Doesn't Allah know what Catholics believe?

[exoflare]

Genesis315:

Here’s another:

Revelation 5:6-8. Here we see the saints offering Jesus our prayers. In the passage the “ancients” are what we refer to now as canonized saints and the term “saints” is the broader use of the term meaning all Chrisitians.

I don’t think that’s good enough. You’d have to find the verse where Jesus speaks thusly:

“Excuse me, my students. I just remembered I’ve got something I have to do real quick. Don’t worry, I’ll be done in a second. Ahem… jcaz?.. JCAZ! Yeah, YOU! Just wanted to take a little time out here to say that talking to dead guys and asking them to pray for you is okay! Yes, the word ‘guys’ should also be interpreted to include females as well. They will be referred to here on out as ‘saints’. You will not, I repeat, WILL NOT burn in hell for all eternity for this. Thanks for asking!”

 

[Genesis315]

exoflare:

I don’t think that’s good enough. You’d have to find the verse where Jesus speaks thusly:

“Excuse me, my students. I just remembered I’ve got something I have to do real quick. Don’t worry, I’ll be done in a second. Ahem… jcaz?.. JCAZ! Yeah, YOU! Just wanted to take a little time out here to say that talking to dead guys and asking them to pray for you is okay! Yes, the word ‘guys’ should also be interpreted to include females as well. They will be referred to here on out as ‘saints’. You will not, I repeat, WILL NOT burn in hell for all eternity for this. Thanks for asking!”

Haha, yeah. I was, however, hoping the above would suffice as an example that the intercession of the saints is approved of by Jesus. Jesus accepting our prayers offered to Him by the saints shows that He must think it’s ok. If not, He would told the “ancients” to knock it off .

 

[Akanke]

Genesis315:

Haha, yeah. I was, however, hoping the above would suffice as an example that the intercession of the saints is approved of by Jesus. Jesus accepting our prayers offered to Him by the saints shows that He must think it’s ok. If not, He would told the “ancients” to knock it off .

It should be. Ghosty provided that and more in an earlier post on this thread. It was disapproved.

 

[Genesis315]

Akanke:

It should be. Ghosty provided that and more in an earlier post on this thread. It was disapproved.

Oops, I didn’t even notice. When jcaz said that no one had provided Scriptural support, I thought he meant it. I should have checked anyway

 

[exoflare]

Genesis315:

Oops, I didn’t even notice. When jcaz said that no one had provided Scriptural support, I thought he meant it.

LOL well now you know better.

 

[Ghosty]

Genesis315: No use, my friend. If you look back I used all of those passages, including actual prayers from Psalms that directly address angels in response to his putting down of the St. Michael prayer.

Jcaz: Your standards are confused and unworkable, I’m afraid. As I stated, Jesus himself told us to follow the Pharisees’ teaching, and one of those is to pray the Psalms which invoke angels. I’ve shown you where Jesus Himself spoke with the dead, and I’ve shown you passages where the dead offer our prayers to God. Furthermore, you know that Christians consider Jesus to be God, and all words of God to be words of Christ, and all Scripture to be the words of God, so the arbitrary limit (which I have met anyway) that you place on it is absurd. You don’t win a soccer match by constantly moving your goal and changing its size.

You seem quite worked up, and what’s more you are starting to ignore actual Scripture in your zeal to be right. Unless this stops, I’ll stop responding to you completely, because such attitudes aren’t conducive to discussion. Rather than shout louder, confront what you’ve been given, which as you know is the Word of God in the Catholic belief. You prove nothing by challenging that we show the exact point where Jesus says pray for the dead, because such is not the way of Scripture. Not even born Muslims make the demands you’re making, and you insist that you were once a Catholic.

God’s peace be with you.

 

[Genesis315]

Genesis315: No use, my friend. If you look back I used all of those passages, including actual prayers from Psalms that directly address angels in response to his putting down of the St. Michael prayer.

Jcaz: Your standards are confused and unworkable, I’m afraid. As I stated, Jesus himself told us to follow the Pharisees’ teaching, and one of those is to pray the Psalms which invoke angels. I’ve shown you where Jesus Himself spoke with the dead, and I’ve shown you passages where the dead offer our prayers to God. Furthermore, you know that Christians consider Jesus to be God, and all words of God to be words of Christ, and all Scripture to be the words of God, so the arbitrary limit (which I have met anyway) that you place on it is absurd. You don’t win a soccer match by constantly moving your goal and changing its size.

You seem quite worked up, and what’s more you are starting to ignore actual Scripture in your zeal to be right. Unless this stops, I’ll stop responding to you completely, because such attitudes aren’t conducive to discussion. Rather than shout louder, confront what you’ve been given, which as you know is the Word of God in the Catholic belief. You prove nothing by challenging that we show the exact point where Jesus says pray for the dead, because such is not the way of Scripture. Not even born Muslims make the demands you’re making, and you insist that you were once a Catholic.

God’s peace be with you.

jcaz’ problem is that the Bible is not the same type of book as the Quran. The Quran is basically supposed to be a God-dictated catechism of Islam. So in it Allah will make the kind of statements jcaz is looking for from Jesus. The Bible, is inspired but is not meant to be a catechism.

 

[Ghosty]

Yes, but Jcaz claims to be a former Catholic. He should understand this and understand where our beliefs and focus comes from. The fact that he doesn’t is rather troubling.

 

[r.gonzales]

Ghosty:

You should understand that if a word has more than one meaning, then any one of those meanings can be used without invoking another.

perhaps this might be true for words that contain more than one meaning, meanings that are completely different from one another. however, pray’s definintions are all very similar and share a common thing, so the implication is definitely contained within it. you should understand that certain words are used as synonyms of others to add a particular desired emphasis in whatever particular context the person wants to convey. and as i mentioned earlier, the implication that’s found in the word pray is asking - usually humbly or in a manner similar to begging, if not begging itself - a higher power of some sort.

let’s say for arguments sake though, that you don’t actually “pray” to mary and all that you’re doing is asking her to pray for your sins, as the supplication states. there is the issue of intercession that i mentioned earlier in this thread as well as the issue of the dead hearing the call of the living. as for what was mentioned regarding mary not being dead and her soul being alive… the souls of every single person who ever lived are all still “alive” awaiting the day of resurrection. we’re talking about the worldly life here, not the life of the hereafter. so this argument holds no water. once you have died in this life, you’re considered dead. and it’s a fact that the dead can’t hear the living.

Ghosty:

We Catholics say that we are simply asking “please” to Mary when we say “Pray to Mary”, and you tell us we are not. The fact is that you are the one changing our use of the word in order to support your argument. You even admit that asking politely is valid definition of the word, and we have shown that it is still often used in English without any implication of worship, but you refuse to accept our statements for no reason other than it disproves yours. Tell me, when a legal request is submitted to a U.S. court with the words “We pray to you to hear our case”, are the people worshipping the judge? You can’t just arbitrarily dismiss the actual use of the word just because it goes against your belief.

this, along with what you mentioned earlier that was along the same lines (i.e., we saying you do such and such, while you denying it), is kind of ironic… some of you on this board ademantly claim and accuse islam of being a religion of violence and one that breeds terrorism, while many of the muslims on this board continually refute and disprove these claims with clear texts from both the Quran, the Sunnah and the statements of the leaders from amongst the muslims scholars. and despite the clear evidences showing the contrary, many of your christian brothers and sisters are doing exactly what you’re saying we’re doing with this issue - closing their eyes and ears to what we say and continue to accuse and blame, using ambiguous texts to support their views.

kind of reminds me of a line of arabic poetry that says, “she accused me of her own inequities and slowly slipped away.”

 

[Reuben_J]

exoflare:

I don’t think that’s good enough. You’d have to find the verse where Jesus speaks thusly:

“Excuse me, my students. I just remembered I’ve got something I have to do real quick. Don’t worry, I’ll be done in a second. Ahem… jcaz?.. JCAZ! Yeah, YOU! Just wanted to take a little time out here to say that talking to dead guys and asking them to pray for you is okay! Yes, the word ‘guys’ should also be interpreted to include females as well. They will be referred to here on out as ‘saints’. You will not, I repeat, WILL NOT burn in hell for all eternity for this. Thanks for asking!”

Hi exoflare,

Yes, you’re right on .

He has structured his argument shrewdly to make it seems the Catholic faith should be founded on the teaching of Jesus which must be found explicitly in the Bible. It reminds one of the Protestants’ Bible Only argument against the Catholics and that shows him to be quite insincere in this argument.

In truth we don’t have to answer his questions at all or show biblical verses to support our doctrine as it is derived both from Scripture and Tradition. Anyway Ghosty did a good job on that by bringing up the Revelations and the Psalms verses and the transfiguration verse in Matthew.

But the point is, even if we can show him the biblical verse requested it will not solve his problem. Muslims will come up with the Bible is corrupted response.

What worry me about Jcaz as former Catholic is he does not appreciate this Scripture and Tradition foundation of the faith. No wonder he left the faith. Perhaps this is something we Catholics should ponder – do our youngs steep enough in their knowledge of their own religion?

Peace.

Reuben.

 

[Ghosty]

Peace be with you.

and as i mentioned earlier, the implication that’s found in the word pray is asking - usually humbly or in a manner similar to begging, if not begging itself - a higher power of some sort.

And I’m telling you this is plainly not the case. In English we also “pray” to equals, as in “Pray tell, why are we discussing the definition of this word as it’s obviously used in different ways in the English language.” There is no implication in this use of calling on a higher power. Pray is also used in legal documents, as anyone who works in law can tell you. There’s nothing more to be said on this subject because the fact is that you are simply wrong about this word and its usage.

You can say all day long that Catholics are “praying” to a higher power when we pray to Mary, but we insist that we are not. Furthermore, we present the absolute fact that pray can mean either worshipful invoking of a higher power or politely asking an equal. You are telling us what definition we are using, which is extremely disingenuous. You have been unable to prove that we pray to saints in the sense of worshipfully invoking a higher power.

we’re talking about the worldly life here, not the life of the hereafter. so this argument holds no water. once you have died in this life, you’re considered dead. and it’s a fact that the dead can’t hear the living.

And this is plainly contradicted by both Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Even Jesus spoke directly with the dead in the verses I showed above. You can insist that what we do is wrong by Islamic standards, but the fact is that all contemporary accounts of Jesus, by people who knew him personally, indicate that He spoke with the dead. The only thing you can produce to the contrary is a document by someone who lived 600 years later and was completely unfamiliar with the teachings of the Apostles.

You can claim, as I know most Muslims do, that these verses are corrupted, but then the burden of proof is on you to prove that they were corrupted from original stories. The fact is that no one, in all the centuries leading up to Mohammed, indicated that these things were corrupted from the accounts of people who actually knew Jesus. We have letters from people who knew the apostles personally, and they testified to the veracity of the Gospels, which describe Jesus speaking with the dead. We have letters from Peter himself, and in 2 Peter 1:16-18 he verifies that this incident occured.

I’m not telling Muslims to pray to the dead, but you must understand that all historical evidence points to Jesus having spoken with the dead personally. Furthermore, Muslims accuse us of treating the dead as higher powers, which is the true issue at hand, and that is plainly not the case. We ask them to pray for us, and they hear us by virtue of Tawheed ar-Ruboobeeyah; we never claim that they hear us by their own power. You will not find any Catholic teaching that violates Tawheed ar-Ruboobeeyah in this regard.

this, along with what you mentioned earlier that was along the same lines (i.e., we saying you do such and such, while you denying it), is kind of ironic…

This has nothing to do with either my statements, or the topic of this thread. If you want to discuss this issue, start another thread and don’t bring me into it.

God bless!

 

[hawk]

jcaz:

Posted by hawk:

No hawk. Talking with people like you , who claim to have an understanding of Islaam, yet make comments like that, is pointless!

You know very well that the sunnah refers to the actions, teachings, statements, and approvals of “so and so”. So if a Muslim claims that we should follow the sunnah of whoever it is we claim to follow, than obviously, that is not limited to only the actions of Jesus.

Your arguments are so devoid of logic, I should probably expect you to come and say, “so are you saying we should not use cars, as Jesus didn’t drive cars. We should stick with camels.”

This is the logic of your type. You know the replies to your statements, yet you make the statements anyway. Why? Who knows.

According to the islamic perspective, Christians who truly follow Jesus, peace be upon him, would have their beliefs completely molded on his actions, teachings, statements, and approvals.

You have missed the point entirely, Christianity was never structured that way.

In islam there is an islamic way to go to the toilet, with your left leg first and such, christians will not even understand what I am tlaking about.
Also you are required to sit down as you urinate, this is the islamic way for men.

We as christians do not do things this way.

 

[Ghosty]

In islam there is an islamic way to go to the toilet, with your left leg first and such, christians will not even understand what I am tlaking about.
Also you are required to sit down as you urinate, this is the islamic way for men.

 

[hawk]

[/quote]

I am not trying to deride their beliefs, I am just pointing out that the faith is built on the example of Mohammed.

Ours is built on the example of Christ, but in a less pedantic way.

For example Muslims beleive that music is haraam.
They will say that only the “duff” or tambourine is permitted to played.

I am not sure there is concensus on this issue with regards the religious edicts, but like jcaz says, all innovations lead to hell.

I am just trying to point out, that islam is about imitating the Prophet in every detail of his life, and they have alot of information on how he lived.

As christians, we believe that we must imitate the spirit of Christ, we arent concerned with how he went to the toilet, or how he ate.

He was teaching us to be judicious in the application of the law.

 

[Joe_Monahan]

Joe Monahan:

Just a note to acknowledge the civility and charity of the debate in this thread, ladies and gentlemen. It is impressive that you can disagree and still treat each other with respect while refuting one another’s arguments and seeking to convince one another to understand your respective points of view. Thank you.

I posted the above message to this thread slightly more than 24 hours ago. The tenor of debate by certain individuals of both faiths has significantly deteriorated since that time and has
adversely affected the ability of others to continue viable discussion on the topic.

**Consider this to be the sole warning that I will issue on this thread. **

Unless I observe an immediate return to acceptable levels of charitable and civil discourse, indicative of respect for one another, this thread will be closed and conduct warnings, at a minimum, will be forthcoming to those who make it necessary for me to act.

Joe Monahan

 

[Faith101]

iamrefreshed:

Again with the numbers Faith? I thought you said numbers don’t matter?

in all honesty, the faith of 1 pious believing muslim is better than a billion people who are muslim-by-name.

However, there ARE over 1.3 billion people (and growing dramatically) who believe that a man named Mohamed ibn Abdullah was indeed a messenger sent by God. THey also believe that the revelation revealed to Mohamed is the direct, unadulterated word of God. You can’t ignore this.

If YOU want to suggest that he isnt a messenger…than bring YOUR proof. The burden of proof is not on us.

 

[iamrefreshed]

Faith101:

in all honesty, the faith of 1 pious believing muslim is better than a billion people who are muslim-by-name.

However, there ARE over 1.3 billion people (and growing dramatically) who believe that a man named Mohamed ibn Abdullah was indeed a messenger sent by God. THey also believe that the revelation revealed to Mohamed is the direct, unadulterated word of God. You can’t ignore this.

If YOU want to suggest that he isnt a messenger…than bring YOUR proof. The burden of proof is not on us.

I have no desire to disprove your religion Faith. You are more than welcome to it as I am mine.

I just brought up the point on numbers because you have chided others for doing so. Billions of people thought the earth was flat. Guess what? They were wrong.

I agree with your first statement about being pious.

 

[r.gonzales]

Ghosty:

And I’m telling you this is plainly not the case. In English we also “pray” to equals, as in “Pray tell, why are we discussing the definition of this word as it’s obviously used in different ways in the English language.” There is no implication in this use of calling on a higher power. Pray is also used in legal documents, as anyone who works in law can tell you. There’s nothing more to be said on this subject because the fact is that you are simply wrong about this word and its usage.

again, the example you bring of “pray tell…” doesn’t fit into this discussion and is mentioned in the definitions i provided where an example of its usage in that context was given. as mentioned earlier, the usage of pray in that instance is a synonym for the word “please”. this doesn’t even come close to having any similarity to the way you’re using it with respect to supplications to saintly figures. in any case, like you said, there’s nothing more to be said as we’ve pretty much exhausted the issue and are going around in circles.

as for the rest of what you mentioned regarding your “historical evidences”, as is the case with much of history itself, it’s all highly speculative, and there is much debate about the identity of the gospel’s authors (i.e., who they really were and if they really were contemporaries of jesus). there are also many other indications to show that your scriptures were altered/corrupted, which we won’t get into here since this is not the topic of discussion.

Ghosty:

I’m not telling Muslims to pray to the dead, but you must understand that all historical evidence points to Jesus having spoken with the dead personally. Furthermore, Muslims accuse us of treating the dead as higher powers, which is the true issue at hand, and that is plainly not the case. We ask them to pray for us, and they hear us by virtue of Tawheed ar-Ruboobeeyah; we never claim that they hear us by their own power. You will not find any Catholic teaching that violates Tawheed ar-Ruboobeeyah in this regard.

no, the true issue at hand is calling upon the dead as intermediaries between you and Allah, which according to islamic teachings is polytheisitic in its very nature and violates the very category of tawheed that the prophets and messengers were sent with, tawheed al-uloohiyyah (the oneness of divinity), also referred to as tawheed al-'ibaadah (the oneness of worship). as was mentioned earlier, Allah says, “so do not invoke anyone along with Allah.” (72:18). invoking or supplicating is a form of worship in islam. thus, by calling upon other than Allah, especially with respect to asking those who are unable to respond, whether it be because they are dead, they are alive but absent or they are clearly unable to do what you ask of them (i.e., asking them things that only Allah can do for them, etc.). doing such is setting up partners or rivals with Allah, and this is where the tawheed of Allah, exalted and glorified is He, is violated. and this isn’t even taking all the graven images of her into consideration, or the fact that i have witnessed catholics prostrating to these very idols of mary with my very own eyes - both things that also violate Allah’s tawheed.

Ghosty:

This has nothing to do with either my statements, or the topic of this thread. If you want to discuss this issue, start another thread and don’t bring me into it.

no, it doesn’t. i just thought i’d mention it because i found it ironic that the shoe is now on the other foot, so to speak.

 

[severinus]

This whole thread becomes tiresome. On the one hand we have Muslims claiming that Mary is worshipped in the Catholic Church. On the other we have Catholics taking the orthodox view that Mary is not worshipped. This is not a point worth arguing; the Church has spoken on this.

It is not wise to impute beliefs to another. The official Catholic doctrine concerning the Virgin Mary is that she is to be honored and venerated, but not worshipped. Worship is for God alone. The Catechism, concerning devotion to Mary, states: “This very special devotion…differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit and greatly fosters this adoration.” (paragraph 971)

The quote used in the Catechism is from Lumen Gentium 66).

That should put an end to it.

 

[Ghosty]

severinus:

This whole thread becomes tiresome. On the one hand we have Muslims claiming that Mary is worshipped in the Catholic Church. On the other we have Catholics taking the orthodox view that Mary is not worshipped. This is not a point worth arguing; the Church has spoken on this.

It is not wise to impute beliefs to another. The official Catholic doctrine concerning the Virgin Mary is that she is to be honored and venerated, but not worshipped. Worship is for God alone. The Catechism, concerning devotion to Mary, states: “This very special devotion…differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit and greatly fosters this adoration.” (paragraph 971)

The quote used in the Catechism is from Lumen Gentium 66).

That should put an end to it.

Indeed. Muslims are trying to impart their meaning onto our actions despite our protests and proofs to the contrary. There is no debate to be had, because what they say is simply not the case. We have presented modern linguistic evidence, ancient linguistic evidence, and official Church documents to show that what they impart to us not only isn’t taught, but wasn’t taught during the time of Mohammed, and wasn’t taught before.

As a final note, I want to directly address some Latin, since the Latin Vulgate was being used at the time of Mohammed, and the word pray actually comes from Latin. Since Latin is the official language of the Church, and English is only a translation of Latin terms, knowing the Latin should settle the discussion about what the Church actually teaches, regardless of English word usage. Keep in mind that the official Bible used by the Church is in Latin, and all official documents are written in Latin. It’s like going back to the Arabic with the Quran. That being said, the word from which we get “pray” is “prec” in Latin. More specifically, it comes from “precari” which is the actual action of praying. Here is a link that describes the meaning of precari (when you get to the link, do a search for the word precari to find the entry).

Here are some related words taken from incunabulabooks.com/ibrflatp.htm

[PRECOR, PRECARI, -, PRECATUS SUM] : V beg/implore/entreat; wish/pray for/to; pray, supplicate, beseech; [PRECOR] : to beseech, pray, beg, entreat, invoke. [PRECOR] : to pray, beg, entreat, invoke.

Notice not a single mention of divinity or higher powers. This is because precari/precor/prec do NOT mean such things. Precari can be made to anyone or anything. In Latin, which is the official language of the Catholic Church, and the language used in the Church’s official bible, the word “precari” means only to ask, just as we Catholics have been insisting this whole time.

Unless something new is brought up, I think this will be my final post on this topic. If people can’t except the actual Latin words and definitions being used, there’s nothing more I can do. I think this should suffice to show that the Church does not, and has not since before Mohammed was born, done anything more than beseech the Saints as equals, and not in any way as higher powers. Even the words used indicate this.

God bless.