Why are Catholic acused of worshipping Mary?

Question

Short simple answer: Protestants equate prayer and worship. So, when they see a Catholic praying to Mary, they think we are worshipping her.

Of course, thoughtful people know that this is ridiculous. Prayer is NOT worship. Prayer is a "request". When we pray to those who have gone to heaven ahead of us, we are making a "request" of them. And what is that request? It is that THEY pray for US. Protestants do it all the time, but they limit themselves to making this request only of people still on earth. In this, the protestant view of the Church is very narrow-minded. You see, Romans 8: 38-39 says: "neither death nor life... ...neither the present nor the future.. ..neither height nor depth, nor anything else.. ..will be able to separate us". The Family of God transcends death. We ALL LIVE IN CHRIST.

Hebrews 12: 22-24 says that as we approach God, Jesus and the angels, we also approach "the spirits of righteous men made perfect". In other words, THE SAINTS

The Bible directs us to invoke those in heaven and ask them to pray with us. Thus in Psalms 103, we pray, "Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, hearkening to the voice of his word! Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers that do his will!" (Ps. 103:20-21). And in Psalms 148 we pray, "Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his host!" (Ps. 148:1-2).

Not only do those in heaven pray with us, they also pray for us. In the book of Revelation, we read: "[An] angel came and stood at the altar [in heaven] with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God" (Rev. 8:3-4).

I invite people to read this information:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Praying_to_the_Saints.asp

I would also like to hear your comments or responses.
God bless everyone.

To "royal racer": Yes, I have a tendancy to do that. I give the best answers to my questions. LOL

Answer 1

You've never given me a best answer although on more than one occasion I felt I deserved it.

Answer 2

Well the answer to your question is complex. The bottom line is prayer and supplication is to be made to God. Further more the angels are not people, and to say that they are would not be biblically based, just religiously justified. When Jesus was teaching His disciples how to pray, hence the "Our Father", He gave them a blue print on how to pray and intercede, and nothing in that prayer was to the dead, but only a petition to God and God alone.
The saint are the people of God. It is not an elect group chosen and canonized. God has chosen His saints and they are all whom believe and have confessed that Jesus was born of a virgin was crucified for our sins and was resurrected from the dead and is now seated at the right hand of the father.
In addition why would you not just pray to the Lord. You have not only the ability but the right by the blood of the Lamb to do so. The veil has been torn. Praying is worship by the way. Why would you pray to someone whom you don't worship. That means I could pray to anything dead to pray for me, our God is the God of the Living, not the dead.

Answer 3

I agree with you whole heartedly. i would like to point out another little fact for my protestant friends. Catholics are not compelled to pray to Mary or any other saint. It is perfectly permissible for a Catholic to go their entire life without ever petitioning a saint in heaven to pray for them. However most Catholics do this, because they believe that God is the God of the living not the dead,(Matthew 22:32, Luke 20:38, Mark 12:27) and when they pray together with the saints they come closer to God, as the prayer of a righteous man has much effect.(James 5:16) Please note this statement cannot apply to those of us on earth, because as you know none of us here on earth are rightious in God's eyes, only those who are in heaven have been judged and found rightious in the eyes of God!

Answer 4

No because I freely admit I worship Jesus. In fact I often say I worship you Jesus. So kind if hard for it not to be worship. As to Catholics worshiping Mary. Only you and God know what is in your heart. If you are crossing the line He will deal with you. He is the judge so I will leave the judging to Him.

Answer 5

First of all it is disingenuous to state that the practice of praying for each other has no biblical foundation, we are instructed in Scripture to have a prayer life for others as it is part of God’s commandment to love one another.

(2Co 5:8 DRB) But we are confident and have a good will to be absent rather from the body and to be present with the Lord.

The Catholic Church does not teach that it is absolutely necessary for one to ask for the intercession of saints.............http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-S6YMuFYyaa9ESBoW5DFwEjL_HhqA?p=4

Answer 6

As a catholic lawyer, I am fascinated by the fact that barristers in the British Courts address judges as "Your Worship."

It is amazing that Bible fundamentalists overly interpret words to justify their anti-Catholic bigotry, but they fail to listen to Jesus when He gave us His mother from the Cross, "Behold your mother."

Answer 7

They( Funda. Prots.) also cannot distinguish honor,veneration and saluting from adoration and idolizing-except when it comes to their own church traditions of which there are many.

When it is boiled down they only have a privatized relationship with God and have no real sene of church,let alone an understanding and practice of being in the Communion of Saints in the Mystical Body of Christ.

Most Protestants are functionally JWs or SDAs when it comes to relating to those who have gone on in Christ or to His angels.

You are so right, they just will not see beyond their blinders of therchurch"traditions of men".

Catholicism teaches strongly that Christ is the One Mediator and that there is no going to the Father except through Him. and asking the saints and the graced on earth to join us in prayer does in no way contradict Christ's unique,necessary,total and perfect mediation and intercession as our great and Sole Priest and our Great and Sole Perfect and All-Sufficient Sacrifice.

Taking the Heavenly Victors in Christ as prayer partners makes perfect Bible sense IMHO.

I do ask Elijah to pray with me and Moses and other OT worthies.

How is asking others to pray with me or join their prayers with mine show any doubt in the power of my own prayer offered through Christ?

If "Hail, Mary,full of grace" is good enough for the Bible it is good enough fro me

Answer 8

You took Romans 8 :39 out of context, sorry.
It says:
39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It says nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.
It doesn't say that nothing can separate us, the church from one another.
I am sure that when people get down on their knees & say " hail" to a King, or to a leader, or to a figure or an idol, it looks & sounds much like worship in the ears of others.

Jesus said, that "no-one can come to the Father except by Me." There is no need to petition the saints or Mary to speak to God on our behalf, because Jesus Himself stands at the right hand of the Father's throne, in the role of our High Priest, intercessing on our behalf. This is the reason why He shed His blood on the cross for us, to make it possible to go directly to Father through Him.
On earth we seek other believers to join together in agreement in prayer, in seeking the will of God, for Jesus says "where two or more are gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst".
And in Hebrew 12:24 again, we are approaching the throne, in the presence of all the angels, saints & hosts to Christ:

24and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.

The saints in heaven most likely pray for God's will to be done on earth as it is heaven, but we who are on earth don't always know what God's will is in every situation, but Jesus knows! He is our Mediator, and no-one else.
If we pray to the saints, are we following the first commandment to put God first and above all else, including to whom we pray to?
Be careful of whom you judge to be narrow-minded less you be judged according to what you judge. There is a difference between ignorance and narrow-mindedness. Some people have not studied the Word of God as much as others have or have not learned all that you presume to know.
There is also a difference between studying the Word in the Spirit of God and in the flesh of one's own intellect.

Answer 9

To srprimea:

Do you know what that festival is all about? Perhaps you should do some research and find out exactly what the reason is for the parade, the beautiful statue, and the jewel-encrusted crown.

Answer 10

Yes, you are monotheists in theory and by principle, but the Trinity, plus Mary, plus all the Saints and various angels (both good and evil) begin to look rather pantheistic in practice.

Not that there's anything wrong with that---the more gods the merrier, say I (the Atheist). Monotheism is not any better than polytheism IMHO.

After all, Hindu gods are all officially aspects of Brahma.