Do Catholics have to pray to Mary?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Curious11
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Glad you’re back to the language of love…vs. “not rejecting”. Good direction.
 
I don’t think anyone here, or in the Church, uses the “obligatory” language with respect to Mary. [Correction spurred on by (name removed by moderator)…we aren’t obligated to express our love for Mary in any particular way…though we are offered many beautiful and family ways to do this…but we are obligated to understand Mary’s role in our own redemption and faith based on Church teaching. Thank you (name removed by moderator).]

But again this very language of “obligatory” (and elsewhere, "not rejecting) isn’t the language of “family charity”.

I think some of these “legalistic type” people here totally miss the point about living the love of the Holy Family.

They distance themselves from the intimacy of sharing in the family life of Jesus Christ.
 
Last edited:
This is a very strange argument that sadly doesn’t surprise me because of the way the RCC has gone. Priests and laypeople have lost the faith of their ancestors and have given into heresies of iconoclasm and protestant doctrine.

Just as nobody is saved without Christ, nobody is saved except through the Holy Virgin Mary. Ignorance being outside of the Church (The Orthodox Church) may or may not help you, but the RCC has not formally renounced the teachings of the Mother of God, so there is no pass on ignorance for this issue. It doesn’t surprise me that you have RC Priests saying the intercession of the Saints and the Mother of God are optional. You will never find this in the Orthodox Church.

O Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, for the sake of the prayers of thy Most Pure Mother, our Holy and God Bearing Fathers, and all the Saints, have mercy on us.
 
True…but we aren’t obligated to do May pilgrimages, say the Rosary, etc.
 
godisgood77 said:
Do we treat her less than our own mother when Our Lord gave His mother to us? - Well the scene from the cross has been interpreted by some to be that Christ gave his mother to all of the world. Another interpretation is that he gave her to the apostle that he loved and he took her in to his home. Whatever you believe on this topic is fine, but either way there is no disrespect to Jesus or Mary.
Click to expand...
That Mary is our “mother in the order of grace” who–subordinate to Jesus Christ-- “brings us the gifts of eternal salvation” is even part of the Church’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church from Vatican II. Likewise John Paul II in Redemptoris Mater explcitly states that Mary is given as mother to every single individual and to all mankind.
 
“Man suffers on account of evil, which is a certain lack, limitation or distortion of good. We could say that man suffers because of a good in which he does not share, from which in a certain sense he is cut off, or of which he has deprived himself. He particularly suffers when he a ought—in the normal order of things—to have a share in this good and does not have it.” (John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, 7)

Mary is a good that lessens suffering. And the Church knows - by her past frequent exhortations to pray the rosary - that more and more people will obtain the good, which is the relationship between Jesus and Mary.
 
Last edited:
Edward_H said:
l belief doesn’t find expression in your heart and in your will. ergo…fi
Click to expand...
Sorry, but you’ve lost me…

I do not know how you would be able ascertain that my belief doesn’t find expression in my actions. Also, you say that I supposedly accept the Church’s teaching and ask if I know the full meaning of the Church’s teaching… I certainly do not claim to know it all, but feel relatively well informed on this particular topic.
 
lonegreywolf20 said:
Please cite and provide proof that we are saved through Mary.
Click to expand...
Here is just one example that Our Lady “became the cause of our salvation”, from Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church:

Rightly therefore the holy Fathers see her as used by God not merely in a passive way, but as freely cooperating in the work of human salvation through faith and obedience. For, as St. Irenaeus says, she "being obedient, became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race."(6*) Hence not a few of the early Fathers gladly assert in their preaching, “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience; what the virgin Eve bound through her unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosened by her faith.”(7*) Comparing Mary with Eve, they call her “the Mother of the living,”(8*) and still more often they say: “death through Eve, life through Mary.”(9*)
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_...s/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html
 
Last edited:
If we say we love our country, but if we don’t volunteer for service, we don’t consider joining the military, we cheat or chince on our taxes, we don’t vote, we don’t study very effortfully the positions of the candidates we do vote for, we don’t inform ourselves…then one could fairly be accused that they have a fissure between their intellect and their will.
 
Last edited:
Amen! Loving awareness of Mary’s presence adds such sweetness to the Cross. How much I missed out on when I didn’t really know Jesus through Mary.
 
Last edited:
Matthew 2:21 and the whole Theology of Christianity is proof that only because of the Incarnation which was through The Holy Virgin Mary is man saved. I hope you understand this. God from all eternity before He created one thing, had in His Mind the Holy Virgin and entering into creation through Her.

The fact that the Holy Scriptures show that the humanity that the Son of God received in a way allowed Him to have compassion on us because He shared in our weaknesses. This sharing was through the Holy Virgin. When the Mother of God told Christ that the wine at the wedding had run dry, in His divinity He rightly explains that it was not right to do such miracles such as giving fine wine because He had not yet defeated death and brought life to mankind fully, but in His humanity He obeys and makes the fine wine because His Holy Mother asked of it. A grace beyond any kind of grace that God has already given us is given by the intercession of the Theotokos.
 
Thank you for providing that.

Even so, the church and my priest says we are not required to pray to Mary, so unless the church and my priest is wrong, I will still not be praying to Mary as it’s not a requirement.

I’m sure we’ll have a laugh about our disagreement in heaven!
 
Last edited:
Edward_H said:
If we say we love our country, but if we don’t volunteer for service, we don’t consider joining the military, we cheat or chince on our taxes, we don’t vote, we don’t study very effortfully the positions of the candidates we do vote for, we don’t inform ourselves…then one could fairly be accused that they have a fissure between their intellect and their will.
Click to expand...
Fair enough…we’re not likely to agree…but I respect your right to have an opinion on my faith and the practice of it.

However, here’s another example that I think more accurately sums up the discussion… The speed limit is 65 MPH and the driver is going 65 MPH… the passenger notices that the driver is only going the speed limit and then comments that the driver is a bad driver for not going faster and then goes on to critique the way the driver holds the wheel, has the mirrors adjusted and seat position… while he’s at it, maybe he criticized the driver’s taste of music… or comments that the driver doesn’t change the fluid frequently enough or rotates the tires…
 
So when Jesus says that we should love Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength…

…when Jesus says “be perfect as my heavenly father is perfect”

…when Jesus says “rebuke the sinner”

Was He just lying to us?

Pointing to a more magnanimous and muscular and striving and cheerful and abandoning response to God’s love for us…isn’t judging others.

And doing so shouldn’t be treated by some (here) as a reason for taking offense in that call/reminder.

God said He would “vomit the lukewarm” out of His mouth!

So when some point to a more striving goal…they shouldn’t be dismissed as ‘judgers’.

In fact it’s a grave responsibility of all Christians to raise the bar all the way, until their last breath.
 
Last edited:
You’re, of course, correct about Jesus’ teaching, but you are conflating two things here …Jesus is oxygen, you can not breath without it… you die without it. Devotions, including those for Mary or other saints are choices…choices which each individual makes … these are not life or death choices.

Friend, with your response, we are no longer talking about Marian devotional practices …
 
No conflating…just raising your appreciation for the “family life” that Jesus wants for each of us.

The Trinity is a ‘communion of persons’.

And that’s the image of not just our own family life, but our life with God, His own family, all his friends, and all saints down through the ages.

It’s the “communion of saints” lived daily.

At the end of each day my living room is filled with “Friends and family of God”…having chatted with God and His friends and family all day long.

We need to regain the “big family” notion of our faith, not building up “Walls” around Jesus, keeping His mother out of our mind/heart/conversation, south of our border.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top