The Catholic Church believes that Mary is sacred and holy.
You must be pretty holy to carry God in your womb wouln’t you think?
The ark of the New Covenant is indeed sacred
Catholics also call the bible sacred too (Biblia Sacra)
They have statues of Mary in their churches
And there are statues of Presidents in Washington DC and Kings and Queens in London.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
An image of the person who gave birth to the Word made flesh is graven.
This ties in with the previous verse. Statues are fine as long as you don’t worship them as a God. Catholic do not worship Mary nor statues of her. We honour her, Christ honoured her to you know.
Do you have photos of deceased loved ones at home? Statues (Gnomes?) in your garden? Figurines on your shelves? A NATIVITY set at Christmas.
The verse escapes me at the moment but didn’t in fact God ask Moses to make a statue of a serpent, which would heal people. It was destroyed only when people began worshiping it.
Saint Basil said “whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it” (2132 CCC).
They pray to Mary. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us to pray to Mary,
They pray to Mary because they believe that she intercedes for us. This is not supported by any Scripture, but Scripture states that Jesus intercedes for us.
The angels and saints in heaven are alive (Jn 6:54, Jn 5:24), they are not oblivious to what goes on here on earth (Matt. 18:10, Lk 15:10) and intercede for us to God (Rev. 5:8, Rev. 8:3-4). All though there is only one mediator, (1 Tm. 2:5) Christ, the mediator of the new covenant (Heb 19:15), God likes to share His greatness (Rev. 12:7–9), in fact Paul calls us ‘God’s co-workers,’ (1Cor 3:9). All of this does not equal us with God, it means simply that we work together with Him to further His kingdom. Intercession is good and acceptable to God (1 Tim 2:1-4) especially the prayer of a just person which avails much (Jm 5:16).
Origen: “But not the high priest [Christ] alone prays for those who pray sincerely, but also the angels . . . as also the souls of the saints who have already fallen asleep” (Prayer 11 [A.D. 233]).
Jerome: “You say in your book that while we live we are able to pray for each other, but afterwards when we have died, the prayer of no person for another can be heard. . . . But if the apostles and martyrs while still in the body can pray for others, at a time when they ought still be solicitous about themselves, how much more will they do so after their crowns, victories, and triumphs?” (Against Vigilantius 6 [A.D. 406]).
Augustine: A Christian people celebrates together in religious solemnity the memorials of the martyrs, both to encourage their being imitated and so that it can share in their merits and be aided by their prayers (Against Faustus the Manichean [AD. 400]).
TRANSFIGURATION contact with the dead Matt. 17:3
Thus in the Psalms we pray, “Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, hearkening to the voice of his word! Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers that do his will!” (Ps. 103:20-21). And in Psalm 148, “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his host!” (Ps. 148:1-2).
Catholics believe that Mary never sinned. Again, this is not supported by any Scripture.
Kecharitomene (Lk 1:28) means that Mary was endowed with a permanet fullness of grace in the past (sometime before the angel’s visit) with the effects ongoing throughout her life. And it is grace unless you transalte charis as favor in which case Paul would read ‘justified by favor.’
In lay terms this means Mary is full of grace, which keeps the greek vocative.
Even Luther said "She is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin. . . . God’s grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil” (Jaroslav Pelikan, ed., Luther’s Works (St. Louis: Concordia), vol. 43, 40.)
St. Thomas Aquinas said a similar thing in his Summa.
If we are justified (freed from sin) by grace and Mary has always been full, how could she sin?
Nowere in the bible does it say MARY actually ever sinned. And by the way in birth Jesus recieved Mary’s DNA did he not.
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”
This in from a letter to the Romans NOT Nazareens and I believe it refers to specific Greeks and Jews in Rome.
Paul says that the Romans (3:22) are filled with ALL knowledge. Did they know every itty bitty little thing there is to know
Matthew 24:39 says the flood took them ALL away, yet Noah and his family survived.
Matthew 3:5 says that ALL Judea came to see him, but surely not literally every single Judean came to see him.
In fact in Romans 15:19, Paul says that MANY were made sinners, not all.
They believe that Mary was always a virgin
Mt 1:25 the until in greek deals with the time upto the birth of Christ and NOT after.
Brothers in Hebrew and Aramaic could mean cousin or close family friend. When the OT was put in greek cousins etc were still refered to as brothers and this tradtion continued into the NT.
In Genesis 14:12 Lot is referred to as the son of Abram’s brother but two verses later he is referred to as Abram’s brother.
In Acts we read of 11 Apostles and the Mother of Jesus and his brothers in the upper room. We are told they numbered 120. Take away Mary and the Apostles and it leaves 108.
Mary had 109 children over 30 odd years. I don’t think so.
Only Jesus and Jesus ALONE is ever called A son (singular) of Mary/Joseph.
- and yet we soldier on. 
