I am a Mary worshipper

[Edgar_Davie]

Please, this is absurd. To belabor the meaning of words, wheather defined by Jack Chick or the Pope, that would elevate a carnally created human to a position equal to the One Creator demonstraits an agenda other than truth. This subject is beneath the dignity of intellectual discussion.

 

[GregoryPalamas]

JimG:

I’m more concerned that they may have lost the concept of latria entirely. And so the amount of worship they give to God hardly even exceeds dulia or hyperdulia. Which is not giving God his due. It is just making Him a Very Important Person.

Very little of what we would call worship goes on at the typical Protestant service. There is even a rather popular notion among Protestants that we ought not to worship at all. That practice was for the Old Testament which had not experienced the finished work of Christ. We who now have experienced such are not to worship but rather to celebrate what Christ has already done.

So, the very fact that we worship anyone at all is in many Protestant eyes a sure sign that we aren’t Christians.

Dan Lauffer, A protestant minister for 27 years.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

scm:

I have to add. One shade of the meaning of Shachah, is “to bow down to God in worship”.
That is very specifically when bowing down to God. Clearly in the Bible quote above, the the context is to bow down to a person, thus not indicating worship, but what I said in my original post.

Which is my precisely my point. The Hebrew word for worshipping God is the same Hebrew word used to honor creatures. I’m not relying upon any translation, which is precisely why I emphasized the Hebrew word of the OT text. Which like the English word “worship” properly connotes these two things, 1) worship of God, and 2) honor that is worthy of creatures.

According to Brown, Driver, Briggs and Gesenius. “Hebrew Lexicon entry for Shachah”. “The KJV Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon”.
biblestudytools.net/Lexicons/Hebrew/heb.cgi?number=7812&version=kjv>

The word shachah means…

1. 
   *]to bow down
   1. 
      *](Qal) to bow down
      *](Hiphil) to depress (fig)
      *](Hithpael)
      1. 
         *]to bow down, prostrate oneself 1c

1. 1. 1. 
         

         *]before superior in homage 1c
         *]before God in worship 1c
         *]before false gods 1c
         *]before angel

         King James Word Usage - Total: 172
         worship 99, bow 31, bow down 18, obeisance 9, reverence 5, fall down 3, themselves 2, stoop 1, crouch 1, miscellaneous 3

         Note the same word is used 99 times for “worship” as translated in the KJV. Yet the same word is used to honor another creature.
         
         So, was Moses’ Divine ***shachah ***substantially different than Moses’ Human shachah? Yes. Likewise, in Catholicism, Divine worship (shachah) is substantially different than Marian worship (shachah), if one were to use the broad usage, in accord with Webster, for the English word “worship.” Strictly speaking, it is accurate (and Biblical) to use the same word for both Divine worship and honor for creatures. Catholics simply use the Greek words *dulia (honor for saints), hyperdulia (honor for Mary), and latria (DIVINE worship). *
         
         Go back and read what RacerX is asserting. He’s biblically correct. However, ***what is lawful is not always expedient, ***according to Scripture. It is far from expedient, in my view, to use the word “worship” in other than the connotation of Divine worship because heretics and infidels will use it to distort the true sense of the Divine and Catholic Faith. Yet, we should always be prepared to Biblically support the Catholic notion that our Divine shachah is substantially different than our ***Marian shachah, ***and like the shachah of Moses, it is not Scripturally proven to be idolatrous.

 

[scm]

itsjustdave1988:

Which is my precisely my point. The Hebrew word for worshipping God is the same Hebrew word used to honor creatures. I’m not relying upon any translation, which is precisely why I emphasized the Hebrew word of the OT text. Which like the English word “worship” connotes two things, 1) worship of God, and 2) honor for creatures.

According to Brown, Driver, Briggs and Gesenius. “Hebrew Lexicon entry for Shachah”. “The KJV Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon”.
biblestudytools.net/Lexicons/Hebrew/heb.cgi?number=7812&version=kjv>

The word shachah means…

Note the same word is used 99 times for “worship” as translated in the KJV. Yet the same word is used to honor another creature.

So, was Moses’ Divine ***shachah ***substantially different than Moses’ Human shachah? Yes. Likewise, in Catholicism, Divine worship (shachah) is substantially different than Marian worship (shachah), if one were to use the broad usage, in accord with Webster, for the English word “worship.” Strictly speaking, it is accurate (and Biblical) to use the same word for both Divine worship and honor for creatures. Catholics simply use the Greek words *dulia (honor for saints), hyperdulia (honor for Mary), and latria (DIVINE worship). *

Go back and read what RacerX is asserting. He’s biblically correct. However, ***what is lawful is not always expedient, ***according to Scripture. It is far from expedient, in my view, to use the word “worship” in other than the connotation of Divine worship because heretics and infidels will use it to distort the true sense of the Divine and Catholic Faith. Yet, we should always be prepared to Biblically support the Catholic notion that our Divine shachah is substantially different than our ***Marian shachah, ***and like the shachah of Moses, it is not Scripturally proven to be idolatrous.

I understand your point now. Sorry I am so thick headed. But a proper translation for “shachah” when it is applied to humans is to say “to bow down”

Ok, so you are saying that the situation with the word “worship” in english is exactly analogous to the word “shachah” in hebrew. But even the Catholic Bible translators realized that “shachah” had better be translated as “bow down to” in the quote that I was responding to.

Unfortunately I believe the average Hebrew speakers of the time would have understood that distinction of the meaning of “shachah” depended on context, if refering to God, it was for worship of God, if refering to a person it was simply to bow to them; however I believe that English speakers of this time dont make such a distinction with tthe word “worship”. You may say this is a Protestant influence, but every Catholic that I know personally recoils at the phrase “worship Mary”.

One additional thing though, I do not put any weight in to the specific english words chosen for the KJV translation. That was an old form of english and many of the KJV english words have changed their meanings by now. Also there are numerous translation errors in the KJV.

Here is a quote ripped off of a website:
"Did you know that in the King James Version of the Bible the word ‘advertise’ means ‘tell,’ ‘allege’ means ‘prove,’ and ‘conversation’ means ‘behavior’? That ‘communicate’ means ‘share,’ ‘take through’ means ‘be anxious,’ and ‘prevent’ means ‘precede’? That ‘meat’ is a general term for ‘food,’ and ‘anon’ and ‘by and by’ translate Greek words which mean ‘immediately’?

These words – and many like them – made perfect sense to readers when the KJV was published in 1611. But today, after nearly four centuries of changes in English, few readers know what such words mean. And most readers miss the riches of the all-time favorite King James Bible"

 

[scm]

GregoryPalamas:

Very little of what we would call worship goes on at the typical Protestant service. There is even a rather popular notion among Protestants that we ought not to worship at all. That practice was for the Old Testament which had not experienced the finished work of Christ. We who now have experienced such are not to worship but rather to celebrate what Christ has already done.

So, the very fact that we worship anyone at all is in many Protestant eyes a sure sign that we aren’t Christians.

Dan Lauffer, A protestant minister for 27 years.

And do you see worship in a Catholic Mass?
I see:
Bible Study. Consisting of two readings, a psalm and a Gospel reading.
A sermon.
A prayer for a list of requests.
The Lords Prayer.
Fellowship greetings
Communion.
Plus 3 hymns that seem to be from the middle ages interspersed.
All packed in to one hour.

I don’t see praise and worship as I do see at, for instance, an Assembly of God church. There I see:
1 hour of praise and worship accompanied by singing.
1 hour (more or less) of sermon.
15 minutes or so of individual prayer for those that need it.

 

[Ignatius]

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.

You are either seriously misinformed or deliberatly ignorant. In either case, you need to study the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is a grave sin to worship anyone other than God.

 

[batteddy]

“would elevate a carnally created human to a position equal to the One Creator”

NO!!! You haven’t been reading what I’ve been saying. Obviously there would still be an infinite divide between Creator and creature. I am not claiming they would be on the same level as God.

I am just questioning whether the pagan gods were seen on the same level as our God, and I don’t think they were.

All I’m saying is that there is a rough equivalent.

“It will only convince them even more we are pagan.”

So what!?!

We have maintained what is good in paganism, and we should not be embarrassed by this before the Protestants.

G.K. Chesterton, famous Catholic apologist, said in his great book Orthodoxy:

There is a “view that priests darken and embitter the world. I look at the world and simply discover that they don’t. Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.** [Catholic] Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism**. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased. Thus these three facts of experience, such facts as go to make an agnostic, are, in this view, turned totally round. I am left saying, “Give me an explanation, first, of the towering eccentricity of man among the brutes; second, of the vast human tradition of some ancient happiness; third, of the partial perpetuation of such pagan joy in the countries of the Catholic Church.” One explanation, at any rate, covers all three: the theory that twice was the natural order interrupted by some explosion or revelation such as people now call “psychic.” Once Heaven came upon the earth with a power or seal called the image of God, whereby man took command of Nature; and once again (when in empire after empire men had been found wanting) Heaven came to save mankind in the awful shape of a man. This would explain why the mass of men always look backwards; and why the only corner where they in any sense look forwards is the little continent where Christ has His Church.”

The pagans may have gotten the theology wrong, but they had the emotion and religious psychological fulfillment right. And that is a good, joyful thing in human nature. G.K. Chesterton wasn’t afraid to proclaim it, and niether should we deny it to the cold, embittered Protestants.

For we still have “singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air.” and are able to play “every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries”. But the Protestants, who have lost that primal, pagan instinct, which IS compatible with Christianity…are “huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song has ceased.”

 

[Chazemataz]

Stop this bull at once! If you worship Mary, then she will personally see to it that you receive an eternity in Hell. She herself will throw you in! To me, Gods have no beggining. And They have no end. They made mankind. And will destroy it. The only God that fits this description is the Jeudo-Christian God, NOT Mary. Mary is a powerful being, but NOT a God.

 

[jimmy]

Donna P:

Please quit with this please. To worship anyone other than God is to commit a serious sin. Thou shalt not put false god before Me.

We do NOT worship Mary, Mary does NOT want us to worship her.
Please buy the Catholic Answers Beginning Apologetice book on Defending Mary.

YOu do Catholics a HUGE disservice by calling yourself Catholic and saying we worship Mary. To do so shows a disregard for our Church and Jesus teachings.:nope:

It depends on your definition of worship. In current English, to worship is something that is given to God alone. It is not equal to veneration. A couple hundred years ago, worship was not as limited as it is now. The word was not designated just to God.

That is why Catholics use Latin words to describe the faith. We use words like “Latria” and “dulia” and “hyperdulia” because the Latin language does not change. These words mean the same thing they meant 1500 years ago.

“Latria” is the worship given to God alone. It is due to Him that we give this honor. Since God is infinate, eternal, and immutable He is the only one that can recieve this.

“Dulia” is that honor which is given to the saints, in reference to God. It is given to the saints only because of God. It is because they have been made into an image of God that we give this honor. It is because God is in them that we give this honor. It is also because God has honored them that we honor them. God has given them eternal life because they have succeeded here on earth. Therefore they are very deserving of honor.

Mary recieves what is called “hyperdulia” because she is the greatest among all the saints. She lived a sinless life and was perfected by Christ. She was also chosen above all others by God to be His mother.

Now, we are often accused of idolatry. Idolatry is “idol” + “latria”. This means that what idolatry is, is giving to someone or something other than God, the worship that is due to God alone. We do not do that.

Augustine made a point in his On Christian Doctrine that I like to use. He wasn’t talking about honoring the saints or anything but it fits well with this. What Augustine said was that there was a destinction between “Use” and “Enjoyment”. “Enjoyment”, according to Augustine, is something that can only be given to God because He is eternal and immutable. “Use” is what we do with everything that will help us to get to God. Any “enjoyment” we show to someone or something other than God, should be offered in reference to God. It should be offered because that person is an image of God and contains God in themself, not because of the person themself.

So, you can see it is not worship in the same sense of the word.

 

[jimmy]

quote=Racer X I do not see that the word–its connotation, or whatever–has changed. I do not see any distinction between proper-to-God worship and “non-worship” being made in any other case, religious or otherwise, except with regard to devotion to saints. That is contrived and bordering on intellectual dishonesty.

(2) It embarrasses me as a Catholic every time I see it done. During my conversion I spent a lot of time on primarily anti-Catholic boards while discerning the truth of the Catholic Faith (testing it, so to speak) and from experience I can say that this only-looks-like-worship-but-is-not-really-worship approach is big failure as a tactic of defense of the faith. It is ridiculed.
[/quote]

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.

 

[viktor_aleksndr]

lets not use the word worship of Mary. Many people especially those who dont believe in Mary will think that we worship Mary or we “Adore” Mary. Even though we know that worship “adoration” and worship “veneration” are 2 kinds of worship, still many non catholics believe that when we say worship we adore Mary.

 

[cheddarsox]

Go Batteddy, Partying with the pagans! Won’t a lot of people be surprised to see smiles and joy in heaven! God created it and it is good!

cheddar

 

[scm]

“would elevate a carnally created human to a position equal to the One Creator”

NO!!! You haven’t been reading what I’ve been saying. Obviously there would still be an infinite divide between Creator and creature. I am not claiming they would be on the same level as God.

I am just questioning whether the pagan gods were seen on the same level as our God, and I don’t think they were.

All I’m saying is that there is a rough equivalent.

“It will only convince them even more we are pagan.”

So what!?!

We have maintained what is good in paganism, and we should not be embarrassed by this before the Protestants.

G.K. Chesterton, famous Catholic apologist, said in his great book Orthodoxy:

There is a “view that priests darken and embitter the world. I look at the world and simply discover that they don’t. Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.** [Catholic] Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism**. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased. Thus these three facts of experience, such facts as go to make an agnostic, are, in this view, turned totally round. I am left saying, “Give me an explanation, first, of the towering eccentricity of man among the brutes; second, of the vast human tradition of some ancient happiness; third, of the partial perpetuation of such pagan joy in the countries of the Catholic Church.” One explanation, at any rate, covers all three: the theory that twice was the natural order interrupted by some explosion or revelation such as people now call “psychic.” Once Heaven came upon the earth with a power or seal called the image of God, whereby man took command of Nature; and once again (when in empire after empire men had been found wanting) Heaven came to save mankind in the awful shape of a man. This would explain why the mass of men always look backwards; and why the only corner where they in any sense look forwards is the little continent where Christ has His Church.”

The pagans may have gotten the theology wrong, but they had the emotion and religious psychological fulfillment right. And that is a good, joyful thing in human nature. G.K. Chesterton wasn’t afraid to proclaim it, and niether should we deny it to the cold, embittered Protestants.

For we still have “singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air.” and are able to play “every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries”. But the Protestants, who have lost that primal, pagan instinct, which IS compatible with Christianity…are “huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song has ceased.”

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?

 

[batteddy]

“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 didn’t say they adopted it FROM the pagans. I said that the Catholic Church maintains that primal human religious instinct, filled with mystery, and priests, and altars, and sacrafice, and costumes, and popular devotions, and art, etc…that are commonly assosciated, by Protestants, with “paganism”.

But so what if they associate such things with paganism? We shouldn’t be embarrassed on that account.

We have a court of Saints, pagan religions can have a pantheon of gods that can be sort of equivalent, that doesn’t make us any less Christian as long we recognize that they are on a level infinitely below God.

The Protestants act as if to be Christian we have to get rid of any “pagan-seeming” element in our religion…and we act as if we have to justify to them why what we do is not “pagan”.

Well the only justification we have to give is: “so what if that practice “seems” pagan to you, our teachings are perfectly orthodox”

Protestants act as if there is something intrinsically evil about the “pagan spirit”. We maintain that spirit, while correcting the false teachings. And there is no reason to be ashamed of the similarities or analagous parts.

“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?”

Mass is niether the time nor place for that.

Perhaps at a parade on a Feast day or a May Crowning.

The act of worship at Mass is primarily the Eucharistic Sacrafice.

I wonder what Protestants DO believe is reserved for God alone.

For Catholics, the only thing we really reserve for God Alone is the recognition that he Alone is the Self-Existant, infinite, eternal Creator of the Universe. This sublime recognition is what constitutes the essential distinction of latria.

But do Protestants believe such lesser honors and elements of worship (which we believe that God freely and graciously bestows on his saints) such as praise and prayer should also be reserved for God?

THAT is what we need to discuss with them. Not throw out some tired cookie-cutter answer they’ve heard before.

 

[WynCatholic]

scm:

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?

I miss the “Hillsong” worship. Same style, more Catholic content it would be totally astounding. There is, however, one thing that I have noted about semi-charismatic Protestant worship … an undercurrent of desparate searching for the consolation of intimacy with the divine.

Regarding the goddess stuff…
Isn’t a Saint utterly committed to doing and praying for the will and plans of God?
However, a god/goddess can have their own agenda, do selfish, stupid things, be venal, petty, and shortsighted.
That isn’t the case with saints, is it? Isnt that a big difference here. or do I misunderstand the nature of Saints and Mary?
Could a Saint rebel like Lucifer did?
Wayne

 

[jimmy]

scm:

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?

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.

 

[jimmy]

scm:

And do you see worship in a Catholic Mass?
I see:
Bible Study. Consisting of two readings, a psalm and a Gospel reading.
A sermon.
A prayer for a list of requests.
The Lords Prayer.
Fellowship greetings
Communion.
Plus 3 hymns that seem to be from the middle ages interspersed.
All packed in to one hour.

I don’t see praise and worship as I do see at, for instance, an Assembly of God church. There I see:
1 hour of praise and worship accompanied by singing.
1 hour (more or less) of sermon.
15 minutes or so of individual prayer for those that need it.

The Mass is worship in itself. The whole thing is worship. The point is not to go and hear someone speak. The point is to go and hear Gods word and to worship God and to recieve the Eucharist.

 

[drforjc]

Quote:
Originally Posted by scm
*And do you see worship in a Catholic Mass?
I see:
Bible Study. Consisting of two readings, a psalm and a Gospel reading.
A sermon.
A prayer for a list of requests.
The Lords Prayer.
Fellowship greetings
Communion.
Plus 3 hymns that seem to be from the middle ages interspersed.
All packed in to one hour.

I don’t see praise and worship as I do see at, for instance, an Assembly of God church. There I see:
1 hour of praise and worship accompanied by singing.
1 hour (more or less) of sermon.
15 minutes or so of individual prayer for those that need it.*

The Mass is worship in itself. The whole thing is worship. The point is not to go and hear someone speak. The point is to go and hear Gods word and to worship God and to recieve the Eucharist.

---

“He who is looking to be comfortable has come to the wrong address.” - Benedict XVI

And I might add that anyone who actually reads the text of any of the approved Eucharistic prayers could not reasonably conclude that it was not worship.
"We come to you, Father, with praise and thanksgiving…"
"Lord, you are holy indeed, and all creation rightly gives you praise…"
Etc.
Etc. (examples could be multiplied ad infinitum)

 

[viktor_aleksndr]

scm:

And do you see worship in a Catholic Mass?
I see:
Bible Study. Consisting of two readings, a psalm and a Gospel reading.
A sermon.
A prayer for a list of requests.
The Lords Prayer.
Fellowship greetings
Communion.
Plus 3 hymns that seem to be from the middle ages interspersed.
All packed in to one hour.

I don’t see praise and worship as I do see at, for instance, an Assembly of God church. There I see:
1 hour of praise and worship accompanied by singing.
1 hour (more or less) of sermon.
15 minutes or so of individual prayer for those that need it.

Holy Mass is for me the best full worship that a Christian can have. It is an organised full worship with the best praises and songs. It is also the best sacrifice that we can offer to our Father. The sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I belong to a Catholic Charismatic group and i thought it was better than the Holy Mass but now i realise that still the Holy Mass is the best. well, both are best because it is both worship to GOD but i can see that Holy Mass is much better.

 

[scm]

I am sorry, maybe I DO have a strange sense of what “worship” is. I did not think worship was passive. I thought that it is an action, something you actively express. Something that comes out of your heart.
I am sorry, when I am at mass I see people passively participating, going through ritual, and speaking rote responses. Hearing the Word of God is very important, it is food for us, but I did not think it is worship, it is something we are recieving, not giving.

I realise that performing a ritual is considered worship and so I over spoke when I effectively said there is no worship in Catholic mass. And in reality I can not know what is going on in the hearts and minds of those around me.

Perhaps what I am seeing is two forms of worship and one that is more meaningful for me.

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)