Nevertheless, no Catholic thinks Mary is Divine. All our Worship is directed soley to God.
It is worthwhile to note, as Malachias prophesised, God would be Worshipped with Sacrifice offered unto His name.
Only the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church offers such a Sacrifice.
The protestant reformers changed the words in Malchais from SACRIFICE to INCENESE and Clean Oblation to Pure Offering and started y'all down the road that ended-up cheating y'all out of Worship acceptable to God.
Of course, those were not the only words the reformers changed - there are many others - but those were the crucials one when the reformers abandoned the Worship of God as Jesus commanded at the Last Supper.
Now, y'all are fine, well-intentioned Christians, but you do not have worship acceptable to God - you do not have any Worship of God, frankly, (as that necessarily entails Sacrifice)so, I think a more profitable use of your time could be found for Advent rather than attacking Mary's perpetual virginity
Oh, dear. Now you've gone over the line.
My worship is "acceptable to God" because it is God-given and God-centered.
And the ONY sacrifice that is capable of paying for my sins is the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross.
I have been redeemed by His sacrifice. You have, too, although you appear to struggle with understanding that fact.
"Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy." [1] And "The Most Holy Trinity gives the baptized sanctifying grace, the grace of justification . . . ." [2] It is necessary therefore to define justification biblically, and to determine its location. The teaching of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:21 is an example which gives the exact meaning of justification. "For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." Christ Jesus was not "made sin" by the infusion of vice or sin, nor is the believer "made righteous" by the infusion of holiness. The Lord was personally All Holy; yet as the substitute for the believer's sin, He rendered Himself legally responsible to the wrath of God. The consequence of Christ's faithfulness in all that He did, culminating in His death on the cross, is that His righteousness is credited to the believer. It was God who legally constituted Christ to be "sin for us." He was "made sin" because the sins of all of His people were transferred to Him, and in like manner, the believer is made "the righteousness of God in Him" by God's reckoning to the believer Christ's faithfulness to the precepts of the law. Quite clearly, therefore justification is a judicial and gracious act of God whereby a believing sinner has legal right standing in Christ...The most important difference between Biblical faith and Roman Catholicism is the issue of what is necessary for an individual's salvation before God. Right through the Scriptures justification is seen to be necessary for salvation and in the New Testament it is the major theme of the Apostles. The Church of Rome proclaims her seven sacraments as necessary for salvation and that justification before God is given through the sacrament of Baptism. Thus she officially teaches,
Rev 5:8
And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.
And second, it is what we offer with our hearts to the Lord, that finds acceptance,
Luke 21:1
And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury.
21:2 And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites.
21:3 And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all:
21:4 For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had.