The Black Madonna in Cartago

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Ok, Now I understand what my friend is talking about when he tells me of the small mary statute in Costa Rica. From his experience, he has seen people walk on there knees to the Church to praise this statue. Now, I love the Blessed Mother, and have utmost respect for Her. But does this constitute Idolatry? Walking on your knees to this small statue of Mary and praising her in a manor that almost is described as worship??? I dont know too much about this relic or statue… Anyone have any info???:eek:
 
I searched it and didn’t find anything, probably didnt do good enough job. I look forward to answers to your question! 🍿
 
What you are talking is something called “manda” and sorry as I don’t.know.any specific word in English to describe this. It is not idolatry. What happens is that people go to the virgin to pray, and just to give you and example, let’s say that the person has a parent dying with cancer, so they go to pray to the virgin Mary so she can be the intercessor to Jesus to make the miracle of curing that parent with cancer, and they make an offering to the virgin Mary along the lines of please intercede for my parent to be cured of cancer and if my parent gets cured, I promise to you that I am going to.come here and walk from x point to y point on my knees. Then the parent gets cured and the people go and do their manda of walking on their knees. This is very common in Latin America and is very common in Mexico in the temple of Guadalupe. Also some people offer the knee walking as sacrifice for the redemption of the sins of the world (frequently again in Guadalupe and in fatiima too) and others do it as mortification, so no there is no idolatry involved here.
 
marymary1975 said:
What you are talking is something called “manda” and sorry as I don’t.know.any specific word in English to describe this. It is not idolatry. What happens is that people go to the virgin to pray, and just to give you and example, let’s say that the person has a parent dying with cancer, so they go to pray to the virgin Mary so she can be the intercessor to Jesus to make the miracle of curing that parent with cancer, and they make an offering to the virgin Mary along the lines of please intercede for my parent to be cured of cancer and if my parent gets cured, I promise to you that I am going to.come here and walk from x point to y point on my knees. Then the parent gets cured and the people go and do their manda of walking on their knees. This is very common in Latin America and is very common in Mexico in the temple of Guadalupe. Also some people offer the knee walking as sacrifice for the redemption of the sins of the world (frequently again in Guadalupe and in fatiima too) and others do it as mortification, so no there is no idolatry involved here.
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How about this? Go to number 5

listverse.com/2012/07/30/top-10-bizarre-miracles/
 
It just seems weird to me because its a statue of Mary and they crawl on their knees a far distance to this statue and the prayer or creed they say to it just seems wrong. Its almost as if they believe the stone itself heals, not in an intercessory way, but the actual stone of Mary heals. I have no words for this. It sets off some red flags for me. They pray to the statue - not the Lord which is what makes it a little uncomfortable. And I understand intercessory prayers of the Saints and such, but this is truly bizarre to me. I apologize if I offend anyone who is accustomed to this particular Statue… 🤷
 
RaiseMeUp said:
It just seems weird to me because its a statue of Mary and they crawl on their knees a far distance to this statue and the prayer or creed they say to it just seems wrong. Its almost as if they believe the stone itself heals, not in an intercessory way, but the actual stone of Mary heals. I have no words for this. It sets off some red flags for me. They pray to the statue - not the Lord which is what makes it a little uncomfortable. And I understand intercessory prayers of the Saints and such, but this is truly bizarre to me. I apologize if I offend anyone who is accustomed to this particular Statue… 🤷
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I agree with you, it seems a little odd. I understand crawling before the Blessed Sacrament but a statue?? I posted a link to a site that showed a priest holding the statue like as in exposition of the blessed sacrament manner. It seems very odd.
 
RaiseMeUp said:
It just seems weird to me because its a statue of Mary and they crawl on their knees a far distance to this statue and the prayer or creed they say to it just seems wrong. Its almost as if they believe the stone itself heals, not in an intercessory way, but the actual stone of Mary heals. I have no words for this. It sets off some red flags for me. They pray to the statue - not the Lord which is what makes it a little uncomfortable. And I understand intercessory prayers of the Saints and such, but this is truly bizarre to me. I apologize if I offend anyone who is accustomed to this particular Statue… 🤷
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I don’t think is offensive thinking is weird because believe me, I was as surprised when I went to Fatima and saw what the people does there, but this is exactly the same thing you are going to see in Fatima near the image of the virgin, in lourdes, in Guadalupe and in Any catholic shrine. I would be careful in saying that they are praying to the statute as under that logic you can say that Pope JPII was comitting idolatry when he went to Fatima as he was praying to a statute, or that when.he went to pray in front of the holy shroud he was praying to a piece of cloth. You can say under that same logic that in lourdes people are praying to water or to a cave. They are not praying to a piece of stone, they are praying to the Virgin Mary. And how do you know if the creed is wrong if they pray in different languages? The fact that you don’t know what is that their praying doesn’t make it weird, is that you are not familiar with it.
 
I understand that. The prayer was translated into English and it just didn’t seem right. My whole interest in finding out about this was when I was defending the Catholic Faith to a “Non-Denominational” Christian and who was actually at that particular Cathedral and witnessed that event with everyone crawling on their knees to the statue. And you are right I am not familiar with it, but when he told me that it was something I never heard of and now he stereotypes every Catholic Church because of that one time he was at that particular one. And growing up in the Catholic Church and going to Catholic school I never experienced anything like that… And then he threw this at me. 2nd Commandment: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.🤷
 
I wouldn’t mess with that. God sounds pretty jealous about protecting His name as the ONLY source of power and healing.

He says in Isaiah 45:19-25

I did not speak in secret, in a land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I the LORD speak the truth; I declare what is right.

"Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, you survivors of the nations! They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idols, and keep on praying to a god that cannot save.

Declare and present your case; let them take counsel together! Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the LORD? And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me.

"Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.

By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: 'To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.

"Only in the LORD, it shall be said of me, are righteousness and strength; to him shall come and be ashamed all who were incensed against him.

In the LORD all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory."
 
Walking on your knees is a normal Catholic ascetic practice, and it’s particularly popular in poor countries because you need no special equipment. (And poor folks are usually already on the edge when it comes to fasting.)

The point usually is to journey somewhere, while expressing humility (ouch, that force of gravity) and sorrow for sins (I guarantee your knees will make you feel sorry).

I’ve done the Way of the Cross inside my parish church on my knees. Not really that impressive asceticism, as I was wearing stretchy jeans and the floor was smooth despite being hard. But I did try it out, and it does work.

Any major shrine in the Catholic world, you’ll see people walking to it on their knees. The Spanish Steps in Rome are often climbed that way, as a symbolic pilgrimage toward the Veronica’s Veil relic. The Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem used to get pilgrims who would do this, although obviously that would take some prayer-toughened camel knees to get it done. In some places, it’s customary to walk up to the Holy Week cross on your knees. Anyway, Hispanic people today are particularly fond of this ascetic technique, and so it’s usually Hispanic people that get accused of “crawling” or “groveling.” But historically, the English were particularly fond of “creeping to the Cross” in various parish settings.

So yeah, I’m sure people also pilgrimage on their knees to go see this famous statue of Mary. Because it’s normal. Us not understanding this common gesture is the weird thing.
 
Ezra 9:5-6

“I fell upon my knees, and spread out my hands to the Lord my God, and said, ‘My God, I am confounded and ashamed to lift up my face to Thee…’”

Also, you forgot the bit in Phil. 2:10 and in Romans about “in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.”

For some reason, contemporary Christianity is very uncomfortable with asceticism. People who will stay up all night just out of reluctance to go to bed are horrified at the idea of staying up all night to pray. People who’ll risk their lives in crazy ways are horrified by people walking up a rocky path barefoot. And people don’t like seeing other people walk on their knees, either.
 
I had heard about the same thing you have, but my answer is always, "Is that something that the church actually teaches, or is it just something that some people do because they are hurting and in desperate need of healing?

I did some checking and according to Approved Apparitions* El Negritta *is not approved by the church even though Costa Ricans consider her their patron saint. I don’t know of any healings there, but I suppose it’s possible.

As for the whole devotion and seeking it for healing (from God, remember), I would have to say that it is not much different than what we find in the New Testament in John 5:4 (But be sure to scroll down and read the note which points out that that verse is not in Catholic Bibles and yet is included in most of the n-C ones. Obviously there’s a reason…but in this case we see a passage that relates to this kind of instance in the n-C Bible, their ultimate and final authority. So… what can they say?
  • 5:4] Toward the end of the second century in the West and among the fourth-century Greek Fathers, an additional verse was known: “For [from time to time] an angel of the Lord used to come down into the pool; and the water was stirred up, so the first one to get in [after the stirring of the water] was healed of whatever disease afflicted him.” The angel was a popular explanation of the turbulence and the healing powers attributed to it. This verse is missing from all early Greek manuscripts and the earliest versions, including the original Vulgate. Its vocabulary is markedly non-Johannine.
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Also see Acts 5:12] Now many signs and wonders were done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon’s Portico.
13] None of the rest dared join them, but the people held them in high honor.
14] And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women,
15] ** so that they even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and pallets, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them. **
16] The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed.

Again…kinda weird, but yet it happened and is right there in the Bible, big as life. 🤷 How is that much different than the El Negritta devotion? Those people know it’s not the statue doing it just as the people looking for healing in the scriptural cases knew where the healing power was coming from.

Another thing to consider is the fruits of this.
Look up Matthew 7:15-20. What is the fruit of this devotion? Increased faith in God and love for Our Lord and His church and seeking His healing power, right? So based upon that, though it is extreme, how does it fail the test of Christian faith and practice. It doesn’t…
Hope this helps
 
RaiseMeUp said:
I understand that. The prayer was translated into English and it just didn’t seem right. My whole interest in finding out about this was when I was defending the Catholic Faith to a “Non-Denominational” Christian and who was actually at that particular Cathedral and witnessed that event with everyone crawling on their knees to the statue. And you are right I am not familiar with it, but when he told me that it was something I never heard of and now he stereotypes every Catholic Church because of that one time he was at that particular one. And growing up in the Catholic Church and going to Catholic school I never experienced anything like that… And then he threw this at me. 2nd Commandment: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.🤷
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The problem is that many non Catholics don’t understand the catholic religion and they have been told constantly that Catholics adore statutes. It is difficult to argue with them because they are convinced in their brains that Catholics are wrong and they do idolatry. I would recommend you to look read here. forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=230823
 
I have read the comments on this devotion to Mother Mary. My personal views.
I have a great devotion to Mother Mary. I have tried and visited many of Her Apparitions sites.
We adore and pray to only God and therefore to Jesus as God. We request Mary to inetrcede for us and as She is the closest to Jesus,his Earthly Mother,it helps we who are weak,sinful,not able to pray ,request Her interecession…There is this practice of going down on ones knees and at times walk for a few steps in ths manner to plead with Her.
It depends how one looks at it. some may say adoration,But it is a great veneration. All this does not matter how one looks at it ,as long as one yet knows it ids God our Lord Jesus ,and we are going thru Her.
In India ,we have many Mary Shrines (Mt Mary at Bandra-Bombay/Mumbai; Valankanni (south India),Devotion to Mary -Perpetual Succour at Mahim Bombay/Mumbai. At these places over 50% of the Devotees are Non Christians(Hindus,Muslims).They jsu pray to her.

My request to thos ewho have different voews-just pary to Her and ask Her to intercede-see the difference. if you yet wish to Pary directly to god -fine.
J pereira
 
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