Metaphor and simile are inherently flawed when trying to convey an idea by proxy.
The criteria of the Judge is His own. If he was unflinchingly fair, we’d all be damned to hell and no path to redemption would exist.
That is fine and I figured, from the smiley face, that you are acknowledging your statement was an inherently flawed metaphor.
This unfortunately has not been the case for some Catholics whose attitude about Mary is very condescending at best, hostile at worst to those who do not understand or agree with venerating Mary. Now, I don’t think
Peter J himself meant to be. But some of the arguments come with a snide insinuation that “Mary’s role as an advocate is so obvious, here’s a simple analogy to prove it, see, can’t even YOU can understand it now, you silly ignorant Mary-hating heretic?” I have also seen what
Tomyris described in a more, well, detailed way.
I’d say the same about the oft-seen analogy, that to ask Mary for her intercession, is the same as a little kid going to merciful Mom instead of angry Dad after accidentally breaking a vase.
That doesn’t exist in MY thoughts… Maybe you’ve fashioned a “catholic bogey-man” for yourself?
I will say that many non-Catholic Christians find the idea of any mediator or advocate other than Jesus, to be pointless even if true. When they see Catholics emphasize praying to Mary and the saints the reaction is often, “okay, maybe this isn’t actually worship the same way as we’d worship God, but why should we bother to go through Mary, when we can just pray to Jesus directly?”
After all, Jesus himself gave us the Lord’s prayer, he actually encouraged us to pray to the Father himself, he didn’t say “Don’t dare pray to the Father, you’re too unworthy, you should pray to my mother instead.”
It seems that when confronted with the “why should we even bother to pray to Mary or other saints” question, many Catholics claim that, essentially, God doesn’t really care about a little sinner like you, you need to get Mary and the saints to pray for you, before He’d even pay attention to your woes. This sounds very close to advice for a small grassroots charity to hire some professional lobbyists to be sure their cause gets a hearing in Congress.
And so many non-Catholics conclude “OK, so you want us to join your Church so we can move farther away from Jesus, and not pray to God, but pray to the saint-lobbyists instead? Why in the world would we want to do THAT, why should we give up a personal relationship with Jesus and approach him through intermediaries?”
Jesus is not corruptible, which is precisely why Mary can “use her pull with Jesus.” It is a corruption when we disobey our parents. Jesus always obeys His parents precisely because He is not corrupted as we are.
But the Church does NOT teach that adults still have a duty to obey their parents, they are not obligated to, say, go to medical school because the parents want them to, or to refuse a Priestly vocation if the parents want their son to get married and give them grandkids. It is not “corrupt” to refuse to obey parents when they ask such things.
And not even minor children have the duty to obey their parents, if they command them to sin. Now, I realize Mary would not command Jesus to sin, but that is where this human analogy falls apart.
It is also important to note that Mary, by a special grace of God bestowed in anticipation of the Cross, was Immaculately Conceived. She has free will like we do, but her will is perfectly united to the will of God. So if she asks Jesus to do something, she’s not asking Him to do something that was not already His will
This does make sense, but then again we get to the question, “Why should we even bother to ask Mary’s assistance, if it doesn’t change what God’s will is for us?”
The answers to that question, so far, are unconvincing to me.
