Question for Catholics?

Question

I'm not trying to offend, just curious.
How do you (Catholics) justify the following:

1.The Pope - Why is he the holy father? Isn't God the holy father? What makes an elected official holier than anybody else and why is he allowed to change the rules?

2.Confession Booths - When Jesus tore down the curtain, wasn't that so we can all talk to God? Why do we need a priest as a medium if we can all talk to God?

3.Virgin Mary - Why isn't praying to Mary the same thing as idolatry? Mary isn't God. Also, why do Catholics say Mary is with God in Heaven and everybody else is in purgatory? That's not scriptual.

4.Rosary beads. What's the deal with those? They aren't scriptual.

Thanks for the honest answers.

I also meant to ask about baptising babies. What's the point? They don't know what's happening. In 20 years, those same babies could be murdering people. Are they still saved?


A lot of answers are just reiterating the belief. I know what the rosary is. But why do Catholics do it if it isn't in the Bible. Same with Mary. The Bible doesn't say she is in Heaven. Why do Catholics believe this?

Answer 1

1. God is the Almighty Father. The pope is our "foster father" on earth, just like Joseph was Jesus' foster father on earth. This is because people NEED direction. Jesus instituted the office of the pope in Matthew 16:13ff and 18:18, when He gave Peter the keys to the kingdom.

Technically, the pope isn't any holier than anybody else. He's just a guy. He goes to confession every week, same as any other priest or bishop. He wouldn't have to go to confession if he (or Catholics) believed he was sinless and perfectly holy, would he?

He's been given a big job, which is "fathering" all Christians to a closer relationship with Jesus (i.e., sainthood). For this, he STRIVES to holiness, and that's why we call him the "Holy Father." We pray for him, that God will make him holy and give him the ability to make holy decisions and statements that will encourage our faith in the Lord.

He isn't necessarily allowed to change the rules. In fact, some of the rules just CAN'T be changed -- they are what they are, established by the Lord Himself. However, we believe that Jesus would not "leave us as orphans" and can and will divinely inspire our pope to provide us additional instruction or insight to help us on the path to sainthood. Very, very rarely, a pope will speak "ex cathedra" and make a statement of doctrine that is considered infallible. But he doesn't do it in a vacuum -- if he feels compelled to speak "ex cathedra," he has a host of biblical scholars and historians who will study and pray over the issue to help ensure that the pope is speaking truly within Christian doctrine and dogma.

2. We can all talk to God and we SHOULD talk to God. A priest in the confessional is only there to help facilitate the process of confessing to God and receiving absolution through the blood of Christ. The Bible says we should confess our sins to one another (James 5:16), and priests are specially trained to hear confessions in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. For one thing, it can be difficult for a person's soul to hear about other people's sins...but priests are trained in prayer to be able to withstand this. For another, a person's confession ought to be kept confidential, since it's really between that person and God, and our priests are under solemn vows to keep this confidentiality.

Furthermore, it is very profound and healing to confess your sins and then have someone say, "You are absolved in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." It's good for your soul!

Also, our priests are trained counselors, so they can give us wise advise on avoiding the same sin in the future. They also assign us a penance, usually prayers, to help us make up for our failings and train our minds and hearts and souls to be more Christ-like. Surely you don't find anything wrong with that?

3. Praying isn't worship. Idolatry IS worship. Praying is just asking. We ask Mary to pray for us. We don't ask her to be our god and we don't think of her as some sort of supernatural goddess. She is human, she's just a very good human who is very faithful to Jesus, and we want to be just as faithful to Jesus as Mary is.

We don't say that Mary is with God in heaven and everybody else is in purgatory, so I don't know where you got that idea. Mary is with God in heaven because she believed Jesus was her Savior even before He was conceived and literally laid down her life to bring Him into the world (childbirth was VERY dangerous and the #1 killer of women back then -- not to mention the fact that she could have been accused of adultery/fornication and stoned to death). Furthermore, we recognize that other good Christian people are in heaven -- we call them "canonized saints" and we even say there are more saints than just the canonized ones in heaven!

Purgatory *is* Scriptural. It's the process of the Grace of our Lord being applied to the sinner's soul so that he or she can enter heaven. We know this is necessary because the Bible says that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..." and also because the Bible says "nothing unclean shall enter heaven." So if none of us are clean and nothing unclean can enter heaven, there must be some sort of a cleansing process. We call it "purgatory." Most protestants don't have a name for it or think about it much, but when they do, they realize that it has to exist. Otherwise, nobody would ever go to heaven.

4. Rosary beads are just a tool to help us remember to pray to God. Rosary beads themselves are not found in Scripture, but the idea of using a tool to remind you to pray most certainly IS Scriptural. All throughout the Old Testament, people were setting up rocks as altars, or places of prayer. Rosary beads are very convenient because they are small and you can carry them with you anywhere.

Rosary beads are also numbered to match various sets of prayers. There is the traditional Rosary (meditations on the life of Christ with a creed, Our Father, Hail Mary (which is a quote from Luke 1, etc.) and also things like the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, which are prayers imploring the Lord to be merciful to all sinners.

EDITED TO ADD:

We baptize babies because salvation is a gift from God that cannot be earned, deserved or even chosen. God chooses US. We are helpless to do anything to get saved. Infant baptism is a beautiful picture of that -- a helpless baby, brought before the Lord to become His forever. The Bible says that "whole households" were baptized in the name of the Lord. "Whole" households had to include children -- if the Bible meant that kids couldn't be baptized, it wouldn't state that "WHOLE households" were baptized. It would say, "Everyone over the age of reason" or "All the adults of each household" or whatever.

You ask why Catholics "do" the Rosary if it's not in the Bible. Actually, the substance of the Rosary most certainly IS in the Bible. We meditate on the life of Christ, and that's all Scriptural. Today, we have five mediations: His agony in prayer at the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt. 26:36ff, etc), the beating He experienced at the hands of the Roman soldiers (Mt. 27:26, etc.), the crowning of thorns(Mt.27:29, etc.), the carrying of the cross (John 19:17) and finally, the crucifixion (Mt 27:35, etc.). With each meditation, we pray the Our Father (Mathhew 6:9ff) and ten Hail Mary prayers (Luke 1:28 and Luke 1:42 with a request that Mary pray for us), and the prayer, "Glory be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit."

Surely you have no complaints about Catholics meditating on the life of Christ, praying to the Lord and quoting Scripture, do you?

You also ask why we Catholics believe that Mary is in heaven. Well, where else would she be? She believed that Jesus Christ is her savior -- she loved Him and laid down her own life for His sake. She is most obviously a Christian and the Bible promises that all who believe in Jesus will have Eternal Life. That means you go to heaven.

The Bible doesn't say that YOU are baptized -- does that mean you aren't? The Bible doesn't say that YOU exist at all -- does that mean you don't?

Anything that happened after the writing of the books of the Bible was complete would not be recorded in Scripture. But that doesn't mean that these events are not true. You know you were born. You know you believe in Jesus. You know these things are true and we all must accept them as true, even though the Bible doesn't specifically tell us that they are true.

Answer 2

1. The pope represents God on Earth.
2. Jesus specifically stated to Saint Peter (the
first Pope) how confession is to be done.
Priests act as a bridge between the sinner and
God.
3. Because Mary sits next to God in heaven.
There are people in Heaven, Purgatory, and
Hell. Mary is not the only person in Heaven.
4. Rosary beads are used to help you pray a
certain prayer called the rosary. You don't
have to use them to pray the rosary.

Answer 3

The reason for these Catholic doctrines (other than the pope one) is that Catholics believe in the bible as well as tradition and dogma, hence they have "extra-biblical" beliefs.

The pope doctrine comes from Matthew 16. When Jesus asked, "Who do you think I am" Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." Jesus then said, "On this rock I will build my church".

Most churches believe that Jesus was referring to Peter's testimony as the rock, while Catholics believe that Jesus was referring to Peter himself.

Answer 4

Not a catholic but:
Jesus: Isn't god the the one god? Why is he allowed to change the rules?
Praying in church: didn't Jesus say to pray in private and not in like the hypocrites in church?
Why pray to Jesus? Isn't that idolatry?
Why not just ask god for redemption? Hint' it is in Isaiah.

Answer 5

Isn't the pope the closest one to god?