All quotes are from the Douay-Rheims Bible.

Uh; I did NOT see any QUOTE marks in what you posted.

The only way to be a Berean is to be a Jew ...

Well; that's the folks to whom the GOSPEL was sent; but it went to the Thessalonicans first: Jews as well.

What the BIBLE illustrates; however; is that ONE bunch when to the Scriptures to seek the Truth; while the others just moaned and complained about the teaching.

“Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God”

PSST!

Mary never got the memo!

Those teachings of God that you don’t find in Sacred Scripture can be found in Sacred Tradition.

Demonstratively false.

5. The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall not perish.

--Mary of Rome

Several evangelicals have come to believe ~~the truth of~~ Catholic teaching.

There. I fixed it.

My family focuses on those beliefs that we hold in common. And they are many.

Wouldn't be nice if we on FR did this?

But; for some silly reason; we on either (or more) sides seem to want to CONTEND for the faith once given to the saints.

Most of us realize the TRUTH of the Scriptures where Jesus is recorded as saying:

Matthew 10:35-37
…35 For I have come to turn ‘A man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ 37 Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me;…

Bears repeating!

I don’t have to endure without sin; I just have to endure in faith.

Yes!

Well; she WAS the hottest chick he'd EVER seen!

LOL, she was the ONLY chick he had ever seen.

Amazing that the RCC had to come and "clean up" the "clear" messages of the apparition claiming to be Mary.

One would think if these messages were from Heaven, they'd been in sync with the NT and not need the "clarifications".

Galatians 1:6~9: "I wonder that you are so soon removed from Him that called you into the Grace of Christ, unto another Gospel. Which is not another, only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ but though we, or an angel from Heaven, preach a Gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. As we said before, so now I say again: if anyone preach to you a Gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema."

The original Gospel came directly from Christ through His Apostles. All of the Apostles had been raised in a Jewish tradition with the Jewish Scriptures as was St. Paul. Jesus then made the connections for them showing how He Himself fulfilled those Scriptures. The One, Holy, Catholic Apostolic Church is the one that Christ instituted in with and through His Apostles and Disciples.

By accepting this new Gospel, born some 1500 years later, the Gospel that you readily admit is totally different from the one you were raised on, brings you under that anathema.

May God have mercy on your soul and the souls of those who have corrupted you. As St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:6, "Your glorying is not good. Know you not that a little leaven (another Gospel) corrupts the whole lump?"

St. Paul goes on to say in verses 7&8: "Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new paste, as you are unleavened. (Catholic) For Christ our pasch is sacrificed. Therefore let us feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

Ahhh a digital mind reader and thru the internet. Shall I like Simon Magus, offer to buy such a gift from you?

Why yes of course I have a desperately wicked heart and it is deceitful above all things. All my righteousness is as filthy rags. Now tell me, are those words such that any man uttering them should admire himself by them? Did I create those words? Or did I discover those facts about my self by looking in a mirror?

Any good thing at all that exists in me is only there by the grace of the living God, by the presence of the Holy Spirit and by the image of the Son placed therein by the Spirit. I am not a good man and have made mistakes in my life! Yet I know who I believe in, “the God that knows that He is God”, who was begotten incarnate as God with Us! Again I will state words I did not create ....”I know who I believe in and am persuaded that he is able to keep that, which I have committed unto him against that day!” These were not my own words that I should admire myself by them, but rather to be guided by them that my faith and hope be fixed upon him who calls himself...”the resurrection and the life”!

You see, you are a means to an end in my responses to you! I really speaking to those who need to hear that God loves them in spite of their filthy rags, that some day, when God glorifies all of us, it isn’t just the fact that we’ll be like Jesus, but in being like Jesus we’ll discover that we have become more human than we ever though was possible! For we shall be as human as he is ...while being joint heirs of salvation and completed sons and daughters of God!

He Himself fulfilled those Scriptures. The One, Holy, Catholic Apostolic Church is the one that Christ instituted in with and through His Apostles and Disciples.

I agree with the first part, totally disagree with the second part.

By accepting this new Gospel, born some 1500 years later, the Gospel that you readily admit is totally different from the one you were raised on, brings you under that anathema.

Am I correct in assuming you are bringing up Luther again? He lives rent free in your head.
Actually, the truth is, I was raised on a false, works based gospel, in what I consider to be a false, works based religion, otherwise known as the RCC.

May God have mercy on your soul and the souls of those who have corrupted you. As St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:6, "Your glorying is not good. Know you not that a little leaven (another Gospel) corrupts the whole lump?"

God had mercy on my soul the day I met Him by faith, as I was born anew, from above. Unfortunately, I went to 12 years of Catholic school, but it still didn't corrupt my mind so much that I couldn't see the difference between the RCC and the truth, when it was presented to me.
By the way, it is against religion forum rules to mind read. It appears you are mind reading, when you say my glorying is not good. You don't know if I am glorying or not.
Now, since you saw fit to bring scripture into this, I can do the same. Have you ever been born anew from above, like Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3? He told Nicodemus, if he wasn't, he would never see the kingdom of God. You can come to your own conclusion about what Jesus meant, about not seeing the kingdom of God.
Since you brought up Galatians, I have one for you. Galatians 5:4. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace. If one has never been born anew from above, then they never had the grace in the first place.
I will ask again, where are you going at death? If people wait till they breathe their last, it's an iron clad guarantee, that Hell will be their final home. I hope you make it. I know I will.
I guess we will NEVER come to any agreement on any issue, so I see no reason to continue this discussion. Your mind is made up. My mind is made up. We will both have to go on to our "reward."

[Ah, a perveyer of the filthy rags of human merit and useless sacraments knocks on the door!]

“Hello! This household doesn’t want to trade the grace and mercy of God that brings eternal life for your load of dirty rags and eternity without God!”

“Begone. As for me and my home, we will trust and serve the Lord!”

Just another day in the Free Republic neighbor.

[next knock - a Mormon in magic underoos, wearing a name tag that reads, Elder Smith]

[Ah, a perveyer of the filthy rags of human merit and useless sacraments knocks on the door!]

“Hello! This household doesn’t want to trade the grace and mercy of God that brings eternal life for your load of dirty rags and eternity without God!”

“Begone. As for me and my home, we will trust and serve the Lord

You asserted, as if absolute fact, "The One, Holy, Catholic Apostolic Church is the one that Christ instituted in with and through His Apostles and Disciples." That is pure Catholiciism mythology! You, like so many Catholics at FR, have purposely conflated the body of believers --the EKKLESIA JESUS established upon the Rock of confession for Who He IS, Who God has sent for our salvation-- with the ORG (rhymes with Borg) that is the institution of catholiciism.

It has been catholiciism leadership which has established the false religion in Catholicism. Jesus did not establish the majority of what your religion holds as dogmatic to worship, yet you have attributed the blasphemies and heresies in your religion to the Christ, The Son of The Living God! You are on very very dangerous ground.

Rosary

The word rosary comes from Latin and means a garland of roses, the rose being one of the flowers used to symbolize the Virgin Mary. If you were to ask what object is most emblematic of Catholics, people would probably say, “The rosary, of course.” We’re familiar with the images: the silently moving lips of the old woman fingering her beads; the oversized rosary hanging from the waist of the wimpled nun; more recently, the merely decorative rosary hanging from the rearview mirror.

After Vatican II the rosary fell into relative disuse. The same is true for Marian devotions as a whole. But in recent years the rosary has made a comeback, and not just among Catholics. Many Protestants now say the rosary, recognizing it as a truly biblical form of prayer—after all, the prayers that comprise it come mainly from the Bible.

The rosary is a devotion in honor of the Virgin Mary. It consists of a set number of specific prayers. First are the introductory prayers: one Apostles’ Creed (Credo), one Our Father (the Pater Noster or the Lord’s Prayer), three Hail Mary’s (Ave’s), one Glory Be (Gloria Patri).

The Apostles’ Creed

The Apostles’ Creed is so called not because it was composed by the apostles themselves, but because it expresses their teachings. The original form of the creed came into use around A.D. 125, and the present form dates from the 400s. It reads this way:

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day he arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. From thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.”

Traditional Protestants are able to recite the Apostles’ Creed without qualms, meaning every line of it, though to some lines they must give meanings different from those given by Catholics, who composed the creed. For instance, we refer to “the holy Catholic Church,” meaning a particular, identifiable Church on earth. Protestants typically re-interpret this to refer to an “invisible church” consisting of all “true believers” in Jesus.

Protestants, when they say the prayer, refer to the (lower-cased) “holy catholic church,” using “catholic” merely in the sense of “universal,” not implying any connection with the (upper-case) Catholic Church, which is based in Rome. (This is despite the fact that the term “Catholic” was already used to refer to a particular, visible Church by the second century and had already lost its broader meaning of “universal”).

Despite these differences Protestants embrace the Apostles’ Creed without reluctance, seeing it as embodying basic Christian truths as they understand them.

The Lord’s Prayer

The next prayer in the rosary—Our Father or the Pater Noster (from its opening words in Latin), also known as the Lord’s Prayer—is even more acceptable to Protestants because Jesus himself taught it to his disciples.

It is given in the Bible in two slightly different versions (Matt. 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4). The one given in Matthew is the one we say. (We won’t reproduce it here. All Christians should have it memorized.)

The Hail Mary

The next prayer in the rosary, and the prayer which is really at the center of the devotion, is the Hail Mary. Since the Hail Mary is a prayer to Mary, many Protestants assume it’s unbiblical. Quite the contrary, actually. Let’s look at it.

The prayer begins, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” This is nothing other than the greeting the angel Gabriel gave Mary in Luke 1:28 (Confraternity Version). The next part reads this way:

“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” This was exactly what Mary’s cousin Elizabeth said to her in Luke 1:42. The only thing that has been added to these two verses are the names “Jesus” and “Mary,” to make clear who is being referred to. So the first part of the Hail Mary is entirely biblical.

The second part of the Hail Mary is not taken straight from Scripture, but it is entirely biblical in the thoughts it expresses. It reads:

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

Let’s look at the first words. Some Protestants do object to saying “Holy Mary” because they claim Mary was a sinner like the rest of us. But Mary was a Christian (the first Christian, actually, the first to accept Jesus; cf. Luke 1:45), and the Bible describes Christians in general as holy. In fact, they are called saints, which means “holy ones” (Eph. 1:1, Phil. 1:1, Col. 1:2). Furthermore, as the mother of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Mary was certainly a very holy woman.

Some Protestants object to the title “Mother of God,” but suffice it to say that the title doesn’t mean Mary is older than God; it means the person who was born of her was a divine person, not a human person. (Jesus is one person, the divine, but has two natures, the divine and the human; it is incorrect to say he is a human person.) The denial that Mary had God in her womb is a heresy known as Nestorianism (which claims that Jesus was two persons, one divine and one human), which has been condemned since the early 400s and which the Reformers and Protestant Bible scholars have always rejected.

Another Mediator?

The most problematic line for non-Catholics is usually the last: “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” Many non-Catholics think such a request denies the teaching of 1 Timothy 2:5: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” But in the preceding four verses (1 Tim. 2:1-4), Paul instructs Christians to pray for each other, meaning it cannot interfere with Christ’s mediatorship: “I urge that prayers, supplications, petitions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone. . . . This is good, and pleasing to God our Savior.”

We know this exhortation to pray for others applies to the saints in heaven who, as Revelation 5:8 reveals, intercede for us by offering our prayers to God: “The twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

The Glory Be

The fourth prayer found in the rosary is the Glory Be, sometimes called the Gloria or Gloria Patri. The last two names are taken from the opening words of the Latin version of the prayer, which in English reads:

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” The Gloria is a brief hymn of praise in which all Christians can join. It has been used since the fourth century (though its present form is from the seventh) and traditionally has been recited at the end of each Psalm in the Divine Office.

The Closing Prayer

We’ve covered the opening prayers of the rosary. In fact, we’ve covered all the prayers of the rosary except the very last one, which is usually the Hail Queen (Salve Regina), sometimes called the Hail Holy Queen. It’s the most commonly recited prayer in praise of Mary, after the Hail Mary itself, and was composed at the end of the eleventh century. It generally reads like this (there are several variants):

“Hail holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.”

So those are the prayers of the rosary. Between the introductory prayers and the concluding prayer is the meat of the rosary: the decades. Each decade—there are fifteen in a full rosary (which takes about forty-five minutes to say)—is composed of ten Hail Marys. Each decade is bracketed between an Our Father and a Glory Be, so each decade actually has twelve prayers.

Each decade is devoted to a mystery regarding the life of Jesus or his mother. Here the word mystery refers to a truth of the faith, not to something incomprehensible, as in the line, “It’s a mystery to me!” The fifteen mysteries are divided into three groups of five: the Joyful, the Sorrowful, the Glorious. When people speak of “saying the rosary” they usually mean saying any set of five (which takes about fifteen minutes) rather than the recitation of all fifteen mysteries. Let’s look at the mysteries.

Meditation the Key

First we must understand that they are meditations. When Catholics recite the twelve prayers that form a decade of the rosary, they meditate on the mystery associated with that decade. If they merely recite the prayers, whether vocally or silently, they’re missing the essence of the rosary. It isn’t just a recitation of prayers, but a meditation on the grace of God. Critics, not knowing about the meditation part, imagine the rosary must be boring, uselessly repetitious, meaningless, and their criticism carries weight if you reduce the rosary to a formula. Christ forbade meaningless repetition (Matt. 6:7), but the Bible itself prescribes some prayers that involve repetition. Look at Psalms 136, which is a litany (a prayer with a recurring refrain) meant to be sung in the Jewish Temple. In the psalm the refrain is “His mercy endures forever.” Sometimes in Psalms 136 the refrain starts before a sentence is finished, meaning it is more repetitious than the rosary, though this prayer was written directly under the inspiration of God.

It is the meditation on the mysteries that gives the rosary its staying power. The Joyful Mysteries are these: the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38), the Visitation (Luke 1:40-56), the Nativity (Luke 2:6-20), the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:21-39), and the Finding of the child Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41-51).

Then come the Sorrowful Mysteries: the Agony in the Garden (Matt. 26:36-46), the Scourging (Matt. 27:26), the Crowning with Thorns (Matt. 27:29), the Carrying of the Cross (John 19:17), and the Crucifixion (Luke 23:33-46).

The final Mysteries are the Glorious: the Resurrection (Luke 24:1-12), the Ascension (Luke 24:50-51), the Descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-4), the Assumption of Mary into heaven (Rev. 12), and her Coronation (cf. Rev. 12:1).

With the exception of the last two, each mystery is explicitly scriptural. True, the Assumption and Coronation of Mary are not explicitly stated in the Bible, but they are not contrary to it, so there is no reason to reject them out of hand. Given the scriptural basis of most of the mysteries, it’s little wonder that many Protestants, once they understand the meditations that are the essence of the rosary, happily take it up as a devotion. We’ve looked at the prayers found in the rosary and the mysteries around which it is formed. Now let’s see how it was formed historically.

The Secret of Paternoster Row

It’s commonly said that St. Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans), instituted the rosary. Not so. Certain parts of the rosary predated Dominic; others arose only after his death.

Centuries before Dominic, monks had begun to recite all 150 psalms on a regular basis. As time went on, it was felt that the lay brothers, known as the conversi, should have some form of prayer of their own. They were distinct from the choir monks, and a chief distinction was that they were illiterate. Since they couldn’t read the psalms, they couldn’t recite them with the monks. They needed an easily remembered prayer.

The prayer first chosen was the Our Father, and, depending on circumstances, it was said either fifty or a hundred times. These conversi used rosaries to keep count, and the rosaries were known then as Paternosters (”Our Fathers”).

In England there arose a craftsmen’s guild of some importance, the members of which made these rosaries. In London you can find a street, named Paternoster Row, which preserves the memory of the area where these craftsmen worked.

The rosaries that originally were used to count Our Fathers came to be used, during the twelfth century, to count Hail Marys—or, more properly, the first half of what we now call the Hail Mary. (The second half was added some time later.)

Both Catholics and non-Catholics, as they learn more about the rosary and make more frequent use of it, come to see how its meditations bring to mind the sweet fragrance not only of the Mother of God, but of Christ himself.

NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-rosary

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Hebrews 11:1: "Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not." See Hebrews chapter 11 in total for what part faith plays in our relationship to God and to the things of God.

Because you have no faith in the Blessed Mother and the Brown Scapular,
it would do you no good to wear it!

The Brown Scapular, like the Crucifix and Rosary, is a Sacramental. Unlike a Sacrament which is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give Grace, it is a blessed article, a visual reminder, and therefore prompter, to avoid sin (iniquity). 1 John 5:16&17: "He that knows his brother to sin a sin which is not to death (venial sin), let him ask: and life shall be given to him who sinneth not to death. There is a sin unto death. For this I say not that any man ask. All iniquity is sin. And there is a sin unto death (mortal sin)." We are in a daily battle with the Evil One.

Pope St. John Paul II said that the Jews are our elder brothers and sisters in the faith. The Catholic Faith is the fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures. See St. Luke 23:27: "And beginning at Moses and all the prophets He expounded to them in all Scriptures the things that were concerning Him."

God commanded: "Speak to the children of Israel and thou shalt tell them to make to themselves fringes in the corner of their garments, putting in them ribands of 'BLUE'. That when they shall see them they may remember all the commandments of the Lord, and not follow their own thoughts and eyes, going astray after divers things (Iniquity?) But rather being mindful of the precepts of the Lord, may do them, and BE HOLY TO THEIR GOD," Numbers 15:38~40.

This is the Tzitzit, knotted ritual fringes or tassels, attached to the four corners of the tallit (prayer shawl) and tallit katan (every day undergarment). Wearing it is commanded in Deuteronomy 22:12: "Thou shall make strings in the hem at the four corners of thy cloak, wherewith thou shalt be covered." The purpose of wearing Tzitzit is to remind the Jews of their religious obligations. It serves also as a reminder of the Exodus from Egypt (the hell they being put through in Egypt).

Our Lady being a Jewess, borrowed from God on what He had commanded the Jews. The Brown Scapular is the Catholic version of the Tzitzit of our elder brothers and sisters of the Scriptures. In fact, the Jews also had/have Phylacteries: either of two small, black leather cubes containing a piece of parchment inscribed with verses from Deuteronomy 6:4~9, 11:13~21, and Exodus 13:1~16. One is attached with straps to the left arm and the other to the forehead by all Jewish men. It got carried over into the early Christian Church as a receptacle to carry a holy relic.

The historical precedent is there for the Scapular, and it was from Jesus Himself since He is the Word that expresses the Thoughts of the Father, but it is not in and of itself capable of keeping us out of sin or keeping us out of Hell; because God will not take our free wills away from us. The efficacy of wearing the Brown Scapular comes about through our corresponding to the Graces that Our Lady, as the Father's Envoy, promised which are verified in the formal blessing of the priest, (alter Christus) on the Scapular.

God knows His creatures. He knows our propensity to sin and He continuously provides means for us to stay focused on our reason for being here just as He did our elder brothers and sisters, the Jews: to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in the world so we can be with Him in the next. And this is the primary efficacy of EVERY Sacrament, Sacramental and every act of good will. What Jesus gave us was the meat and potatoes of our faith. Our Lady came with the desert like a Good Mama. Again, God knows His creatures...out of sight out of mind. The Brown Scapular reminds us to do all the things we should do if we want, not only to get in the Door of Heaven (Salvation), but to get a high place in Heaven!

The Blessed Virgin Mary comes to defend the rights of Her Father, Her Son, and Her Spouse the Holy Spirit. After all, He was the One Who conceived Jesus in Her womb. She could NOT come to the Earth unless She was sent by Them. It is the Holy Triune God that wants us to appreciate the Blessed Virgin Mary for Her instrumentality in Salvation History that made it possible for us to be Redeemed and Saved. No other human before Her or since possessed the Sanctity She HAD to possess for Jesus to be able to take His Flesh from Her.

Our Holy Mother Mary encourages us on the way to Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. She asks us to look to Her for example, for guidance, for correction, because She has walked the path we are on and She fought the good fight. We should emulate Her. She is the Premo human being!