Hi Athanasias,
While I do understand the official position of the RC Church, we Lutherans also see that such devotion to St. Mary, and the other Saints as at least "risky". Some can become so devoted to Mary and other great Saints that it can result in glory, honor, worship, prayer, and devotion being diverted away from our Lord. This is why you see such steadfast concern regarding this among us Lutherans. We see such devotion not so much as being wrong in and of itself, but it is the possible outcome of such devotion that can be used by the devil and become a stumbling block to the faithful.
Therefore, we hold to the doctrine of "Sola Deo Gloria" in a very litteral way.
Blessings and peace to you,
Mark
Hi Mark, God bless you. Its great to talk to you again. Did you get my last email? Thanks for clarifying things. I think if Rev and the others would have posted the Lutheran objection to the Catholic devotion and veneration of Mary the way that you did I would not be bothered at all. After all you guys dissagree with the practice. That's ok I understand that. The thing that bothered me was that 3 times by 3 different people the claim was made that Catholics worship Mary, which I know that you and other educated Lutherans know that we Catholics and our Church does not teach or practice. So It bothered me that the Catholic faith was being falsely and wrongly misrepresented here. Our two churches stand in mutual respect and charity toward each other on a ecumencial level. We Catholics appreciate our separated Lutheran brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.
Dialogs do indeed help us understand what each other believes even if we end up dissagreeing with it. But the dialogs must be open to the grace of the Holy Spirit speaking to our hearts and we must put aside predjudices and false impressions that both sides of our Churches have toward one another for fruit to occur and true Christian unity to happen.
Catholics would agree with you that there is a always a danger in presenting certain teachings of the chruch because the devil could enter in and use peoples ignorance to his own benefit. However, this just means that when we teach these things we must teach and catechize the body of Christ fully and properly and form one another in faithful prayer and obedience to Christ and his word. This does not mean that we should throw out the baby with the bathwater or never teach them the spiritual truth on these issues so to speak.
I look at it this way. It reminds me of certain fundamentalist Christians who rail against Lutherans and Catholics for baptizing infants. The fundamentalist will look to a some(But not all) Lutherans and Catholics whose faith ended at thier infant baptism. In other words some parents just get their kid baptized and never teach thier kids to pray or about Christ, his sacrifice, and thier faith. And the baptized kids grow up with a adult body but a faith of a infant. Many of them when they grow up leading immoral lives out of ignornance and being worldly and not really caring about Jesus at all. I have seen it happen. Now their relationship with Christ or the Church has been stifled. This the fundamentlist would say is one major problem with infant baptism.
Now it is true if a abuse like that happens with this doctrine in a family then the devil can enter in and danger to the persons soul can happen. But we do not stop teaching or practicing infant baptism just because some abuse it and the devil can and does get some people because of thier misunderstading of it. We teach infant baptism because we believe that the sacred scriptures imply it and the early tradition of the apostles teach it. We just need to catechize and teach properly the body of Christ when we practice and teach infant baptism.
The same can be said in the Catholic understading of Marian devotion. As you have indicated there is technically nothing wrong with it(As Martin Luther himself had a great devotion to the blessed Mother even after the reformation). So we do it and teach it as we Catholics believe it is biblical in a implicit sense. But we never teach or practice the worship of Mary. So it is really a misudnerstanding and prejudice of some(Not all) Protestants that think we do. I just wanted to make that clear. We do not worship Mary. We do not teach that is it ok to worship anyone but God himself as our Catchism and the ten commandments state. Please trust me I am a life long Catholic, Catechist, and a theology major in college. So i would please aprecaite if our other good brothers and sisters on this threasd understood that so we Catholics are not misunderstood.
In the Catholic understanding we never give worship to anyone but God alone. Now we do venerate or give glory and honor to other people and not just God. But we do not think this distracts or take away from Gods glory rather we think this illuminates God glory even more. In fact we see it as biblical to give honor and glory to the body of Christ.
fWe honor the people who have gone before us in the faith. These people(like St. Paul and Mary) who have fought the good fight and made it to heaven. These people our our models in faith that teach us to follow Jesus. These Saints are our examples to follow and imitate(1 Cor 11:1-12, 1 Thess 1: 6) and this doe snot take away from Christ glory.
Also We can also give other human beings Honor in a religious context. In Hebrews chapters 11-12 the Author to Hebrews honors the Old Testament saints who had gone before us. Paul says that we are to give double honor to the Elders in the Church (1 Timothy 5:17). And vestments were made for Aaron the Priest for glory and Honor(Ex 28:2-3). Biblically bowing down is acceptable a as form of veneration or honor or glory. For example, King Solomon Bowed down to Bathsheba out of veneration of respect of hwo she wass and her office of davidic Queen mother(1 Kings 2:19-20). Jesus himself said that he will make the synagogue of Satan bow down before the glorified Christians Feet(Rev 3:9). Will they be worshiping Christians? I don't think so. So we can give people honor and glory and we can bow down to people without any of this being worship at all. This is what the Catholics call veneration. We venerate or honor a saint for what that saint has done for God and try to follow in his footsteps as Paul would encourage us to do. We never worship people. We worship God alone as the bible commands.The honor we give to a saint who is in the body of Christ does nothing more than radiate Gods glory and honor. We honor St. Paul for what God did for him.
As a matter of understanding the Catholic side better we give the example of Christ himself and Gods command to us. Christ obeyed the Ten commandments perfectly. One of the commandments was to honor your father and mother. In the Hebrew the word for honor here means "Glorify". We simply imitate Christ. Now We are all called to honor or glorify our own parents so this glory does not and cannot distract from God but rather this glory of his creation and redemption in the inidividual radiates Gods goodness. After all who do you know goes into a art gallery and looks at a painting by Davinci and just stops to admire the picture without giving glory to the artist who makes it. If one loves the painting then this relfects on the artist and his glory as a good painter it does not take away from it.
We Honor Mary because we Catholics beleieve that biblically speaking she is the typological fulfillment of the new davidic Queen Mother(a office held by Bathsheba for example) as Catholics understand her since her son is the new fullfillment of Davidic King(Matt 1:1) and all davidic Kings had queen mothers. So we se Mary acting and having the role of as this queen mother(Rev 12:1, Jn 2:3-5).
Now as far as the praying goes. The word Pray has a broad meaning, Any dictionary will show this. It can mean worship or communication to God. Or it can also mean to simply "ask another human being". The word itself comes from Prithie Or I pray thee, or I ask you.
When a Catholic prays to God he is asking God to help him and he is also worshiping God. But when a Catholic prays to Mary or the Saints, they are simply "Asking" those saints to pray for them to God. Just like you would ask your Christian friends(the body of Christ on earth) to pray for you we Catholics also ask our departed brothers(the body of Christ in heaven) to pray for us. We do this for several reasons.
1) We do not believe that Christ has two bodies(one in heaven and one on earth) we believe that there is only One body of Christ(Eph 4:4). That one body exist in both heaven and on earth.
2) We believe that God wants his Body to pray and intercede for each other (1 Tim 2:1)
3) We believe that the prayers of the righteous man avails much(James 5:16)
and who is more righteous than those in heaven?
4) We believe that those in heaven hear our prayers to them and offer them up like incense before Gods heavenly Throne(Rev 5:8) on our behalf.
We also see this understanding as a apostolic tradition that was taught and practiced in the early Christian communities and liturgies of the Christian Church.
We first and foremost pray to God directly and develop a relationship with him.
We do not worship saints. We worship God alone!
I know and accept that Lutherans may dissagree with all of this and I appreciate my good Lutheran brothers. I just wanted to let people have a fuller understanding of what Catholics actually teach and practice. This is what I will be teaching to my students. And we do not teach or practice the worship or Mary or anyone other than God himself.
To say other wise is to lie and misrepresent our faith.
May God bless you always my friend and bothers and siters who read this.
In Jesus the King through Mary the queen Mother,
Athanasias
