Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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ARBear13 gave a good answer, that Mary is the first and greatest evangelist. Her role as co-mediatrix and co-redeemer, if one chooses to use those terms, doesn't diminish Christ but points the way to him.

The idea is similar to what Paul says in Colossians 1:24 -- that he is grateful for his sufferings because they help complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. Of course we know that Christ's sacrifice is sufficient for our salvation. All that's lacking is evangelizing, which is what Paul refers to.

To that I would only add that Mary's role as evangelist didn't end with Christ's death and resurrection. The Church teaches that it continues until the end of time:

Quote:

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This maternity of Mary in the order of grace began with the consent which she gave in faith at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, and lasts until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this salvific duty, but by her constant intercession continued to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation. By her maternal charity, she cares for the brethren of her Son, who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and cultics, until they are led into the happiness of their true home. Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked by the Church under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix, and Mediatrix. This, however, is to be so understood that it neither takes away from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficaciousness of Christ the one Mediator. (Lumen Gentium 62)

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ArBear didn't give a good answer. He didn't answer me at all. He completely dodged the point, just as you are doing.

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"All Christians can help 'save' others in a subordinate sense through evangelism by directing people to Jesus. The Apostle Paul said as much in 1 Corinthians 9:22. The Catholic Church believes that Mother Mary is the best possible evangelist because she loved Jesus more than anyone else, so she can bring people to salvation through her evangelical witness. That is the sense in which the word 'salvation' is used in all the scenarios you quoted."

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Seriously- what's the matter with you Roman Catholics? Are you honestly saying that because all Christians can help save others, that it means "none can attain salvation except through that Christian", that "none goes to Jesus except through that Christian", that the Christian is the "gate of heaven", that sinners receive pardon "by that Christian's intercession alone", that the Christian is the "road we must travel to get to God", and that "we obtain EVERY hope, grace and ALL SALVATION through that Christian"??

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No, Mary is unique in that way. As Christ's mother, she alone is the gate through which salvation came into the world.

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Jesus - "I AM THE GATE" (John 10:9)

Your blind spot to Marian idolatry is absolutely astounding and perplexing. You can't even see it as you're doing it.

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"It was thus that Christ died as a ransom, paid once for all, on behalf of our sins, he the innocent for us the guilty, so as to present us in God's sight." (1 Peter 3:18)

"Even as I write, I am glad of my sufferings on your behalf, as, in this mortal frame of mine, I help to pay off the debt which the afflictions of Christ still leave to be paid, for the sake of his body, the Church." (Colossians 1:24)

Which one is right, and which one is the heretic?

You will never find satisfactory answers to your questions by proof-texting. You must understand that words have different meanings in different contexts.

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It wasn't "proof-texting". You called Mary the gate, when Jesus' direct and clear, unambiguous words was that HE is the gate. You're attempting to squirm out of the fact that you demonstrated first hand the kind of Marian idolatry that plagues your church.

There is nothing Paul is saying that is giving him the exclusive honor that only belongs to Jesus. There is only ONE gate to heaven, "THE" gate. And Jesus says he is it. Roman Catholics like yourself give that honor to Mary. And whatever it is, be it extreme ignorance, dishonesty, blindness, satanic brainwashing, even plain old stupidity... something is blinding you to your idolatry.

And never mind that you only answered to the "gate" aspect of my question, and conspicuously avoided answering to the "salvation being ONLY through Mary" part. Your sophistry isn't going to work.

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Hopefully we can agree that Jesus is not an actual gate. Metaphors can be used in different ways for different things. When we say Mary was the gate by which salvation entered the world, we simply mean that through her Christ became incarnate.

Paul may not be giving himself exclusive honor, but he is taking honor that belongs exclusively to Jesus -- at least by your logic. That's why you can't just pick out words and phrases to prove a point. You need to understand what is meant in context.

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No, Paul is not taking any honor away from Jesus. He's saying that his suffering was required as a continuation of Jesus' sufferings, because he had to spread the gospel which would require suffering.

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Correct. And likewise, what these theologians are saying is that Mary's mediation and intercession are required as a continuation of Christ's.

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....and saying that her intercession alone is necessary for salvation, that NO ONE can come to Jesus without her, that those who seek HER protection will be saved, that SHE is the foundation of ALL our confidence, and that we obtain EVERY GRACE and ALL SALVATION only through her.

All very unbiblical and obviously idolatrous beliefs, usurping Jesus. And pure worship. Your ignorance/lack of discernment/dishonesty regarding this fact tells us the whole story about Roman Catholicism.

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I understand your issues with some of that language. I hope you'll find your way to a better understanding of its meaning.

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"These aren't the droids you're looking for."

Please just stop with the gaslighting defense mechanisms and just be honest with others as well as with yourself with what's clearly being said by your Church, not to mention what is practiced. Then maybe you'll begin to understand why people will always scoff at your Church's continual insistence that you don't worship Mary. "Clarifying" Mary's role as a mediator by downgrading her "Co-Mediatrix" title isn't going to convince anyone.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Also, are you buying ArBear's argument that those quotes were "out of context"? You let him off the hook too easily. I have been trying to address this with him myself, but I fear he has joined the long list of people who don't like my questions so they ignore me. I guess you're gonna have to get that out of him, if you care to.

Is there really a context in which such statements could EVER be acceptable to someone who professes to love and only worship God, as they say they do? Denying that one worships Mary, but then balking at disavowing clear statements of Mary worship somehow just doesn't make a person seem like they're on the level.

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I married into a Catholic family and have been to many, many Catholic masses. Some of the family seem to place Mary higher than others but I've yet to hear any of them say salvation comes through Mary or, anything remotely close to it.
I've sat through many liturgies and have yet to hear one say anything that links Mary to salvation. On the other hand, I've also sat through a handful of rosaries after a death and hear nothing about Christ expect from family members in casual conversation before and after. Never have I heard the person conducting (is that the right word) the rosary speak of Christ salvation.

The last rosary I went to , all of the grand kids had t-shirts with their favorite or most appropriate Bible verse on it-verses they had learned in family Bible studies with their grandparents.

As for the quotes, I'd love to have a link to the English translations of each document so I could read them for myself. I fully expect Prots to attack them and RCs to support them or shy away from any defense.

It may be that ARBear isn't shying away from answering but collecting sources . We'll see.

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Individual Roman Catholics here and there may not credit Mary with salvation... but the question is not about them, nor about what they show outwardly, but about specific statements made by their leaders. Are they able to disavow those obviously heretical and idolatrous beliefs? Because if not, then something is really, really wrong, and their repeated denial that they worship Mary starts to look phony.

Can you really doubt the translation of those quotes? Roman Catholicism is suffused with this kind of excessive and idolatrous glorification of Mary. I'm sure you've read the quotes I've given in other threads from The Glories of Mary, or the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary (a book of psalms, where the author used the Psalms from the Old Testament and inserted MARY in place of God. Yes, you heard that right. If that in of itself does not scream idolatry, then idolatry has no meaning whatsoever. If one can't recognize the idolatry in that, then one never will.)

Pope John Paul II's personal motto was "Totus tuum Maria" which (accurately) translated means "I am all yours, Mary". It comes from a Marian prayer in the 1712 book True Devotion to Mary by Louis de Montfort. The prayer goes:

"Totus tuus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria."
("I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart")


He belongs entirely to Mary?? Mary is his all??

How does all this not make plainly obvious, about who Mary is in Roman Catholicism? And mind you, we're not even including their bowing and praying to Mary's image IN CHURCH, singing hymns to her IN CHURCH, holding hundreds of festivals for her, calling her "THE ALL HOLY ONE" in their catechism, etc. There's gotta be a point where the oft-repeated, "you're taking it out of context" go-to argument from Roman Catholics hunkering down on the defensive starts to face an enormous and ever-expanding wall of implausibility.... isn't there? Why do they think we'll keep buying it? The level of gaslighting is truly perplexing.

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I understand what you are saying regarding RC leaders and their written statements regarding Mary. I just don't see the trickledown coming out in the liturgy.

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But again, the question is not whether they are personally engaging in or expressing those sentiments - the question is whether these Catholics, who insist they aren't worshiping Mary, are willing/able to disavow those statements? If they are not, then it doesn't do much to lend credence to their claim. No one who truly loves and worships God alone would ever find those statements even remotely acceptable. If they lack discernment in that area, then there's something really, really wrong.

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Are all Christian's theologically trained?

Are we saved corporately or as individuals?

I don't deal with the Catholic Church. I deal with Catholics.

I don't deal with prosperity churches, Hillsong, Bethel etc… I deal with individuals.

You stick with the corporate battles of church vs church. I'll stick with individuals. We each have our roles.

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I get that you're defensive for the sake of your kin. But this isn't about theological training or what they belief individually and personally. But the truth remains that if they can't recognize the problem in crediting any other person other than Jesus for their salvation, you know, the central tenet of the Christian faith, then there's something really wrong with their Christianity. Is this even debatable?

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"This isn't about…. But…"

Like I said , you handle the corporate side and I'll handle the individual side.

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What exactly is wrong about what I just said?

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If you are dealing with them corporately, nothing is wrong. If you are dealing with them individually, I see a lot that can be done better.

You said " this isn't about them individually or personally" and then came with "but…if they can't". Well that recognition is individual/personal.

It pays to approach individuals differently than it does groups. A professor of 500 teaches differently than a tutor of 1 or 2. Your approach is directed at the RC church. My approach is directed to the individual.

Do professors make breakthroughs or tutors? I think they both do in their own way.

Like I said, different roles.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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ARBear13 gave a good answer, that Mary is the first and greatest evangelist. Her role as co-mediatrix and co-redeemer, if one chooses to use those terms, doesn't diminish Christ but points the way to him.

The idea is similar to what Paul says in Colossians 1:24 -- that he is grateful for his sufferings because they help complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. Of course we know that Christ's sacrifice is sufficient for our salvation. All that's lacking is evangelizing, which is what Paul refers to.

To that I would only add that Mary's role as evangelist didn't end with Christ's death and resurrection. The Church teaches that it continues until the end of time:

Quote:

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This maternity of Mary in the order of grace began with the consent which she gave in faith at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, and lasts until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this salvific duty, but by her constant intercession continued to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation. By her maternal charity, she cares for the brethren of her Son, who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and cultics, until they are led into the happiness of their true home. Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked by the Church under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix, and Mediatrix. This, however, is to be so understood that it neither takes away from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficaciousness of Christ the one Mediator. (Lumen Gentium 62)

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ArBear didn't give a good answer. He didn't answer me at all. He completely dodged the point, just as you are doing.

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"All Christians can help 'save' others in a subordinate sense through evangelism by directing people to Jesus. The Apostle Paul said as much in 1 Corinthians 9:22. The Catholic Church believes that Mother Mary is the best possible evangelist because she loved Jesus more than anyone else, so she can bring people to salvation through her evangelical witness. That is the sense in which the word 'salvation' is used in all the scenarios you quoted."

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Seriously- what's the matter with you Roman Catholics? Are you honestly saying that because all Christians can help save others, that it means "none can attain salvation except through that Christian", that "none goes to Jesus except through that Christian", that the Christian is the "gate of heaven", that sinners receive pardon "by that Christian's intercession alone", that the Christian is the "road we must travel to get to God", and that "we obtain EVERY hope, grace and ALL SALVATION through that Christian"??

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No, Mary is unique in that way. As Christ's mother, she alone is the gate through which salvation came into the world.

---

Jesus - "I AM THE GATE" (John 10:9)

Your blind spot to Marian idolatry is absolutely astounding and perplexing. You can't even see it as you're doing it.

---

"It was thus that Christ died as a ransom, paid once for all, on behalf of our sins, he the innocent for us the guilty, so as to present us in God's sight." (1 Peter 3:18)

"Even as I write, I am glad of my sufferings on your behalf, as, in this mortal frame of mine, I help to pay off the debt which the afflictions of Christ still leave to be paid, for the sake of his body, the Church." (Colossians 1:24)

Which one is right, and which one is the heretic?

You will never find satisfactory answers to your questions by proof-texting. You must understand that words have different meanings in different contexts.

---

It wasn't "proof-texting". You called Mary the gate, when Jesus' direct and clear, unambiguous words was that HE is the gate. You're attempting to squirm out of the fact that you demonstrated first hand the kind of Marian idolatry that plagues your church.

There is nothing Paul is saying that is giving him the exclusive honor that only belongs to Jesus. There is only ONE gate to heaven, "THE" gate. And Jesus says he is it. Roman Catholics like yourself give that honor to Mary. And whatever it is, be it extreme ignorance, dishonesty, blindness, satanic brainwashing, even plain old stupidity... something is blinding you to your idolatry.

And never mind that you only answered to the "gate" aspect of my question, and conspicuously avoided answering to the "salvation being ONLY through Mary" part. Your sophistry isn't going to work.

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Hopefully we can agree that Jesus is not an actual gate. Metaphors can be used in different ways for different things. When we say Mary was the gate by which salvation entered the world, we simply mean that through her Christ became incarnate.

Paul may not be giving himself exclusive honor, but he is taking honor that belongs exclusively to Jesus -- at least by your logic. That's why you can't just pick out words and phrases to prove a point. You need to understand what is meant in context.

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No, Paul is not taking any honor away from Jesus. He's saying that his suffering was required as a continuation of Jesus' sufferings, because he had to spread the gospel which would require suffering.

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Correct. And likewise, what these theologians are saying is that Mary's mediation and intercession are required as a continuation of Christ's.

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....and saying that her intercession alone is necessary for salvation, that NO ONE can come to Jesus without her, that those who seek HER protection will be saved, that SHE is the foundation of ALL our confidence, and that we obtain EVERY GRACE and ALL SALVATION only through her.

All very unbiblical and obviously idolatrous beliefs, usurping Jesus. And pure worship. Your ignorance/lack of discernment/dishonesty regarding this fact tells us the whole story about Roman Catholicism.

---

I understand your issues with some of that language. I hope you'll find your way to a better understanding of its meaning.

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"These aren't the droids you're looking for."

Please just stop with the gaslighting defense mechanisms and just be honest with others as well as with yourself with what's clearly being said by your Church, not to mention what is practiced. Then maybe you'll begin to understand why people will always scoff at your Church's continual insistence that you don't worship Mary. "Clarifying" Mary's role as a mediator by downgrading her "Co-Mediatrix" title isn't going to convince anyone.

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I'm not trying to convince anyone. I'm responding to your demands for an explanation of Church teaching. I don't really know what you're trying to accomplish, but if you want to debate Catholic theology I would think you'd want to understand the beliefs you're attacking.

Fre3dombear said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Realitybites said:

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OsoCoreyell said:

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I want to know by what authority Catholics think it is sound theology to pray to Mary.

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I'm not Roman Catholic but this explanation may help.

Intercessory prayer isn't praying to a person. It is a prayer request that others pray to God for us.

The Biblical support for it is found in these verse:

James 5:16 - Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working."

John 11:26 - "And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (It's a modern heresy that Christians die. Historically, the passing of the Christian has been thought of as the falling asleep of their body in the Lord to await a bodily resurrection. This is why Christians bury their dead, and don't cremate them.)

Hebrews 12:1 - "Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." (We are surrounded by this great cloud today, not at some point when we get to heaven).

Revelation 8:3-4 "Then another angel, having a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel's hand."

The bolded portion of the text is the actual technical mechanism by which God hears your prayer, by the way.

But who gave this angel with the golden censer your prayer to offer to God? Revelation answers that too.

Revelation 5:8 "Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints."

As you can see, making prayer requests of other Christians is not limited to those in your Sunday School Class, Church, City, State, Country, or Generation.

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There is NOTHING in Scripture that clearly and explicitly instructs us to pray to departed saints or Mary, or tells us that they even have the ability to receive prayers to begin with. There is no instance whatsoever anywhere in the Old or New Testament of anyone praying to a departed believer for any kind of intercession. None. There exists NO teaching from Jesus or his apostles that we can and should pray to Mary and the saints.

I just don't understand how a church can build a system of faith, worship, and practice on something like praying to Mary or the saints, when the basis of such a practice can only be derived by reading your assumptions into Scripture and drawing non sequitur inferences like you did in order to justify something that really isn't there. Especially since there is no real reason to do it. We have direct access to God and Jesus, and we are explicitly instructed by Jesus himself to go directly to them. This is the clear, unambiguous teaching of Scripture.

The prayers being in "bowls of incense" does not necessarily indicate that those prayers were directed to the saints or Mary. And there is no reason whatsoever to believe that this is the "actual mechanism" by which prayers go up to God. All this is pure eisegesis. And after all, the practice has no real benefit - what does a believer lose if they don't pray to Mary of the saints? On the other hand, if you DO pray to them, you risk committing idolatry and angering God. The risk/reward is way too high for something finding its basis only in haphazard eisegesis. Praying to Mary and the saints had its origins in pagan Rome. In order to make the pagans convert to Christianity, they were allowed to continue praying to their multiple gods, but they just renamed those gods after Christian figures, like Mary and the saints. Those of you who engage in this practice REALLY need to understand this history.

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There is reason the curtain that partitioned the Holy of Holies tore from top to bottom.

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Tradition is Mary sewed that curtain. Now Ps will say they dont do tradition because they sola scriptura yet the scriptura tells them that tradition is part of it.

Ps even invented a completely separate Bible that didnt exist prior to Martin Luther and somehow explain it away as its the scriptura they want to believe just like they completely ignore verses that nuke their beliefs

Even with all that Ps and Catholics believe statistically most of the same things. Its just the Ps toss aside some of the most critical ones

And of course Ps wouldnt even have a Bible to sola had the Catholics not created it. Bizarre place to find ones self.

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Created it. That's rich.
The Catholics didn't make the books of the Bible authoritative. The books were already seen as authoritative by the early church. The premise that the catholic church created the Bible and made them authoritative is a bad or circular logic.
The truth is that God had already inspired the letters and they were already recognized as being inspired and authoritative by the early church.

LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Also, are you buying ArBear's argument that those quotes were "out of context"? You let him off the hook too easily. I have been trying to address this with him myself, but I fear he has joined the long list of people who don't like my questions so they ignore me. I guess you're gonna have to get that out of him, if you care to.

Is there really a context in which such statements could EVER be acceptable to someone who professes to love and only worship God, as they say they do? Denying that one worships Mary, but then balking at disavowing clear statements of Mary worship somehow just doesn't make a person seem like they're on the level.

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I married into a Catholic family and have been to many, many Catholic masses. Some of the family seem to place Mary higher than others but I've yet to hear any of them say salvation comes through Mary or, anything remotely close to it.
I've sat through many liturgies and have yet to hear one say anything that links Mary to salvation. On the other hand, I've also sat through a handful of rosaries after a death and hear nothing about Christ expect from family members in casual conversation before and after. Never have I heard the person conducting (is that the right word) the rosary speak of Christ salvation.

The last rosary I went to , all of the grand kids had t-shirts with their favorite or most appropriate Bible verse on it-verses they had learned in family Bible studies with their grandparents.

As for the quotes, I'd love to have a link to the English translations of each document so I could read them for myself. I fully expect Prots to attack them and RCs to support them or shy away from any defense.

It may be that ARBear isn't shying away from answering but collecting sources . We'll see.

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Individual Roman Catholics here and there may not credit Mary with salvation... but the question is not about them, nor about what they show outwardly, but about specific statements made by their leaders. Are they able to disavow those obviously heretical and idolatrous beliefs? Because if not, then something is really, really wrong, and their repeated denial that they worship Mary starts to look phony.

Can you really doubt the translation of those quotes? Roman Catholicism is suffused with this kind of excessive and idolatrous glorification of Mary. I'm sure you've read the quotes I've given in other threads from The Glories of Mary, or the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary (a book of psalms, where the author used the Psalms from the Old Testament and inserted MARY in place of God. Yes, you heard that right. If that in of itself does not scream idolatry, then idolatry has no meaning whatsoever. If one can't recognize the idolatry in that, then one never will.)

Pope John Paul II's personal motto was "Totus tuum Maria" which (accurately) translated means "I am all yours, Mary". It comes from a Marian prayer in the 1712 book True Devotion to Mary by Louis de Montfort. The prayer goes:

"Totus tuus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria."
("I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart")


He belongs entirely to Mary?? Mary is his all??

How does all this not make plainly obvious, about who Mary is in Roman Catholicism? And mind you, we're not even including their bowing and praying to Mary's image IN CHURCH, singing hymns to her IN CHURCH, holding hundreds of festivals for her, calling her "THE ALL HOLY ONE" in their catechism, etc. There's gotta be a point where the oft-repeated, "you're taking it out of context" go-to argument from Roman Catholics hunkering down on the defensive starts to face an enormous and ever-expanding wall of implausibility.... isn't there? Why do they think we'll keep buying it? The level of gaslighting is truly perplexing.

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I understand what you are saying regarding RC leaders and their written statements regarding Mary. I just don't see the trickledown coming out in the liturgy.

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But again, the question is not whether they are personally engaging in or expressing those sentiments - the question is whether these Catholics, who insist they aren't worshiping Mary, are willing/able to disavow those statements? If they are not, then it doesn't do much to lend credence to their claim. No one who truly loves and worships God alone would ever find those statements even remotely acceptable. If they lack discernment in that area, then there's something really, really wrong.

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Are all Christian's theologically trained?

Are we saved corporately or as individuals?

I don't deal with the Catholic Church. I deal with Catholics.

I don't deal with prosperity churches, Hillsong, Bethel etc… I deal with individuals.

You stick with the corporate battles of church vs church. I'll stick with individuals. We each have our roles.

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I get that you're defensive for the sake of your kin. But this isn't about theological training or what they belief individually and personally. But the truth remains that if they can't recognize the problem in crediting any other person other than Jesus for their salvation, you know, the central tenet of the Christian faith, then there's something really wrong with their Christianity. Is this even debatable?

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"This isn't about…. But…"

Like I said , you handle the corporate side and I'll handle the individual side.

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What exactly is wrong about what I just said?

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If you are dealing with them corporately, nothing is wrong. If you are dealing with them individually, I see a lot that can be done better.

You said " this isn't about them individually or personally" and then came with "but…if they can't". Well that recognition is individual/personal.

It pays to approach individuals differently than it does groups. A professor of 500 teaches differently than a tutor of 1 or 2. Your approach is directed at the RC church. My approach is directed to the individual.

Do professors make breakthroughs or tutors? I think they both do in their own way.

Like I said, different roles.

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Let me clarify: it isn't about them individually or personally with regard to whether the corporate beliefs "trickled down" to their personal belief or not. Even if they did not, still, how those individuals respond to corporate statements of belief might indicate a problem in their individual beliefs, especially in this case about Mary.

If an individual denies worshiping Mary, but then can't/won't disavow completely idolatrous corporate statements fully supporting it, then it makes supect their denial, as well as raise the question whether they are even truly a Christian. It certainly doesn't take being "theologically trained" to understand the problem behind crediting someone else for salvation other than Jesus, at least one would think. If you are concerned with Catholics as individuals, I hardly see how you can dismiss this. You should approach them as you see fit, but I really don't see how one can reach individual Catholics without first addressing the serious corporate problems first. Especially since in Roman Catholicism, the corporate has full authority over the individual beliefs. Will they listen to you over their corporate authorities? If so, then they can't be Catholic. So there's a catch-22.

Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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ARBear13 gave a good answer, that Mary is the first and greatest evangelist. Her role as co-mediatrix and co-redeemer, if one chooses to use those terms, doesn't diminish Christ but points the way to him.

The idea is similar to what Paul says in Colossians 1:24 -- that he is grateful for his sufferings because they help complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. Of course we know that Christ's sacrifice is sufficient for our salvation. All that's lacking is evangelizing, which is what Paul refers to.

To that I would only add that Mary's role as evangelist didn't end with Christ's death and resurrection. The Church teaches that it continues until the end of time:

Quote:

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This maternity of Mary in the order of grace began with the consent which she gave in faith at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, and lasts until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this salvific duty, but by her constant intercession continued to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation. By her maternal charity, she cares for the brethren of her Son, who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and cultics, until they are led into the happiness of their true home. Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked by the Church under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix, and Mediatrix. This, however, is to be so understood that it neither takes away from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficaciousness of Christ the one Mediator. (Lumen Gentium 62)

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ArBear didn't give a good answer. He didn't answer me at all. He completely dodged the point, just as you are doing.

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"All Christians can help 'save' others in a subordinate sense through evangelism by directing people to Jesus. The Apostle Paul said as much in 1 Corinthians 9:22. The Catholic Church believes that Mother Mary is the best possible evangelist because she loved Jesus more than anyone else, so she can bring people to salvation through her evangelical witness. That is the sense in which the word 'salvation' is used in all the scenarios you quoted."

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Seriously- what's the matter with you Roman Catholics? Are you honestly saying that because all Christians can help save others, that it means "none can attain salvation except through that Christian", that "none goes to Jesus except through that Christian", that the Christian is the "gate of heaven", that sinners receive pardon "by that Christian's intercession alone", that the Christian is the "road we must travel to get to God", and that "we obtain EVERY hope, grace and ALL SALVATION through that Christian"??

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No, Mary is unique in that way. As Christ's mother, she alone is the gate through which salvation came into the world.

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Jesus - "I AM THE GATE" (John 10:9)

Your blind spot to Marian idolatry is absolutely astounding and perplexing. You can't even see it as you're doing it.

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"It was thus that Christ died as a ransom, paid once for all, on behalf of our sins, he the innocent for us the guilty, so as to present us in God's sight." (1 Peter 3:18)

"Even as I write, I am glad of my sufferings on your behalf, as, in this mortal frame of mine, I help to pay off the debt which the afflictions of Christ still leave to be paid, for the sake of his body, the Church." (Colossians 1:24)

Which one is right, and which one is the heretic?

You will never find satisfactory answers to your questions by proof-texting. You must understand that words have different meanings in different contexts.

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It wasn't "proof-texting". You called Mary the gate, when Jesus' direct and clear, unambiguous words was that HE is the gate. You're attempting to squirm out of the fact that you demonstrated first hand the kind of Marian idolatry that plagues your church.

There is nothing Paul is saying that is giving him the exclusive honor that only belongs to Jesus. There is only ONE gate to heaven, "THE" gate. And Jesus says he is it. Roman Catholics like yourself give that honor to Mary. And whatever it is, be it extreme ignorance, dishonesty, blindness, satanic brainwashing, even plain old stupidity... something is blinding you to your idolatry.

And never mind that you only answered to the "gate" aspect of my question, and conspicuously avoided answering to the "salvation being ONLY through Mary" part. Your sophistry isn't going to work.

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Hopefully we can agree that Jesus is not an actual gate. Metaphors can be used in different ways for different things. When we say Mary was the gate by which salvation entered the world, we simply mean that through her Christ became incarnate.

Paul may not be giving himself exclusive honor, but he is taking honor that belongs exclusively to Jesus -- at least by your logic. That's why you can't just pick out words and phrases to prove a point. You need to understand what is meant in context.

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No, Paul is not taking any honor away from Jesus. He's saying that his suffering was required as a continuation of Jesus' sufferings, because he had to spread the gospel which would require suffering.

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Correct. And likewise, what these theologians are saying is that Mary's mediation and intercession are required as a continuation of Christ's.

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....and saying that her intercession alone is necessary for salvation, that NO ONE can come to Jesus without her, that those who seek HER protection will be saved, that SHE is the foundation of ALL our confidence, and that we obtain EVERY GRACE and ALL SALVATION only through her.

All very unbiblical and obviously idolatrous beliefs, usurping Jesus. And pure worship. Your ignorance/lack of discernment/dishonesty regarding this fact tells us the whole story about Roman Catholicism.

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I understand your issues with some of that language. I hope you'll find your way to a better understanding of its meaning.

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"These aren't the droids you're looking for."

Please just stop with the gaslighting defense mechanisms and just be honest with others as well as with yourself with what's clearly being said by your Church, not to mention what is practiced. Then maybe you'll begin to understand why people will always scoff at your Church's continual insistence that you don't worship Mary. "Clarifying" Mary's role as a mediator by downgrading her "Co-Mediatrix" title isn't going to convince anyone.

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I'm not trying to convince anyone. I'm responding to your demands for an explanation of Church teaching. I don't really know what you're trying to accomplish, but if you want to debate Catholic theology I would think you'd want to understand the beliefs you're attacking.

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I'm only demanding that you and your fellow Catholics just be honest with the clear meaning of what's written, instead of constantly engaging in games in order to escape and deny the obvious. I really hoped this wasn't too much to ask for, but apparently it is. As far as what I've accomplished, I'd say that is really accomplishes a LOT to expose Roman Catholics doing this. People who are in the truth just aren't this way.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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Also, are you buying ArBear's argument that those quotes were "out of context"? You let him off the hook too easily. I have been trying to address this with him myself, but I fear he has joined the long list of people who don't like my questions so they ignore me. I guess you're gonna have to get that out of him, if you care to.

Is there really a context in which such statements could EVER be acceptable to someone who professes to love and only worship God, as they say they do? Denying that one worships Mary, but then balking at disavowing clear statements of Mary worship somehow just doesn't make a person seem like they're on the level.

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I married into a Catholic family and have been to many, many Catholic masses. Some of the family seem to place Mary higher than others but I've yet to hear any of them say salvation comes through Mary or, anything remotely close to it.
I've sat through many liturgies and have yet to hear one say anything that links Mary to salvation. On the other hand, I've also sat through a handful of rosaries after a death and hear nothing about Christ expect from family members in casual conversation before and after. Never have I heard the person conducting (is that the right word) the rosary speak of Christ salvation.

The last rosary I went to , all of the grand kids had t-shirts with their favorite or most appropriate Bible verse on it-verses they had learned in family Bible studies with their grandparents.

As for the quotes, I'd love to have a link to the English translations of each document so I could read them for myself. I fully expect Prots to attack them and RCs to support them or shy away from any defense.

It may be that ARBear isn't shying away from answering but collecting sources . We'll see.

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Individual Roman Catholics here and there may not credit Mary with salvation... but the question is not about them, nor about what they show outwardly, but about specific statements made by their leaders. Are they able to disavow those obviously heretical and idolatrous beliefs? Because if not, then something is really, really wrong, and their repeated denial that they worship Mary starts to look phony.

Can you really doubt the translation of those quotes? Roman Catholicism is suffused with this kind of excessive and idolatrous glorification of Mary. I'm sure you've read the quotes I've given in other threads from The Glories of Mary, or the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary (a book of psalms, where the author used the Psalms from the Old Testament and inserted MARY in place of God. Yes, you heard that right. If that in of itself does not scream idolatry, then idolatry has no meaning whatsoever. If one can't recognize the idolatry in that, then one never will.)

Pope John Paul II's personal motto was "Totus tuum Maria" which (accurately) translated means "I am all yours, Mary". It comes from a Marian prayer in the 1712 book True Devotion to Mary by Louis de Montfort. The prayer goes:

"Totus tuus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria."
("I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart")


He belongs entirely to Mary?? Mary is his all??

How does all this not make plainly obvious, about who Mary is in Roman Catholicism? And mind you, we're not even including their bowing and praying to Mary's image IN CHURCH, singing hymns to her IN CHURCH, holding hundreds of festivals for her, calling her "THE ALL HOLY ONE" in their catechism, etc. There's gotta be a point where the oft-repeated, "you're taking it out of context" go-to argument from Roman Catholics hunkering down on the defensive starts to face an enormous and ever-expanding wall of implausibility.... isn't there? Why do they think we'll keep buying it? The level of gaslighting is truly perplexing.

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I understand what you are saying regarding RC leaders and their written statements regarding Mary. I just don't see the trickledown coming out in the liturgy.

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But again, the question is not whether they are personally engaging in or expressing those sentiments - the question is whether these Catholics, who insist they aren't worshiping Mary, are willing/able to disavow those statements? If they are not, then it doesn't do much to lend credence to their claim. No one who truly loves and worships God alone would ever find those statements even remotely acceptable. If they lack discernment in that area, then there's something really, really wrong.

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Are all Christian's theologically trained?

Are we saved corporately or as individuals?

I don't deal with the Catholic Church. I deal with Catholics.

I don't deal with prosperity churches, Hillsong, Bethel etc… I deal with individuals.

You stick with the corporate battles of church vs church. I'll stick with individuals. We each have our roles.

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I get that you're defensive for the sake of your kin. But this isn't about theological training or what they belief individually and personally. But the truth remains that if they can't recognize the problem in crediting any other person other than Jesus for their salvation, you know, the central tenet of the Christian faith, then there's something really wrong with their Christianity. Is this even debatable?

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"This isn't about…. But…"

Like I said , you handle the corporate side and I'll handle the individual side.

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What exactly is wrong about what I just said?

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If you are dealing with them corporately, nothing is wrong. If you are dealing with them individually, I see a lot that can be done better.

You said " this isn't about them individually or personally" and then came with "but…if they can't". Well that recognition is individual/personal.

It pays to approach individuals differently than it does groups. A professor of 500 teaches differently than a tutor of 1 or 2. Your approach is directed at the RC church. My approach is directed to the individual.

Do professors make breakthroughs or tutors? I think they both do in their own way.

Like I said, different roles.

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Let me clarify: it isn't about them individually or personally with regard to whether the corporate beliefs "trickled down" to their personal belief or not. Even if they did not, still, how those individuals respond to corporate statements of belief might indicate a problem in their individual beliefs, especially in this case about Mary.

If an individual denies worshiping Mary, but then can't/won't disavow completely idolatrous corporate statements fully supporting it, then it makes supect their denial, as well as raise the question whether they are even truly a Christian. It certainly doesn't take being "theologically trained" to understand the problem behind crediting someone else for salvation other than Jesus, at least one would think. If you are concerned with Catholics as individuals, I hardly see how you can dismiss this. You should approach them as you see fit, but I really don't see how one can reach individual Catholics without first addressing the serious corporate problems first. Especially since in Roman Catholicism, the corporate has full authority over the individual beliefs. Will they listen to you over their corporate authorities? If so, then they can't be Catholic. So there's a catch-22.

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Think of it as people that describe themselves as Calvinist, 4 1/2 point Calvinist.

Yes I do see the catch-22 in what you described just as there is a catch-22 in a 4 1/2 point Calvinist. I also see the Catholics in my family fully describing the gospel, fully believing the gospel and living the gospel as close to fully as any Protestant is capable of living it.

NOT A RABBIT TRAIL
if an individual Catholic struggles with transubstantiation and leans more towards con substantiation, should they disavow the church for that reason?

LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Also, are you buying ArBear's argument that those quotes were "out of context"? You let him off the hook too easily. I have been trying to address this with him myself, but I fear he has joined the long list of people who don't like my questions so they ignore me. I guess you're gonna have to get that out of him, if you care to.

Is there really a context in which such statements could EVER be acceptable to someone who professes to love and only worship God, as they say they do? Denying that one worships Mary, but then balking at disavowing clear statements of Mary worship somehow just doesn't make a person seem like they're on the level.

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I married into a Catholic family and have been to many, many Catholic masses. Some of the family seem to place Mary higher than others but I've yet to hear any of them say salvation comes through Mary or, anything remotely close to it.
I've sat through many liturgies and have yet to hear one say anything that links Mary to salvation. On the other hand, I've also sat through a handful of rosaries after a death and hear nothing about Christ expect from family members in casual conversation before and after. Never have I heard the person conducting (is that the right word) the rosary speak of Christ salvation.

The last rosary I went to , all of the grand kids had t-shirts with their favorite or most appropriate Bible verse on it-verses they had learned in family Bible studies with their grandparents.

As for the quotes, I'd love to have a link to the English translations of each document so I could read them for myself. I fully expect Prots to attack them and RCs to support them or shy away from any defense.

It may be that ARBear isn't shying away from answering but collecting sources . We'll see.

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Individual Roman Catholics here and there may not credit Mary with salvation... but the question is not about them, nor about what they show outwardly, but about specific statements made by their leaders. Are they able to disavow those obviously heretical and idolatrous beliefs? Because if not, then something is really, really wrong, and their repeated denial that they worship Mary starts to look phony.

Can you really doubt the translation of those quotes? Roman Catholicism is suffused with this kind of excessive and idolatrous glorification of Mary. I'm sure you've read the quotes I've given in other threads from The Glories of Mary, or the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary (a book of psalms, where the author used the Psalms from the Old Testament and inserted MARY in place of God. Yes, you heard that right. If that in of itself does not scream idolatry, then idolatry has no meaning whatsoever. If one can't recognize the idolatry in that, then one never will.)

Pope John Paul II's personal motto was "Totus tuum Maria" which (accurately) translated means "I am all yours, Mary". It comes from a Marian prayer in the 1712 book True Devotion to Mary by Louis de Montfort. The prayer goes:

"Totus tuus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria."
("I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart")


He belongs entirely to Mary?? Mary is his all??

How does all this not make plainly obvious, about who Mary is in Roman Catholicism? And mind you, we're not even including their bowing and praying to Mary's image IN CHURCH, singing hymns to her IN CHURCH, holding hundreds of festivals for her, calling her "THE ALL HOLY ONE" in their catechism, etc. There's gotta be a point where the oft-repeated, "you're taking it out of context" go-to argument from Roman Catholics hunkering down on the defensive starts to face an enormous and ever-expanding wall of implausibility.... isn't there? Why do they think we'll keep buying it? The level of gaslighting is truly perplexing.

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I understand what you are saying regarding RC leaders and their written statements regarding Mary. I just don't see the trickledown coming out in the liturgy.

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But again, the question is not whether they are personally engaging in or expressing those sentiments - the question is whether these Catholics, who insist they aren't worshiping Mary, are willing/able to disavow those statements? If they are not, then it doesn't do much to lend credence to their claim. No one who truly loves and worships God alone would ever find those statements even remotely acceptable. If they lack discernment in that area, then there's something really, really wrong.

---

Are all Christian's theologically trained?

Are we saved corporately or as individuals?

I don't deal with the Catholic Church. I deal with Catholics.

I don't deal with prosperity churches, Hillsong, Bethel etc… I deal with individuals.

You stick with the corporate battles of church vs church. I'll stick with individuals. We each have our roles.

---

I get that you're defensive for the sake of your kin. But this isn't about theological training or what they belief individually and personally. But the truth remains that if they can't recognize the problem in crediting any other person other than Jesus for their salvation, you know, the central tenet of the Christian faith, then there's something really wrong with their Christianity. Is this even debatable?

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"This isn't about…. But…"

Like I said , you handle the corporate side and I'll handle the individual side.

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What exactly is wrong about what I just said?

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If you are dealing with them corporately, nothing is wrong. If you are dealing with them individually, I see a lot that can be done better.

You said " this isn't about them individually or personally" and then came with "but…if they can't". Well that recognition is individual/personal.

It pays to approach individuals differently than it does groups. A professor of 500 teaches differently than a tutor of 1 or 2. Your approach is directed at the RC church. My approach is directed to the individual.

Do professors make breakthroughs or tutors? I think they both do in their own way.

Like I said, different roles.

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Let me clarify: it isn't about them individually or personally with regard to whether the corporate beliefs "trickled down" to their personal belief or not. Even if they did not, still, how those individuals respond to corporate statements of belief might indicate a problem in their individual beliefs, especially in this case about Mary.

If an individual denies worshiping Mary, but then can't/won't disavow completely idolatrous corporate statements fully supporting it, then it makes supect their denial, as well as raise the question whether they are even truly a Christian. It certainly doesn't take being "theologically trained" to understand the problem behind crediting someone else for salvation other than Jesus, at least one would think. If you are concerned with Catholics as individuals, I hardly see how you can dismiss this. You should approach them as you see fit, but I really don't see how one can reach individual Catholics without first addressing the serious corporate problems first. Especially since in Roman Catholicism, the corporate has full authority over the individual beliefs. Will they listen to you over their corporate authorities? If so, then they can't be Catholic. So there's a catch-22.

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Think of it as people that describe themselves as Calvinist, 4 1/2 point Calvinist.

Yes I do see the catch-22 in what you described just as there is a catch-22 in a 4 1/2 point Calvinist. I also see the Catholics in my family fully describing the gospel, fully believing the gospel and living the gospel as close to fully as any Protestant is capable of living it.

NOT A RABBIT TRAIL
if an individual Catholic struggles with transubstantiation and leans more towards con substantiation, should they disavow the church for that reason?

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Would, or do your family members who you say fully describe, believe, and live the gospel recognize the idolatry that is clearly evident in the Roman Catholic Church regarding Mary? If they don't at all, then I just can't believe they are true Christians. However, if they recognize the "troublesome language" and try to make (lame) excuses for it like some here, perhaps they are true Christians, but they are in serious error, and vulnerable. And I have to point out that if they truly are okay with crediting anyone else other than Jesus for their salvation like what is being done for Mary in Roman Catholicism, then I can't agree that they are truly "living the gospel". Something is very wrong in their Christian life.

If an individual Catholic does not believe in transubstantiation, then the Roman Catholic Church disavows THEM. You and your Catholic family members do realize this, don't you? And I would say that definitely yes, that if a church teaches something that is not the gospel or something that conflicts and/or contradicts clear biblical teaching, that person should leave that church. It's what Paul instructs us to do in Galatians. I would certainly consider the idolatry of Mary to apply here, wouldn't you?

As far as Calvinism is concerned, or any other doctrinal difference among Protestants for that matter, I don't believe any of them claim that if one doesn't agree with their specific doctrine, that they aren't saved. And certainly none of them engage in idolatry like with Mary and make it binding to salvation. I mean, the treatment of Mary in Roman Catholicism makes it NOT a Christian religion. It's a different religion altogether. So definitely anyone who claims themself a Christian should not be part of a church that isn't even a Christian church. That should go without saying.

Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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ARBear13 gave a good answer, that Mary is the first and greatest evangelist. Her role as co-mediatrix and co-redeemer, if one chooses to use those terms, doesn't diminish Christ but points the way to him.

The idea is similar to what Paul says in Colossians 1:24 -- that he is grateful for his sufferings because they help complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. Of course we know that Christ's sacrifice is sufficient for our salvation. All that's lacking is evangelizing, which is what Paul refers to.

To that I would only add that Mary's role as evangelist didn't end with Christ's death and resurrection. The Church teaches that it continues until the end of time:

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This maternity of Mary in the order of grace began with the consent which she gave in faith at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, and lasts until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this salvific duty, but by her constant intercession continued to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation. By her maternal charity, she cares for the brethren of her Son, who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and cultics, until they are led into the happiness of their true home. Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked by the Church under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix, and Mediatrix. This, however, is to be so understood that it neither takes away from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficaciousness of Christ the one Mediator. (Lumen Gentium 62)

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ArBear didn't give a good answer. He didn't answer me at all. He completely dodged the point, just as you are doing.

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"All Christians can help 'save' others in a subordinate sense through evangelism by directing people to Jesus. The Apostle Paul said as much in 1 Corinthians 9:22. The Catholic Church believes that Mother Mary is the best possible evangelist because she loved Jesus more than anyone else, so she can bring people to salvation through her evangelical witness. That is the sense in which the word 'salvation' is used in all the scenarios you quoted."

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Seriously- what's the matter with you Roman Catholics? Are you honestly saying that because all Christians can help save others, that it means "none can attain salvation except through that Christian", that "none goes to Jesus except through that Christian", that the Christian is the "gate of heaven", that sinners receive pardon "by that Christian's intercession alone", that the Christian is the "road we must travel to get to God", and that "we obtain EVERY hope, grace and ALL SALVATION through that Christian"??

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No, Mary is unique in that way. As Christ's mother, she alone is the gate through which salvation came into the world.

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Jesus - "I AM THE GATE" (John 10:9)

Your blind spot to Marian idolatry is absolutely astounding and perplexing. You can't even see it as you're doing it.

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"It was thus that Christ died as a ransom, paid once for all, on behalf of our sins, he the innocent for us the guilty, so as to present us in God's sight." (1 Peter 3:18)

"Even as I write, I am glad of my sufferings on your behalf, as, in this mortal frame of mine, I help to pay off the debt which the afflictions of Christ still leave to be paid, for the sake of his body, the Church." (Colossians 1:24)

Which one is right, and which one is the heretic?

You will never find satisfactory answers to your questions by proof-texting. You must understand that words have different meanings in different contexts.

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It wasn't "proof-texting". You called Mary the gate, when Jesus' direct and clear, unambiguous words was that HE is the gate. You're attempting to squirm out of the fact that you demonstrated first hand the kind of Marian idolatry that plagues your church.

There is nothing Paul is saying that is giving him the exclusive honor that only belongs to Jesus. There is only ONE gate to heaven, "THE" gate. And Jesus says he is it. Roman Catholics like yourself give that honor to Mary. And whatever it is, be it extreme ignorance, dishonesty, blindness, satanic brainwashing, even plain old stupidity... something is blinding you to your idolatry.

And never mind that you only answered to the "gate" aspect of my question, and conspicuously avoided answering to the "salvation being ONLY through Mary" part. Your sophistry isn't going to work.

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Hopefully we can agree that Jesus is not an actual gate. Metaphors can be used in different ways for different things. When we say Mary was the gate by which salvation entered the world, we simply mean that through her Christ became incarnate.

Paul may not be giving himself exclusive honor, but he is taking honor that belongs exclusively to Jesus -- at least by your logic. That's why you can't just pick out words and phrases to prove a point. You need to understand what is meant in context.

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No, Paul is not taking any honor away from Jesus. He's saying that his suffering was required as a continuation of Jesus' sufferings, because he had to spread the gospel which would require suffering.

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Correct. And likewise, what these theologians are saying is that Mary's mediation and intercession are required as a continuation of Christ's.

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....and saying that her intercession alone is necessary for salvation, that NO ONE can come to Jesus without her, that those who seek HER protection will be saved, that SHE is the foundation of ALL our confidence, and that we obtain EVERY GRACE and ALL SALVATION only through her.

All very unbiblical and obviously idolatrous beliefs, usurping Jesus. And pure worship. Your ignorance/lack of discernment/dishonesty regarding this fact tells us the whole story about Roman Catholicism.

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I understand your issues with some of that language. I hope you'll find your way to a better understanding of its meaning.

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"These aren't the droids you're looking for."

Please just stop with the gaslighting defense mechanisms and just be honest with others as well as with yourself with what's clearly being said by your Church, not to mention what is practiced. Then maybe you'll begin to understand why people will always scoff at your Church's continual insistence that you don't worship Mary. "Clarifying" Mary's role as a mediator by downgrading her "Co-Mediatrix" title isn't going to convince anyone.

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I'm not trying to convince anyone.

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But your Church is. ArBear is. It's all part of the fairly recent ecumenical movement of the Roman Catholic Church striving to make Roman Catholicism more palatable to people of all religions, in this case with Protestantism. And as I'm hoping that I'm making quite clear here, this "clarification" is way, way too insufficient for that. The enormous problem with Mary deification and worship still remains as the 900 pound gorilla. Some of us aren't going to fall asleep on this.

We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith. The difference is that Mary is a mother to all Christians, so in that sense all salvation comes through her.

Also, not everything a pope or saint says is binding for salvation.

Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith.

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• "O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee." (Pope Leo XIII, Adiutricem, 9)
• "no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother" (Pope Leo 13th, Octobri Mense)
• "She has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven, the most true mediatrix between God and human beings" (St. Lawrence Justinian)
• "Sinners receive pardon by the intercession of Mary alone." (attributed to St. John Chrysostom, by St. Alphonsus Ligouri)
• "No one ever finds Christ but with and through Mary. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Mary seeks Him in vain." (St. Bonaventure)
• "All those who seek Mary's protection will be saved for all eternity." (Pope Benedict XV)
• "Mary's intercession is not only useful but necessary for salvation.... " (St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church)
• "Mary is the road we must travel to reach God" (Pope Francis, paraphrased)
• "God has entrusted the keys and treasures of Heaven to Mary." (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• "The foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will: That we obtain everything through Mary." (Pope Pius IX)

All this clearly belies your claim. When you start saying, writing, and teaching these things about your own mother and father as well, then maybe people will start to believe you. The most stupefying thing is you and your fellow Catholics' blatant dishonesty regarding this, and your attempts at Jedi mind-trick level gaslighting. I am really at a loss to explain it, other than to attribute it to the result of deep Satanic deception.

Sam Lowry said:

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The difference is that Mary is a mother to all Christians, so in that sense all salvation comes through her.

Also, not everything a pope or saint says is binding for salvation.

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Mary being the "Mother to all Christians" is a Roman Catholic man-made tradition, completely absent in Scripture, thus not from divine revelation. In fact it directly contradicts Scripture. Mary had nothing to do with the actual obtaining of salvation for us. Bearing Jesus does not credit her with the work of Jesus. You remember that Jesus fella, don't you? The one who actually was divine and actually had to do the work to get our salvation? It doesn't escape people's notice that in Roman Cathoicism everything just seems to fall back to Mary. And the OP thinks he can convince people that Roman Catholics don't worship her??

Saying salvation came through Mary because she gave birth to the man who obtained salvation for us, would be like saying the Holocaust came through Hitler's mother.

And though not everything a pope says is binding for salvation, it does go to show what the Roman Catholic Church teaches. And the fact that we now have Catholic popes directly contradicting each other with regard to Mary's title of Co-Redemptrix and Mediator of All Graces, it brings into question, to say the least, the Roman Catholic claim of the infallible magisterium guiding Jesus' church.

Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith. The difference is that Mary is a mother to all Christians, so in that sense all salvation comes through her.

Also, not everything a pope or saint says is binding for salvation.

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Using your logic, our salvation comes through everyone in Mary's genealogy because without them, no Mary, without Mary, no Christ.

TinFoilHatPreacherBear said:

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Fre3dombear said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Realitybites said:

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OsoCoreyell said:

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I want to know by what authority Catholics think it is sound theology to pray to Mary.

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I'm not Roman Catholic but this explanation may help.

Intercessory prayer isn't praying to a person. It is a prayer request that others pray to God for us.

The Biblical support for it is found in these verse:

James 5:16 - Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working."

John 11:26 - "And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (It's a modern heresy that Christians die. Historically, the passing of the Christian has been thought of as the falling asleep of their body in the Lord to await a bodily resurrection. This is why Christians bury their dead, and don't cremate them.)

Hebrews 12:1 - "Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." (We are surrounded by this great cloud today, not at some point when we get to heaven).

Revelation 8:3-4 "Then another angel, having a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel's hand."

The bolded portion of the text is the actual technical mechanism by which God hears your prayer, by the way.

But who gave this angel with the golden censer your prayer to offer to God? Revelation answers that too.

Revelation 5:8 "Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints."

As you can see, making prayer requests of other Christians is not limited to those in your Sunday School Class, Church, City, State, Country, or Generation.

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There is NOTHING in Scripture that clearly and explicitly instructs us to pray to departed saints or Mary, or tells us that they even have the ability to receive prayers to begin with. There is no instance whatsoever anywhere in the Old or New Testament of anyone praying to a departed believer for any kind of intercession. None. There exists NO teaching from Jesus or his apostles that we can and should pray to Mary and the saints.

I just don't understand how a church can build a system of faith, worship, and practice on something like praying to Mary or the saints, when the basis of such a practice can only be derived by reading your assumptions into Scripture and drawing non sequitur inferences like you did in order to justify something that really isn't there. Especially since there is no real reason to do it. We have direct access to God and Jesus, and we are explicitly instructed by Jesus himself to go directly to them. This is the clear, unambiguous teaching of Scripture.

The prayers being in "bowls of incense" does not necessarily indicate that those prayers were directed to the saints or Mary. And there is no reason whatsoever to believe that this is the "actual mechanism" by which prayers go up to God. All this is pure eisegesis. And after all, the practice has no real benefit - what does a believer lose if they don't pray to Mary of the saints? On the other hand, if you DO pray to them, you risk committing idolatry and angering God. The risk/reward is way too high for something finding its basis only in haphazard eisegesis. Praying to Mary and the saints had its origins in pagan Rome. In order to make the pagans convert to Christianity, they were allowed to continue praying to their multiple gods, but they just renamed those gods after Christian figures, like Mary and the saints. Those of you who engage in this practice REALLY need to understand this history.

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There is reason the curtain that partitioned the Holy of Holies tore from top to bottom.

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Tradition is Mary sewed that curtain. Now Ps will say they dont do tradition because they sola scriptura yet the scriptura tells them that tradition is part of it.

Ps even invented a completely separate Bible that didnt exist prior to Martin Luther and somehow explain it away as its the scriptura they want to believe just like they completely ignore verses that nuke their beliefs

Even with all that Ps and Catholics believe statistically most of the same things. Its just the Ps toss aside some of the most critical ones

And of course Ps wouldnt even have a Bible to sola had the Catholics not created it. Bizarre place to find ones self.

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Created it. That's rich.
The Catholics didn't make the books of the Bible authoritative. The books were already seen as authoritative by the early church. The premise that the catholic church created the Bible and made them authoritative is a bad or circular logic.
The truth is that God had already inspired the letters and they were already recognized as being inspired and authoritative by the early church.

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Christ instructed Peter to form the Church and thus gave the authority to said Church, which Catholics believe to be the Body of Christ. You are correct in that Catholics didn't make the books of the Bible authoritative; Catholics don't believe that either. However, by the given authority from Christ Himself and passed down through apostolic succession, the Canon was established.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Also, are you buying ArBear's argument that those quotes were "out of context"? You let him off the hook too easily. I have been trying to address this with him myself, but I fear he has joined the long list of people who don't like my questions so they ignore me. I guess you're gonna have to get that out of him, if you care to.

Is there really a context in which such statements could EVER be acceptable to someone who professes to love and only worship God, as they say they do? Denying that one worships Mary, but then balking at disavowing clear statements of Mary worship somehow just doesn't make a person seem like they're on the level.

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I married into a Catholic family and have been to many, many Catholic masses. Some of the family seem to place Mary higher than others but I've yet to hear any of them say salvation comes through Mary or, anything remotely close to it.
I've sat through many liturgies and have yet to hear one say anything that links Mary to salvation. On the other hand, I've also sat through a handful of rosaries after a death and hear nothing about Christ expect from family members in casual conversation before and after. Never have I heard the person conducting (is that the right word) the rosary speak of Christ salvation.

The last rosary I went to , all of the grand kids had t-shirts with their favorite or most appropriate Bible verse on it-verses they had learned in family Bible studies with their grandparents.

As for the quotes, I'd love to have a link to the English translations of each document so I could read them for myself. I fully expect Prots to attack them and RCs to support them or shy away from any defense.

It may be that ARBear isn't shying away from answering but collecting sources . We'll see.

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Individual Roman Catholics here and there may not credit Mary with salvation... but the question is not about them, nor about what they show outwardly, but about specific statements made by their leaders. Are they able to disavow those obviously heretical and idolatrous beliefs? Because if not, then something is really, really wrong, and their repeated denial that they worship Mary starts to look phony.

Can you really doubt the translation of those quotes? Roman Catholicism is suffused with this kind of excessive and idolatrous glorification of Mary. I'm sure you've read the quotes I've given in other threads from The Glories of Mary, or the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary (a book of psalms, where the author used the Psalms from the Old Testament and inserted MARY in place of God. Yes, you heard that right. If that in of itself does not scream idolatry, then idolatry has no meaning whatsoever. If one can't recognize the idolatry in that, then one never will.)

Pope John Paul II's personal motto was "Totus tuum Maria" which (accurately) translated means "I am all yours, Mary". It comes from a Marian prayer in the 1712 book True Devotion to Mary by Louis de Montfort. The prayer goes:

"Totus tuus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria."
("I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart")


He belongs entirely to Mary?? Mary is his all??

How does all this not make plainly obvious, about who Mary is in Roman Catholicism? And mind you, we're not even including their bowing and praying to Mary's image IN CHURCH, singing hymns to her IN CHURCH, holding hundreds of festivals for her, calling her "THE ALL HOLY ONE" in their catechism, etc. There's gotta be a point where the oft-repeated, "you're taking it out of context" go-to argument from Roman Catholics hunkering down on the defensive starts to face an enormous and ever-expanding wall of implausibility.... isn't there? Why do they think we'll keep buying it? The level of gaslighting is truly perplexing.

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I understand what you are saying regarding RC leaders and their written statements regarding Mary. I just don't see the trickledown coming out in the liturgy.

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But again, the question is not whether they are personally engaging in or expressing those sentiments - the question is whether these Catholics, who insist they aren't worshiping Mary, are willing/able to disavow those statements? If they are not, then it doesn't do much to lend credence to their claim. No one who truly loves and worships God alone would ever find those statements even remotely acceptable. If they lack discernment in that area, then there's something really, really wrong.

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Are all Christian's theologically trained?

Are we saved corporately or as individuals?

I don't deal with the Catholic Church. I deal with Catholics.

I don't deal with prosperity churches, Hillsong, Bethel etc… I deal with individuals.

You stick with the corporate battles of church vs church. I'll stick with individuals. We each have our roles.

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I get that you're defensive for the sake of your kin. But this isn't about theological training or what they belief individually and personally. But the truth remains that if they can't recognize the problem in crediting any other person other than Jesus for their salvation, you know, the central tenet of the Christian faith, then there's something really wrong with their Christianity. Is this even debatable?

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"This isn't about…. But…"

Like I said , you handle the corporate side and I'll handle the individual side.

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What exactly is wrong about what I just said?

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If you are dealing with them corporately, nothing is wrong. If you are dealing with them individually, I see a lot that can be done better.

You said " this isn't about them individually or personally" and then came with "but…if they can't". Well that recognition is individual/personal.

It pays to approach individuals differently than it does groups. A professor of 500 teaches differently than a tutor of 1 or 2. Your approach is directed at the RC church. My approach is directed to the individual.

Do professors make breakthroughs or tutors? I think they both do in their own way.

Like I said, different roles.

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Let me clarify: it isn't about them individually or personally with regard to whether the corporate beliefs "trickled down" to their personal belief or not. Even if they did not, still, how those individuals respond to corporate statements of belief might indicate a problem in their individual beliefs, especially in this case about Mary.

If an individual denies worshiping Mary, but then can't/won't disavow completely idolatrous corporate statements fully supporting it, then it makes supect their denial, as well as raise the question whether they are even truly a Christian. It certainly doesn't take being "theologically trained" to understand the problem behind crediting someone else for salvation other than Jesus, at least one would think. If you are concerned with Catholics as individuals, I hardly see how you can dismiss this. You should approach them as you see fit, but I really don't see how one can reach individual Catholics without first addressing the serious corporate problems first. Especially since in Roman Catholicism, the corporate has full authority over the individual beliefs. Will they listen to you over their corporate authorities? If so, then they can't be Catholic. So there's a catch-22.

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Think of it as people that describe themselves as Calvinist, 4 1/2 point Calvinist.

Yes I do see the catch-22 in what you described just as there is a catch-22 in a 4 1/2 point Calvinist. I also see the Catholics in my family fully describing the gospel, fully believing the gospel and living the gospel as close to fully as any Protestant is capable of living it.

NOT A RABBIT TRAIL
if an individual Catholic struggles with transubstantiation and leans more towards con substantiation, should they disavow the church for that reason?

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Would, or do your family members who you say fully describe, believe, and live the gospel recognize the idolatry that is clearly evident in the Roman Catholic Church regarding Mary? If they don't at all, then I just can't believe they are true Christians. However, if they recognize the "troublesome language" and try to make (lame) excuses for it like some here, perhaps they are true Christians, but they are in serious error, and vulnerable. And I have to point out that if they truly are okay with crediting anyone else other than Jesus for their salvation like what is being done for Mary in Roman Catholicism, then I can't agree that they are truly "living the gospel". Something is very wrong in their Christian life.

If an individual Catholic does not believe in transubstantiation, then the Roman Catholic Church disavows THEM. You and your Catholic family members do realize this, don't you? And I would say that definitely yes, that if a church teaches something that is not the gospel or something that conflicts and/or contradicts clear biblical teaching, that person should leave that church. It's what Paul instructs us to do in Galatians. I would certainly consider the idolatry of Mary to apply here, wouldn't you?

As far as Calvinism is concerned, or any other doctrinal difference among Protestants for that matter, I don't believe any of them claim that if one doesn't agree with their specific doctrine, that they aren't saved. And certainly none of them engage in idolatry like with Mary and make it binding to salvation. I mean, the treatment of Mary in Roman Catholicism makes it NOT a Christian religion. It's a different religion altogether. So definitely anyone who claims themself a Christian should not be part of a church that isn't even a Christian church. That should go without saying.

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"Take this all of you and eat of it, for this is my body which will be given up for you."

"In a similar way, taking the chalice with the fruit of the vine, He gave thanks, and gave the chalice to his disciples saying: Take this, all of you, and drink from it. For this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins."

"Do this in memory of me."

Regarding your claim of not needing to follow one doctrine for salvation, Nietzsche once suggested that a major consequence of protestantism was that everyone would eventually just become their own church. Perhaps this is why you're seeing a vast number of young people going towards Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith.

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• "O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee." (Pope Leo XIII, Adiutricem, 9)
• "no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother" (Pope Leo 13th, Octobri Mense)
• "She has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven, the most true mediatrix between God and human beings" (St. Lawrence Justinian)
• "Sinners receive pardon by the intercession of Mary alone." (attributed to St. John Chrysostom, by St. Alphonsus Ligouri)
• "No one ever finds Christ but with and through Mary. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Mary seeks Him in vain." (St. Bonaventure)
• "All those who seek Mary's protection will be saved for all eternity." (Pope Benedict XV)
• "Mary's intercession is not only useful but necessary for salvation.... " (St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church)
• "Mary is the road we must travel to reach God" (Pope Francis, paraphrased)
• "God has entrusted the keys and treasures of Heaven to Mary." (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• "The foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will: That we obtain everything through Mary." (Pope Pius IX)

All this clearly belies your claim. When you start saying, writing, and teaching these things about your own mother and father as well, then maybe people will start to believe you. The most stupefying thing is you and your fellow Catholics' blatant dishonesty regarding this, and your attempts at Jedi mind-trick level gaslighting. I am really at a loss to explain it, other than to attribute it to the result of deep Satanic deception.

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Have you considered that you might just be misunderstanding the intent of these authors and are taking quotes out of context?

Let's say you found someone badly injured on the side of the road. Without your intervention, they are clearly going to die soon. You load them into your car and take them to the hospital, where the doctor provides lifesaving medical treatment. After the person has recovered, they come up to you and thank you for saving their life.

Were they wrong to thank you in this way? Are they saying that you saved them instead of the doctor? I don't think any honest person would say that they were. The doctor's intervention is what actually saved this person's life, but you also "saved" them in a lesser, subordinate way by taking them to the hospital. This second sense is how Catholics view Mary's intercession. Mary, through her intercession, brings us wounded sinners into the presence of the Great Physician, who is the only Person with the power to heal the soul.

Also, let's say for argument's sake that you're right and that we Catholics are semi-pagans who worship Mary as some sort of secondary goddess. If so, we do an awfully poor job of it by historical pagan standards. Pagan deities expected to be publicly acknowledged as divine by their devotees, but no Catholic publications ever written have ever called Mother Mary divine. On the contrary, there are many official Church documents that explicitly reject the existence of any divinity other than the Trinity.

Also, all ancient Greco-Roman deities demanded ritual sacrifice as a key component of worship. However, the only ritual sacrifice known to Catholicism is that of Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is exclusively offered to the Trinitarian God according to unchangeable dogma. The only religious group that ever attempted to offer sacrifice to Mary, the aforementioned Collyridians, were excommunicated by the Catholic Church on the grounds of idolatry without any internal Church controversy, an excommunication which still stands to this day. And if there is anything we can say for sure about the character of the early Catholic Church, it's that they were NOT shy about engaging in controversy regarding religious matters.

If I were to call an ancient Greco-Roman pagan to the present day and tell them that "my religion worships someone named Mary, but she isn't divine and we never offer sacrifice to her. In fact, we will kick anyone who sacrifices to her out of our community" they would call me a madman. Ritual, intentional sacrifice was the central component of worship in Greco-Roman paganism, so the previous statement would strike them as insane and self-contradictory.

Do some poorly catechized Catholics take Marian devotion too far? Yes, and that's precisely why the recent doctrinal note was issued. Offering worship to the Virgin Mary, or to anyone other than God, is expressly forbidden in Catholicism, and it always has been.

ARbear13 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith.

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• "O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee." (Pope Leo XIII, Adiutricem, 9)
• "no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother" (Pope Leo 13th, Octobri Mense)
• "She has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven, the most true mediatrix between God and human beings" (St. Lawrence Justinian)
• "Sinners receive pardon by the intercession of Mary alone." (attributed to St. John Chrysostom, by St. Alphonsus Ligouri)
• "No one ever finds Christ but with and through Mary. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Mary seeks Him in vain." (St. Bonaventure)
• "All those who seek Mary's protection will be saved for all eternity." (Pope Benedict XV)
• "Mary's intercession is not only useful but necessary for salvation.... " (St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church)
• "Mary is the road we must travel to reach God" (Pope Francis, paraphrased)
• "God has entrusted the keys and treasures of Heaven to Mary." (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• "The foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will: That we obtain everything through Mary." (Pope Pius IX)

All this clearly belies your claim. When you start saying, writing, and teaching these things about your own mother and father as well, then maybe people will start to believe you. The most stupefying thing is you and your fellow Catholics' blatant dishonesty regarding this, and your attempts at Jedi mind-trick level gaslighting. I am really at a loss to explain it, other than to attribute it to the result of deep Satanic deception.

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Have you considered that you might just be misunderstanding the intent of these authors and are taking quotes out of context?

Let's say you found someone badly injured on the side of the road. Without your intervention, they are clearly going to die soon. You load them into your car and take them to the hospital, where the doctor provides lifesaving medical treatment. After the person has recovered, they come up to you and thank you for saving their life.

Were they wrong to thank you in this way? Are they saying that you saved them instead of the doctor? I don't think any honest person would say that they were. The doctor's intervention is what actually saved this person's life, but you also "saved" them in a lesser, subordinate way by taking them to the hospital. This second sense is how Catholics view Mary's intercession. Mary, through her intercession, brings us wounded sinners into the presence of the Great Physician, who is the only Person with the power to heal the soul.

Also, let's say for argument's sake that you're right and that we Catholics are semi-pagans who worship Mary as some sort of secondary goddess. If so, we do an awfully poor job of it by historical pagan standards. Pagan deities expected to be publicly acknowledged as divine by their devotees, but no Catholic publications ever written have ever called Mother Mary divine. On the contrary, there are many official Church documents that explicitly reject the existence of any divinity other than the Trinity.

Also, all ancient Greco-Roman deities demanded ritual sacrifice as a key component of worship. However, the only ritual sacrifice known to Catholicism is that of Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is exclusively offered to the Trinitarian God according to unchangeable dogma. The only religious group that ever attempted to offer sacrifice to Mary, the aforementioned Collyridians, were excommunicated by the Catholic Church on the grounds of idolatry without any internal Church controversy, an excommunication which still stands to this day. And if there is anything we can say for sure about the character of the early Catholic Church, it's that they were NOT shy about engaging in controversy regarding religious matters.

If I were to call an ancient Greco-Roman pagan to the present day and tell them that "my religion worships someone named Mary, but she isn't divine and we never offer sacrifice to her. In fact, we will kick anyone who sacrifices to her out of our community" they would call me a madman. Ritual, intentional sacrifice was the central component of worship in Greco-Roman paganism, so the previous statement would strike them as insane and self-contradictory.

Do some poorly catechized Catholics take Marian devotion too far? Yes, and that's precisely why the recent doctrinal note was issued. Offering worship to the Virgin Mary, or to anyone other than God, is expressly forbidden in Catholicism, and it always has been.

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I think we've all heard people wrongly use " judge not lest ye be judged." Read by itself, it sounds like a clear cut statement. When I hear people misuse the verse, I try to provide them context rather than let them continue down the wrong thought path.

Can you provide context to any of the statements in question so that I and others aren't misinterpreting the statement the same way the "judge not" statement gets misinterpreted.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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The difference is that Mary is a mother to all Christians, so in that sense all salvation comes through her.

Also, not everything a pope or saint says is binding for salvation.

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Mary being the "Mother to all Christians" is a Roman Catholic man-made tradition, completely absent in Scripture, thus not from divine revelation. In fact it directly contradicts Scripture. Mary had nothing to do with the actual obtaining of salvation for us. Bearing Jesus does not credit her with the work of Jesus. You remember that Jesus fella, don't you? The one who actually was divine and actually had to do the work to get our salvation? It doesn't escape people's notice that in Roman Cathoicism everything just seems to fall back to Mary. And the OP thinks he can convince people that Roman Catholics don't worship her??

Saying salvation came through Mary because she gave birth to the man who obtained salvation for us, would be like saying the Holocaust came through Hitler's mother.

And though not everything a pope says is binding for salvation, it does go to show what the Roman Catholic Church teaches. And the fact that we now have Catholic popes directly contradicting each other with regard to Mary's title of Co-Redemptrix and Mediator of All Graces, it brings into question, to say the least, the Roman Catholic claim of the infallible magisterium guiding Jesus' church.

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Catholics don't believe in sola scriptura, so that's no argument.

If you read the document, you should see it's very much in line with what other popes have said.

Hitler's mother had no idea of his destiny. If she had, it would make sense to say it came about through her.

LIB,MR BEARS said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith. The difference is that Mary is a mother to all Christians, so in that sense all salvation comes through her.

Also, not everything a pope or saint says is binding for salvation.

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Using your logic, our salvation comes through everyone in Mary's genealogy because without them, no Mary, without Mary, no Christ.

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Think of it more in terms of proximate cause.

Sam Lowry said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith. The difference is that Mary is a mother to all Christians, so in that sense all salvation comes through her.

Also, not everything a pope or saint says is binding for salvation.

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Using your logic, our salvation comes through everyone in Mary's genealogy because without them, no Mary, without Mary, no Christ.

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Think of it more in terms of proximate cause.

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Do you view God as sovereign?

Did God NEED Mary? I fully understand He used Mary but, did He NEED her.

After that we can go through all those listed in Hebrews 11 to see who God NEEDED.

LIB,MR BEARS said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith. The difference is that Mary is a mother to all Christians, so in that sense all salvation comes through her.

Also, not everything a pope or saint says is binding for salvation.

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Using your logic, our salvation comes through everyone in Mary's genealogy because without them, no Mary, without Mary, no Christ.

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Think of it more in terms of proximate cause.

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Do you view God as sovereign?

Did God NEED Mary? I fully understand He used Mary but, did He NEED her.

After that we can go through all those listed in Hebrews 11 to see who God NEEDED.

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He is sovereign. He needed her only for purposes of his plan. Otherwise he could have made a different plan.

LIB,MR BEARS said:

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ARbear13 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith.

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• "O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee." (Pope Leo XIII, Adiutricem, 9)
• "no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother" (Pope Leo 13th, Octobri Mense)
• "She has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven, the most true mediatrix between God and human beings" (St. Lawrence Justinian)
• "Sinners receive pardon by the intercession of Mary alone." (attributed to St. John Chrysostom, by St. Alphonsus Ligouri)
• "No one ever finds Christ but with and through Mary. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Mary seeks Him in vain." (St. Bonaventure)
• "All those who seek Mary's protection will be saved for all eternity." (Pope Benedict XV)
• "Mary's intercession is not only useful but necessary for salvation.... " (St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church)
• "Mary is the road we must travel to reach God" (Pope Francis, paraphrased)
• "God has entrusted the keys and treasures of Heaven to Mary." (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• "The foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will: That we obtain everything through Mary." (Pope Pius IX)

All this clearly belies your claim. When you start saying, writing, and teaching these things about your own mother and father as well, then maybe people will start to believe you. The most stupefying thing is you and your fellow Catholics' blatant dishonesty regarding this, and your attempts at Jedi mind-trick level gaslighting. I am really at a loss to explain it, other than to attribute it to the result of deep Satanic deception.

---

Have you considered that you might just be misunderstanding the intent of these authors and are taking quotes out of context?

Let's say you found someone badly injured on the side of the road. Without your intervention, they are clearly going to die soon. You load them into your car and take them to the hospital, where the doctor provides lifesaving medical treatment. After the person has recovered, they come up to you and thank you for saving their life.

Were they wrong to thank you in this way? Are they saying that you saved them instead of the doctor? I don't think any honest person would say that they were. The doctor's intervention is what actually saved this person's life, but you also "saved" them in a lesser, subordinate way by taking them to the hospital. This second sense is how Catholics view Mary's intercession. Mary, through her intercession, brings us wounded sinners into the presence of the Great Physician, who is the only Person with the power to heal the soul.

Also, let's say for argument's sake that you're right and that we Catholics are semi-pagans who worship Mary as some sort of secondary goddess. If so, we do an awfully poor job of it by historical pagan standards. Pagan deities expected to be publicly acknowledged as divine by their devotees, but no Catholic publications ever written have ever called Mother Mary divine. On the contrary, there are many official Church documents that explicitly reject the existence of any divinity other than the Trinity.

Also, all ancient Greco-Roman deities demanded ritual sacrifice as a key component of worship. However, the only ritual sacrifice known to Catholicism is that of Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is exclusively offered to the Trinitarian God according to unchangeable dogma. The only religious group that ever attempted to offer sacrifice to Mary, the aforementioned Collyridians, were excommunicated by the Catholic Church on the grounds of idolatry without any internal Church controversy, an excommunication which still stands to this day. And if there is anything we can say for sure about the character of the early Catholic Church, it's that they were NOT shy about engaging in controversy regarding religious matters.

If I were to call an ancient Greco-Roman pagan to the present day and tell them that "my religion worships someone named Mary, but she isn't divine and we never offer sacrifice to her. In fact, we will kick anyone who sacrifices to her out of our community" they would call me a madman. Ritual, intentional sacrifice was the central component of worship in Greco-Roman paganism, so the previous statement would strike them as insane and self-contradictory.

Do some poorly catechized Catholics take Marian devotion too far? Yes, and that's precisely why the recent doctrinal note was issued. Offering worship to the Virgin Mary, or to anyone other than God, is expressly forbidden in Catholicism, and it always has been.

---

I think we've all heard people wrongly use " judge not lest ye be judged." Read by itself, it sounds like a clear cut statement. When I hear people misuse the verse, I try to provide them context rather than let them continue down the wrong thought path.

Can you provide context to any of the statements in question so that I and others aren't misinterpreting the statement the same way the "judge not" statement gets misinterpreted.

---

All of these quotes are from treatises penned by famous Catholic theologians who are widely regarded in the Church as exceptionally advanced. They build their arguments and statements upon Catholic first principles (such as the absolute sovereignty of God and sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice at Calvary) that were already fully understood and accepted by the intended audience. Most of those papal quotes were from missives that were directly specifically to other Catholic bishops, so pontiffs such as Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius IX could be certain that their audience had the theological background necessary to understand them in their proper context. The other quotes are from professional theologians, such as St. Alphonsus Liguori, who wrote them for highly educated clergy or lay audiences who wanted to understand Marian devotion at a deeper theological level. They definitely were not intended for a Protestant or lay Catholic audience that isn't well-versed in Catholic theology. Let's just say that no one is passing out Liguori's four volume Moral Theology to random visitors at Sunday Mass.

It's helpful to think of these theological treatises like math textbooks. A textbook focused on multivariable calculus is not going to begin with basic addition and subtraction; it's going to assume that you already know a great deal about mathematics before you begin reading. The Catholic Church has spilled so much ink about theology over the past few thousand years that trying to rehash these arguments on a message board is an exercise in futility. If you are actually interested in learning more about Catholic Mariology and aren't just using this as a line of attack, I would suggest starting with the Catechism or Scott Hahn's book Hail, Holy Queen. Hahn is a former Presbyterian minster turned Catholic theologian who writes about Catholic doctrine specifically for a Protestant or formerly Protestant audience.

The extent of the average parishioner's Marian devotion consists of an occasional Rosary, which is a meditation on the life of Christ from Mary's perspective, and attendance at the Masses commemorating the Marian dogmas. All four Marian dogmas are actually meant to establish a truth about Christ Himself, a point that has been emphasized and expounded upon by the priest at every one I've ever attended.

Mary is rarely mentioned at Mass outside the aforementioned feast day Masses, Christmas, and Easter. Mass is the one weekly event that Catholics are required to attend, and it is all about God and is directed to God. In fact, a normal Sunday Mass is only going to mention the Virgin Mary once, in the recitation of the Nicene or Apostles' Creed. Contrast that with the dozens of times the various Persons of the Trinity will be specifically mentioned at every Mass.

ARbear13 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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ARbear13 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith.

---

• "O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee." (Pope Leo XIII, Adiutricem, 9)
• "no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother" (Pope Leo 13th, Octobri Mense)
• "She has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven, the most true mediatrix between God and human beings" (St. Lawrence Justinian)
• "Sinners receive pardon by the intercession of Mary alone." (attributed to St. John Chrysostom, by St. Alphonsus Ligouri)
• "No one ever finds Christ but with and through Mary. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Mary seeks Him in vain." (St. Bonaventure)
• "All those who seek Mary's protection will be saved for all eternity." (Pope Benedict XV)
• "Mary's intercession is not only useful but necessary for salvation.... " (St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church)
• "Mary is the road we must travel to reach God" (Pope Francis, paraphrased)
• "God has entrusted the keys and treasures of Heaven to Mary." (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• "The foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will: That we obtain everything through Mary." (Pope Pius IX)

All this clearly belies your claim. When you start saying, writing, and teaching these things about your own mother and father as well, then maybe people will start to believe you. The most stupefying thing is you and your fellow Catholics' blatant dishonesty regarding this, and your attempts at Jedi mind-trick level gaslighting. I am really at a loss to explain it, other than to attribute it to the result of deep Satanic deception.

---

Have you considered that you might just be misunderstanding the intent of these authors and are taking quotes out of context?

Let's say you found someone badly injured on the side of the road. Without your intervention, they are clearly going to die soon. You load them into your car and take them to the hospital, where the doctor provides lifesaving medical treatment. After the person has recovered, they come up to you and thank you for saving their life.

Were they wrong to thank you in this way? Are they saying that you saved them instead of the doctor? I don't think any honest person would say that they were. The doctor's intervention is what actually saved this person's life, but you also "saved" them in a lesser, subordinate way by taking them to the hospital. This second sense is how Catholics view Mary's intercession. Mary, through her intercession, brings us wounded sinners into the presence of the Great Physician, who is the only Person with the power to heal the soul.

Also, let's say for argument's sake that you're right and that we Catholics are semi-pagans who worship Mary as some sort of secondary goddess. If so, we do an awfully poor job of it by historical pagan standards. Pagan deities expected to be publicly acknowledged as divine by their devotees, but no Catholic publications ever written have ever called Mother Mary divine. On the contrary, there are many official Church documents that explicitly reject the existence of any divinity other than the Trinity.

Also, all ancient Greco-Roman deities demanded ritual sacrifice as a key component of worship. However, the only ritual sacrifice known to Catholicism is that of Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is exclusively offered to the Trinitarian God according to unchangeable dogma. The only religious group that ever attempted to offer sacrifice to Mary, the aforementioned Collyridians, were excommunicated by the Catholic Church on the grounds of idolatry without any internal Church controversy, an excommunication which still stands to this day. And if there is anything we can say for sure about the character of the early Catholic Church, it's that they were NOT shy about engaging in controversy regarding religious matters.

If I were to call an ancient Greco-Roman pagan to the present day and tell them that "my religion worships someone named Mary, but she isn't divine and we never offer sacrifice to her. In fact, we will kick anyone who sacrifices to her out of our community" they would call me a madman. Ritual, intentional sacrifice was the central component of worship in Greco-Roman paganism, so the previous statement would strike them as insane and self-contradictory.

Do some poorly catechized Catholics take Marian devotion too far? Yes, and that's precisely why the recent doctrinal note was issued. Offering worship to the Virgin Mary, or to anyone other than God, is expressly forbidden in Catholicism, and it always has been.

---

I think we've all heard people wrongly use " judge not lest ye be judged." Read by itself, it sounds like a clear cut statement. When I hear people misuse the verse, I try to provide them context rather than let them continue down the wrong thought path.

Can you provide context to any of the statements in question so that I and others aren't misinterpreting the statement the same way the "judge not" statement gets misinterpreted.

---

All of these quotes are from treatises penned by famous Catholic theologians who are widely regarded in the Church as exceptionally advanced. They build their arguments and statements upon Catholic first principles (such as the absolute sovereignty of God and sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice at Calvary) that were already fully understood and accepted by the intended audience. Most of those papal quotes were from missives that were directly specifically to other Catholic bishops, so pontiffs such as Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius IX could be certain that their audience had the theological background necessary to understand them in their proper context. The other quotes are from professional theologians, such as St. Alphonsus Liguori, who wrote them for highly educated clergy or lay audiences who wanted to understand Marian devotion at a deeper theological level. They definitely were not intended for a Protestant or lay Catholic audience that isn't well-versed in Catholic theology. Let's just say that one is passing out Liguori's four volume Moral Theology to random visitors at Sunday Mass.

It's helpful to think of these theological treatises like math textbooks. A textbook focused on multivariable calculus is not going to begin with basic addition and subtraction; it's going to assume that you already know a great deal about mathematics before you begin reading. The Catholic Church has spilled so much ink about theology over the past few thousand years that trying to rehash these arguments on a message board is an exercise in futility. If you are actually interested in learning more about Catholic Mariology and aren't just using this as a line of attack, I would suggest starting with the Catechism or Scott Hahn's book Hail, Holy Queen. Hahn is a former Presbyterian minster turned Catholic theologian who writes about Catholic doctrine specifically for a Protestant or formerly Protestant audience.

The extent of the average parishioner's Marian devotion consists of an occasional Rosary, which is a meditation on the life of Christ from Mary's perspective, and attendance at the Masses commemorating the Marian dogmas. All four Marian dogmas are actually meant to establish a truth about Christ Himself, a point that has been emphasized and expounded upon by the priest at every one I've ever attended.

Mary is rarely mentioned at Mass outside the aforementioned feast day Masses, Christmas, and Easter. Mass is the one weekly event that Catholics are required to attend, and it is all about God and is directed to God. In fact, a normal Sunday Mass is only going to mention the Virgin Mary once, in the recitation of the Nicene or Apostles' Creed. Contrast that with the dozens of times the various Persons of the Trinity will be specifically mentioned at every Mass.

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I like the last paragraph as it matches what I have seen at masses I've attended.

Regarding the previous paragraphs, I'll see if I can find the crib notes.

mtenery14 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Also, are you buying ArBear's argument that those quotes were "out of context"? You let him off the hook too easily. I have been trying to address this with him myself, but I fear he has joined the long list of people who don't like my questions so they ignore me. I guess you're gonna have to get that out of him, if you care to.

Is there really a context in which such statements could EVER be acceptable to someone who professes to love and only worship God, as they say they do? Denying that one worships Mary, but then balking at disavowing clear statements of Mary worship somehow just doesn't make a person seem like they're on the level.

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I married into a Catholic family and have been to many, many Catholic masses. Some of the family seem to place Mary higher than others but I've yet to hear any of them say salvation comes through Mary or, anything remotely close to it.
I've sat through many liturgies and have yet to hear one say anything that links Mary to salvation. On the other hand, I've also sat through a handful of rosaries after a death and hear nothing about Christ expect from family members in casual conversation before and after. Never have I heard the person conducting (is that the right word) the rosary speak of Christ salvation.

The last rosary I went to , all of the grand kids had t-shirts with their favorite or most appropriate Bible verse on it-verses they had learned in family Bible studies with their grandparents.

As for the quotes, I'd love to have a link to the English translations of each document so I could read them for myself. I fully expect Prots to attack them and RCs to support them or shy away from any defense.

It may be that ARBear isn't shying away from answering but collecting sources . We'll see.

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Individual Roman Catholics here and there may not credit Mary with salvation... but the question is not about them, nor about what they show outwardly, but about specific statements made by their leaders. Are they able to disavow those obviously heretical and idolatrous beliefs? Because if not, then something is really, really wrong, and their repeated denial that they worship Mary starts to look phony.

Can you really doubt the translation of those quotes? Roman Catholicism is suffused with this kind of excessive and idolatrous glorification of Mary. I'm sure you've read the quotes I've given in other threads from The Glories of Mary, or the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary (a book of psalms, where the author used the Psalms from the Old Testament and inserted MARY in place of God. Yes, you heard that right. If that in of itself does not scream idolatry, then idolatry has no meaning whatsoever. If one can't recognize the idolatry in that, then one never will.)

Pope John Paul II's personal motto was "Totus tuum Maria" which (accurately) translated means "I am all yours, Mary". It comes from a Marian prayer in the 1712 book True Devotion to Mary by Louis de Montfort. The prayer goes:

"Totus tuus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria."
("I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart")


He belongs entirely to Mary?? Mary is his all??

How does all this not make plainly obvious, about who Mary is in Roman Catholicism? And mind you, we're not even including their bowing and praying to Mary's image IN CHURCH, singing hymns to her IN CHURCH, holding hundreds of festivals for her, calling her "THE ALL HOLY ONE" in their catechism, etc. There's gotta be a point where the oft-repeated, "you're taking it out of context" go-to argument from Roman Catholics hunkering down on the defensive starts to face an enormous and ever-expanding wall of implausibility.... isn't there? Why do they think we'll keep buying it? The level of gaslighting is truly perplexing.

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I understand what you are saying regarding RC leaders and their written statements regarding Mary. I just don't see the trickledown coming out in the liturgy.

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But again, the question is not whether they are personally engaging in or expressing those sentiments - the question is whether these Catholics, who insist they aren't worshiping Mary, are willing/able to disavow those statements? If they are not, then it doesn't do much to lend credence to their claim. No one who truly loves and worships God alone would ever find those statements even remotely acceptable. If they lack discernment in that area, then there's something really, really wrong.

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Are all Christian's theologically trained?

Are we saved corporately or as individuals?

I don't deal with the Catholic Church. I deal with Catholics.

I don't deal with prosperity churches, Hillsong, Bethel etc… I deal with individuals.

You stick with the corporate battles of church vs church. I'll stick with individuals. We each have our roles.

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I get that you're defensive for the sake of your kin. But this isn't about theological training or what they belief individually and personally. But the truth remains that if they can't recognize the problem in crediting any other person other than Jesus for their salvation, you know, the central tenet of the Christian faith, then there's something really wrong with their Christianity. Is this even debatable?

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"This isn't about…. But…"

Like I said , you handle the corporate side and I'll handle the individual side.

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What exactly is wrong about what I just said?

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If you are dealing with them corporately, nothing is wrong. If you are dealing with them individually, I see a lot that can be done better.

You said " this isn't about them individually or personally" and then came with "but…if they can't". Well that recognition is individual/personal.

It pays to approach individuals differently than it does groups. A professor of 500 teaches differently than a tutor of 1 or 2. Your approach is directed at the RC church. My approach is directed to the individual.

Do professors make breakthroughs or tutors? I think they both do in their own way.

Like I said, different roles.

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Let me clarify: it isn't about them individually or personally with regard to whether the corporate beliefs "trickled down" to their personal belief or not. Even if they did not, still, how those individuals respond to corporate statements of belief might indicate a problem in their individual beliefs, especially in this case about Mary.

If an individual denies worshiping Mary, but then can't/won't disavow completely idolatrous corporate statements fully supporting it, then it makes supect their denial, as well as raise the question whether they are even truly a Christian. It certainly doesn't take being "theologically trained" to understand the problem behind crediting someone else for salvation other than Jesus, at least one would think. If you are concerned with Catholics as individuals, I hardly see how you can dismiss this. You should approach them as you see fit, but I really don't see how one can reach individual Catholics without first addressing the serious corporate problems first. Especially since in Roman Catholicism, the corporate has full authority over the individual beliefs. Will they listen to you over their corporate authorities? If so, then they can't be Catholic. So there's a catch-22.

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Think of it as people that describe themselves as Calvinist, 4 1/2 point Calvinist.

Yes I do see the catch-22 in what you described just as there is a catch-22 in a 4 1/2 point Calvinist. I also see the Catholics in my family fully describing the gospel, fully believing the gospel and living the gospel as close to fully as any Protestant is capable of living it.

NOT A RABBIT TRAIL
if an individual Catholic struggles with transubstantiation and leans more towards con substantiation, should they disavow the church for that reason?

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Would, or do your family members who you say fully describe, believe, and live the gospel recognize the idolatry that is clearly evident in the Roman Catholic Church regarding Mary? If they don't at all, then I just can't believe they are true Christians. However, if they recognize the "troublesome language" and try to make (lame) excuses for it like some here, perhaps they are true Christians, but they are in serious error, and vulnerable. And I have to point out that if they truly are okay with crediting anyone else other than Jesus for their salvation like what is being done for Mary in Roman Catholicism, then I can't agree that they are truly "living the gospel". Something is very wrong in their Christian life.

If an individual Catholic does not believe in transubstantiation, then the Roman Catholic Church disavows THEM. You and your Catholic family members do realize this, don't you? And I would say that definitely yes, that if a church teaches something that is not the gospel or something that conflicts and/or contradicts clear biblical teaching, that person should leave that church. It's what Paul instructs us to do in Galatians. I would certainly consider the idolatry of Mary to apply here, wouldn't you?

As far as Calvinism is concerned, or any other doctrinal difference among Protestants for that matter, I don't believe any of them claim that if one doesn't agree with their specific doctrine, that they aren't saved. And certainly none of them engage in idolatry like with Mary and make it binding to salvation. I mean, the treatment of Mary in Roman Catholicism makes it NOT a Christian religion. It's a different religion altogether. So definitely anyone who claims themself a Christian should not be part of a church that isn't even a Christian church. That should go without saying.

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"Take this all of you and eat of it, for this is my body which will be given up for you."

"In a similar way, taking the chalice with the fruit of the vine, He gave thanks, and gave the chalice to his disciples saying: Take this, all of you, and drink from it. For this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins."

"Do this in memory of me."

Regarding your claim of not needing to follow one doctrine for salvation, Nietzsche once suggested that a major consequence of protestantism was that everyone would eventually just become their own church. Perhaps this is why you're seeing a vast number of young people going towards Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

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One additional note, that shuts the door on transubstantiation - Jesus and the disciples were jews, Jesus himself and his disciples would have been sinning by drinking raw blood. Jesus did not break the law of the jews during his lifetime.
By Jesus's sinless life it absolutely must have been symbolic. Otherwise each one at that table was sinning. Clearly He wouldn't do that.

LIB,MR BEARS said:

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ARbear13 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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ARbear13 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith.

---

• "O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee." (Pope Leo XIII, Adiutricem, 9)
• "no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother" (Pope Leo 13th, Octobri Mense)
• "She has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven, the most true mediatrix between God and human beings" (St. Lawrence Justinian)
• "Sinners receive pardon by the intercession of Mary alone." (attributed to St. John Chrysostom, by St. Alphonsus Ligouri)
• "No one ever finds Christ but with and through Mary. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Mary seeks Him in vain." (St. Bonaventure)
• "All those who seek Mary's protection will be saved for all eternity." (Pope Benedict XV)
• "Mary's intercession is not only useful but necessary for salvation.... " (St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church)
• "Mary is the road we must travel to reach God" (Pope Francis, paraphrased)
• "God has entrusted the keys and treasures of Heaven to Mary." (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• "The foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will: That we obtain everything through Mary." (Pope Pius IX)

All this clearly belies your claim. When you start saying, writing, and teaching these things about your own mother and father as well, then maybe people will start to believe you. The most stupefying thing is you and your fellow Catholics' blatant dishonesty regarding this, and your attempts at Jedi mind-trick level gaslighting. I am really at a loss to explain it, other than to attribute it to the result of deep Satanic deception.

---

Have you considered that you might just be misunderstanding the intent of these authors and are taking quotes out of context?

Let's say you found someone badly injured on the side of the road. Without your intervention, they are clearly going to die soon. You load them into your car and take them to the hospital, where the doctor provides lifesaving medical treatment. After the person has recovered, they come up to you and thank you for saving their life.

Were they wrong to thank you in this way? Are they saying that you saved them instead of the doctor? I don't think any honest person would say that they were. The doctor's intervention is what actually saved this person's life, but you also "saved" them in a lesser, subordinate way by taking them to the hospital. This second sense is how Catholics view Mary's intercession. Mary, through her intercession, brings us wounded sinners into the presence of the Great Physician, who is the only Person with the power to heal the soul.

Also, let's say for argument's sake that you're right and that we Catholics are semi-pagans who worship Mary as some sort of secondary goddess. If so, we do an awfully poor job of it by historical pagan standards. Pagan deities expected to be publicly acknowledged as divine by their devotees, but no Catholic publications ever written have ever called Mother Mary divine. On the contrary, there are many official Church documents that explicitly reject the existence of any divinity other than the Trinity.

Also, all ancient Greco-Roman deities demanded ritual sacrifice as a key component of worship. However, the only ritual sacrifice known to Catholicism is that of Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is exclusively offered to the Trinitarian God according to unchangeable dogma. The only religious group that ever attempted to offer sacrifice to Mary, the aforementioned Collyridians, were excommunicated by the Catholic Church on the grounds of idolatry without any internal Church controversy, an excommunication which still stands to this day. And if there is anything we can say for sure about the character of the early Catholic Church, it's that they were NOT shy about engaging in controversy regarding religious matters.

If I were to call an ancient Greco-Roman pagan to the present day and tell them that "my religion worships someone named Mary, but she isn't divine and we never offer sacrifice to her. In fact, we will kick anyone who sacrifices to her out of our community" they would call me a madman. Ritual, intentional sacrifice was the central component of worship in Greco-Roman paganism, so the previous statement would strike them as insane and self-contradictory.

Do some poorly catechized Catholics take Marian devotion too far? Yes, and that's precisely why the recent doctrinal note was issued. Offering worship to the Virgin Mary, or to anyone other than God, is expressly forbidden in Catholicism, and it always has been.

---

I think we've all heard people wrongly use " judge not lest ye be judged." Read by itself, it sounds like a clear cut statement. When I hear people misuse the verse, I try to provide them context rather than let them continue down the wrong thought path.

Can you provide context to any of the statements in question so that I and others aren't misinterpreting the statement the same way the "judge not" statement gets misinterpreted.

---

All of these quotes are from treatises penned by famous Catholic theologians who are widely regarded in the Church as exceptionally advanced. They build their arguments and statements upon Catholic first principles (such as the absolute sovereignty of God and sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice at Calvary) that were already fully understood and accepted by the intended audience. Most of those papal quotes were from missives that were directly specifically to other Catholic bishops, so pontiffs such as Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius IX could be certain that their audience had the theological background necessary to understand them in their proper context. The other quotes are from professional theologians, such as St. Alphonsus Liguori, who wrote them for highly educated clergy or lay audiences who wanted to understand Marian devotion at a deeper theological level. They definitely were not intended for a Protestant or lay Catholic audience that isn't well-versed in Catholic theology. Let's just say that one is passing out Liguori's four volume Moral Theology to random visitors at Sunday Mass.

It's helpful to think of these theological treatises like math textbooks. A textbook focused on multivariable calculus is not going to begin with basic addition and subtraction; it's going to assume that you already know a great deal about mathematics before you begin reading. The Catholic Church has spilled so much ink about theology over the past few thousand years that trying to rehash these arguments on a message board is an exercise in futility. If you are actually interested in learning more about Catholic Mariology and aren't just using this as a line of attack, I would suggest starting with the Catechism or Scott Hahn's book Hail, Holy Queen. Hahn is a former Presbyterian minster turned Catholic theologian who writes about Catholic doctrine specifically for a Protestant or formerly Protestant audience.

The extent of the average parishioner's Marian devotion consists of an occasional Rosary, which is a meditation on the life of Christ from Mary's perspective, and attendance at the Masses commemorating the Marian dogmas. All four Marian dogmas are actually meant to establish a truth about Christ Himself, a point that has been emphasized and expounded upon by the priest at every one I've ever attended.

Mary is rarely mentioned at Mass outside the aforementioned feast day Masses, Christmas, and Easter. Mass is the one weekly event that Catholics are required to attend, and it is all about God and is directed to God. In fact, a normal Sunday Mass is only going to mention the Virgin Mary once, in the recitation of the Nicene or Apostles' Creed. Contrast that with the dozens of times the various Persons of the Trinity will be specifically mentioned at every Mass.

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I like the last paragraph as it matches what I have seen at masses I've attended.

Regarding the previous paragraphs, I'll see if I can find the crib notes.

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Paragraph 970 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is particularly helpful in understanding the lens by which Catholics view everything else we say about Mary.

Also, if it helps you to understand my perspective, I actually was not raised Catholic. I am an adult convert. I was raised as a devout, churchgoing, evangelical Southern Baptist. My parents and sister are still devout, churchgoing, evangelical Baptists. I love my family and still greatly appreciate the Christian upbringing which they provided for me. When I visit my parents, I attend both Catholic Mass and my parents' Baptist church on Sundays.

Like many Baptists, I was raised with a strong bias against Catholicism, seeing them as definitely heretical and possibly not Christian at all. I changed my mind and when I started getting serious about theology and Church history in my 20s. I "converted" as an adult, but I don't like thinking of becoming Catholic as a conversion to a different religion. I didn't change religions. If after my investigations I found incontrovertible proof that the Catholic Church worshipped Mary or anything other than the Trinitarian God, I would never have given becoming Catholic a second thought and would have gladly continued to call Catholics heretics. However, I found that the exact opposite was true.

"Paragraph 970…"

Man complicates.



"This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent."

God simplifies.

mtenery14 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Also, are you buying ArBear's argument that those quotes were "out of context"? You let him off the hook too easily. I have been trying to address this with him myself, but I fear he has joined the long list of people who don't like my questions so they ignore me. I guess you're gonna have to get that out of him, if you care to.

Is there really a context in which such statements could EVER be acceptable to someone who professes to love and only worship God, as they say they do? Denying that one worships Mary, but then balking at disavowing clear statements of Mary worship somehow just doesn't make a person seem like they're on the level.

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I married into a Catholic family and have been to many, many Catholic masses. Some of the family seem to place Mary higher than others but I've yet to hear any of them say salvation comes through Mary or, anything remotely close to it.
I've sat through many liturgies and have yet to hear one say anything that links Mary to salvation. On the other hand, I've also sat through a handful of rosaries after a death and hear nothing about Christ expect from family members in casual conversation before and after. Never have I heard the person conducting (is that the right word) the rosary speak of Christ salvation.

The last rosary I went to , all of the grand kids had t-shirts with their favorite or most appropriate Bible verse on it-verses they had learned in family Bible studies with their grandparents.

As for the quotes, I'd love to have a link to the English translations of each document so I could read them for myself. I fully expect Prots to attack them and RCs to support them or shy away from any defense.

It may be that ARBear isn't shying away from answering but collecting sources . We'll see.

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Individual Roman Catholics here and there may not credit Mary with salvation... but the question is not about them, nor about what they show outwardly, but about specific statements made by their leaders. Are they able to disavow those obviously heretical and idolatrous beliefs? Because if not, then something is really, really wrong, and their repeated denial that they worship Mary starts to look phony.

Can you really doubt the translation of those quotes? Roman Catholicism is suffused with this kind of excessive and idolatrous glorification of Mary. I'm sure you've read the quotes I've given in other threads from The Glories of Mary, or the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary (a book of psalms, where the author used the Psalms from the Old Testament and inserted MARY in place of God. Yes, you heard that right. If that in of itself does not scream idolatry, then idolatry has no meaning whatsoever. If one can't recognize the idolatry in that, then one never will.)

Pope John Paul II's personal motto was "Totus tuum Maria" which (accurately) translated means "I am all yours, Mary". It comes from a Marian prayer in the 1712 book True Devotion to Mary by Louis de Montfort. The prayer goes:

"Totus tuus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria."
("I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart")


He belongs entirely to Mary?? Mary is his all??

How does all this not make plainly obvious, about who Mary is in Roman Catholicism? And mind you, we're not even including their bowing and praying to Mary's image IN CHURCH, singing hymns to her IN CHURCH, holding hundreds of festivals for her, calling her "THE ALL HOLY ONE" in their catechism, etc. There's gotta be a point where the oft-repeated, "you're taking it out of context" go-to argument from Roman Catholics hunkering down on the defensive starts to face an enormous and ever-expanding wall of implausibility.... isn't there? Why do they think we'll keep buying it? The level of gaslighting is truly perplexing.

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I understand what you are saying regarding RC leaders and their written statements regarding Mary. I just don't see the trickledown coming out in the liturgy.

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But again, the question is not whether they are personally engaging in or expressing those sentiments - the question is whether these Catholics, who insist they aren't worshiping Mary, are willing/able to disavow those statements? If they are not, then it doesn't do much to lend credence to their claim. No one who truly loves and worships God alone would ever find those statements even remotely acceptable. If they lack discernment in that area, then there's something really, really wrong.

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Are all Christian's theologically trained?

Are we saved corporately or as individuals?

I don't deal with the Catholic Church. I deal with Catholics.

I don't deal with prosperity churches, Hillsong, Bethel etc… I deal with individuals.

You stick with the corporate battles of church vs church. I'll stick with individuals. We each have our roles.

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I get that you're defensive for the sake of your kin. But this isn't about theological training or what they belief individually and personally. But the truth remains that if they can't recognize the problem in crediting any other person other than Jesus for their salvation, you know, the central tenet of the Christian faith, then there's something really wrong with their Christianity. Is this even debatable?

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"This isn't about…. But…"

Like I said , you handle the corporate side and I'll handle the individual side.

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What exactly is wrong about what I just said?

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If you are dealing with them corporately, nothing is wrong. If you are dealing with them individually, I see a lot that can be done better.

You said " this isn't about them individually or personally" and then came with "but…if they can't". Well that recognition is individual/personal.

It pays to approach individuals differently than it does groups. A professor of 500 teaches differently than a tutor of 1 or 2. Your approach is directed at the RC church. My approach is directed to the individual.

Do professors make breakthroughs or tutors? I think they both do in their own way.

Like I said, different roles.

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Let me clarify: it isn't about them individually or personally with regard to whether the corporate beliefs "trickled down" to their personal belief or not. Even if they did not, still, how those individuals respond to corporate statements of belief might indicate a problem in their individual beliefs, especially in this case about Mary.

If an individual denies worshiping Mary, but then can't/won't disavow completely idolatrous corporate statements fully supporting it, then it makes supect their denial, as well as raise the question whether they are even truly a Christian. It certainly doesn't take being "theologically trained" to understand the problem behind crediting someone else for salvation other than Jesus, at least one would think. If you are concerned with Catholics as individuals, I hardly see how you can dismiss this. You should approach them as you see fit, but I really don't see how one can reach individual Catholics without first addressing the serious corporate problems first. Especially since in Roman Catholicism, the corporate has full authority over the individual beliefs. Will they listen to you over their corporate authorities? If so, then they can't be Catholic. So there's a catch-22.

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Think of it as people that describe themselves as Calvinist, 4 1/2 point Calvinist.

Yes I do see the catch-22 in what you described just as there is a catch-22 in a 4 1/2 point Calvinist. I also see the Catholics in my family fully describing the gospel, fully believing the gospel and living the gospel as close to fully as any Protestant is capable of living it.

NOT A RABBIT TRAIL
if an individual Catholic struggles with transubstantiation and leans more towards con substantiation, should they disavow the church for that reason?

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Would, or do your family members who you say fully describe, believe, and live the gospel recognize the idolatry that is clearly evident in the Roman Catholic Church regarding Mary? If they don't at all, then I just can't believe they are true Christians. However, if they recognize the "troublesome language" and try to make (lame) excuses for it like some here, perhaps they are true Christians, but they are in serious error, and vulnerable. And I have to point out that if they truly are okay with crediting anyone else other than Jesus for their salvation like what is being done for Mary in Roman Catholicism, then I can't agree that they are truly "living the gospel". Something is very wrong in their Christian life.

If an individual Catholic does not believe in transubstantiation, then the Roman Catholic Church disavows THEM. You and your Catholic family members do realize this, don't you? And I would say that definitely yes, that if a church teaches something that is not the gospel or something that conflicts and/or contradicts clear biblical teaching, that person should leave that church. It's what Paul instructs us to do in Galatians. I would certainly consider the idolatry of Mary to apply here, wouldn't you?

As far as Calvinism is concerned, or any other doctrinal difference among Protestants for that matter, I don't believe any of them claim that if one doesn't agree with their specific doctrine, that they aren't saved. And certainly none of them engage in idolatry like with Mary and make it binding to salvation. I mean, the treatment of Mary in Roman Catholicism makes it NOT a Christian religion. It's a different religion altogether. So definitely anyone who claims themself a Christian should not be part of a church that isn't even a Christian church. That should go without saying.

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"Take this all of you and eat of it, for this is my body which will be given up for you."

"In a similar way, taking the chalice with the fruit of the vine, He gave thanks, and gave the chalice to his disciples saying: Take this, all of you, and drink from it. For this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins."

"Do this in memory of me."

Regarding your claim of not needing to follow one doctrine for salvation, Nietzsche once suggested that a major consequence of protestantism was that everyone would eventually just become their own church. Perhaps this is why you're seeing a vast number of young people going towards Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

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Exactly. Jesus was clearly making a symbolic pronouncement of the bread and wine. As Tinfoil pointed out, drinkng blood was against the Law, and Jesus would have been a sinner if he commanded his disciples to do it, thus he would not have been the perfect Messiah. He had not died on the cross yet, and thus he and his disciples were still under the Law. There are many other logical and scriptural problems with the literal interpretation.

There is division among protestants into demoninations based on doctrine that is important, yet NOT based on salvivic issues (mostly). Protestants from different denominations still consider each other fellow believers and brothers/sisters in Jesus Christ. However, the Roman Catholic Church considers transubstantiation to be dogma, where if you don't believe it, you are separated from the church, thus separated from the only mechanism for your salvation. This ultimately means in their belief system that you're separated from God, which means you are going to Hell. Jesus' gospel message was certainly not "believe in me and you will be saved.... uh, that is unless you don't eat the Eucharist meal and believe that the bread is actually and physically me". Ridiculous. Roman Catholicism is adding to the gospel.

I believe that many people are turning to Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy because they aren't well versed in the gospel and what Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy actually teaches, but they want a more formalized structure and the claim to consistency with the ancient faith (which is just a claim that is showable to be false) as well as it being a reaction to Protestant churches become liberalized. I don't disagree that the latter issue is a big problem. But the answer shouldn't be to go from one error into the arms of the mother of all errors. You don't leave right-wing racism to go become a member of Antifa, for instance.

ARbear13 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith.

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• "O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee." (Pope Leo XIII, Adiutricem, 9)
• "no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother" (Pope Leo 13th, Octobri Mense)
• "She has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven, the most true mediatrix between God and human beings" (St. Lawrence Justinian)
• "Sinners receive pardon by the intercession of Mary alone." (attributed to St. John Chrysostom, by St. Alphonsus Ligouri)
• "No one ever finds Christ but with and through Mary. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Mary seeks Him in vain." (St. Bonaventure)
• "All those who seek Mary's protection will be saved for all eternity." (Pope Benedict XV)
• "Mary's intercession is not only useful but necessary for salvation.... " (St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church)
• "Mary is the road we must travel to reach God" (Pope Francis, paraphrased)
• "God has entrusted the keys and treasures of Heaven to Mary." (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• "The foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will: That we obtain everything through Mary." (Pope Pius IX)

All this clearly belies your claim. When you start saying, writing, and teaching these things about your own mother and father as well, then maybe people will start to believe you. The most stupefying thing is you and your fellow Catholics' blatant dishonesty regarding this, and your attempts at Jedi mind-trick level gaslighting. I am really at a loss to explain it, other than to attribute it to the result of deep Satanic deception.

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Have you considered that you might just be misunderstanding the intent of these authors and are taking quotes out of context?

Let's say you found someone badly injured on the side of the road. Without your intervention, they are clearly going to die soon. You load them into your car and take them to the hospital, where the doctor provides lifesaving medical treatment. After the person has recovered, they come up to you and thank you for saving their life.

Were they wrong to thank you in this way? Are they saying that you saved them instead of the doctor? I don't think any honest person would say that they were. The doctor's intervention is what actually saved this person's life, but you also "saved" them in a lesser, subordinate way by taking them to the hospital. This second sense is how Catholics view Mary's intercession. Mary, through her intercession, brings us wounded sinners into the presence of the Great Physician, who is the only Person with the power to heal the soul.

Also, let's say for argument's sake that you're right and that we Catholics are semi-pagans who worship Mary as some sort of secondary goddess. If so, we do an awfully poor job of it by historical pagan standards. Pagan deities expected to be publicly acknowledged as divine by their devotees, but no Catholic publications ever written have ever called Mother Mary divine. On the contrary, there are many official Church documents that explicitly reject the existence of any divinity other than the Trinity.

Also, all ancient Greco-Roman deities demanded ritual sacrifice as a key component of worship. However, the only ritual sacrifice known to Catholicism is that of Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is exclusively offered to the Trinitarian God according to unchangeable dogma. The only religious group that ever attempted to offer sacrifice to Mary, the aforementioned Collyridians, were excommunicated by the Catholic Church on the grounds of idolatry without any internal Church controversy, an excommunication which still stands to this day. And if there is anything we can say for sure about the character of the early Catholic Church, it's that they were NOT shy about engaging in controversy regarding religious matters.

If I were to call an ancient Greco-Roman pagan to the present day and tell them that "my religion worships someone named Mary, but she isn't divine and we never offer sacrifice to her. In fact, we will kick anyone who sacrifices to her out of our community" they would call me a madman. Ritual, intentional sacrifice was the central component of worship in Greco-Roman paganism, so the previous statement would strike them as insane and self-contradictory.

Do some poorly catechized Catholics take Marian devotion too far? Yes, and that's precisely why the recent doctrinal note was issued. Offering worship to the Virgin Mary, or to anyone other than God, is expressly forbidden in Catholicism, and it always has been.

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What you're saying is that if someone saves your life, that it's okay to say that particular person saved ALL lives, that salvation for everyone ONLY comes through that person. That unless you go through that specific person, you will not be saved at all. That's what those quotes are clearly saying. You Roman Catholics are really trying to whitewash those quotes and dilute what they are really saying. You're clearly in denial. You're trying to say that ANY person who evangelizes another is credited in the lesser sense of that person's salvation. But in that case, NEVER would the saved person ever (rightfully) extoll the person who evangelized them as the person from whom every other person obtains "ALL grace, hope, and ALL salvation". Do you truly not see the problem there? How is it that you Roman Catholics don't see this? You are all so blind it's ridiculous.

Regarding worship as having to entail sacrifice. obviously God does not see it that way. Scripture clearly indicates that bowing to Peter and the angel in Revelation was considered worship. Have you bowed to any images of Mary lately?

If you can't understand that those quotes are exactly an example of taking Marian devotion too far making it actual worship, then you're totally blind and deceived and you're just gaslighting. If you can't see that bowing to Mary's statue, praying to her, celebrating hundreds of festivals for her, singing hymns to her in church, saying repetitive prayers where you say her name ten times more than you mention God, calling her "THE ALL HOLY ONE", and saying that ALL SALVATION comes through her is idolatrous worship, then you are deeply, deeply deceived and in big, big trouble. The recent doctrinal note MUST disavow ALL such things like it in Roman Catholicism (which is a LOT) and you must do the same, otherwise it is all just an empty, meaningless gesture.

canoso said:

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"Paragraph 970…"

Man complicates.



"This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent."

God simplifies.

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People are not expected to put aside their intellect when becoming Christians. It is natural to have questions about what one should believe.The Catechism is meant to be a teaching and reference guide for people with questions about the Christian faith, so it's supposed to be exhaustive.

I'm sure that you would agree that studying the Bible is profitable. I'm also sure you would agree that it is the job of the universal church to teach the tenets of the Christian faith. The Catechism is the product of nearly 2000 years of intense study of Divine Revelation (of which the Bible is a major part) from the combined effort of thousands of learned, faithful Christian men and women.

If you're looking for simplicity, the Church already simplified the core tenets of the Christian faith nearly 1700 years ago at the Council of Nicaea. The Nicene Creed is not long and not difficult to memorize.

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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ARbear13 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith.

---

• "O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee." (Pope Leo XIII, Adiutricem, 9)
• "no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother" (Pope Leo 13th, Octobri Mense)
• "She has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven, the most true mediatrix between God and human beings" (St. Lawrence Justinian)
• "Sinners receive pardon by the intercession of Mary alone." (attributed to St. John Chrysostom, by St. Alphonsus Ligouri)
• "No one ever finds Christ but with and through Mary. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Mary seeks Him in vain." (St. Bonaventure)
• "All those who seek Mary's protection will be saved for all eternity." (Pope Benedict XV)
• "Mary's intercession is not only useful but necessary for salvation.... " (St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church)
• "Mary is the road we must travel to reach God" (Pope Francis, paraphrased)
• "God has entrusted the keys and treasures of Heaven to Mary." (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• "The foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will: That we obtain everything through Mary." (Pope Pius IX)

All this clearly belies your claim. When you start saying, writing, and teaching these things about your own mother and father as well, then maybe people will start to believe you. The most stupefying thing is you and your fellow Catholics' blatant dishonesty regarding this, and your attempts at Jedi mind-trick level gaslighting. I am really at a loss to explain it, other than to attribute it to the result of deep Satanic deception.

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Have you considered that you might just be misunderstanding the intent of these authors and are taking quotes out of context?

Let's say you found someone badly injured on the side of the road. Without your intervention, they are clearly going to die soon. You load them into your car and take them to the hospital, where the doctor provides lifesaving medical treatment. After the person has recovered, they come up to you and thank you for saving their life.

Were they wrong to thank you in this way? Are they saying that you saved them instead of the doctor? I don't think any honest person would say that they were. The doctor's intervention is what actually saved this person's life, but you also "saved" them in a lesser, subordinate way by taking them to the hospital. This second sense is how Catholics view Mary's intercession. Mary, through her intercession, brings us wounded sinners into the presence of the Great Physician, who is the only Person with the power to heal the soul.

Also, let's say for argument's sake that you're right and that we Catholics are semi-pagans who worship Mary as some sort of secondary goddess. If so, we do an awfully poor job of it by historical pagan standards. Pagan deities expected to be publicly acknowledged as divine by their devotees, but no Catholic publications ever written have ever called Mother Mary divine. On the contrary, there are many official Church documents that explicitly reject the existence of any divinity other than the Trinity.

Also, all ancient Greco-Roman deities demanded ritual sacrifice as a key component of worship. However, the only ritual sacrifice known to Catholicism is that of Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is exclusively offered to the Trinitarian God according to unchangeable dogma. The only religious group that ever attempted to offer sacrifice to Mary, the aforementioned Collyridians, were excommunicated by the Catholic Church on the grounds of idolatry without any internal Church controversy, an excommunication which still stands to this day. And if there is anything we can say for sure about the character of the early Catholic Church, it's that they were NOT shy about engaging in controversy regarding religious matters.

If I were to call an ancient Greco-Roman pagan to the present day and tell them that "my religion worships someone named Mary, but she isn't divine and we never offer sacrifice to her. In fact, we will kick anyone who sacrifices to her out of our community" they would call me a madman. Ritual, intentional sacrifice was the central component of worship in Greco-Roman paganism, so the previous statement would strike them as insane and self-contradictory.

Do some poorly catechized Catholics take Marian devotion too far? Yes, and that's precisely why the recent doctrinal note was issued. Offering worship to the Virgin Mary, or to anyone other than God, is expressly forbidden in Catholicism, and it always has been.

---

What you're saying is that if someone saves your life, that it's okay to say that particular person saved ALL lives, that salvation for everyone ONLY comes through that person. That unless you go through that specific person, you will not be saved at all. That's what those quotes are clearly saying. You Roman Catholics are really trying to whitewash those quotes and dilute what they are really saying. You're clearly in denial. You're trying to say that ANY person who evangelizes another is credited in the lesser sense of that person's salvation. But in that case, NEVER would the saved person ever (rightfully) extoll the person who evangelized them as the person from whom every other person obtains "ALL grace, hope, and ALL salvation". Do you truly not see the problem there? How is it that you Roman Catholics don't see this? You are all so blind it's ridiculous.

Regarding worship as having to entail sacrifice. obviously God does not see it that way. Scripture clearly indicates that bowing to Peter and the angel in Revelation was considered worship. Have you bowed to any images of Mary lately?

If you can't understand that those quotes are exactly an example of taking Marian devotion too far making it actual worship, then you're totally blind and deceived and you're just gaslighting. If you can't see that bowing to Mary's statue, praying to her, celebrating hundreds of festivals for her, singing hymns to her in church, saying repetitive prayers where you say her name ten times more than you mention God, calling her "THE ALL HOLY ONE", and saying that ALL SALVATION comes through her is idolatrous worship, then you are deeply, deeply deceived and in big, big trouble. The recent doctrinal note MUST disavow ALL such things like it in Roman Catholicism (which is a LOT) and you must do the same, otherwise it is all just an empty, meaningless gesture.

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I'm going to ignore the rant, as you very clearly are not interested in understanding the Catholic perspective, and ask a different question that I've been wondering as I read your posts.

Why do you call us Roman Catholics every time you refer to us? There are millions of non-Romans who are still Catholics.

ARbear13 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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ARbear13 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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ARbear13 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith.

---

• "O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee." (Pope Leo XIII, Adiutricem, 9)
• "no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother" (Pope Leo 13th, Octobri Mense)
• "She has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven, the most true mediatrix between God and human beings" (St. Lawrence Justinian)
• "Sinners receive pardon by the intercession of Mary alone." (attributed to St. John Chrysostom, by St. Alphonsus Ligouri)
• "No one ever finds Christ but with and through Mary. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Mary seeks Him in vain." (St. Bonaventure)
• "All those who seek Mary's protection will be saved for all eternity." (Pope Benedict XV)
• "Mary's intercession is not only useful but necessary for salvation.... " (St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church)
• "Mary is the road we must travel to reach God" (Pope Francis, paraphrased)
• "God has entrusted the keys and treasures of Heaven to Mary." (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• "The foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will: That we obtain everything through Mary." (Pope Pius IX)

All this clearly belies your claim. When you start saying, writing, and teaching these things about your own mother and father as well, then maybe people will start to believe you. The most stupefying thing is you and your fellow Catholics' blatant dishonesty regarding this, and your attempts at Jedi mind-trick level gaslighting. I am really at a loss to explain it, other than to attribute it to the result of deep Satanic deception.

---

Have you considered that you might just be misunderstanding the intent of these authors and are taking quotes out of context?

Let's say you found someone badly injured on the side of the road. Without your intervention, they are clearly going to die soon. You load them into your car and take them to the hospital, where the doctor provides lifesaving medical treatment. After the person has recovered, they come up to you and thank you for saving their life.

Were they wrong to thank you in this way? Are they saying that you saved them instead of the doctor? I don't think any honest person would say that they were. The doctor's intervention is what actually saved this person's life, but you also "saved" them in a lesser, subordinate way by taking them to the hospital. This second sense is how Catholics view Mary's intercession. Mary, through her intercession, brings us wounded sinners into the presence of the Great Physician, who is the only Person with the power to heal the soul.

Also, let's say for argument's sake that you're right and that we Catholics are semi-pagans who worship Mary as some sort of secondary goddess. If so, we do an awfully poor job of it by historical pagan standards. Pagan deities expected to be publicly acknowledged as divine by their devotees, but no Catholic publications ever written have ever called Mother Mary divine. On the contrary, there are many official Church documents that explicitly reject the existence of any divinity other than the Trinity.

Also, all ancient Greco-Roman deities demanded ritual sacrifice as a key component of worship. However, the only ritual sacrifice known to Catholicism is that of Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is exclusively offered to the Trinitarian God according to unchangeable dogma. The only religious group that ever attempted to offer sacrifice to Mary, the aforementioned Collyridians, were excommunicated by the Catholic Church on the grounds of idolatry without any internal Church controversy, an excommunication which still stands to this day. And if there is anything we can say for sure about the character of the early Catholic Church, it's that they were NOT shy about engaging in controversy regarding religious matters.

If I were to call an ancient Greco-Roman pagan to the present day and tell them that "my religion worships someone named Mary, but she isn't divine and we never offer sacrifice to her. In fact, we will kick anyone who sacrifices to her out of our community" they would call me a madman. Ritual, intentional sacrifice was the central component of worship in Greco-Roman paganism, so the previous statement would strike them as insane and self-contradictory.

Do some poorly catechized Catholics take Marian devotion too far? Yes, and that's precisely why the recent doctrinal note was issued. Offering worship to the Virgin Mary, or to anyone other than God, is expressly forbidden in Catholicism, and it always has been.

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I think we've all heard people wrongly use " judge not lest ye be judged." Read by itself, it sounds like a clear cut statement. When I hear people misuse the verse, I try to provide them context rather than let them continue down the wrong thought path.

Can you provide context to any of the statements in question so that I and others aren't misinterpreting the statement the same way the "judge not" statement gets misinterpreted.

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All of these quotes are from treatises penned by famous Catholic theologians who are widely regarded in the Church as exceptionally advanced. They build their arguments and statements upon Catholic first principles (such as the absolute sovereignty of God and sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice at Calvary) that were already fully understood and accepted by the intended audience. Most of those papal quotes were from missives that were directly specifically to other Catholic bishops, so pontiffs such as Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius IX could be certain that their audience had the theological background necessary to understand them in their proper context. The other quotes are from professional theologians, such as St. Alphonsus Liguori, who wrote them for highly educated clergy or lay audiences who wanted to understand Marian devotion at a deeper theological level. They definitely were not intended for a Protestant or lay Catholic audience that isn't well-versed in Catholic theology. Let's just say that one is passing out Liguori's four volume Moral Theology to random visitors at Sunday Mass.

It's helpful to think of these theological treatises like math textbooks. A textbook focused on multivariable calculus is not going to begin with basic addition and subtraction; it's going to assume that you already know a great deal about mathematics before you begin reading. The Catholic Church has spilled so much ink about theology over the past few thousand years that trying to rehash these arguments on a message board is an exercise in futility. If you are actually interested in learning more about Catholic Mariology and aren't just using this as a line of attack, I would suggest starting with the Catechism or Scott Hahn's book Hail, Holy Queen. Hahn is a former Presbyterian minster turned Catholic theologian who writes about Catholic doctrine specifically for a Protestant or formerly Protestant audience.

The extent of the average parishioner's Marian devotion consists of an occasional Rosary, which is a meditation on the life of Christ from Mary's perspective, and attendance at the Masses commemorating the Marian dogmas. All four Marian dogmas are actually meant to establish a truth about Christ Himself, a point that has been emphasized and expounded upon by the priest at every one I've ever attended.

Mary is rarely mentioned at Mass outside the aforementioned feast day Masses, Christmas, and Easter. Mass is the one weekly event that Catholics are required to attend, and it is all about God and is directed to God. In fact, a normal Sunday Mass is only going to mention the Virgin Mary once, in the recitation of the Nicene or Apostles' Creed. Contrast that with the dozens of times the various Persons of the Trinity will be specifically mentioned at every Mass.

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I like the last paragraph as it matches what I have seen at masses I've attended.

Regarding the previous paragraphs, I'll see if I can find the crib notes.

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Paragraph 970 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is particularly helpful in understanding the lens by which Catholics view everything else we say about Mary.

Also, if it helps you to understand my perspective, I actually was not raised Catholic. I am an adult convert. I was raised as a devout, churchgoing, evangelical Southern Baptist. My parents and sister are still devout, churchgoing, evangelical Baptists. I love my family and still greatly appreciate the Christian upbringing which they provided for me. When I visit my parents, I attend both Catholic Mass and my parents' Baptist church on Sundays.

Like many Baptists, I was raised with a strong bias against Catholicism, seeing them as definitely heretical and possibly not Christian at all. I changed my mind and when I started getting serious about theology and Church history in my 20s. I "converted" as an adult, but I don't like thinking of becoming Catholic as a conversion to a different religion. I didn't change religions. If after my investigations I found incontrovertible proof that the Catholic Church worshipped Mary or anything other than the Trinitarian God, I would never have given becoming Catholic a second thought and would have gladly continued to call Catholics heretics. However, I found that the exact opposite was true.

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It's not that you haven't found proof that the Roman Catholic Church worships Mary, it's that you've bought into their semantic game into what worship actually is. Anyone can not be worshiping their idol, if they just change the definition. If you truly can not see that:

• making statues and images of Mary and the saints, and bowing and praying to them
• singing hymns to Mary
• having pictures and statues of her all over the house
• celebrating hundreds of festivals yearly for her
• extol her with titles like "Advocate, Benefactress, Mediatrix.... THE ALL HOLY ONE"
• cite repetitive prayers which mentions her name TEN TIMES more than God is mentioned
• call her "sovereign", "peacemaker between sinners and God", "ruler of my house", "Queen of heaven"
• ask her that she "grant that we may go to heaven" and say that "none is saved except through Mary"
• say that "ALL SALVATION" is obtained ONLY through her
• say that we obtain ALL good things ONLY through her
• write psalms for Mary, where the Psalms of the Old Testament is taken and Mary is inserted where God was
• call her "God of this world" (a designation for Satan, btw)
• say to Mary that you "entrust your soul to her, and put your salvation in her hands"
• say that "one word from Mary, and God MUST obey her", that "her prayer is an established Law for the Lord"
• believe in authentic apparitions of her, which tell people to build a shrine in her honor, and to sacrifice themselves for other people's sins.
• and many, many more

... does not clearly constitute worship and idolatry, and a usurpation of the glory and honor due Jesus alone, then one of these things is incontrovertibly true: you are are either deeply, deeply deceived, or a liar and a false believer, or very, VERY dumb. And I'm quite certain you're not dumb. I'm sorry to have to put it so plain. But I think it's a disservice to you and all Roman Catholics to not just state it as it is.

ARbear13 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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ARbear13 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith.

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• "O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee." (Pope Leo XIII, Adiutricem, 9)
• "no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother" (Pope Leo 13th, Octobri Mense)
• "She has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven, the most true mediatrix between God and human beings" (St. Lawrence Justinian)
• "Sinners receive pardon by the intercession of Mary alone." (attributed to St. John Chrysostom, by St. Alphonsus Ligouri)
• "No one ever finds Christ but with and through Mary. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Mary seeks Him in vain." (St. Bonaventure)
• "All those who seek Mary's protection will be saved for all eternity." (Pope Benedict XV)
• "Mary's intercession is not only useful but necessary for salvation.... " (St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church)
• "Mary is the road we must travel to reach God" (Pope Francis, paraphrased)
• "God has entrusted the keys and treasures of Heaven to Mary." (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• "The foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will: That we obtain everything through Mary." (Pope Pius IX)

All this clearly belies your claim. When you start saying, writing, and teaching these things about your own mother and father as well, then maybe people will start to believe you. The most stupefying thing is you and your fellow Catholics' blatant dishonesty regarding this, and your attempts at Jedi mind-trick level gaslighting. I am really at a loss to explain it, other than to attribute it to the result of deep Satanic deception.

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Have you considered that you might just be misunderstanding the intent of these authors and are taking quotes out of context?

Let's say you found someone badly injured on the side of the road. Without your intervention, they are clearly going to die soon. You load them into your car and take them to the hospital, where the doctor provides lifesaving medical treatment. After the person has recovered, they come up to you and thank you for saving their life.

Were they wrong to thank you in this way? Are they saying that you saved them instead of the doctor? I don't think any honest person would say that they were. The doctor's intervention is what actually saved this person's life, but you also "saved" them in a lesser, subordinate way by taking them to the hospital. This second sense is how Catholics view Mary's intercession. Mary, through her intercession, brings us wounded sinners into the presence of the Great Physician, who is the only Person with the power to heal the soul.

Also, let's say for argument's sake that you're right and that we Catholics are semi-pagans who worship Mary as some sort of secondary goddess. If so, we do an awfully poor job of it by historical pagan standards. Pagan deities expected to be publicly acknowledged as divine by their devotees, but no Catholic publications ever written have ever called Mother Mary divine. On the contrary, there are many official Church documents that explicitly reject the existence of any divinity other than the Trinity.

Also, all ancient Greco-Roman deities demanded ritual sacrifice as a key component of worship. However, the only ritual sacrifice known to Catholicism is that of Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is exclusively offered to the Trinitarian God according to unchangeable dogma. The only religious group that ever attempted to offer sacrifice to Mary, the aforementioned Collyridians, were excommunicated by the Catholic Church on the grounds of idolatry without any internal Church controversy, an excommunication which still stands to this day. And if there is anything we can say for sure about the character of the early Catholic Church, it's that they were NOT shy about engaging in controversy regarding religious matters.

If I were to call an ancient Greco-Roman pagan to the present day and tell them that "my religion worships someone named Mary, but she isn't divine and we never offer sacrifice to her. In fact, we will kick anyone who sacrifices to her out of our community" they would call me a madman. Ritual, intentional sacrifice was the central component of worship in Greco-Roman paganism, so the previous statement would strike them as insane and self-contradictory.

Do some poorly catechized Catholics take Marian devotion too far? Yes, and that's precisely why the recent doctrinal note was issued. Offering worship to the Virgin Mary, or to anyone other than God, is expressly forbidden in Catholicism, and it always has been.

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What you're saying is that if someone saves your life, that it's okay to say that particular person saved ALL lives, that salvation for everyone ONLY comes through that person. That unless you go through that specific person, you will not be saved at all. That's what those quotes are clearly saying. You Roman Catholics are really trying to whitewash those quotes and dilute what they are really saying. You're clearly in denial. You're trying to say that ANY person who evangelizes another is credited in the lesser sense of that person's salvation. But in that case, NEVER would the saved person ever (rightfully) extoll the person who evangelized them as the person from whom every other person obtains "ALL grace, hope, and ALL salvation". Do you truly not see the problem there? How is it that you Roman Catholics don't see this? You are all so blind it's ridiculous.

Regarding worship as having to entail sacrifice. obviously God does not see it that way. Scripture clearly indicates that bowing to Peter and the angel in Revelation was considered worship. Have you bowed to any images of Mary lately?

If you can't understand that those quotes are exactly an example of taking Marian devotion too far making it actual worship, then you're totally blind and deceived and you're just gaslighting. If you can't see that bowing to Mary's statue, praying to her, celebrating hundreds of festivals for her, singing hymns to her in church, saying repetitive prayers where you say her name ten times more than you mention God, calling her "THE ALL HOLY ONE", and saying that ALL SALVATION comes through her is idolatrous worship, then you are deeply, deeply deceived and in big, big trouble. The recent doctrinal note MUST disavow ALL such things like it in Roman Catholicism (which is a LOT) and you must do the same, otherwise it is all just an empty, meaningless gesture.

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I'm going to ignore the rant, as you very clearly are not interested in understanding the Catholic perspective, and ask a different question that I've been wondering as I read your posts.

Why do you call us Roman Catholics every time you refer to us? There are millions of non-Romans who are still Catholics.

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"Catholic" just means "universal". Your brand of "Catholicism" comes from the Romanization of Christianity which started in the 4th century, when the Roman state entered the church. In an effort to expedite and facilitate pagan Rome to convert to the official state religion, compromises to Christianity were made. Consider what Emeritus professor of history at Yale University, Ramsay Macmullen, writes about regarding this very topic:

"The creed that was the true heart of the Christian community in the first centruy of two of its existence was retained untouched by the inflow of new members after Constantine. Church organization, too, showed no effects. But in the ideas and rites just described a large area of new loyalties opened up. Augustine called the sum total of imported paganism among his congregation their "mother," while what he himself would teach them was "the father." They must choose; or he hoped they would. But he could not make them do so. He conceded that they must be allowed some latitude in their manner of worship. At just about the same time, toward the beginning of the fifth century, Jerome made the same acknowledgement: better, worship of the saints in the pagan manner than none at all."

And of course you're going to call what I said a "rant". It's a convenient way of dismissing a person and what they're saying when the truth starts to hit too hard. Marginalizing them is a way of not having to answer them.

ARbear13 said:

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canoso said:

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"Paragraph 970…"

Man complicates.



"This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent."

God simplifies.

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People are not expected to put aside their intellect when becoming Christians. It is natural to have questions about what one should believe.The Catechism is meant to be a teaching and reference guide for people with questions about the Christian faith, so it's supposed to be exhaustive.

I'm sure that you would agree that studying the Bible is profitable. I'm also sure you would agree that it is the job of the universal church to teach the tenets of the Christian faith. The Catechism is the product of nearly 2000 years of intense study of Divine Revelation (of which the Bible is a major part) from the combined effort of thousands of learned, faithful Christian men and women.

If you're looking for simplicity, the Church already simplified the core tenets of the Christian faith nearly 1700 years ago at the Council of Nicaea. The Nicene Creed is not long and not difficult to memorize.

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God doesn't say He's simplistic. He says relationship with Him is simple. Why not experience freedom?

ARbear13 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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ARbear13 said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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ARbear13 said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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We don't credit Mary with our salvation any more than we credit the mothers and fathers who prayed for us and brought us up in the faith.

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• "O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee." (Pope Leo XIII, Adiutricem, 9)
• "no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother" (Pope Leo 13th, Octobri Mense)
• "She has been made the ladder to paradise, the gate of heaven, the most true mediatrix between God and human beings" (St. Lawrence Justinian)
• "Sinners receive pardon by the intercession of Mary alone." (attributed to St. John Chrysostom, by St. Alphonsus Ligouri)
• "No one ever finds Christ but with and through Mary. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Mary seeks Him in vain." (St. Bonaventure)
• "All those who seek Mary's protection will be saved for all eternity." (Pope Benedict XV)
• "Mary's intercession is not only useful but necessary for salvation.... " (St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church)
• "Mary is the road we must travel to reach God" (Pope Francis, paraphrased)
• "God has entrusted the keys and treasures of Heaven to Mary." (St. Thomas Aquinas)
• "The foundation of all our confidence is found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good things, in order that everyone may know that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is His will: That we obtain everything through Mary." (Pope Pius IX)

All this clearly belies your claim. When you start saying, writing, and teaching these things about your own mother and father as well, then maybe people will start to believe you. The most stupefying thing is you and your fellow Catholics' blatant dishonesty regarding this, and your attempts at Jedi mind-trick level gaslighting. I am really at a loss to explain it, other than to attribute it to the result of deep Satanic deception.

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Have you considered that you might just be misunderstanding the intent of these authors and are taking quotes out of context?

Let's say you found someone badly injured on the side of the road. Without your intervention, they are clearly going to die soon. You load them into your car and take them to the hospital, where the doctor provides lifesaving medical treatment. After the person has recovered, they come up to you and thank you for saving their life.

Were they wrong to thank you in this way? Are they saying that you saved them instead of the doctor? I don't think any honest person would say that they were. The doctor's intervention is what actually saved this person's life, but you also "saved" them in a lesser, subordinate way by taking them to the hospital. This second sense is how Catholics view Mary's intercession. Mary, through her intercession, brings us wounded sinners into the presence of the Great Physician, who is the only Person with the power to heal the soul.

Also, let's say for argument's sake that you're right and that we Catholics are semi-pagans who worship Mary as some sort of secondary goddess. If so, we do an awfully poor job of it by historical pagan standards. Pagan deities expected to be publicly acknowledged as divine by their devotees, but no Catholic publications ever written have ever called Mother Mary divine. On the contrary, there are many official Church documents that explicitly reject the existence of any divinity other than the Trinity.

Also, all ancient Greco-Roman deities demanded ritual sacrifice as a key component of worship. However, the only ritual sacrifice known to Catholicism is that of Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is exclusively offered to the Trinitarian God according to unchangeable dogma. The only religious group that ever attempted to offer sacrifice to Mary, the aforementioned Collyridians, were excommunicated by the Catholic Church on the grounds of idolatry without any internal Church controversy, an excommunication which still stands to this day. And if there is anything we can say for sure about the character of the early Catholic Church, it's that they were NOT shy about engaging in controversy regarding religious matters.

If I were to call an ancient Greco-Roman pagan to the present day and tell them that "my religion worships someone named Mary, but she isn't divine and we never offer sacrifice to her. In fact, we will kick anyone who sacrifices to her out of our community" they would call me a madman. Ritual, intentional sacrifice was the central component of worship in Greco-Roman paganism, so the previous statement would strike them as insane and self-contradictory.

Do some poorly catechized Catholics take Marian devotion too far? Yes, and that's precisely why the recent doctrinal note was issued. Offering worship to the Virgin Mary, or to anyone other than God, is expressly forbidden in Catholicism, and it always has been.

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I think we've all heard people wrongly use " judge not lest ye be judged." Read by itself, it sounds like a clear cut statement. When I hear people misuse the verse, I try to provide them context rather than let them continue down the wrong thought path.

Can you provide context to any of the statements in question so that I and others aren't misinterpreting the statement the same way the "judge not" statement gets misinterpreted.

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All of these quotes are from treatises penned by famous Catholic theologians who are widely regarded in the Church as exceptionally advanced. They build their arguments and statements upon Catholic first principles (such as the absolute sovereignty of God and sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice at Calvary) that were already fully understood and accepted by the intended audience. Most of those papal quotes were from missives that were directly specifically to other Catholic bishops, so pontiffs such as Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius IX could be certain that their audience had the theological background necessary to understand them in their proper context. The other quotes are from professional theologians, such as St. Alphonsus Liguori, who wrote them for highly educated clergy or lay audiences who wanted to understand Marian devotion at a deeper theological level. They definitely were not intended for a Protestant or lay Catholic audience that isn't well-versed in Catholic theology. Let's just say that one is passing out Liguori's four volume Moral Theology to random visitors at Sunday Mass.

It's helpful to think of these theological treatises like math textbooks. A textbook focused on multivariable calculus is not going to begin with basic addition and subtraction; it's going to assume that you already know a great deal about mathematics before you begin reading. The Catholic Church has spilled so much ink about theology over the past few thousand years that trying to rehash these arguments on a message board is an exercise in futility. If you are actually interested in learning more about Catholic Mariology and aren't just using this as a line of attack, I would suggest starting with the Catechism or Scott Hahn's book Hail, Holy Queen. Hahn is a former Presbyterian minster turned Catholic theologian who writes about Catholic doctrine specifically for a Protestant or formerly Protestant audience.

The extent of the average parishioner's Marian devotion consists of an occasional Rosary, which is a meditation on the life of Christ from Mary's perspective, and attendance at the Masses commemorating the Marian dogmas. All four Marian dogmas are actually meant to establish a truth about Christ Himself, a point that has been emphasized and expounded upon by the priest at every one I've ever attended.

Mary is rarely mentioned at Mass outside the aforementioned feast day Masses, Christmas, and Easter. Mass is the one weekly event that Catholics are required to attend, and it is all about God and is directed to God. In fact, a normal Sunday Mass is only going to mention the Virgin Mary once, in the recitation of the Nicene or Apostles' Creed. Contrast that with the dozens of times the various Persons of the Trinity will be specifically mentioned at every Mass.

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I like the last paragraph as it matches what I have seen at masses I've attended.

Regarding the previous paragraphs, I'll see if I can find the crib notes.

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Paragraph 970 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is particularly helpful in understanding the lens by which Catholics view everything else we say about Mary.

Also, if it helps you to understand my perspective, I actually was not raised Catholic. I am an adult convert. I was raised as a devout, churchgoing, evangelical Southern Baptist. My parents and sister are still devout, churchgoing, evangelical Baptists. I love my family and still greatly appreciate the Christian upbringing which they provided for me. When I visit my parents, I attend both Catholic Mass and my parents' Baptist church on Sundays.

Like many Baptists, I was raised with a strong bias against Catholicism, seeing them as definitely heretical and possibly not Christian at all. I changed my mind and when I started getting serious about theology and Church history in my 20s. I "converted" as an adult, but I don't like thinking of becoming Catholic as a conversion to a different religion. I didn't change religions. If after my investigations I found incontrovertible proof that the Catholic Church worshipped Mary or anything other than the Trinitarian God, I would never have given becoming Catholic a second thought and would have gladly continued to call Catholics heretics. However, I found that the exact opposite was true.

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Many Baptist, including a couple on my side of the family, believe Catholicism is a false religion. At the same time, I've heard one priest formerly in Waco state only RCs will find salvation.

In central Texas I'm sure it's heavily slanted to the Protestant side. In the NE, I'm sure it leans the other way.

The cool thing is prots and RCs don't get to make that call

Perhaps this dispute between the church of 10th century and the churches of the 15th-21st century could be settled by this morning prayer from the original church.

"O my plenteously merciful and all merciful God, Lord Jesus Christ, through Thy great love Thou didst come down and become incarnate so that Thou mightest save all. And again, O Saviour, save me by Thy grace, I pray Thee. For if Thou shouldst save me for my works, this would not be grace or a gift, but rather a duty; yea, Thou Who art great in compassion and ineffable in mercy. For he that believeth in Me, Thou hast said, O my Christ, shall live and never see death. If, then, faith in Thee saveth the desperate, behold, I believe, save me, for Thou art my God and Creator. Let faith instead of works be imputed to me, O my God, for Thou wilt find no works which could justify me. But may my faith suffice instead of all works, may it answer for, may it acquit me, may it make me a partaker of Thine eternal glory. And let Satan not seize me and boast, O Word, that he hath torn me from Thy hand and fold. But whether I desire it or not, save me, O Christ my Saviour, forestall me quickly, quickly, for I perish. Thou art my God from my mother's womb. Vouchsafe me, O Lord, to love Thee now as fervently as I once loved sin itself, and also to work for Thee without idleness, diligently, as I worked before for deceptive Satan."