Why Not Catholic?

Yes, we do call Mary as blessed and indeed she is. It is a blessing of great value. However, she was, as posted above, just a sinner like the rest of us. However, she bore an honor that few of us ever will understand. Indeed, I don't think she fully understood it either.

Athanasias said:

I just wanted to point something out to you that you misrepresented about the Catholic faith. You wrongly seem to think we teach and practice the worship of Mary. As a life long Catholic who is also a theology major I just needed to point out to you that Catholic DO NOT worship anyone but God alone nor we teach that we should. Mary is never worshiped and we were never told to worship her in grade or high school. Period. No priest has ever said about Mary "Here is your goddess o Catholics worship her". Our Catechism and councils teach the worship of God alone! Please do not misrepresent our faith to others.

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(snipped for brevity and bolding entirely mine)


May I ask, since in the bolded part you state that no priest has stated..., how you reconcile this statement with the fact that Pope John Paul II has named Mary as the Coredemptrix with Christ? That seems to me that the highest Priest certainly HAS advocated the worship of Mary and has raised her to the level of God.

Kae
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Giantsbran1227 said:

I never wanted the thread to turn into this....

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You thought a thread entitled "why not Catholic?", in a Lutheran forum, would have no controversy......amazing.

I went to a Roman Catholic book store a few months ago with a WELS friend of mine just to see what it would be like. As soon as we entered the store, there was a large keosk (sp?) with only books about the pope, next to that was a lighted area with statues of Mary all over the place. I stopped counting after I hit 35. Towards the back of the store were 7 smaller statues of Christ and books about Him.

My question is.....are all Roman Catholic book stores set up like this one?

Giantsbran1227 said:

The orthodox church VENERATES Mary. She is not our savior nor do we treat her as a God. We simply ask her to pray for us.

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According to Scripture, one must only pray to God. You are not "simply" asking Mary something. We have the honor of praying to the Lord ourselves, with the Holy Spirit's help. What more is needed, when praying, than God Himself?

1My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

1 John 2:1-2 ESV

uummmm...who else are we suppose to pray to again?...

RedneckLutheran said:

1My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

1 John 2:1-2 ESV

uummmm...who else are we suppose to pray to again?...

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Amen and amen

MarkRohfrietsch said:

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

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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

Your point number 4 tells much....."We believe that those in Heaven hear our prayers to them...." You just prayed to someone other than God.

Athanasias, Lutherans believe that prayer is a form of worship. This could be one reason why there are people saying that RC's worship Mary because we consider prayer to be a form of worship and RC's say it's ok to pray to her.

Jim47 said:

She didn't choose to be the mother of Jesus, she was called to be His mother, just as you are called to be a Christian.

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And just as we can reject that call, so could she have...? I am not sure.

Athanasias

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).

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There is no place in the bible including the verses you refered to here that instruct us to pray to or worship anyone except The LORD our God which is made up of the Trinity, and because of this when someone prays to anyone but God that are breaking the first commandment.

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This "Catholics worship Mary" thing always amazes me....


Catholics should NOT deny that there is a long tradition of WORSHIPPING Mary, indeed, anyone can google the official quotes. My Deacon told us that Catholic PROUDLY and HUMBLY worship Her - without excuse. Now, before you get all upset, READ THE NEXT PARAGRAPH......

It's all in what is mean by "worship." Look it up in the dictionary. It is, essentially and historically, a synonym of adore and revere. Only ONE meaning of such is "to regard as divine." In England, the mayor is called, "Your Worship." Does that mean the English worship all mayors as gods? Of course not, they are simply using the term in another way, as to mean to hold in honor and esteem. In many Lutheran churches, the pastor uses the title "REV" in front of his name (some use Fr. or Pr. - FAR better, BTW) now look the word "revere" in your dictionary - the meanings are virtually idential to "worship." Does this mean that every time you put "Rev." in front of a pastor's name, you are worshipping him as a god? Come on.... You are simply using a definition OTHER than one that embraces the divine. Words have various meanings, you need to know WHICH is meant. Now read the next paragraph....

In Latin (until recently, the language of the CC and STILL the language for official statements) there are actually two very different words for worship - both however get translated into English as "worship." One means to regard as divine and the other clearly EXCLUDES that thought and means to regard with esteem and honor. The CC has been VERY careful to use these terms carefully and has been very clear (again at Vatican II) to state that ONLY GOD is worshipped as divine (using that Latin word) whereas Mary is held in esteem (using the other Latin word). The Catholic Church could not possibly be more clear on this, and I find it unfortunate that too many Protestants misunderstand.


NOW, it IS an issue about prayer. I was pretty active in the CC for nearly 5 years, and to this day, Mariology seems filled with oddities to me. The OFFICIAL positions are usually not so remarkable or troublesome, but there IS a spirituality surrounding Mary that, at times, seems ... well.... carried away. I PERSONALLY tend to understand this as a mark of great devotion rather than "heresy" (I've been in love, we've all been in love, it causes us to say and do things... well, you know, lol). Even some Catholics will sometimes express a bit of concern for what is done and said via Our Lady at times. Again, I tend to "cut some slack" on this because it's a passion thing, not a theology thing. But, to the point, is Our Lady prayed TO or THROUGH? All this leads to endless stuff. Again, words mean things and "pray" can simply mean to ask. "Pray tell me, when will I get a raise?" Some Catholics will say they DO pray TO Mary but that only means they are asking a favor or request of Her - not any different than I asking the people of this forum to pray for me, "Pray, do this for me." BUT, some Catholics DO speak of Mary as somehow answering the prayer - or at the very least - being a significant reason for why it is granted (the wedding at Cana always comes up here). In Marian spirituality, it sure can SEEM anyway that Mary has a status equal to Christ, even at times, greater. And yes, that CAN cause some to wonder if there's some at least IMPLIED divinity there. Again, I'm APT to regard such as either sloppyness or runaway passion - but I admit, it CAN seem pretty spooky and inappropriate.


BTW, I only recently learned that Lutherans are officially opposed to praying THROUGH the saints. I'm not sure I agree with this, to be frank. I see nothing in Scripture that indicates we cannot ask other members of the Communion of Saints to pray for us - that they MUST be alive to pray. BUT, I acknowledge this does exist in the Confessions. PErhaps another discussion for another day and thread.



I hope that helps a bit.


My $0.005


Pax


- Josiah



PS I have just a tiny bit of discomfort for we Lutherans discussing Catholicism in a forum where Catholics don't normally frequent. I realize (and appreciate) that they are allowed to post here and correct our misunderstandings, unlike their forum where Protestants are not permitted to "teach" them ANYTHING (To post "Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492" is technically a rule violation in OBOB if a noncatholic posted it). But they don't frequent here. Discussions like this really should be in Theology's Mariology forum or perhaps Conservative Christians or Liberal Catholics - forums CAtholics frequent but where Protestants are permitted to discuss. I don't like it when OBOB discusses Lutheranism (often very BADLY) - and Lutherans aren't permitted to respond and probably wouldn't know the discussion is going on even if they could. And I see this similarly.







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seajoy said:

You thought a thread entitled "why not Catholic?", in a Lutheran forum, would have no controversy......amazing.
...

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May I make a motion, sir?


I move that we close this thread.


Issues here may be re-opened in the Mariology forum of Theology.


Is there a second?



LOL




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Giantsbran1227 said:

The orthodox church VENERATES Mary. She is not our savior nor do we treat her as a God. We simply ask her to pray for us.

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And what do you think will happen if you pray to Father directly?

Would it be more proper or less? And why ... IN YOUR OPINION please.

Thanks,
Ed

BabyLutheran said:

And just as we can reject that call, so could she have...? I am not sure.

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God knew how she would respond as He does with all of us. She deserves no more credit than that afforded those of unquestioning faith. It is that level of trust and faith we should look to emulate, but that is not synonymous with worshiping and labeling her queen as if she were somehow on the same level as our Heavenly Father. It's a completely illogical and unnecessary reference and I believe our RC visitor here now includes it in his posts for the reaction he gets. I guess some people still don't understand the persistent Lutheran instinct to correct such blatant error.

RedneckLutheran said:

1My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

1 John 2:1-2 ESV

uummmm...who else are we suppose to pray to again?...

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Good one.

Thanks,
Ed

Edial said:

And what do you think will happen if you pray to Father directly?

Would it be more proper or less? And why ... IN YOUR OPINION please.
Ed[/quote

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Edial said:

]


Ed, if I asked YOU to pray for me, would you or I think it THEREFORE is more likely to be answered? Either way, does that suggest it's wrong for me to ask you to pray for me?

Doesn't the Bible counsel us to pray for each other? To seek the prayers of others?




.

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LilLamb219 said:

Athanasias, Lutherans believe that prayer is a form of worship. This could be one reason why there are people saying that RC's worship Mary because we consider prayer to be a form of worship and RC's say it's ok to pray to her.

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This is a great point!

Prayer IS a form of worship!

Kathy, you just resolved 2000 years worth of debates in one post.

... Now you need to work on the Infant Baptism debate and see what you can come up with ...

Thanks,
Ed