Posted on 04/02/2007 12:18:53 PM PDT by Between the Lines
I think Marianism is a sweet thing. I belong to a Marian church. The problem starts when we tell them in no uncertain terms that we love Mary, we don’t like to hear people say bad things about her, and that we believe that she, and all the Saints in Heaven, can hear us when we pray (talk) to them, in Jesus Name, and they simply will not believe us. They’ll pretend to listen and turn around and say, “No, you worship her.” They wish to bash, they wish to persecute, and they’ve been doing so ever since the mad, renegade monk Luther spread HOPIOS across Europe in the 1500s.
Yeah, well.
It’s interesting. I’ve always figured that the saints could hear us and were with us - even as a protestant kid, and that prayers for the dead were an act of love. As a five year old I had this imagination that the angels gave you a blue ribbon if somebody prayed for you. Blue ribbons were something I understood ... I didn’t get ‘em but I understood them.
But clearly some people think that is not only wrong but horribly, grotesquely wrong. One of the Dominicans says he has a special relationship with the Little Flower, and a protestant responds, “You mean he thinks he has a relationship with a dead French nun?” as though the next step were involuntary committal. (Of course, for me, dead isn’t a problem. French, however ....)
I suppose being bashed isn’t so bad. It’s the abandonment of conversation for condemnation and abuse that upsets me.
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