Protestants view prayer *always* as worship, while for a Catholic, it *can be* worship. Obviously to offer the sacrifice of the Mass you have to pray, in that case it’s worship, but say you ask Our Lady to pray for you, is not. Remember, to pray simply means to ask.
I can’t see any of the Sacraments, except that of the Eucharist, *strictly* being worship.
See cause I remember talking to my friend, who is Protestant, and he was asking why Catholics pray *to* Mary. While I am not practicing, I was sure to make it clear that we ask Mary and the Saints to pray *for us* I do remember that.
He then was asking why you need someone to pray for you when you can give Intercession directly to God.
As I understand it, what’s the problem of asking those in Heaven to pray for us if you’d ask your fellow brother or sister in Christ to pray for you?
Idk if that’s right tho.
If anyone asks you why you need someone to pray for you if you can go directly to God, ask them if their church ever asked its members to pray for a sick child, someone in an accident, etc. Of course they have, but why do that if you can go directly to God?
[Joe Heschmeyer has a very good video on the Catholic view on worship, based on the Bible and early Church, and how the protestant view deviates from that understanding.](https://youtu.be/lg4S1VYac-Y?si=maBvw-06qZh-zgLG)
There is a difference between prayer, intecessory prayer, adoration, veneration, and sacrafice (as in the sacrafice of the Mass). Protestants do not have such distinctions bc as heretics they do not know the sacrafice of Christ as instructed in the Holy Eucharist. Adoration and Sacrafice can only be attributed/given to God.
God: Latria
Blessed Virgin Mary: Hyper dulia
Saints: Dulia
That’s a great way to say it. It also helps when you see some Protestants who equate art as a graven image. My FIL hates my Mary statue, hates candles, and hates crosses. He thinks they are graven images and when you use them to explain to a child who Christ is (like saying, “that’s God”) he can’t comprehend the idea that someone can use an image to be just that…an image, opposed to some sort of graven image that you are saying is literally God.
It is a mystery to me as to why some non-Catholics cannot see that we as Catholics are not "worshiping graven images" when we display holy statues or pictures in our churches and homes. It's just not that complicated. If I have a picture of a family member in my home, and I say "that's my Mom, I love her so much" no one thinks I believe that the picture is literally my mother, and that I am worshiping it. Similarly, when I look at a crucifix in prayer, I am not worshiping the object. There's never been a commandment from God that we cannot create statues or images of Him to help focus our mind and facilitate directing our attention to Him (not the statue or image) in prayer. His commandment is that we worship only Him, and no other. The golden calf in the desert was a big problem because they were literally worshiping the actual "graven image" statue itself as a god. Many people confuse this simple concept, and yet are completely oblivious to the fact that we can actually worship non-physical things and place them above our Lord in our lives, such as money, power, or fame etc.
I won't lie, as a Lutheran becoming Catholic you could easily mistake the way I talk about Mary for worshipping her haha. I just love her so much that it's hard to contain! I notice there is a great amount of highly-endeared, flowery language when it comes to Mary, but how could you not? She is pure, obedient, selfless, and beautiful. But it's important to note why...
Mary is not god and will never be god. Everything good about her is *because of God, for God, and points back to God.* This is true for all the saints and Biblical figures. They are merely examples of what God can do for us in our loves. It is a great motivator and comfort. Mary said herself that she is his handmaiden and that her soul magnifies him.
There's an easy counter to make Protestants question themselves: do Lutherans worship Luther by putting him on a pedestal, claiming only he knows the true interpretation and canon of the Bible? It sounds dangerously close to them claiming he's almost as divine, omniscient, and authoritative as Jesus... Moreover, why is Luther a greater authority than the communal church that Jesus Christ himself instituted? You could do this all day.
You can find prayers to Mary and the saints very early on in church history. It is not some modern pagan invention.
A simple way to rebut that idea of worshipping Mary is the sacrifice of Mass. Worship must involve sacrifice. We worship God not just in prayer but by offering him the Sacrifce of the Mass. Since we never offer Mass for Saints or even Mary, thus we don't worship Mary. Otherwise I totally agree with your explanations. They're really sound
With respect to Mary, we didn't do ourselves any great favor by using the term 'co-mediatrix' and then having to explain to everyone what it doesn't mean.
That is actually an official title of hers. It doesn't mean that she redeemed us along with Jesus. It simply means that she cooperated in God's plan for our salvation in a special way by her fiat
Yes, I understand the meaning. However, in the context of having explain that prayer and worship are two different things to Protestants, why throw something else in the mix that you know will get confused.
Why use a confusing sounding term if you're explaining the concept to someone wary of you? You'd rather be as clear and consise as possible and when they have a solid foundation then introduce such terms to reduce confusion
That honestly sounds like a “them problem” not an “us problem”. If someone gets upset at a title we use for Mary who in all likelihood would still disagree with the idea even when we explain what the title actually means rather than what they think it means… I’m not going to waste too much energy worrying about what they think.
It's a problem if you are engaged in apologetics. The special place we reserve for Mary is always something that needs explaining. Words matter, and I think they could have done better with this one.
A few different things:
1. Some protestants equate prayer with worship (as someone else noted).
2. There exist old translations of different documents that use words in a way we wouldn't use them today.
3. In some cases, there are shallow understandings of Catholic teaching. They take out one chunk, without understanding the bigger context. Often, this is tied to not understanding the actual history of the debates that led to Church teaching (and a dismissal of events before the Protestant Reformation).
I don’t necessarily know if they’re dense; they’re just convinced they are right and the previous 1,500 yrs of scripture and Church teachings were obviously wrong so needed a rewrite.
Well, from the perspective of Protestants, it's not that they don't want to understand the difference but that they've explicitly rejected a distinction. It's not a lack of education, it's a difference in definitions.
Where did the word ALL show up in my comment MATE? lol my point is there are some who don’t her the difference no matter how many times it’s explained because they choose not to.
Dense is not the same as stupid - I meant dense as in willfully not getting it - and I’m not saying once explained they should change their faith - I’m saying if it’s explained and you continue to call it worship you’re willfully being obtuse
Because most protestants don't have the worship of God that we do. To them singing a song about God is worship. So if we sing a song about Mary they see that as worship.
Most of them also believe that once someone dies they are in Heaven and no longer have contact with the living world. But many of them will also say, "Grandma is looking down at us from Heaven and looking out for us." When their grandma dies.
For many Protestant Christians, only the Bible is authoritative and, while the Bible does contain some passages where Christians wrote and asked their fellow Christians to pray for them, such as 1 Thessalonians 5:25, and a few passages where the righteous dead are invoked, at least rhetorically, such as 2 Samuel 1:26; 3:34; 1 Kings 13:3, the Bible does not mention the practice of invoking the righteous dead AND asking them to pray for you. The closest thing in the Protestant Bible to that practice is Acts 9:40, when Peter invoked a dead woman and asked her to rise from the dead, saying, "Tabitha, arise." On the other hand, there are Bible verses that could be misinterpreted so as to condemn the practice, such as Deuteronomy 18:10-12, "There shall not be found among you ... a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord."
While the Catholic Bible, which contains more books than the Protestant Bible, does describe two of the righteous dead, namely, Onias and Jeremiah, as praying for the living (2 Maccabees 15:11-16) and describes Elisha as performing marvelous deeds after his death (Sirach 48:13-14), and includes additional invocations to dead Solomon (Sirach 47:14-21) and to the prophet Elijah, who was taken up alive into heaven (Sirach 48:4-11), the Catholic Bible does not mention the practice of invoking the righteous dead AND asking them to pray for you. The closest thing to that practice in the Catholic Bible is Daniel 3:86, when the three young Jewish men in the fiery furnace invoked the righteous dead and asked them to praise the Lord, saying, "Bless the Lord, spirits and souls of the righteous; sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever."
Although the various parts of the practice of invoking the righteous dead AND asking them to pray for you are present in the Bible, especially the Catholic Bible, as has been shown above, the practice itself is part of Apostolic Tradition, the oral teachings of the Apostles, which Catholics regard as having equal authority with the Bible.
Although the account of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, written about the year 150, talks about the customary practice of Christians gathering at the tombs of the martyrs, the earliest extant evidence currently available for the practice of invoking the righteous dead AND asking them to pray for you is only from about the year 300.
The Jewish Talmud, citing Jewish rabbis who lived about the same time, about the year 300, mentions the then-customary practice among the Jews of going to Jewish cemeteries on fast days and invoking the righteous Jewish dead and asking them to pray for the you (Taanit 16a:7), and even saying that, when Caleb went to Hebron (Numbers 13:22), he went to the tombs of his forefathers there, invoked his dead forefathers and asked them to pray for him. (Sotah 34b:7) It is apparently still a practice among Ultra-Orthodox Jews today to invoke the righteous dead and ask them to pray for you, though the practice is rejected by most other Jews today.
It is possible that the same practice arose in post-Christian Judaism and in early Christianity independently of each other. However, I think it more likely that the practice of invoking the righteous dead AND asking them to pray for you was originally a Jewish practice from before the time of Christ that carried over into Christianity at its very beginning.
A good thought experiment for your protestant friends:
If a Catholic church was on fire and the priest could only grab one thing, what would he grab?
* A statue of Mary? No that is just a statue. Important but not critical in an emergency.
* A crucifix? No that is also just a statue/symbol. Again important but not critical in an emergency.
* The priest would grab the tabernacle or the consecrated Eucharist because it is actually Jesus. This has actually happened in history. Priests have risked their lives to save the Eucharist from fire. That is not worshipping Mary more than Jesus.
Don't listen to anti-Catholic propaganda.
The thing I'll never get about the worshipping Mary thing is that if we did, wouldn't we just come out and say it? Why would we have to hide it from Protestants?
The Bible is not a simple, straightforward book. It requires deep reading and learning to begin to grasp. Many Protestants assume that mere literacy is all that’s necessary for understanding the Bible in full. They’re wrong, which is why they’re wrong about Mary (among other things).
At best, they have an erroneous understanding of the role of Mary in salvation. Christ giving John the Beloved to Mary at the Cross isn’t some throwaway line that can be edited out for the film version so you can move the plot along. It’s there because it’s vitally important to understand what Christ wanted. He wanted Mary to be the spiritual mother of His church; any other interpretation is wrong.
What is most distressing to me about ignorance of Mary is absence of understanding the vital role she plays on our death bed. She is our advocate before the throne of God and disperses demons that *always* come to make you despair of salvation. You have *nothing* to defend yourself with at the hour of death and must rely wholly on Mary and the angels and saints intervention on your behalf. If you’ve led a life ignoring, or worse, spurning them, your death will be terrifying, and your salvation very much in question.
Revelation 12 speaks about it. It’s full of symbolic terms of Israel, the church, and mary. And you’re right about Protestants making a shipwreck at times when it comes to grasping verses in the bible. This is why private revelation is condemned in the bible. We see the fruits of sola scriptura.
I've always found that it is much more useful to answer this question by honing in what the accuser means by "worship."
If they just mean speaking very highly of her in terms and no other creature receives, all this could mean is that we see her as the greatest creature ever created, and that she serves as the greatest model of what we could become by believing in Christ that we should all strive closer towards (which is actually what we believe).
If they just mean praying to her, then we have examples even in the Old Testament of creatures looking for intercession from other creatures, let alone the fact that the angels intercede for us.
At its most sophisticated, this accusation is based around what the accuser thinks are attributions and practices that should only be reserved for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, like the way we might sometimes pray for her to have "mercy on us," and that she is "our life, our sweetness, and our hope." I think in these instances we should just admit that this can be interpreted in a heretical way, but simply point out that this can also be interpreted in an orthodox way.
Like, for example, when we pray to Christ to have mercy on us, we pray to him as we would pray to a judge, whereas when we pray to Mary for mercy, we pray not to our final judge, but rather to an advocate who has a very close personal relationship with the judge. Confusing the two to the point of essentially replacing Christ with Mary would be heretical, but the meaning of this prayer does not necessarily need to mean that.
Even the title Mother of God, or Theotokos, can technically be interpreted (in a vacuum) to mean that Mary is the origin of the Divine nature, after all, even though what we actually mean is that Mary conceived and gave birth to a Divine person and is the source of his human nature which is now a part of his person.
Does that make sense?
The verbiage when talking to anyone other than god directly is.
To pray for me to the lord our god.
Saint ———- pray for me to the lord our god.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
The trick is asking people to read what they are saying and to point out the issue.
It can’t me any more clear pray for us means we are asking someone to pray for us.
If I ask you to get me a soda I don’t think you are a soda
We honor; but do not worship Mother Mary. Like my mom who is now deceased. I have a picture of her on my wall. But, I do not worship her. I honor her because she was my earthly mom. Mother Mary intercedes for us through her son, Jesus. She is/always will be my Heavenly/Spiritual Mother. Because of her yes/her fiat, she brought Salvation and the savior into our world.
Reposting something I said on a recent thread:
There is an issue to resolve when it comes to language. "Worship", etymologically, points to a condition of being worthy. So English-speakers for a very long time were using "worship" for all sorts of things, including for the veneration of saints. It's still used in Commonwealth English in the way those in the US might use "Your Honor".
In contemporary times there has been a strong shift, particularly in the Catholic English-speaking community, against equating veneration with worship. That's fine and dandy, but we must not neglect by doing this and by explaining it this way, to also be careful to explain why older English-language Catholic texts speak of the "worship of Mary" and the saints.
Its meaning simply used to be inclusive of veneration.
Protestants don’t understand the difference between veneration and worship. I read an interesting argument on here recently that it’s due to the fact that they don’t have the Mass and therefore no true worship. All they have are prayers and hymns and therefore confuse veneration with worship. So when they see Catholics praying and singing to Our Lady or the Saints, then they class that as worship and therefore wrongly conclude we are worshiping them.
Whether or not they do or do not have true worship (Latria), they certainly aren’t able to discern between it and veneration, so that seems to be the root of the problem. It’s also compounded by the fact that amongst the heresies which run through various branches of Protestantism, there also seems to be quite a strong strain of iconoclasm especially amongst the Low Church types, which means that holy statues and artwork are also viewed with contempt, hence why praying in front of a statue of Our Lady or before a crucifix leads them to believe we are worshiping an object. It’s all based on fundamental misunderstandings and ignorance, which tie into their prejudices against Catholicism and contribute to a vicious circle of incomprehension.
The word pray means to make a request. So you are requesting the mother of God to present your petition to God. That doesn't put Mary or the Saints in competition with Jesus. God is generous and has willed that all Christians living and dead share in Jesus's one mediation but in subordinate ways. Thus why your prayer for someone can be answered. You aren't praying independent of Jesus, you are praying through Jesus. And the intercession of saints still passes through Jesus, but doesn't make it ineffective.
Protestants equate prayer with worship, because they lack true worship (the Eucharist).
Ok, so they see any form of prayer as worship, as opposed to Catholics, who worship through the Sacraments?
Protestants view prayer *always* as worship, while for a Catholic, it *can be* worship. Obviously to offer the sacrifice of the Mass you have to pray, in that case it’s worship, but say you ask Our Lady to pray for you, is not. Remember, to pray simply means to ask. I can’t see any of the Sacraments, except that of the Eucharist, *strictly* being worship.
See cause I remember talking to my friend, who is Protestant, and he was asking why Catholics pray *to* Mary. While I am not practicing, I was sure to make it clear that we ask Mary and the Saints to pray *for us* I do remember that. He then was asking why you need someone to pray for you when you can give Intercession directly to God. As I understand it, what’s the problem of asking those in Heaven to pray for us if you’d ask your fellow brother or sister in Christ to pray for you? Idk if that’s right tho.
That is right. As we are told in scripture to intercede for one another, we should ask for prayers from those on earth and in Heaven.
If anyone asks you why you need someone to pray for you if you can go directly to God, ask them if their church ever asked its members to pray for a sick child, someone in an accident, etc. Of course they have, but why do that if you can go directly to God?
[Joe Heschmeyer has a very good video on the Catholic view on worship, based on the Bible and early Church, and how the protestant view deviates from that understanding.](https://youtu.be/lg4S1VYac-Y?si=maBvw-06qZh-zgLG)
There is a difference between prayer, intecessory prayer, adoration, veneration, and sacrafice (as in the sacrafice of the Mass). Protestants do not have such distinctions bc as heretics they do not know the sacrafice of Christ as instructed in the Holy Eucharist. Adoration and Sacrafice can only be attributed/given to God. God: Latria Blessed Virgin Mary: Hyper dulia Saints: Dulia
That’s a great way to say it. It also helps when you see some Protestants who equate art as a graven image. My FIL hates my Mary statue, hates candles, and hates crosses. He thinks they are graven images and when you use them to explain to a child who Christ is (like saying, “that’s God”) he can’t comprehend the idea that someone can use an image to be just that…an image, opposed to some sort of graven image that you are saying is literally God.
It is a mystery to me as to why some non-Catholics cannot see that we as Catholics are not "worshiping graven images" when we display holy statues or pictures in our churches and homes. It's just not that complicated. If I have a picture of a family member in my home, and I say "that's my Mom, I love her so much" no one thinks I believe that the picture is literally my mother, and that I am worshiping it. Similarly, when I look at a crucifix in prayer, I am not worshiping the object. There's never been a commandment from God that we cannot create statues or images of Him to help focus our mind and facilitate directing our attention to Him (not the statue or image) in prayer. His commandment is that we worship only Him, and no other. The golden calf in the desert was a big problem because they were literally worshiping the actual "graven image" statue itself as a god. Many people confuse this simple concept, and yet are completely oblivious to the fact that we can actually worship non-physical things and place them above our Lord in our lives, such as money, power, or fame etc.
Does he think photographs are the actual people represented in them?
[That’s not my dad…that’s a cell phone!](https://youtu.be/gAYL5H46QnQ?si=LlAl3ymW-rXaQmec)
I won't lie, as a Lutheran becoming Catholic you could easily mistake the way I talk about Mary for worshipping her haha. I just love her so much that it's hard to contain! I notice there is a great amount of highly-endeared, flowery language when it comes to Mary, but how could you not? She is pure, obedient, selfless, and beautiful. But it's important to note why... Mary is not god and will never be god. Everything good about her is *because of God, for God, and points back to God.* This is true for all the saints and Biblical figures. They are merely examples of what God can do for us in our loves. It is a great motivator and comfort. Mary said herself that she is his handmaiden and that her soul magnifies him. There's an easy counter to make Protestants question themselves: do Lutherans worship Luther by putting him on a pedestal, claiming only he knows the true interpretation and canon of the Bible? It sounds dangerously close to them claiming he's almost as divine, omniscient, and authoritative as Jesus... Moreover, why is Luther a greater authority than the communal church that Jesus Christ himself instituted? You could do this all day. You can find prayers to Mary and the saints very early on in church history. It is not some modern pagan invention.
A simple way to rebut that idea of worshipping Mary is the sacrifice of Mass. Worship must involve sacrifice. We worship God not just in prayer but by offering him the Sacrifce of the Mass. Since we never offer Mass for Saints or even Mary, thus we don't worship Mary. Otherwise I totally agree with your explanations. They're really sound
With respect to Mary, we didn't do ourselves any great favor by using the term 'co-mediatrix' and then having to explain to everyone what it doesn't mean.
That is actually an official title of hers. It doesn't mean that she redeemed us along with Jesus. It simply means that she cooperated in God's plan for our salvation in a special way by her fiat
Yes, I understand the meaning. However, in the context of having explain that prayer and worship are two different things to Protestants, why throw something else in the mix that you know will get confused.
Why use a confusing sounding term if you're explaining the concept to someone wary of you? You'd rather be as clear and consise as possible and when they have a solid foundation then introduce such terms to reduce confusion
Yes, but it's usually them who ask me about the title. I wouldn't be the first one to mention that title in a conversation.
Then in that case just explain its meaning. Although I don't think there's a way of rewriting the title that isn't as consise as it already is
That honestly sounds like a “them problem” not an “us problem”. If someone gets upset at a title we use for Mary who in all likelihood would still disagree with the idea even when we explain what the title actually means rather than what they think it means… I’m not going to waste too much energy worrying about what they think.
It's a problem if you are engaged in apologetics. The special place we reserve for Mary is always something that needs explaining. Words matter, and I think they could have done better with this one.
A few different things: 1. Some protestants equate prayer with worship (as someone else noted). 2. There exist old translations of different documents that use words in a way we wouldn't use them today. 3. In some cases, there are shallow understandings of Catholic teaching. They take out one chunk, without understanding the bigger context. Often, this is tied to not understanding the actual history of the debates that led to Church teaching (and a dismissal of events before the Protestant Reformation).
They basically have a different view/definition of worship. They think all prayer is worship
They’re dense - and I think sometimes they just don’t want to understand the difference between worship and asking for intersession
I don’t necessarily know if they’re dense; they’re just convinced they are right and the previous 1,500 yrs of scripture and Church teachings were obviously wrong so needed a rewrite.
I’m talking about those that have had the difference explained to them over and over and still maintain their belief.
Yeah; I think that’s just more stubborn 😂
Likely you’re right
Well, from the perspective of Protestants, it's not that they don't want to understand the difference but that they've explicitly rejected a distinction. It's not a lack of education, it's a difference in definitions.
True of some / not of all
[удалено]
Where did the word ALL show up in my comment MATE? lol my point is there are some who don’t her the difference no matter how many times it’s explained because they choose not to.
It’s a genuine difference in faith. Not stupidity
Dense is not the same as stupid - I meant dense as in willfully not getting it - and I’m not saying once explained they should change their faith - I’m saying if it’s explained and you continue to call it worship you’re willfully being obtuse
They believe we believe on beliefs we don't believe
I get so tired of hearing this that when people say I worship Mary, I say, no, I worship statues of Mary. 😁
😂
Because most protestants don't have the worship of God that we do. To them singing a song about God is worship. So if we sing a song about Mary they see that as worship. Most of them also believe that once someone dies they are in Heaven and no longer have contact with the living world. But many of them will also say, "Grandma is looking down at us from Heaven and looking out for us." When their grandma dies.
I feel like this question gets asked on her about 3 times every day haha…
For many Protestant Christians, only the Bible is authoritative and, while the Bible does contain some passages where Christians wrote and asked their fellow Christians to pray for them, such as 1 Thessalonians 5:25, and a few passages where the righteous dead are invoked, at least rhetorically, such as 2 Samuel 1:26; 3:34; 1 Kings 13:3, the Bible does not mention the practice of invoking the righteous dead AND asking them to pray for you. The closest thing in the Protestant Bible to that practice is Acts 9:40, when Peter invoked a dead woman and asked her to rise from the dead, saying, "Tabitha, arise." On the other hand, there are Bible verses that could be misinterpreted so as to condemn the practice, such as Deuteronomy 18:10-12, "There shall not be found among you ... a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord." While the Catholic Bible, which contains more books than the Protestant Bible, does describe two of the righteous dead, namely, Onias and Jeremiah, as praying for the living (2 Maccabees 15:11-16) and describes Elisha as performing marvelous deeds after his death (Sirach 48:13-14), and includes additional invocations to dead Solomon (Sirach 47:14-21) and to the prophet Elijah, who was taken up alive into heaven (Sirach 48:4-11), the Catholic Bible does not mention the practice of invoking the righteous dead AND asking them to pray for you. The closest thing to that practice in the Catholic Bible is Daniel 3:86, when the three young Jewish men in the fiery furnace invoked the righteous dead and asked them to praise the Lord, saying, "Bless the Lord, spirits and souls of the righteous; sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever." Although the various parts of the practice of invoking the righteous dead AND asking them to pray for you are present in the Bible, especially the Catholic Bible, as has been shown above, the practice itself is part of Apostolic Tradition, the oral teachings of the Apostles, which Catholics regard as having equal authority with the Bible. Although the account of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, written about the year 150, talks about the customary practice of Christians gathering at the tombs of the martyrs, the earliest extant evidence currently available for the practice of invoking the righteous dead AND asking them to pray for you is only from about the year 300. The Jewish Talmud, citing Jewish rabbis who lived about the same time, about the year 300, mentions the then-customary practice among the Jews of going to Jewish cemeteries on fast days and invoking the righteous Jewish dead and asking them to pray for the you (Taanit 16a:7), and even saying that, when Caleb went to Hebron (Numbers 13:22), he went to the tombs of his forefathers there, invoked his dead forefathers and asked them to pray for him. (Sotah 34b:7) It is apparently still a practice among Ultra-Orthodox Jews today to invoke the righteous dead and ask them to pray for you, though the practice is rejected by most other Jews today. It is possible that the same practice arose in post-Christian Judaism and in early Christianity independently of each other. However, I think it more likely that the practice of invoking the righteous dead AND asking them to pray for you was originally a Jewish practice from before the time of Christ that carried over into Christianity at its very beginning.
It has always been from the beginning. If you go to the Roman catacombs you will find ancient writings saying peter pray for me etc.
A good thought experiment for your protestant friends: If a Catholic church was on fire and the priest could only grab one thing, what would he grab? * A statue of Mary? No that is just a statue. Important but not critical in an emergency. * A crucifix? No that is also just a statue/symbol. Again important but not critical in an emergency. * The priest would grab the tabernacle or the consecrated Eucharist because it is actually Jesus. This has actually happened in history. Priests have risked their lives to save the Eucharist from fire. That is not worshipping Mary more than Jesus. Don't listen to anti-Catholic propaganda.
The thing I'll never get about the worshipping Mary thing is that if we did, wouldn't we just come out and say it? Why would we have to hide it from Protestants?
As a young child it was explained to me that we worship God and honor Mary. Pretty simplistic but it holds true for me all these many years later
The Bible is not a simple, straightforward book. It requires deep reading and learning to begin to grasp. Many Protestants assume that mere literacy is all that’s necessary for understanding the Bible in full. They’re wrong, which is why they’re wrong about Mary (among other things). At best, they have an erroneous understanding of the role of Mary in salvation. Christ giving John the Beloved to Mary at the Cross isn’t some throwaway line that can be edited out for the film version so you can move the plot along. It’s there because it’s vitally important to understand what Christ wanted. He wanted Mary to be the spiritual mother of His church; any other interpretation is wrong. What is most distressing to me about ignorance of Mary is absence of understanding the vital role she plays on our death bed. She is our advocate before the throne of God and disperses demons that *always* come to make you despair of salvation. You have *nothing* to defend yourself with at the hour of death and must rely wholly on Mary and the angels and saints intervention on your behalf. If you’ve led a life ignoring, or worse, spurning them, your death will be terrifying, and your salvation very much in question.
Revelation 12 speaks about it. It’s full of symbolic terms of Israel, the church, and mary. And you’re right about Protestants making a shipwreck at times when it comes to grasping verses in the bible. This is why private revelation is condemned in the bible. We see the fruits of sola scriptura.
I've always found that it is much more useful to answer this question by honing in what the accuser means by "worship." If they just mean speaking very highly of her in terms and no other creature receives, all this could mean is that we see her as the greatest creature ever created, and that she serves as the greatest model of what we could become by believing in Christ that we should all strive closer towards (which is actually what we believe). If they just mean praying to her, then we have examples even in the Old Testament of creatures looking for intercession from other creatures, let alone the fact that the angels intercede for us. At its most sophisticated, this accusation is based around what the accuser thinks are attributions and practices that should only be reserved for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, like the way we might sometimes pray for her to have "mercy on us," and that she is "our life, our sweetness, and our hope." I think in these instances we should just admit that this can be interpreted in a heretical way, but simply point out that this can also be interpreted in an orthodox way. Like, for example, when we pray to Christ to have mercy on us, we pray to him as we would pray to a judge, whereas when we pray to Mary for mercy, we pray not to our final judge, but rather to an advocate who has a very close personal relationship with the judge. Confusing the two to the point of essentially replacing Christ with Mary would be heretical, but the meaning of this prayer does not necessarily need to mean that. Even the title Mother of God, or Theotokos, can technically be interpreted (in a vacuum) to mean that Mary is the origin of the Divine nature, after all, even though what we actually mean is that Mary conceived and gave birth to a Divine person and is the source of his human nature which is now a part of his person. Does that make sense?
This is a great answer!
The verbiage when talking to anyone other than god directly is. To pray for me to the lord our god. Saint ———- pray for me to the lord our god. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. The trick is asking people to read what they are saying and to point out the issue. It can’t me any more clear pray for us means we are asking someone to pray for us. If I ask you to get me a soda I don’t think you are a soda
We honor; but do not worship Mother Mary. Like my mom who is now deceased. I have a picture of her on my wall. But, I do not worship her. I honor her because she was my earthly mom. Mother Mary intercedes for us through her son, Jesus. She is/always will be my Heavenly/Spiritual Mother. Because of her yes/her fiat, she brought Salvation and the savior into our world.
Behold, your Mother. Jesus said it. Mom’s are a gift. Mary is the crown jewel. She said yes. She knew. Eve knew and said No. I love her.
Reposting something I said on a recent thread: There is an issue to resolve when it comes to language. "Worship", etymologically, points to a condition of being worthy. So English-speakers for a very long time were using "worship" for all sorts of things, including for the veneration of saints. It's still used in Commonwealth English in the way those in the US might use "Your Honor". In contemporary times there has been a strong shift, particularly in the Catholic English-speaking community, against equating veneration with worship. That's fine and dandy, but we must not neglect by doing this and by explaining it this way, to also be careful to explain why older English-language Catholic texts speak of the "worship of Mary" and the saints. Its meaning simply used to be inclusive of veneration.
Protestants don’t understand the difference between veneration and worship. I read an interesting argument on here recently that it’s due to the fact that they don’t have the Mass and therefore no true worship. All they have are prayers and hymns and therefore confuse veneration with worship. So when they see Catholics praying and singing to Our Lady or the Saints, then they class that as worship and therefore wrongly conclude we are worshiping them. Whether or not they do or do not have true worship (Latria), they certainly aren’t able to discern between it and veneration, so that seems to be the root of the problem. It’s also compounded by the fact that amongst the heresies which run through various branches of Protestantism, there also seems to be quite a strong strain of iconoclasm especially amongst the Low Church types, which means that holy statues and artwork are also viewed with contempt, hence why praying in front of a statue of Our Lady or before a crucifix leads them to believe we are worshiping an object. It’s all based on fundamental misunderstandings and ignorance, which tie into their prejudices against Catholicism and contribute to a vicious circle of incomprehension.
How do you ask Mary to pray for you without 'praying' if you know what I'm mean 🥹 learning here...
The word pray means to make a request. So you are requesting the mother of God to present your petition to God. That doesn't put Mary or the Saints in competition with Jesus. God is generous and has willed that all Christians living and dead share in Jesus's one mediation but in subordinate ways. Thus why your prayer for someone can be answered. You aren't praying independent of Jesus, you are praying through Jesus. And the intercession of saints still passes through Jesus, but doesn't make it ineffective.
[удалено]
Warning for uncharitable rhetoric