Posted on 01/03/2013 11:09:36 PM PST by WilliamIII
Before Monday night's national championship game, a University of Notre Dame football captain will lead the team through a prayer called Litany of the Blessed Virgin. "Mother of our Savior," a captain will say. "Pray for us," the team will respond.
It's a ritual familiar to Catholics. But most players on the Notre Dame squad aren't Catholic. So participation in that ritual is voluntary. And should any concern arise about praying to the Virgin Mary—a concept some non-Catholic Christians find objectionable—team chaplain Father Paul Doyle stands ready to respond. "We're not praying to our blessed mother," he says. "We're asking her to pray for us."
At the heart of Notre Dame's legendary football program is a careworn balancing act. The team is unapologetically Catholic. Before every game, the Fighting Irish participate in a Mass overseen by one of the team's two appointed Catholic priests, a tradition dating back to the 1920s. At the end of that ceremony, each player receives a priest-blessed medal devoted to a Catholic saint—a different saint every game for four years. Also during the pregame Mass, players can kiss a reliquary containing two splinters that Notre Dame believes came from the cross of Jesus. "Most of the non-Catholic players are Christian, so when you tell them these splinters came from the actual cross of Jesus they are humbled to reverence," Doyle says.
Yet Notre Dame is so nonpromotional that players of other faiths feel welcome on the team, never receiving so much as an invitation to convert, let alone pressure to do so. As a result, many feel comfortable participating in distinctly Catholic rituals.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Non-living? So you don’t believe in eternal life, resurrection of the dead? You think the faithful who die are dead?
Roll tide!!!!!
-—— . The team is unapologetically Catholic. -——
Too bad the same can’t be said about the school, although Boston College has the trademark on “Barely Catholic.”
Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with you (Luke 1:28), Blessed are you among women (Luke 1:41), And blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus (Luke 1:42), Holy Mary, Mother of God (Luke 1:43) (but this should be “Mother of our Lord”), Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death (James 5:16 sort of). James 5:16 is that we should pray for one another.
Catholics love to ask the saints and for Mary in particular to pray for them. Baptists tend to oppose the identification of only a few of us as saints. When the crowd asked, upon his being named Pope, to immediately name John Paul II as a saint, he blurted out, “Are we not all saints?” That response sounded Baptist to me. Mary, I think, gets caught up in this different approaches to sainthood (whether it is to be reserved for a few, great men and women; or, whether the sainthood of all the believers is to be emphasized).
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_Mary_pass
Saints Intercede for us.
Once you understand this it really does not matter how it’s worded since God knows our hearts
From Scripturecatholic.com...
1 Tim 2:3 - because this subordinate mediation is good and acceptable to God our Savior. Because God is our Father and we are His children, God invites uss to participate in Christ’s role as mediator.
1 Tim. 2:5 - therefore, although Jesus Christ is the sole mediator between God and man, there are many intercessors (subordinate mediators).
1 Cor. 3:9 - God invites us to participate in Christ’s work because we are God’s “fellow workers” and one family in the body of Christ. God wants His children to participate. The phrase used to describe “fellow workers” is “sunergoi,” which literally means synergists, or cooperators with God in salvific matters. Does God need fellow workers? Of course not, but this shows how much He, as Father, loves His children. God wants us to work with Him.
Mark 16:20 - this is another example of how the Lord “worked with them” (”sunergountos”). God cooperates with us. Out of His eternal love, He invites our participation.
Rom. 8:28 - God “works for good with” (the Greek is “sunergei eis agathon”) those who love Him. We work as subordinate mediators.
2 Cor. 6:1 - “working together” (the Greek is “sunergountes”) with him, don’t accept His grace in vain. God allows us to participate in His work, not because He needs our help, but because He loves us and wants to exalt us in His Son. It is like the father who lets his child join him in carrying the groceries in the house. The father does not need help, but he invites the child to assist to raise up the child in dignity and love.
Heb. 12:1 - the “cloud of witnesses” (nephos marturon) that we are surrounded by is a great amphitheatre of witnesses to the earthly race, and they actively participate and cheer us (the runners) on, in our race to salvation.
1 Peter 2:5 - we are a holy priesthood, instructed to offer spiritual sacrifices to God. We are therefore subordinate priests to the Head Priest, but we are still priests who participate in Christ’s work of redemption.
Well said!
This is no different than praying to her. Why obfuscate and deny? You are prayiung to her when you take up words to speak directly to her in request of favor. When Jesus was specifically asked how we should pray, He did not bring His mother into the mix, but directed us to call upon God directly as Our Father. No amount of tradition or pontification changes this fact.
Yet we do well to ackowledge Mary's participation in a special way where our standing before God is concerned, for she is indeed alive, and is indeed the earthly vessel whereby salvation entered into this world in the flesh of Christ Jesus. "Henceforth all generations will call me blessed." That I will gladly do! But I suspect not even Mary would expect us to look to her and call upon her for favor, but would rather point to her risen Son, who together with the Father and the Holy Spirit rule all things out of mercy for poor sinners.
So you think the admonition to NOT commune with the dead means that you can commune with those who have died on earth but are now in heaven?
For pretty much the same reason praying to Jesus isn't communing with the dead. Thanks for asking.
Indeed? Why confuse prayer with worship? Are you really so confused you can't distinguish the categories?
Praying to Jesus isn’t necromancy. Communing with a spirit of a human who has passed is.
Catholics celebrate All Saints Day (as a 'holy day of obligation', no less) and All Souls Day as a reminder that the list of named Saints is NOT exclusive, and that we are all called to holiness, and all hope for salvation even if we never get our names on the calendar.
“Are we not all saints?” That response sounded Baptist to me.
That response sounds thoroughly Catholic to me ... perhaps we should spend more time looking at our common ground.
(whether it is to be reserved for a few, great men and women; or, whether the sainthood of all the believers is to be emphasized).
I think that a properly Catholic approach would be to spend some time looking at both approaches, as both views are valid and both views lead to Christ, who is the source of all goodness and all holiness.
Good point about All Saint’s Day. This is why we need to reclaim Halloween.
One year, as chair of the Christian Life Committee at my church, we featured a Middle Ages/Reformation/Renaissance-themed costume party for the children. I was thinking great men and women - such as Luther, Gutenberg, Galileo and Queen Isabella. But, then came a family with their children dressed as peasants. The father said to me, quoting Abraham Lincoln, God must love common people, or else why did he make so many of them.
I don’t refer to those alive in Christ as “non-living.”
If only you knew what you don’t know.
Right prayer, like right worship, begins and ends with what God has spoken in the biblical texts. He has not told us thereby, or therein, to pray to, or through, St. Mary. Look up the definition of prayer, and then ask yourself if asking St. Mary to pray for you is a prayer or not. It’s plain on the very face of it that it is a prayer asking for prayer. To say any differently is to obfuscate.
Meanwhile, I hope Notre Dame wins.
No it isn’t.
A frequent misguided conclusion reached by the obtuse.
That I will gladly do!
When will you start?
But I suspect not even Mary would expect us to look to her and call upon her for favor, but would rather point to her risen Son, who together with the Father and the Holy Spirit rule all things out of mercy for poor sinners.
"His mother saith to the waiters: Whatsoever He shall say to you, do ye." John 2:5
Can you point to that passage of Scripture which describes the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for starters?
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