Mary Worship

[pocohombre]

test

 

[Brigid34]

Why do Protestants dislike Catholics and say that we worship mary & other statues? They even go so far as to say Catholicism is the “occult”? why are some protestants so hateful towards us?

Some people hate what they don’t understand. It’s just part of our human condition.

 

[pocohombre]

Some people hate what they don’t understand. It’s just part of our human condition.

Do you understand the perceived “hatred” others may have toward CC? They may understand fully enough to hate not what they don’t understand, but what they correctly understand.That is part of human nature also. In fact we are to hate whatever may impede,distort,supplant the truth about the kingdom. We are to love all, especially those at odds with us,even while shaking the dust of our shoes as we depart on different paths.

 

[pocohombre]

Poco…are there many truths or only one truth?

I suggest you read this article and thhe book the article is about: catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0097.html

Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation
MARK BRUMLEY
Louis Bouyer contends that the only way to safeguard the positive principles of the Reformation is through the Catholic Church. For only in the Catholic Church are the positive principles the Reformation affirmed found without the negative elements the Reformers mistakenly affixed to them.

Martin Luther

---

Interpreting the Reformation is complicated business. But like many complicated things, it can be simplified sufficiently well that even non-experts can get the gist of it. Here’s what seems a fairly accurate but simplified summary of the issue: The break between Catholics and Protestants was either a tragic necessity (to use Jaroslav Pelikan’s expression) or it was tragic because unnecessary.
Many Protestants see the Catholic/Protestant split as a tragic necessity, although the staunchly anti-Catholic kind of Protestant often sees nothing tragic about it. Or if he does, the tragedy is that there ever was such a thing as the Roman Catholic Church that the Reformers had to separate from. His motto is “Come out from among them” and five centuries of Christian disunity has done nothing to cool his anti-Roman fervor.

Thanks, read only portion cause of time but found it boomeranging on the one point i did read, that is CC has same problem article says Protestants have about assumption of justification .

 

[pablope]

Thanks, read only portion cause of time but found it boomeranging on the one point i did read, that is CC has same problem article says Protestants have about assumption of justification .

Which part is that? Can you point to the particular paragraph?

This is what the article (what is in the book, the author is a lutheran):

The Reformers held this view for two reasons. First, because they came to think it necessary in order to uphold the gratuitousness of justification. Second, because they thought the Bible taught it. On both points, argues Bouyer, the Reformers were mistaken. There is neither a logical nor a biblical reason why God cannot effect a change in man without undercutting justification by grace alone. Whatever righteousness comes to be in man as a result of justification is a gift, as much any other gift God bestows on man. Nor does the Bible’s treatment of “imputed” righteousness imply that justification is not imparted. On these points, the Reformers were simply wrong:

 

[pocohombre]

Which part is that? Can you point to the particular paragraph?

This is what the article (what is in the book, the author is a lutheran):

The Reformers held this view for two reasons. First, because they came to think it necessary in order to uphold the gratuitousness of justification. Second, because they thought the Bible taught it. On both points, argues Bouyer, the Reformers were mistaken. There is neither a logical nor a biblical reason why God cannot effect a change in man without undercutting justification by grace alone. Whatever righteousness comes to be in man as a result of justification is a gift, as much any other gift God bestows on man. Nor does the Bible’s treatment of “imputed” righteousness imply that justification is not imparted. On these points, the Reformers were simply wrong:

I think it was about presumption of salvation. Protestants have more of presumption of a type of OSAS,that is you are born again or you are not and the perseverance is not questioned. My take is that Catholics presume cause you are water bapized,confirmed, and remain out of mortal sin you are saved/ persevering/born agian. Both are presumptious .P’s presume persverance after getting saved /born again. CC presumes saved /born again by 2/3 sacraments. CC may rightly pick/critique P’s for lack of "perseverance etc,but fail to see their own presumptions,.hence I wrote “boomerang”, seeing the speck in other’s eye but not seeing plank in one’s own eye.

 

[pablope]

I think it was about presumption of salvation. Protestants have more of presumption of a type of OSAS,that is you are born again or you are not and the perseverance is not questioned. My take is that Catholics presume cause you are water bapized,confirmed, and remain out of mortal sin you are saved/ persevering/born agian. Both are presumptious .P’s presume persverance after getting saved /born again. CC presumes saved /born again by 2/3 sacraments. CC may rightly pick/critique P’s for lack of "perseverance etc,but fail to see their own presumptions,.hence I wrote “boomerang”, seeing the speck in other’s eye but not seeing plank in one’s own eye.

So Poco…instead of learning, getting something from the article…making you think and meditate…what you instead see are faults, fault finding…

 

[DAML72]

I was a hardcore reformed protestant for years. When I first became a Christian I went to a Southern Baptist Church. I had NO IDEA what the various denominations taught. I just went with a friend, “found religion” and walked down the aisle!

Early in my Christian training I was approached by the youth minister who wanted to make sure this teenager hadn’t fallen for peer pressure and I had truly made a decision for Christ. He walked me through the whole sin, salvation, Blood of Christ, atonement, etc. theology. (A great deal of what he said was the truth.) BUT…he went on to describe the protestant reformation and how the reformers had rescued Christianity from the “Whore of Babylon!” He explained in great detail how Constantine converted to Christianity and tried to accommodate the pagans in his new state religion, Catholicism. He accommodated them by allowing them to continue their polytheistic worship and superimpose Christian personalities onto the existing pantheon of gods.

Now, its very likely that this well intentioned minister was simply repeating a lot of what his own teachers had told him, and the information with which he was indoctrinated in seminary.

The point is, protestant Christians are taught from the very beginning that Catholicism is evil. (And some of them really think EVIL. Like, the devil incarnate kind of evil.)

As you can see, I’m Catholic now. So there’s still hope for the rest of them!

Not all Protestants are taught these things - for example, your mainstream Northern Presbyterian is not going to be thinking that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon. They probably haven’t even ever heard of the Whore of Babylon. LOL!

Protestant teaching depends on the denomination, of which there are how many tens of thousands now? Some are just taught about corruption in the church, Martin Luther’s theses, Calvinist apologetics, etc.

When I was growing up, I remember one of the things my mother told me was that Catholics have to go to a priest to receive forgiveness for their sins, we don’t need to do that- we believe we can go right to God. Actually, I think that was about all she told me - and probably that there were only two sacraments. I came up with the idolatry thing all on my own - especially after living in South America for a year - there you have people offering little gifts to the statue of Mary, having processions, etc. From the outside, it does look a lot like worship.

I think it comes from a lack of understanding the concept of the Communion of Saints. I would say the Apostle’s creed in church, but I had no idea what the Communion of Saints was until the age of 40 - just a few months ago. When I found out that it’s just the teaching that the Saints are alive in Heaven and we could ask them to pray for us, I was like - ‘Whoa! There are Christians who believe this too? I believe that!’ I don’t think 24 hours went by before I started praying the Rosary.

But those people who are militant in their anti-Catholicism - that’s something else all together. As one of my priests says, ‘There’s something else going on there.’ I think all we can do is pray that they find the truth.

 

[DAML72]

I would also like to point out that Catholics, as a general rule, don’t do much to change these ideas. Evangelization is pretty weak. I have known a lot of Catholics in my life - some have been best friends. I have NEVER, ever had one talk to me about the Catholic church. The Holy Spirit did all the work to plant the seed in my brain.

I understand where this comes from - I’ve only been part of the church for a few months (just was confirmed a month ago) and I already find myself biting my tongue a lot. There is so much anti-Catholicism out there, it’s hard to muster up the desire sometimes to make yourself a target, but we really must try to do better.

 

[perro_sarnoso]

Why do Protestants dislike Catholics and say that we worship mary & other statues? They even go so far as to say Catholicism is the “occult”? why are some protestants so hateful towards us?

because they refuse to be like those who are like my brothers and my sisters and my mother…who listen to the word and live it.

Like Mary.

 

[pocohombre]

So Poco…instead of learning, getting something from the article…making you think and meditate…what you instead see are faults, fault finding…

Did not read the article,just quick scan.Is discerning finding fault? Not sure but doesn’t the article discern, find fault? Have not read it carefully like you have.

 

[pocohombre]

because they refuse to be like those who are like my brothers and my sisters and my mother…who listen to the word and live it.

Like Mary.

ouch!

 

[Skye_Ariel]

That’s **not **the Catholic teaching, and the Catholic teaching was not developed by the Catholic Church or the papacy, but is part of that Scripture that protestantism has undermined and of that Sacred Tradition that protestantism denies by adhering to “sola scriptura”. The bottom line being that much of protestantism is based on new ideas and concepts, while the Church sticks to an ever-growing, non-contradicting Tradition…one that can take each and every novel protestant idea and refute it as contradictory, unscriptural, and unsound from the standpoint of reason.

It’s very easy to point our fingers at a fact that appears wrong in the modern context without taking into consideration all the other factors of the day. One example: Latin. In a world with very clean-cut languages and the ease to translate texts into those languages, it’s easy to criticize the Church for trying to keep all things in one universal language. But back when we had thousands of odd dialects with no clear grammatical basis, no clear structure, no way to translate the Sacred Scripture into those languages without even taking the risk of desecrating her by conveying erroneous ideas, the Church had her temporary, pastoral reasons to make certain choices. Do they still apply today? Perhaps not. Besides, look at the fruits of the rejection of the teaching authority of the Church: hundreds of mistranslated Bibles, over forty thousand “Christian” denominations, each doing pretty much whatever pleases them more according to “their” understanding of “their” Bible, and 800 million Christians scattered amidst them…is this what God wanted, rather than a nicely organized visible Church with authority to teach and understand Scripture?

You mention the Popes having armies. Have you forgotten what sort of structure we had in the world? Kingdoms and emperors hungry for power. The Pope represented Christianity and was the visible Vicar of the King of Kings. He had to be “in the world while not of the world”. He had to be one of the emperors, in fact the one who could crown and depose them, because all kings and emperors saw their authority coming from God, and he was the representative of God on earth. This also means that he was the only one who could be a mediator between clashing kingdoms and empires. He was the United Nations. If you want to see how God is involved in this aspect of the Church, study what took place at the time of Napoleon.

Does this figure of papacy still apply today? Perhaps not. We’ve seen popes give up the crown and throne quite a few decades ago, and as you can see, in the XX and XXI Century, as monarchies are no longer the way in which countries are organized, we see a papacy no longer looking much as such, with very humble popes that walk amidst the people, travel, dress modestly, and who are giving a greater role to the bishops (though, as in every structure that does not want to fall into chaos, there can be only one man saying the last word). Also we forget way too often who these popes and cardinals and bishops are. Most often they are average people, whom you’d have never expected they would have become overseers of the largest and most ancient Christian community in the world. I mean, just in the last century we had an Italian son of farmers from a town called “Under-the-hill”, a Polish who worked as a miner and studied in a clandestine seminary, an average German kid who embraced consecrated life and whose mind allowed him to become a professor and eventually one of the most brilliant minds of the Church, and now an Argentinian son of two Italian immigrants who chose to become a priest and even as a cardinal archbishop was known for living in a small apartment, cooking his own food, and taking the bus. And if you look at the over 200 popes that came before them, you’ll find that most were quite extraordinary people, and that those who were not up to their office at least never taught anything erroneous in faith and morals regardless of how they behaved…for the office may not fail in teaching, though he who holds it is not made impeccable and may fail in practicing the teachings.

As for the rest of your remarks, I will only say without any fear of being refuted that without the Catholic Church we would not have civilization as we know it today, with its human and civil rights, its democratic principles, its ideas of social justice. We would have that which is slowly approaching as the values of Christianity are slowly declining: a state of nature as described by Hobbes, a purely utilitarian, hedonistic, and relativist society in which the only absolute statement would be: homo homini lupus.

Exactly, not to mention that before the printing press most people could not read and had no Bibles so they used statues to represent characters and events of the Bible which is why there is the tradition of statues. It’s easy to look at it in today’s context and think oh they worship and pray to statues but in the past they looked at statues of Mary and Jesus etc to remind them of God’s Word the Bible. Today we can just read the Bible, back then the Bible was told to them and relics were used as reminders etc. Now they are just a part of our tradition. Sola Scriptura made no sense in the past when people did not have their own personal Bible they could study.

 

[Aussieman88]

I call it the demon spirit of religion.

 

[JohnR77]

I will paraphrase Archbishop Fulton Sheen – millions of people hate what they think the Catholic Church teaches, but only a handful hate what the Church actually teaches.

The Roman church is the Whore of Babylon in Revelation. I could go on and on and on.

“we”) Catholics do not do enough to evangelize the faith as Truth teaches us. The laity is not out there preaching the gospel as we know it.

Great post Trevor. Thanks.

Scroll to the bottom of the following link to see my response to
The Catholic Church being accused of being the Whore of Babylon.
One article is based on Scott Hahn’s notes.
Although I will add more arguments about the city being on “many waters” at a later time.

defendingthebride.com/church.html

Some open minded Protestants pray the rosary. The Hail Mary is a Christ centered Biblical prayer.

defendingthebride.com/co/cool.html

Some Protestants try to place a false dichotomy, a complete separation, between God and creation. Any focus or attention to anyone besides Christ is wrongly seen as taking away from the glory of God. They fail to see God as the greatest Creator or Artist we can imagine. He is not insecure. He takes satisfaction when we notice His greatest work, which is the hearts of the Saints purified by His grace.

www.defendingthebride.com/direct/direct2.html#vat

For some Protestant there is confusion on the word “prayer.” They are often accustomed to “ only praying to God” and so the words “prayer” and “Worship” can almost be synonymous. In order to clarify that for Catholics “prayer” means simply to ask, not to worship, see

defendingthebride.com/ma3/only2.html

To respond to this false accusation that we Catholics worship Mary, I made the following web page.

Proof that Catholics clearly teach to worship only God and not to worship Mary

defendingthebride.com/ma3/only18.html

I hope that helps.
John

 

[JohnR77]

Sorry, I meant to say,
“Some Protestants try to place a false dichotomy, a complete separation, between God’s grace and creation.” Luther believed God’s grace just covered over the saved individual but that he was still just manure. Catholics believe God’s grace comes into the individual and transforms him.