I am a Mary worshipper

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jimmy:
Are you saying that Catholics aren’t thankfull to the Lord? If that is what you mean just look at how devoutly a good Catholic will try to follow Christ in everything he does. That is being thankfull to the Lord, doing His will. Just saying “Thankyou Lord” is not necisarily thankful. Why does someone have to say it outloud? Is it a contest to see who is the most thankful to the Lord?

scm, you have some strange idea about what worship is. It is not praising God outloud so everyone can look at you and say, “hey, look at him, he is really praising God.” THat is vainglory and it leads to hell, and no where else.
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NO! I did not mean to say that Catholics are not thankful to the Lord. Forgive me if I was taken that way.
I was trying to get at the concept of people speaking out of their hearts to the Lord, in their own words, not a memorized response. That that is worship, though you dissagree with me on that. It is directed at the Lord, not those around you. If vanity enters in to it, then I agree with you, that person is following the wrong path.
 
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scm:
You speak as if the Catholic Church adopted good practices from the pagans. I can’t tell for sure, but isnt that like saying:
Pagans eat carrots, Catholics eat carrots; the Catholics adopted the practice of eating carrots from the pagans?

I’ve spent time with Protestants in true worship of God, its a celebration. When was the last time you saw anyone at a Catholic Mass raise thier hands in the air and say “Thank you Lord!” out loud?
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ON 20/20 they aired a segment of the Kabbalah. The celebrants were acting to me as though they were in some form of Pentecostal Judiasm. A lot of dancing and crying. I have no doubt that the emotions that these people were feeling were real. Just as I have no doubt that the strong emotions any religious person feels is real. When I was a teenager, our teacher showed us a program on cults. It scared me silly because the cult participants were talking of love and joy in the same manner that I had heard in church!!!

My point is not to belittle your experiences. Far from it. I am just pointing out that you can’t go by emotions alone to decide if your worship service is more true then ours.
 
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scm:
As for vanity in speaking out loud to the Lord, well I just don’t see it. I speak praise and worship to the Lord in the privacy of my own bedroom, so I can’t see how vanity operates there. I also speak praise and worship when I attend Protestant services and prayer meetings, There I am speaking in fellowship and congress to the Lord (the two or more gathered in my name thing operating)
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If you speak out loud in your in your bedroom, that is a little different. What I got from what you said is that it is more meaningfull to say “thank you Lord” out loud than to say it without the sound. You mentioned you never see people “raising their hands and saying “thank you Lord” out loud” at Mass. Why would it matter if you see it? As long as they are thankfull to the Lord and they express it to God, it does not matter what we see.
 
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scm:
NO! I did not mean to say that Catholics are not thankful to the Lord. Forgive me if I was taken that way.
I was trying to get at the concept of people speaking out of their hearts to the Lord, in their own words, not a memorized response. That that is worship, though you dissagree with me on that. It is directed at the Lord, not those around you. If vanity enters in to it, then I agree with you, that person is following the wrong path.
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I understand. SOmetimes it is hard to get your point across when others can’t see your facial expression and body language. I think that most people on this site do speak to God in their own words. Yes, we use wonderful meditative aids like the rosary but we also talk directly to God. When I sit on my back porch with my cup of coffee and listen to the birds, I am in God’s presence and I give him thanks.
 
Racer X:
In So how is the Blessed Virgin Mary not a goddess? one of the main points made is that we (Catholics) do not worship Mary. I think it is a serious mistake in apologetics say that we do not worship her. Anyone outside of the Catholic Church can see that we do worship her. To reply to them that it only looks like worship but is not *really *worship just undermines our credibility. They know what the word “worship” means and our explanation just looks like redefining the word worship to suit our needs—which it is.

But this finagling is unnecessary. The relationship between the words worship, veneration and adoration is:

- Adoration is the worship properly due to God alone, veneration is the worship appropriate to the saints.

See the Catholic Encyclopedia articles on Worship, Christian, which begins thus:

and continues

The worship due God alone is properly called Adoration.

Some might say that the usage of “worship” has changed since the Catholic Encyclopedia, but I see no evidence for that. All that is happened is that recently Catholics have tried to sweep an uncomfortable question under the rug… and quite unnecessarily.

So the next time you are accused of worshipping Mary, say, “Yes, I do but not with the sort of worship that may be given to God alone.” Or simply, “Yes. And…?” That may lead to a conversation that will help them actually understand the distinction. On the other hand, what are they to make of denial of worshipping her when they can see it with their own eyes?
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Tell it like it is
 
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jimmy:
The Catholic Church has always made a destinction between worship proper to God and worship other than that proper to God. The worhsip proper to God is called latria, and the worship proper to what is not God is called “dulia”. There is a big destinction here. The Catholic Church bases its teachings and writings in the Latin language, not in the English language. So if there is one word in the English language that designates both, it does not matter because Latin is the language of the Church, and there are two words in Latin for it.

You have misunderstood the Catholic teaching on worship.
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Really?
 
NO! I did not mean to say that Catholics are not thankful to the Lord. Forgive me if I was taken that way.
I was trying to get at the concept of people speaking out of their hearts to the Lord, in their own words, not a memorized response. That that is worship, though you dissagree with me on that. It is directed at the Lord, not those around you. If vanity enters in to it, then I agree with you, that person is following the wrong path.
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The thing about this is, though, that if you study the documentation on the histor of the form of worship of the infant church (such as the Didache and other early Christian writings) all the way through 20 centuries of Catholic and Orthodox liturgy you can’t help but notice that it was **liturgical **worship.
The “spontaneous” style of public worship (ala the AoG/Pentacostals/etc.is, quite simply a modern innovation.
 
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jimmy:
If you speak out loud in your in your bedroom, that is a little different. What I got from what you said is that it is more meaningfull to say “thank you Lord” out loud than to say it without the sound. You mentioned you never see people “raising their hands and saying “thank you Lord” out loud” at Mass. Why would it matter if you see it? As long as they are thankfull to the Lord and they express it to God, it does not matter what we see.
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I can not argue with that. What I can say is that I was ultimately responding to a previous post that said, Protestants do not worship in their services and in fact do not believe in worship at all.

I’m sorry. I have a foot in both doors. I participate in both services and if you can say Protestants don’t worship how can you say Catholics do? The truth is they both do.
 
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deb1:
I understand. SOmetimes it is hard to get your point across when others can’t see your facial expression and body language. I think that most people on this site do speak to God in their own words. Yes, we use wonderful meditative aids like the rosary but we also talk directly to God. When I sit on my back porch with my cup of coffee and listen to the birds, I am in God’s presence and I give him thanks.
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Deb1 that is beautiful.
What I really wish is that I can have an interractive conversation about this, but that is difficult with this medium. I did have the conversation just now at lunch with a trusted, Mennonite, friend. The answer is, that worship is expressing love to God and there are many ways to make this expression. I attend Cathlic mass regularly, but I am forbidden to express my love verbally. Ok that is fine, Catholics don’t accept that, so I go to an Assembly of God church too where I am free to do that.
In the end, I personally need BOTH services to fully feel that I am worshiping God in congress with others.

I look at the responses I got and I see that I effectively yelled FIRE in a crowded theater. It was not my intention to throw stones, but I can see how it can be read that way. I am just going to have to ask everyone here to forgive me. It was unfair of me to imply that other peoples way of expressing love to God was invalid.
I don’t know if it matters to anyone here, but I have learned from this today.
 
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deb1:
ON 20/20 they aired a segment of the Kabbalah. The celebrants were acting to me as though they were in some form of Pentecostal Judiasm. A lot of dancing and crying. I have no doubt that the emotions that these people were feeling were real. Just as I have no doubt that the strong emotions any religious person feels is real. When I was a teenager, our teacher showed us a program on cults. It scared me silly because the cult participants were talking of love and joy in the same manner that I had heard in church!!!

My point is not to belittle your experiences. Far from it. I am just pointing out that you can’t go by emotions alone to decide if your worship service is more true then ours.
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Deb1, I tried to explain myself in another response to your other note. But I would like to pursue one point that you have brought up here if you don’t mind.

Worship is expressing Love to God. Love is an emotion. And I was emphasising the emotional part of expressing love. There are other aspects of expressing love that are not emotional, such as communication, especially listening. What I did not get this morning, but now get this afternoon, is that listening, hearing the Word of God, is not just food for us as I thought. It is part of participating in communication with the object of our love, God; Hearing Him.
Again I will appologize. I just did not get that concept until this afternoon.
 
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drforjc:
The thing about this is, though, that if you study the documentation on the histor of the form of worship of the infant church (such as the Didache and other early Christian writings) all the way through 20 centuries of Catholic and Orthodox liturgy you can’t help but notice that it was **liturgical **worship.
The “spontaneous” style of public worship (ala the AoG/Pentacostals/etc.is, quite simply a modern innovation.
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I acknowledge that. I can’t help it, I am a pentacostal born-again Christian Catholic.
 
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scm:
Deb1 that is beautiful.
What I really wish is that I can have an interractive conversation about this, but that is difficult with this medium. I did have the conversation just now at lunch with a trusted, Mennonite, friend. The answer is, that worship is expressing love to God and there are many ways to make this expression. I attend Cathlic mass regularly, but I am forbidden to express my love verbally. Ok that is fine, Catholics don’t accept that, so I go to an Assembly of God church too where I am free to do that.
In the end, I personally need BOTH services to fully feel that I am worshiping God in congress with others.

I look at the responses I got and I see that I effectively yelled FIRE in a crowded theater. It was not my intention to throw stones, but I can see how it can be read that way. I am just going to have to ask everyone here to forgive me. It was unfair of me to imply that other peoples way of expressing love to God was invalid.
I don’t know if it matters to anyone here, but I have learned from this today.
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Have you tried any charismatic Catholic services? I am new to the faith so I am uncertain how you find these services but I am interested in them myself.
 
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deb1:
Have you tried any charismatic Catholic services? I am new to the faith so I am uncertain how you find these services but I am interested in them myself.
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About 10 years ago there was a large charismatic meeting, culminating in bishop Eugene Gerber saying Mass. It was very cool. Held a candle to any Protestant service I’ve been to, including Promise Keepers!

An incredible thing happened. I got singled out of the entire crowd by the woman on stage. She said strange things about me, but nobody else in the room. She did some serious inspired preaching and they had a band and all.

I’d go again.

Yes, Catholics can do that stuff too, but normally they don’t choose to.

Alan
 
Wow. I just scrolled through this thread, since I’m babbling on another about trying to find unity on the Mary front.

I see lots of posts where there are tons of words, and some of them are boldfaced and everything. I saw loaded, judgmental words flying.

As a person who can crank out words in huge quantities, I think I’m about tired of lots of words.

This is an apologetics forum which can be very detailed. I’m just making an excuse in advance for posting without actually reading the thread. Therefore my judgment is quick, and subject to flaw.

Mary is kind of like my Mom. If I am spiritually adopted into Christ’s family, and if I’m a disciple whom Jesus loves, then Mary is my spiritual mother. If that isn’t worth honoring, then go throw out the Ten Commandments. We honor our Father and Mother in heaven as on earth. We don’t actually worship our earthly parents or our heavenly Mother; we worship God alone.

Alan
 
Hello All,

Please, let’s make the distinction between veneration(Honor) and Adoration(Worship). We can NEVER worship Mary. We honor Mary and pray for her intercession. But, she herself can do nothing without God. Only God is all of himself all at once. The Miracles attributted to Mary and the Saints comes through their intercession, but not their direct action. It is the will of God that causes the Miracles. God alone is totally transcendant and it is disrespectful and, yes, blasphemous. God alone is worthy of Worship(Adoration). We can Honor Mary and the Saints but never see them as gods. Check out these tracts: www.catholic.com/library/Saint_Worship.asp, www.catholic.com/library/Do_Catholics_Worship_Statues.asp, www.catholic.com/library/Praying_to_the_Saints.asp.
 
Thank you to all who have participated in this discussion.
This thread is now closed.
 
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