Mary worship? I don’t think so

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Amberlea said:
I have seen worship of Mary in the church. I know people who love her and don’t know Jesus well. I know some who have no prayer life outside of Marian devotion.
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It’s impossible to truly love Mary and not know Jesus.

Also, it’s perfectly okay to have a prayer life consisting solely of church-approved Marian devotions such as the Rosary, the Little Office of the BVM, the Miraculous Medal Novena etc. Prayer is always to God even when we ask intercession of Mary and honor her. Devotions like the ones I listed are all scripturally based and involve God/ Jesus, not just Mary.

I also agree with twf that you have no idea what someone else’s prayer life entails and that they presumably attend Mass and receive Jesus, which is the biggest connection to Christ there is.

“Mary worship” would be somehow worshipping Mary as if she were a goddess all to herself, not connected to the Trinity as she intimately is and not doing the will of God, interceding with God, serving as mediatrix between us and her Son, etc. We would have to make Mary into some pagan goddess who just responded to us on her own. I don’t know a single Catholic who does that.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Prayer is always to God even when we ask intercession of Mary and honor her.
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When we ask intercession of Mary, that prayer is to Mary. God hears it, because we are in conversation with someone in Heaven. . . . who then brings our prayer to God. . . .

“To pray” means “to ask”: when we “ask” a saint we “pray” to a saint.
 
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Anesti33 said:
When we ask intercession of Mary, that prayer is to Mary . God hears it, because we are in conversation with someone in Heaven. But it is not prayer to God.
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This is a misstatement of Catholic teaching. I strongly suggest you discuss with your priest. I have muted you as you keep making the same statement to me on multiple threads. Good evening.
 
I don’t know how you arrived at the idea that I took it personally. I didn’t. (Disagreeing with someone on here doesn’t mean someone is taking it personally.)

However, I felt that your analysis of how you saw people at church worshipping Mary was wrong, so I pointed it out, as did twf.

If you actually know people doing voodoo rituals to Mary in their basements, then that’s something else again.
 
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It is usually more possible that people worship food, or money, or television, or Katy Perry. And I’d say the dangers there are much worse.
 
So if you have seen people worshipping Mary in church, then you wouldn’t mind sharing with us: What did you see? How did it qualify as worship? How was it qualitatively different from veneration? How did you know it was directed to Mary and not God?
 
I know that people talk loosely about “worshipping” money or pop idols, but I don’t think it’s helpful to use that term.

The worship of a person, or a thing is much less common than it was and is practically extinct in western society.

For example, it was quite inaccurate to suggest that the introduction of Pachamamas into churches involved “worshipping” Pachamama. At worst it was an act which involved endorsing a pagan religion and asking the intercession of a pagan God to the true God. Dangerous, but not worship.
 
It is not rare or extinct, but the belief that it is is one of the most pernicious lies today.

Worship of an object often means that you will put the love of it ahead of anything else. Love of money is rampant in this Capitalist society, and people will do anything to make a buck. When that love of money exceeds love of divine worship, you have idolatry.

Worship of food is obvious in a gluttonous middle class. We can hardly deal with a one-hour Eucharistic fast! We all want our GrubHub and Outback-sized portions. Gets in the way of fasting–idolatry.
 
Maximian said:
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Anesti33:
Love of money is rampant
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Yes, but love is not worship.
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It is, when we sacrifice our lives to it, and serve it rather than God, and don’t tell me that is a rare occurrence.
 
Respectfully, you seem to have a Protestant understanding of the term worship. I say this as a former Protestant who long struggled with Our Lady… but with her help, no more 🙂 . “Praise and Worship” events, which you mentioned earlier, are primarily praise… and praise can and should be directed to Our Lady. There are many beautiful hymns that we sing in praise of her.
Now that said, we can offer worship apart from the formal act of the Eucharistic sacrifice. We can offer up ourselves as a living sacrifice - Scripture speaks of this - and that could be done at a “praise and worship” type event… but all of our worship, our sacrifices, must united to the one sacrifice of Christ on the altar, which is the source and summit of Christian worship…the very definition of Christian worship.
 
twf said:
And what Catholic hasn’t been given a Hail Mary as a penance in the confessional? Our assigned penance is definitely obligatory
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Me, I ask not to be give a penance that requires a prayer to Mary or saints… the priest who heard my confession just gave me a different pray for penance. I wasn’t told the Hail Mary prayer was a requirement for absolution.

I was told many time, by many life time Catholics prayers to Mary and saints was not a requirement to be an active participating Catholic.

prayers to someone other than God can not be an obligation, at least not based on the meaning of the word obligation.
 
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The be completely dependent on Mary is to profoundly follow our Lord who asked her for every thing.
 
Luke 7-14 King James Version

And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms; saying unto them, 8 When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; 9 And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. 10 But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee. 11 For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Clearly Jesus wasn’t talking about worship in the sense of what is owing only to God. He meant respect; admiration.

At least some of those who accuse us of worshipping the Blessed Virgin do so because their definition of worship differs from ours. They think you can’t pray to someone unless you worship them.
 
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