I actually consider this an invalid point of debate, for the following reason:
Catholic theology believes that prayer takes three forms:
Latria, which is offered to God alone,
hyperdulia, which translates to âhigh venerationâ and is offered to Mary in her status as Mother of the Saviour, and
dulia, which is offered to the Saints. Only the first one,
latria, is considered worship, since it is directed directly God and relies on Godâs direct power to grant prayers. The other two are intercessory, meaning they are addressed to God indirectly through His saints, who participate in His communion and help us grow in Holiness and closeness to the Lord. But Protestants reject this theology, and consider all prayer to be worship, conveniently chucking all the above theology into the metaphorical garbage can. Your question is nothing more than a tactic commonly used by Protestants to draw an âahaâ moment for yourselves and which is really based on your quite oversimplistic theology which is not suitable for a discussion of Catholicism. Nope. You want to discuss Catholicism, you discuss according to Catholic theology, not Protestant, which was mostly engineered to invalidate the Catholic Church.
Furthermore, hereâs a question for you:
You say you are a Christian who believes in the authority of the Bible. Who do you believe gave this book called the Bible its authority?