'bama
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 ...
Please cut the obscurantism, Father Doyle.... We know prayer to a non-deity when we see it.
Here's the Litany
Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary
- Lord, have mercy on us.
- Christ, have mercy on us.
- Lord, have mercy on us.
- Christ, hear us.
- Christ, graciously hear us.
- God the Father of Heaven,
- Have mercy on us.
- God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
- Have mercy on us.
- God the Holy Ghost,
- Have mercy on us.
- Holy Trinity, one God,
- Have mercy on us.
- Holy Mary,
- pray for us. ..
- Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,
- Spare us, O Lord.
- Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,
- Graciously hear us, O Lord.
- Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,
- Have mercy on us.
Now if you'll notice this starts with asking God directly to have mercy on us, then asks Mary to pray FOR us and ends with asking God to have mercy for us
Do you think our God is a non-deity for Mary to pray to HIM?
More obscurantism.
Obviously, you don’t.
Who really cares?
Face it, guys - this sorta stuff gives Proddys the creeps...
Credo in unum Deum
you have not responded why you think that praying to Jesus Christ is "prayer to a non-Christian deity" -- not only does the Litany have us praying directly to our Lord and God Jesus Christ, but also asking Mary to pray for us TO God.
Why do you think that praying to Jesus Christ is "prayer to a non-Christian deity"?
To Hell With Notre Dame!
and Rudy was off sides.
“We know a prayer to a non-deity when we see it”
Do you know English when you read it? Tell me what the expression “pray for us” denotes.
Honey, if the saved dead in Heaven are not alive and well, you and I haven’t a prayer on any terms of reaching there, so what’s it to you. Ever get a load of Revelations, John’s blessed vision caught up into Heaven and seeing those below the Alter praying, “ how long, Lord, how long, before you avenge us”?
What do you come up with when you think of God the Father, or Jesus the Son......, and there is no.......mother...., yet it is God the Holy Spirit who overshadows Mary and she is made with child. The spouse, the Holy Spirit in power.
The whole family of God, and no mother? Father, Son, Holy Spirit spouse, no daughter to God the father, no spouse to God the Holy Spirit, no mother to God the Son?
The Church a bride? Wedding Feast? Coming to the bridegroom? Come on.
Isn’t Notre Dame the university where, when Obama was invited to speak, he said, first, take down the crosses and they did?
Don’t distract them with reality, they’re on a roll.
BTW, there is a new “graphic novel” about the NT book of Revelation and I have a copy of it. It is faithful to the Biblical book.
Notre Dame at one time was a Catholic institution but as far as I can tell is now just another secular university posing as a “religious” school. If you look closely the “Touchdown Jesus” has a tear in it’s eye.
Why isn't that communing with the dead (since it is a spiritual communication to a non-living, non-deity person)?
In this day and age, the kids praying to God, is a good thing.
That tear miraculously disappeared the day after Charlie Weis was fired.
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?
'bama
A prayer, strictly speaking, is a request. Some is in the context of divine worship; some is not. I can pray to you if I like — that would NOT be worship (latria) which belongs to God alone. Lawyers routinely send “prayers” to judges. I don’t know why you insist on blurring this important distinction.
Prayer (legal term), a legal term referring to a plaintiff's demands
If the Assumption of the Virgin directly into heaven without dying is a fact, then she and she alone (well except for Enoch and Elijah) would represent ostensible exceptions to the admonition re: necromancy (though I am not capable nor worthy to clarify that admonition beyond what any of us can read in Scripture).
I couldn't agree more...and it's a wonderful thought.
All I am saying is that there is an admonition not to involve oneself in necromancy (etc.) and that seems to include all spirits of the non-divine (ref: Saul trying using the Witch of Endor to summon the Prophet Samuel).
Certainly Samuel was with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Heaven (though this of course occurred before the time in which Jesus had come to the earth in person as the Christ).
As an aside, my head is beginning to spin and I think I need a cup of tea.;-)
Yes. Are you familiar with the concept of Jesus dying for our sins, and after him the dead being allowed to enter the kingdom of heaven? That’s presumably where his mom is.
Jesus died on earth. Does that mean you can’t talk to him?
He’s the Creator and He invites you into a personal conversation and relationship with Himself...what do you think?
I think they are mostly just being polite.
Jesus opened up the Heavens between His Death and His Resurrection.
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