My next question...... :)

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Kater30

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Ok, everyone who is not Catholic says the same thing about why they disagree with Catholicism…you guys apparently pray to Mary. 🙂 I have heard from Catholics I know that you do not pray to Mary. When I told a friend (non-Catholic) this she said, “Katie, they all say that”. I doubt that every Catholic that I know would lie about praying to Mary as some underground conspiracy to convert everyone only to trap them into praying to Mary. 🙂 So, what’s your defense? I have heard that it is more like asking Mary to pray for us. So, we ask Mary to pray to God on our behalf…why can’t we just pray to the Lord ourselves??

God Bless,
Katie 🙂
 
You don’t have to pray to Mary but …He never refuses his mother… Just think about it…The Wedding Feast at Cana… I started His Ministry didn’t it?

Annunciata:)
 
I have always found it someone disingenuous that many of my fundamentalist friends and co-workers have such a problem with us asking Mary or someone in the communion of saints to intercede for us. They say that just go to God directly, but yet they seem to have no problem asking other members in their church to intercede for them. I usually turn the question back on them and ask them to justify their action of asking someone else to intecede for them instead of going directly to God. I have yet to receive an adequate defense.
:blessyou:
 
I think that those who say “we don’t pray to Mary” are being defensive and really mean “we don’t worship Mary”.

In practice we should all pray to Mary and Saints. There is only one mediator to the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. But how many mediators are their to Jesus? We actually honor Him when we ask His holy creations to be part of the sanctifying process.

Our most infamous Catholic detractors will attempt to confuse the issue with meaning of worship and honor. They give it thier best shot and they fall so very short of the truth.

There are tracts on this site, documents on the www.ewtn.com site in their library, and many good books on Mary and Saints. While it would be great if you could ask any Catholic to explain a Catholic truth, that is not possible. The current adult generation is greatly lacking in good understanding. And it only follows that
1] they don’t really know their faith
2] they can’t explain their faith
3] they are easily led out of their faith

MrS
 
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Kater30:
Ok, everyone who is not Catholic says the same thing about why they disagree with Catholicism…you guys apparently pray to Mary. 🙂 I have heard from Catholics I know that you do not pray to Mary. When I told a friend (non-Catholic) this she said, “Katie, they all say that”. I doubt that every Catholic that I know would lie about praying to Mary as some underground conspiracy to convert everyone only to trap them into praying to Mary. 🙂 So, what’s your defense? I have heard that it is more like asking Mary to pray for us. So, we ask Mary to pray to God on our behalf…why can’t we just pray to the Lord ourselves??

God Bless,
Katie 🙂
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Of course we can and do. We (and you) also ask others to pray for us, like “Pastor, can you say a special prayer for healing for my syster?”. We may also the whole Church to pray for us. I have heard pastors say “And now let us join in intercessory pray for our sister Katie.” For us, the Church include the Church Militant as well as the Church Triumphant. It’s really no different.
 
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Kater30:
Ok, everyone who is not Catholic says the same thing about why they disagree with Catholicism…you guys apparently pray to Mary. 🙂 I have heard from Catholics I know that you do not pray to Mary. When I told a friend (non-Catholic) this she said, “Katie, they all say that”. I doubt that every Catholic that I know would lie about praying to Mary as some underground conspiracy to convert everyone only to trap them into praying to Mary. 🙂 So, what’s your defense? I have heard that it is more like asking Mary to pray for us. So, we ask Mary to pray to God on our behalf…why can’t we just pray to the Lord ourselves??

God Bless,
Katie 🙂
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As a recent convert from Southern Baptist, I asked many of those questions myself. When I actually listened to the prayers to Mary, I always heard, pray for me. It made sense. If someone were in heaven, why couldn’t they pray for us? I’ve asked people to pray for me and I prayed for others. Do we have to have others pray for us? Of course not, but it never hurts.
 
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Kater30:
I doubt that every Catholic that I know would lie about praying to Mary as some underground conspiracy to convert everyone only to trap them into praying to Mary
God Bless,
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:bigyikes:O my gosh, Kater! I guess we’re busted now! I guess it is no longer a secret that we really would love it if everybody converted and came to the fullness of faith in Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. And that includes coming to appreciate an appropriate respect for that impossible mother of his. What a subversive: ordering people to do whatever her son tells them to do. The nerve! :love:

Think about it, Kater: Have you ever heard a Catholic say that we don’t pray directly to God? We do it all the time.

We also take advantage of the privileged sanctity of those who love him best when we ask Mary and the saints to pray on our behalf. After all, they are with God, and thus, they are more alive than we are, more replete with his divine charity.
 
Katie,

Thanks for your honesty! When I converted my parents did assume that some massive conspiracy was in place that would not teach me the full truth of Catholicism until after I was a member.

Just to go how hard that would have been, I was an “almost” Catholic for four years. I had been attending a weekly mass and singing with the musicians for a year before that.

So over four years of attending mass – I even helped plan a few, too – being engaged to a man who is incredibly honest for most of that time, attending many different churches for weddings, funerals, babptisms, etc and all these people kept a major set of secrets about the fullness of the faith from me.

I am so sad that it took me so many years to get past my Marian biases. Once I learned to pray the Rosary, my spiritual mother has helped me to know her Son so much better. First, the Rosary is a prayer to the Mother of God (see the scripture about the visitation of Mary with Elizabeth) to help you know her son.

My brother is still a fundamentalist and that pleases my mom. He is very devout and started taking notes in Sunday school when he was 9 yrs. old. Really! So do you think my mom doesn’t tell her friends about her son and his Biblical knowledge? She takes her prayer requests to him, too. All that is very legit right?
Mary and Jesus are much like that – except Jesus is even more perfect than my brother – just don’t tell my mom.

My brother asks my mom to pray for him and his prayer concerns (I get left out because I am Catholic which equals godless idolator) but again my brother can ask my mom to pray for him and that is OK.

So, if Mary is a typical Jewish mother – she is the first one to be right that her son is God. She will have great pleasure teaching you about her Son.

Her Son will listen to her requests because he loves her and is more intimately involved with her than other creature ever made. What a special bond they share.

How can we mere mortals even begin to show our faces to the One who suffered for our sins? His mother will bring you to him. It is sheer genius to let her in your prayer life.
 
Yes Yes Yes !!! đź‘Ť I absolutly pray to Our Blessed Mother. AND St. Joseph, AND St. Francis, AND St. Anne, And St. Bartholomew, AND MY dearly departed father, grandmother, AND to my guardian angel, AND to my Patron Saint whose name I do not know.
Do I worship any of these??? NO NO NO NO NO!!!
Do I talk to God? Every DAY!!!
Do I love them YES! They are my friends and I ask for their help.
Am I trying to hide it?? NEVER!
 
Nothing wrong with praying to Mary. “Praying to” does not mean “worship.” It means communication. Sometimes you just need to have a talk with your Mother.

If you accept Jesus as your personal Saviour, why not accept his Mother as your personal Mother, and give her the same honor He does?
 
ridesawhitehors said:
Yes Yes Yes !!! đź‘Ť I absolutly pray to Our Blessed Mother. AND St. Joseph, . . . . .
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This just confuses the issue and does not help our separated brotheren. Most protestants don’t know the difference between prayer and worship. You need to use their language to communicate clearly to them. We don’t pray to Mary and the saints in the way they understand prayer. What we do is ask them in the same way we ask the whole Church to pray for us.
 
You better believe that I absolutely, positively, every single day pray to the Mother of God our Most Blessed Mother Mary!!!:yup: Why wouldn’t I want to pray to the lady who gave birth to Jesus?
 
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RBushlow:
. . . Most protestants don’t know the difference between prayer and worship.
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This astonishes me.

Would it be better to say that we “talk to” Mary and the saints?

Or is it the protestant view that we’re not allowed to talk to anyone in heaven, except God?
 
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Kater30:
Ok, everyone who is not Catholic says the same thing about why they disagree with Catholicism…you guys apparently pray to Mary. 🙂 I have heard from Catholics I know that you do not pray to Mary. When I told a friend (non-Catholic) this she said, “Katie, they all say that”. I doubt that every Catholic that I know would lie about praying to Mary as some underground conspiracy to convert everyone only to trap them into praying to Mary. 🙂 So, what’s your defense? I have heard that it is more like asking Mary to pray for us. So, we ask Mary to pray to God on our behalf…why can’t we just pray to the Lord ourselves??

God Bless,
Katie 🙂
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Katie, we do pray to Mary, but we do not worship her.

Have you ever asked someone to pray for you. Or have you ever prayed for someone. That is basically what we are doing when we pray to Mary. To pray means to ask. Escept we believe that Mary’s prayers to God are greater than ours because she is perfectly purified by Christ and she said yes to God in all ways. When we pray the hail Mary the last line of the prayer is
pray for us sinners at the hour of our death. Amen
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JimG:
This astonishes me.

Would it be better to say that we “talk to” Mary and the saints?

Or is it the protestant view that we’re not allowed to talk to anyone in heaven, except God?
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If you’re going to effectively communicate the Catholic Faith to someone, you need to try to present the information in a way that they will understand. To most Protestants, prayer and worship equate. Worshiping something other then God is idolatry. Therefore, they equate this prayer with idolatry. Since we are NOT worshiping Mary, the Angels or Saints, we need to go the extra step and illustrate what we are doing in a way that they will understand. So we might say something like the following: “You may ask another person or the whole congregation to pray for you, that is exactly what we are doing.” This is both accurate and understandable for our separated brethren.
 
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