Question on the perpetual virginity of Mary...

[gntlmnr]

In your point 4 you say that Catholics do not pray “TO” Mary but really they do. A prayer is a request. In the Hail Mary, it is requesting that she prays for you but you are praying (requesting of her) to Mary. I fully understand that you can’t pray to Mary for a new bike but you can pray to Mary and ask her to ask her son. That I get.

When you ask a friend to pray for you, does that mean you are praying to that friend?

 

[Brandall]

When you ask a friend to pray for you, does that mean you are praying to that friend?

When it’s used as a request in a legal brief, does that make the judge a deity?

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=819297&highlight=do+we+pray+to+mary

 

[gntlmnr]

When it’s used as a request in a legal brief, does that make the judge a deity?

Mary is NOT deity in Catholicism.

 

[Brandall]

Mary is NOT deity in Catholicism.

I did not say she was. You need to relax a bit. decaff is your friend.

 

[gntlmnr]

I did not say she was. You need to relax a bit. decaff is your friend.

Thank you for the advice. I am very relaxed. Obviously your post was not clear to me, and that’s why my answer might have been irrelevant to you. Please clarify then.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

nmgauss:

True peer-reviewed scholarship has no agenda other than seeking unbiased truth. There is no such thing as heresy or blasphemy in scholarship. Only those bent on protecting their beliefs are suspect in their statements. There is a plethora of wordy writings that are of a preachy nature. I totally ignore these.

I’m going to assume you are pretty naive. There is no such thing as unbiased scholarship. All scholarship proceeds from certain given premises that themselves may or may not be provable or biased. Scholarship builds on scholarship, whether the foundation scholarship is agenda driven or not. All that really matters in scholarship (as with all things) is the credibility of the source. So if the source is credible in a scientific community that prides itself on Atheistic first principles, then that source, driven as it is by an agenda, is considered to be pure unbiased truth.

Just as a liberal will watch CNN for HIS unbiased truth and the conservative will watch FOX news for HIS unbiased truth.

You should develop your OWN powers of critical thinking. Then YOU can decide who has the truth and who hasn’t. But for now, you are swallowing anything which comes packaged as “unbiased” truth, which is not acceptable to critical thinkers. e.g. “true peer reviewed scholarship.”

 

[Brandall]

Thank you for the advice. I am very relaxed. Obviously your post was not clear to me, and that’s why my answer might have been irrelevant to you. Please clarify then.

Perhaps this should be in a different thread but I’ll share an article from this website. catholic.com/blog/tim-staples/is-prayer-synonymous-with-worship

I don’t know how you feel about Mr. Staples but I consider him an authority. You will see that he uses the term “Praying to Saints” numerous times because that is what it is. He makes the point far better than I ever could.

I may be wrong but you seem to have the idea that when you pray to someone, they have to be a deity. That is not so and I pointed that out. It is a common line in most requests of the court that “We pray for xxxxx”. Which is correct because they are making a request. That type of request does not deify the court.

To everyone else, I apologize for derailing this thread. I hope it can carry on.

 

[gntlmnr]

Perhaps this should be in a different thread but I’ll share an article from this website. catholic.com/blog/tim-staples/is-prayer-synonymous-with-worship

I don’t know how you feel about Mr. Staples but I consider him an authority. You will see that he uses the term “Praying to Saints” numerous times because that is what it is. He makes the point far better than I ever could.

I may be wrong but you seem to have the idea that when you pray to someone, they have to be a deity. That is not so and I pointed that out. It is a common line in most requests of the court that “We pray for xxxxx”. Which is correct because they are making a request. That type of request does not deify the court.

To everyone else, I apologize for derailing this thread. I hope it can carry on.

Thank you for the clarification. I will read the link when I have some time.

 

[ezeekl]

I have no religious beliefs. I was raised in a godless home, although my grandparents were devout Christians. Neither my father or mother paid any attention to the church.

BINGO ! ! !

Wolf in sheep’s clothing alert.

 

[nmgauss]

I’m going to assume you are pretty naive. There is no such thing as unbiased scholarship. All scholarship proceeds from certain given premises that themselves may or may not be provable or biased. Scholarship builds on scholarship, whether the foundation scholarship is agenda driven or not. All that really matters in scholarship (as with all things) is the credibility of the source. So if the source is credible in a scientific community that prides itself on Atheistic first principles, then that source, driven as it is by an agenda, is considered to be pure unbiased truth.

The basis of scholarship is verifiable facts. How can one have an agenda when the main effort is to gather facts, interpret them, and have others offer their interpretation of the same facts. It is peer-reviewed interpretations of those facts that receive the most important attention. That is the way Aristotle thought, and it is the foundation of science. It is the adoption of Plato’s a priori ideas based only on the mind that has resulted in so much distortion in ideas about our surroundings.

In Darwin’s discoveries, he was not out to prove anything. He brought back hundreds of pounds of specimens and then studied them for many years. He had others look at those same specimens. Writings on those same specimens were attempts at analysis and interpretation.

In Botany and Zoology, there is a great effort to maintain large collections of specimens so that others may study them. and define species. Taxonomy is the discipline of classification. Huge manuals have been written describing these species to the finest detail. There is no agenda in compiling all this information other than to provide accurate accounts of observations.

 

[po18guy]

Even works designed to prove a point are suspect.

So, you reject clinical trials of new medications?

I have no religious beliefs. I was raised in a godless home, although my grandparents were devout Christians. Neither my father or mother paid any attention to the church.

By way of full disclosure, you are atheist.

As to your participation in this thread: the subject is from the scriptures, which you do not believe. The person is Mary, whom you may very well believe to be nothing more than a literary device. So, one wonders why you are here in the first place.

 

[nmgauss]

So, you reject clinical trials of new medications?

If careful clinical trials are conducted and published in reputable journals, the methods are a standard part of the reports. The object is to detect any difference between the tested medication and a placebo. If statistically significant differences are reported (assuming that enough tests have been performed), then replication of the original clinical trials are conducted by other scientists. If the same results are reported by others, then the medication is judged to exhibit significance. Whether the exhibited differences were desired is another question.

By way of full disclosure, you are atheist.

I like to characterize myself as having indifference to religion. It has not been an integral part of my almost eight decades of life. My father and mother had a cynical attitude toward religion and so do my brothers and their families. I just don’t feel it is important to me.

As to your participation in this thread: the subject is from the scriptures, which you do not believe. The person is Mary, whom you may very well believe to be nothing more than a literary device. So, one wonders why you are here in the first place.

Why does it matter what I believe?

I find it intellectually stimulating to toss these ideas around. As a result, I have learned a lot about the Bible and Christianity. My reading has extended into Judaism and Islam.

I don’t want to oppose Catholicism or other types of Christianity. I do want to understand how the different belief systems developed, and to analyze the supporting literature.

 

[gntlmnr]

I appreciate your long answer but it didn’t address the subject. I don’t understand what importance it is if Mary was perpetually virginal but it isn’t a big hang up. It just isn’t something that, at this time, provides any thing for me.

I was trying to think why the subject of the perpetual virginity of Mary is important to me, and how it affects my life. Well, as a matter of fact, I went to a Catholic school all my life, and when we were taught Catechism, this subject was not a preoccupation or a hang-up in any of those classes at all. The subject of the perpetual virginity of Mary was just simply mentioned to us as a belief that the Catholic Church believed in throughout history, and we moved on to other subjects without being given any biblical proof or any biblical evidence as to why the Church held that belief.

As a proof to you that the perpetual virginity of Mary was not a Catholic hang-up, when Evangelical Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses approach Catholics to discuss religion, and when they attack the perpetual virginity of Mary, great many Catholics are thrown into a loop and they have absolutely no defense at all, and that did include me (I think Catholics nowadays may be more prepared than they were in the past) . When I was approached by Evangelical Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses about this subject, this was always the first subject that was brought up, because they knew exactly that Catholics are very poorly prepared to defend this particular point. I, personally, could not defend this belief at all, because I was not prepared at all to defend it. Now and after I was faced with so many attacks from Evangelical Christians and from Jehovah’s Witnesses, this has become an important issue to me, because now I simply want to know the THRUTH. Why do I want to know the THRUTH? Because the TRUTH is not going to affect my belief about only Mary, but it is also going to affect the credibility of the Catholic Church as a whole to me, and I am going to question every single teaching that the Catholic Church taught me, and that does include what the Church taught me about Christ himself.

So now I think it would be more appropriate of us to ask Evangelical Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses as to why this particular subject is of any importance to them, and why they are going on a crusade to convince Catholics that Mary did not remain a virgin.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

The basis of scholarship is verifiable facts. How can one have an agenda when the main effort is to gather facts, interpret them, and have others offer their interpretation of the same facts. It is peer-reviewed interpretations of those facts that receive the most important attention. That is the way Aristotle thought, and it is the foundation of science. It is the adoption of Plato’s a priori ideas based only on the mind that has resulted in so much distortion in ideas about our surroundings.

In Darwin’s discoveries, he was not out to prove anything. He brought back hundreds of pounds of specimens and then studied them for many years. He had others look at those same specimens. Writings on those same specimens were attempts at analysis and interpretation.

In Botany and Zoology, there is a great effort to maintain large collections of specimens so that others may study them. and define species. Taxonomy is the discipline of classification. Huge manuals have been written describing these species to the finest detail. There is no agenda in compiling all this information other than to provide accurate accounts of observations.

Hold on there padawan! When I commented on “scholarship’s bias” I was referring to your quote:

I would like to locate the earliest document in which the Apostle’s Creed is laid out. If none of the original pieces of writing by the Apostle’s themselves survives, then we are left only with what Irenaeus and Tertullian wrote 130 to 180 years later. Whatever spin both people may have introduced is what we have to deal with.*** It has been determined by scholars of religious literature that these writings had a purpose over and above recording what actually happened. Enhancing Christianity was the main reason why they were written. ***The same can be said for the Gospels.

This kind of scholarship is hardly scientific. It is exactly the kind of biased scholarship I was referring to.

Now I will agree, sometimes the scholarship is useful, but sometimes detrimental. Just because it is found in a “peer reviewed journal” hardly means it comes with a stamp of “unbiased truth”. It may or may not be biased OR truthful.