Prayer of Pope to Mary: To Whom Would the Apostles have pointed him ..Mary or Jesus?

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What, in the end, is the objection of nonCatholics to the prayers of Catholics?

That Catholics don’t pray to God when they ‘pray to Mary’ or other saints? Well, of course, if the narrow and man-made and relatively recent (within the last 300 years or so) definition of prayer were to be ‘communication with God alone’, then yes, it would APPEAR that prayer to anybody other than God would be wrong.

However, that narrow definition is as I said man-made, narrow and recent. It is not the definition of prayer that the apostles knew, nor the early Christians, nor indeed any Christian (even Martin Luther or Calvin). . .no, it is not a definition that Christians accepted. . .until a few listened to man-made ‘traditions’ and started insisting that THEIR definition be retroactively applied to all Christian teaching.

Protestants who insist on such applications are guilty of the worst sort of intolerance one can imagine.
 
Tantum_ergo said:
To Whom would the apostles point us, Jesus OR Mary?

Both. Mary is united to Jesus as part of the Body of Christ; the spouse of Christ. Everyone knows from Scripture that a man and a woman become, in marriage, one flesh. They are not divided.

Being part of Christ’s spousal body means that any saint is likewise not divided from Jesus. It is Jesus who, as Scripture tells us, makes us ‘gods’. . .yet we are not ourselves above Jesus in being His brothers and sisters. His redemption makes us children of the Father, His life gives us eternal life.

There is no false dichotomy here. There is no attempt to set up Jesus OR Mary, Jesus OR St. Paul, Jesus OR St. Peter, Jesus OR you and I. If we have died with Christ, we live with Him. We are part of Him; He is in us and we are in Him. That is Scriptural, for heaven’s sake!

So those who read St. Paul’s works aren’t listening to St. Paul INSTEAD OF Jesus. Those who pray to St. Paul or others are not praying to them INSTEAD OF Jesus.

Attempting to ‘divorce’ people from Jesus is an attempt to divide the Body of Christ. . .hardly what Jesus taught.
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but why we should pray in names of Mary or in other St?can’t we just pray directly in JESUS name?u said "Being part of Christ’s spousal body means that any saint is likewise not divided from Jesus. It is Jesus who, as Scripture tells us, makes us ‘gods’.then u said"we are not ourselves above Jesus in being His brothers and sisters."saints are united in Christ but not above in JESUS…so it means we cant use there names in praying…i am catholic…help me to undersrand it…correct me if im wrong…GOD BLESS
 
It would also be an excellent idea for many Protestants to become more familiar with the rosary. Not only its history, but its purpose as a tool in Catholic devotions.

Every decade of the Rosary is devoted to a particular aspect of the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. We meditate upon Him as we pray the Our Father, Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

The Hail Mary (source of much Protestant angst) is in its first part wholly Scriptural. Not only that, the focus of the Hail Mary is Jesus. See:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. (Gabriel’s saluation to Mary, found in Scripture.)
Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb (Elizabeth’s greeting to Mary, found in Scripture.)

Now here, we insert the name of Jesus. Blessed is the fruit of your womb, JESUS.

Who then is the focus of this prayer? For what reason is Mary full of grace? For what reason is she blessed? For the FRUIT OF HER WOMB who is JESUS.

BECAUSE Jesus is fruit of her womb, she is ‘Holy Mary.’ “All generations shall call me blessed” (found in Scripture); is there any way that the Mother of God is not made holy by the carrying of Him in her womb? Can you honestly say she is not holy when Scripture speaks of her in the terms it does?

“Mother of God”. The greek Theotokos or ‘God bearer’ was the title given Mary by the earliest Christians. Scripture speaks of the Mother of Christ, of Jesus’s mother. She is the Mother of God, Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death”.
Pray for us sinners. Note that Mary is not asked to ‘save us’, or to redeem us. Such things are for God. No, we ask her to pray for us, now and when we die. Would we not ask any person in the world the same request, as Christians, to pray for us? Why then, would we not ask somebody like Mary to pray for us? When Scripture tells us that God is God OF THE LIVING and that those who die in Christ LIVE IN HIM eternally, why not ask Mary or any other who has died in Christ to pray for us, especially as Scripture tells us the prayer of a righteous person is so powerful?

So we have a Scriptural prayer aligned with other Scriptural prayers, recited as we meditate upon the life of Christ. What a powerful devotion. Why would we not choose to avail ourselves of this? It is Christocentric as indeed is ALL prayer to Mary and the saints, by definition, and thus most Scriptural and worthy.
 
Hi prayerwarrior. Where does it say that we cannot pray to others? If you read Scripture, you will say that St. Paul exhorts us (as does St. James) to pray for him, and to pray for each other. You yourself, I am sure, would ask me to pray for you and I would gladly do so. When we pray to Mary and the saints, we aren’t praying to them ‘alone’. We aren’t praying to them INSTEAD of Jesus. We are praying WITH THEM and asking them to pray WITH US TO GOD.

You don’t turn to your friend in Church and say, Pray for me, and think, "Oh no! I’ve just substituted my friend for GOD! --do you?? Asking somebody to pray for you doesn’t mean you’ve turned them into Jesus, does it?

Why would asking Mary to pray for you be any different?
 
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