Letter to my evangelical relatives about the protestant claim that Catholics worship Mary

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Did I mess this up?

"The misunderstanding that Catholics worship Mary is based on different understandings of the word “worship.”

For non-Catholics, worship means coming together in a home or church building for prayer and singing and sermons on Sunday, for example.

The Catholic understanding of worship is based on the Bible, starting in the Old Testament. Worship always involved a sacrifice of a victim, back then it was an animal.

In the New Testament, Christ is both the priest and victim. We are saved by his death and resurrection.

Year after year, the Jews observed the Passover with a new animal sacrifice, but the language of their observance unites them with the original Passover observance. Every modern Jew is on a journey of exodus to Jerusalem. Their favorite saying to each other is, “Next year in Jerusalem !”

That teaches us how Catholics understand the “sacrifice” of the Mass, that the bread and wine are supernaturally united with Christ, as the Bible says “this is my body…this is my blood.” Thus, the Mass is the offering of the same sacrifice to God as Christ on the cross. It is, once and for all, the same sacrifice as Calvary. There is only one sacrifice for sin and one high priest.

There’s no “Mary” involved here. That is, there is no sacrifice of anything to Mary. Therefore, there is no worship of Mary."
 
No, of course we don’t worship Mary, we hold Her in high regard because She is the Mother of God incarnate Jesus. When we pray to Her we ask for a Her intercession, we ask Her to pray for us on our behalf knowing that She is the Queen of Heaven and constantly has the ear of The Holy Trinity.

I don’t think it’s complicated really and I don’t see why they insist on saying that we worship the Holy Mother. Perhaps some of them just don’t understand and perhaps some of them purposely misunderstand. Probably the former.
 
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I would add to your letter that worship also involves an act of the intellect, acknowledging an entity as God. Catholics do not acknowledge Mary as a Goddess, they acknowledge her as worthy of honor. So there is no worship.
 
Mess up? Hardly, it is the best explanation that I have seen. I usually say, when this comes up, that worship in modern terms means to believe it is God. We don’t believe Mary is God so no worship. I want to point out that in years past worship had a different meaning. It is why the English judges are called your worship. Also why some prayers have worship in them for mere humans but today most people only mean the first meaning of worship.
 
hope said:
I usually say, when this comes up, that worship in modern terms means to believe it is God. We don’t believe Mary is God so no worship.
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I agree with this.

Prayer for Catholics is only worship when it is directed towards praising God. If it’s to anybody other than God the Father, God the Son or God the Holy Spirit, it’s intercessory prayer where we’re basically asking the person to pray to God with us and for us.

Singing in and of itself is not worship unless it’s a hymn of praise to God (only). There are many reasons why Catholics would sing or not sing and singing is not always worshipping.

Listening to a sermon is certainly not worship. Doesn’t even make logical sense.

The Mass does revolve around sacrifice, however we can “worship God” outside of Mass without needing to make a sacrifice to God. If I prayed right now sitting on my couch, “I praise and worship you, God” that would be worship. I would not be permitted as a Catholic to pray, “I praise and worship you, Mary” or “I praise and worship you, St. so-and-so” because that would be blasphemy, as worship is reserved for God.
 
otrrl said:
The Catholic understanding of worship is based on the Bible, starting in the Old Testament. Worship always involved a sacrifice of a victim, back then it was an animal.
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They will counter with Scripture that we are to “present ourselves as a living Sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God” and that we bring a “Sacrifice of Praise into the house of the Lord”.
 
I was Evangelical Protestant for the first 47 years of my life, and I was in churches where some of the most well-known and respected Evangelicals were preachers and teachers (e.g., Steve Douglass, President of Campus Crusade for Christ, John Ortberg, author and pastor, etc.)

Your.sentence describing what worship means to non-Catholics is not going to be well-received by your relatives because it’s incredibly incomplete and therefore, an inaccurate definition of Evangelical Protestant worship.

Evangelical Protestants believe that “worship” is ascribing to God His due worth

God is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, and worship is recognizing and confessing/proclaiming, either aloud or silently, that God is God, and that He alone has all these attributes. When worshiping God, we recognize His Place as God, and our place as His creation.

There are some Evangelical Protestants who teach that everything Christians do is an act of worship to God–our cooking, cleaning, childcare, jobs, recreation, sleeping, eating, etc. Not all Evangelical Protestants teach this. You would want to feel out your relatives and see if this is their belief or not. Don’t assume anything.

But whether your Evangelical Protestant relatives teach that all of Christian life is an act or worship, or that worship is a special act in which all of our attention is focused on praising and honoring God, both would agree that “worship” is “ascribing to God His due worth.”

And that is why many Evangelical Protestants have hard time with Mary. Many Catholics, including some in this thread, say that “we honor Mary and recognize her many attributes.” To Evangelical Protestants, that sounds uncomfortably close to their definition of worship of God.

So I would probably stick with the explanation of Mary that many Catholic apologists use. We WORSHIP God. We VENERATE Mary. Two totally different actions.

Finally, I would admit to your relatives that some Catholics probably DO worship Mary, mainly because they have not been taught properly. Inadequate catechesis unfortunately occurs among all Christian groups, Catholic and Protestants. But worship of Mary is definitely NOT taught by the Catholic Church.
 
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Peeps said:
Finally, I would admit to your relatives that some Catholics probably DO worship Mary
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Who does this? If so, there are very few of them. I’ve certainly never met one, and I don’t think the person needs to be “admitting” anything of the sort unless they personally know Catholics who go around saying, “Yes, I worship Mary.”
 
I always like to mention things that we agree on in letters.

Wouldn’t you say that we all put things other than Christ on the altars of our lives? I know I do - a lot. Don’t we all secretly worship things like security, health, our children, etc.? Aren’t all of these “good” things when properly subordinated to our King and his will?

Our enemy is insidious, no? Sometimes, the better the thing is, the more likely we are to make it an idol. For example, I would say that Protestants can very easily fall into worshiping the Bible instead of the Word made flesh. We take a very good thing - God’s Holy Word - and instead of appropriately studying it - we end up spending more time and focusing on the Bible, than Christ. We don’t mean to - but in our brokenness, it happens.

Protestants and Catholics can violently agree that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. As we all gather around His manger, perhaps it would do us all well to ponder those things that we put before Him, confess them and live our lives thankful for His mercy and love.

Merry Christmas all!
 
Having had personal experience with this practice drawn out to it’s most tragic conclusion, a group who considers Mary part of the Godhead, yeah, some people do worship Mary. Two of them are in my cellphone, I could text them and ask them to come over for lunch. This group was excommunicated officially, it was all over the news, we came to Mass with news trucks on our parish parking lot.

For me, I was a youth group minister then and had to sit there with one of the teens as she cried and asked me “what happens now? My Aunt is my Godmother and now she is excommunicated! Am I excommunicated too?”

The less dramatic side is people who tend to be less educated who have a devotion to Mary that has jumped the shark. If you ask them they will tell you that Mary answers prayers, that Mary has the power to heal and save, that Mary can change her son’s mind. It is an innocent, the people are naive and have often been taught this by their mother and grandmother. In every instance I’ve personally seen, this was a person with ethnic background from a country who is deeply culturally Catholic. Sometimes the Catechsis has been non existent, small parishes where there is a priest for Mass but no sort of Rel Ed program, people are simply brought to the parish for their Sacraments. They are shocked when they find out that here in the US they have to send their child to Sacramental Prep and they themselves have Catechesis and prep at the Church before Marriage or before them bring a child to be baptized.

I am sure that Mary herself looks at these people with the same kindness as a mother would look at a child who has some delays and is now learning things for the first time.

Others do not have the words to explain the difference between their devotion to Mary and worship.
 
This is the argument that got me, an Anglican, comfortable with praying the Hail Mary (very recently). I think many Protestants would find it unconvincing, though, because I think they tend to not emphasize the importance of OT ideas and customs in the way that Catholics do.
 
TheLittleLady said:
Having had personal experience with this practice drawn out to it’s most tragic conclusion, a group who considers Mary part of the Godhead, yeah, some people do worship Mary. Two of them are in my cellphone, I could text them and ask them to come over for lunch. This group was excommunicated officially, it was all over the news, we came to Mass with news trucks on our parish parking lot.
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Then they are not part of the Catholic Church. They should not be acknowledged by the Catholic Church, i.e. “some Catholics worship Mary.” They were excommunicated - thrown out.

We do not need to go around acknowledging the wrong practices of some people purporting to be Catholics when we are trying to explain that the Church does not teach, promote, approve or in any way condone worship of Mary. It’s pretty clear to me that the vast majority of Catholics do not worship Mary, do not approve worshiping Mary, and are all on the same page with this being wrong and actually being something Mary herself would disapprove of greatly. I say this as someone who has gone to dozens, probably hundreds by now, of Marian devotions, carried a Mary statue in processions, said many Rosaries, observed Fatima anniversaries, and been to apparition sites.

I likely sound a bit short with people on this whole subject, but I am developing a serious lack of patience with people trying to frame the Catholic religious practice in some terms that Protestants who strongly disapprove, of the Catholic faith will accept. Just tell them the CORRECT teaching and leave it at that. No need to say, “Well a lot of Catholics are just so poorly catechized or stupid that they worship Mary because they don’t understand.” In my 50+ years experience as a Catholic, your average under-educated elderly person understood Marian devotion just fine and was not worshipping Mary.

There is no need to pander to these Protestants who are quite frankly biased against the Catholics and in some cases seem to continue their bias even after they convert and are forever trying to make the Catholic Church act more like a Protestant Church for reasons I won’t even begin to speculate on. Thank God my own Protestant father was NOT like that when he converted. He was a Catholic through and through. Mary devotions and all.

I’m muting this thread now as it is becoming highly disturbing that Catholic converts on it seem to be suggesting that there are huge numbers of Catholics going around and worshipping Mary to the point where we need to offer an explanation for it. This sort of thing is to me why it is just pointless to try to even discuss this subject. I would rather be praying to Mary to please intercede with God for these misguided people than arguing with them.

Good bye, and good luck to the OP explaining this subject to their relatives.
 
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In my experience, Protestants are typically concerned that Catholics detract, nullify, or even just plain out deny Jesus Christ through our beliefs in the Communion of Saints, the Sacraments, and even our concept of salvation. They are concerned especially with our understanding of Mary as the Mother of God and thus our veneration of her as such. Seeing our appreciation for her, they assume that it detracts from the Sovereignty and Majesty of God. Nothing could be farther from the truth, however. Mary is 100% Christocentric; in all truth, that was her entire calling in life. All our prayers to Mary are for her to lead us closer to her Son. The Marian doctrines that we believe may seem to be confusing and unbiblical to our Protestant brethren but, in reality, they simply exalt the great things that God has done for the Mother of the Word made Flesh. Rather than either Mary or Christ, it’s both…and. Mary is a great example for us of someone who surrendered their will to God’s will. Like the moon reflecting the light of the sun, Mary reflects and displays the greatness of her Son, Jesus Christ. That’s what we’re celebrating this Christmas season: Christ’s coming into this world to save us. Because of Mary’s fiat, God was made man and dwelt among us. Well, after all, who loved Jesus’s mother the most? Answer = Jesus.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
 
Depends on how one translates “colere.” The Vatican’s translation into English was indeed “worship”. But its Italian translation rendered it as “honor”.
 
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otrrl said:
Did I mess this up?

"The misunderstanding that Catholics worship Mary is based on different understandings of the word “worship.”

For non-Catholics, worship means coming together in a home or church building for prayer and singing and sermons on Sunday, for example.

The Catholic understanding of worship is based on the Bible, starting in the Old Testament. Worship always involved a sacrifice of a victim, back then it was an animal.

In the New Testament, Christ is both the priest and victim. We are saved by his death and resurrection.

Year after year, the Jews observed the Passover with a new animal sacrifice, but the language of their observance unites them with the original Passover observance. Every modern Jew is on a journey of exodus to Jerusalem. Their favorite saying to each other is, “Next year in Jerusalem !”

That teaches us how Catholics understand the “sacrifice” of the Mass, that the bread and wine are supernaturally united with Christ, as the Bible says “this is my body…this is my blood.” Thus, the Mass is the offering of the same sacrifice to God as Christ on the cross. It is, once and for all, the same sacrifice as Calvary. There is only one sacrifice for sin and one high priest.

There’s no “Mary” involved here. That is, there is no sacrifice of anything to Mary. Therefore, there is no worship of Mary."
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Consider this answer Saint Worship? | Catholic Answers
 
Another approach might be to urge evangelicals to examine the roots of their own view of Mary. Of course they would say the Bible, but what else? What historic blind spots may be biasing them now?

A lot of it is or was reacting against perceived Catholic practice. If they or their predecessors see Catholics (over) emphasizing A, the gut, illogical response is under emphasize A, to even suppress A.

Reaction isn’t rational or scriptural.
 
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Thank you all for the responses. My goal in sending that email to my relatives was to get some response, any response at all. I have gotten no response – that’s the response.

As “evangelicals” they should have been trying to convert me for the last 60 years, and I will not let them die without my trying to get them to think about what they believe in, which I think is false.

So, what I wrote in the original post, was my attempt to deal with one subject, that Catholics do not worship Mary, and why we do not consider that we worship Mary. Yes, there are a lot of sub-issues, but I tried to stay on one point.

Just as the Jews consider every Passover observance to be part of the original Passover, similarly Catholics believe every Mass to be united with Christ’s Passover meal, where he gave us his body and blood. (We are not crucifying Christ over and over.)

Either they are wrong, or I am wrong. I am trying to pry open some minds.

BTW, this year, I did not get a Christmas card from them.
 
One thing we can see very clearly in scripture, no one who evangelizes, is held responsible for successfully converting anyone to the true faith. If the one being evangelized doesn’t respond favorably, so be it. Success is NOT a required condition for evangelizing… Only that we give the messages as clearly as we can give it… when the opportunity presents itself.

The perfect example, Jesus gave when giving the bread of life discourse. His own “disciples” (not the 12) walked away from Jesus saying to Jesus face, this is too hard to even listen to, and they walked away. Did Jesus go after them for a second or 3rd try? No. He let them go.
 
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