and only later --- sometimes decades, sometimes generations later --- by portions of that oral teaching and example which had been transcribed into text.
Mrs. Don-o, I have to point out here that the first part of the sentence is correct in that the Apostles preached before the Holy Spirit moved them to write inspired words in Greek. The Scriptures are no mere transcription of oral teaching into written form. That is am amazingly low view of the doctrine of inspiration. God tells us exactly how it happened. Men were moved by the Holy Spirit. These were not stenographers.
Beyond that, the NT was circulating before the death of John. Peter refers to Paul's writings. We know this.
We also do not that the situation today of not having the canon of Scripture in all its authority.
In other words, you are lacking a great deal of what was handed on to us by the Apostles. And yet you are assessing Christian Church practices based on your incomplete retrieval of true Apostolic customs, doctrines, and practices.
Your broad claim is not falsifiable - nor provable. It rests as a narrative you obviously believe, apart from an unbroken chain of evidence. Yet your argument assumes chain of evidence and accuracy and authority, with none provable. You yourself told me there is no written list of traditions Paul referred to in his epistle. Instead you claim universal traditions.
The NT Church depended on Oral Tradition long before there was a written NT:
The Hebrew Scriptures existed hundreds of years before the Church existed on earth and Paul stated to Timothy
and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
Acts 2:42- And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. ... and that, I think, is why your understanding of "doctrine" and "the breaking if bread" and of "prayers" is unfortunately so limited.
Sorry I cannot accept that argument. The Apostles' doctrine was codified in Scripture. If it was not, you simply need to prove any Apostle taught something before their death. This would be before 100 ad. If something doesn't appear during the life of an Apostle and is documented, then shows up hundreds of years later, it is made up later. Most of what we are discussing here and on other threads was made up later - often from pagan roots.
That is why many of our brothers and sisters in Christ are quite bereft of the "input" which St. Paul insisted was necessary. We went over it before here (link) rather recently, and unfortunately the lack remains.
You never did give us an official list of Pauline Traditions, nor can anyone. Such a list did not exist and doesn't exist in the basement of the Vatican. What you tried to do is present, though stories or analogies, an argument for passing down traditions. Unfortunately, unless someone first buys your narrative, it is not persuasive, since there is no proof of what I listed above. You still lack that "fellowship" to which St. Paul calls us: Ephesians 2:19 - Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God. But you sadly lack this sense of fellowship NOW with the angels and the saints, with whom you will (hopefully) spend eternity!
You do realize this verse doesn't say we have fellowship now with angels and saints?? It says we are fellow citizens within the household of God. The rest you are adding to the passage MDO. Based on what? Belief in a narrative that has no proof and is not supported by any verse in Scripture. Third, you still confuse "prayer" with "adoration." God never condemns the kinds of prayers said by all of Christendom --- the Christendom which is still in the Apostolic Tradition.
Just show me an Apostle praying to a saint and angel and I will gladly and immediatly say, wow! You are right MDO!!
I did ask for such references and there were none coming.
Here we are on praying to angels. No Scripture. No evidence before 100 ad. Just a narrative that God could have done it that way and we should just believe it!
Your Pope Benedict did not believe this and for this reason, though I disagree on many things, I respect him for intellectual accuracy on this:
"For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective form--the true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought outside the institution.
"It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation. (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for the Church of Rome, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) p.196). http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/13/whos-in-charge-here-the-illusions-of-church-infallibility/)
Ratzinger writes (emp. mine), Before Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was defined, all theological faculties in the world were consulted for their opinion. Our teachers' answer was emphatically negative...
Altaner, the patrologist from Wurzburg…had proven in a scientifically persuasive manner that the doctrine of Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven was unknown before the 5th Century; this doctrine, therefore, he argued, could not belong to the “apostolic tradition. And this was his conclusion, which my teachers at Munich shared. - J. Ratzinger, Milestones (Ignatius, n.d.), 58-59. .
“If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text [of the Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes] as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter syllabus… As a result, the one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution, was, to a large extent, corrected…” (Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 381,82;
“The concept of [apostolic] succession was clearly formulated, as von Campenhausen has impressively demonstrated, in the anti-Gnostic polemics of the second century; [and not, as some Roman Catholic writers assert, in the first century] its purpose was to contrast the true apostolic tradition of the Church with the pseudo-apostolic tradition of Gnosis” (“God’s Word: Scripture-Tradition-Office” (San Francisco: Ignatius Press ©2008; Libreria Editrice Vaticana edition ©2005) pgs 22-23).
we are fairly certain today that, while the Fathers were not Roman Catholics as the thirteenth or nineteenth century world would have understood the term , they were, nonetheless, ‘Catholic,’ and their Catholicism extended to the very canon of the New Testament itself.” [yet even here many did not hold the apocryphal books as being Scripture proper.] (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, Theolgische Prinzipienlehre ]San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987], p. 141.)
"Over the pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority there still stands one's own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. Conscience confronts [the individual] with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even of the official church" (Pope Benedict XVI [then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger], Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Vorgrimler, 1968, on Gaudium et spes, part 1,chapter 1.).
At the moment of his encounter with the Risen One he understood that with Christ's Resurrection the situation had changed radically...The wall is no longer necessary; our common identity within the diversity of cultures is Christ, and it is he who makes us just. Being just simply means being with Christ and in Christ. And this suffices. Further observances are no longer necessary. For this reason Luther's phrase: "faith alone" is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love. Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love. So it is that in the Letter to the Galatians in which he primarily developed his teaching on justification St Paul speaks of faith that works through love (cf. Gal 5: 14)." (Pope Benedict XVI,11/19/08 General Audience; —
When asked in an interview in 2000 whether the Church would go along with the desire to solemnly define Mary as Co-redemptrix, then-Cardinal Ratzinger responded that “the response of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is, broadly, that what is signified by this is already better expressed in other titles of Mary, while the formula “Co-redemptrix” departs to too great an extent from the language of Scripture and of the Fathers and therefore gives rise to misunderstandings” (53).
He went on to say that, “Everything comes from Him [Christ], as their Latter to the Ephesians and the Letter to the Colossians, in particular, tell us; Mary, too, is everything she is through Him. The word “Co-redemptrix” would obscure this origin. A correct intention being expressed in the wrong way. “For matters of faith, continuity of terminology with the language of Scripture and that of the Fathers is itself an essential element; it is improper simply to manipulate language” (God and the world: believing and living in our time, by Pope Benedict XVI, Peter Seewald, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2000, p. 306
quotes I pulled from a post by daniel1212 This is the downward Roman path on these threads:
Claim made by RCC -> Challenge made by someone else -> Assertion that it is Biblical -> Verses posted that do not say what was claimed -> Ground shifts to "not everything is in Scripture!" , but part of Apostles' tradition -> Request for any proof at all that it was part of Apostles' teaching or tradition - > No proof given, but instead, assumptions that can't be proven or disproven -> This is pointed out -> Finally, the person drops off the thread or reverts to wonderland "Well, if God wanted to, He could have done it that way!!!!"
And so it goes friend.
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