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To: Blogger
Wow! Round and Round we go. (Not us personally, you understand. I'm just having the deja vu thing here.)

To the instances of Mariolatry: Some Protestants have taken protest to the point of becoming Unitarians. Some have taken good old sola scriptura to very strange places indeed, cf. Jehovah's Witnesses. Long ago and in another country I offered the principle "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds," by which I mean to say that a good thing's being able to be perverted doesn't necessarily mean it's not a good thing. And just for the sake of orneriness, I'll dispute "a lot" on the grounds that if we'll allow excessive language becaue of affectionate devotion then it's REALLY hard to tell from appearances whose excessive in their intentions. If you'd heard some of the things I said to my daughter, when she was little, you'd think I worshipped her.

To praying to the dead: He is not God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him. (formulaic but I hope you get where I'm going.)

To the time spent in Prayer. To each, I wouldn't know. I know I spend maybe 15-20 minutes each day in a Rosary and less time than that on my "office" (which, since I rejoice in my lay status, is kind of informal -- okay, REALLY informal -- but involves Scripture, especially Psalms - I love the Psalms - and reading some wise and holy people). But, this may sound weird, I don't think of/experience the Rosary as devoted to Mary exclusively. I am WAY more into the mysteries.

oOr example, I MAY occasionally think about what it was like for Mary to being Jesus to the temple for the Presentation -- and remember what it was like bringing my child to Church for the Thanksgiving after childbirth -- but I more often think about what it is like for the God for whose worship the temple was built to enter it in disguise, how the awesome God, before whom we would fall to our faces and our tongues cleave at least temporarily to the rooves of our mouths, could, so to speak, fit inside a "little, bitty baby" and so inside a little bitty temple. As in the Mass I find myself wondering how the whole thing doesn't splinter and blow apart in fragments or burn as Spike does at the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And actually, I am going to more weekday Masses now, so I bet the formally intended towrd the Holy Trinity is statistically stomping the time spent in Rosaries. (This'll bug you, it bugs me: I have a feeling that there's a connection between my Rosarying and my desire to make the 35 minute 20 mile one way drive to St Tom's for weekday Mass.)

Bible and Early Church: Oh, let's just open up another thread devoted to things Catholics and Protestants can say to each other by the numbers. Like the old joke about jokes. As the Orthodox brethren have said very well in this thread, our attitude toward Scripture and tradtion and such is really different from the Protestant attitude and more, how shall I say, organic. You know how that one goes.

4,803 posted on 01/10/2007 4:48:48 AM PST by Mad Dawg (horate hoti ex ergon dikaioutai anthropos kai ouk ek pisteos monon; Jas 2:24)
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To: Mad Dawg
"Bible and Early Church: Oh, let's just open up another thread devoted to things Catholics and Protestants can say to each other by the numbers. Like the old joke about jokes."

22!

Did I tell it right?

4,982 posted on 01/10/2007 8:01:25 PM PST by monkfan
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