Posted on 04/30/2008 7:47:49 AM PDT by Pyro7480
They scared me very badly-—to the point I was terrified of Catholic Mass for a while. It was only after investigating, reading the Bible, learning about Christian history and theology, as well as more about what the Catholic Church actually stands for that I got out of my neo-Protestant phase.
Learning about the beliefs and practices of the other denomination that has existed since Apostolic times, the Eastern Orthodox, and how much it resembles Catholicism in practice (except for having the Pope and the centralized hierarchy of the Vatican, of course) gave me more confidence that Catholic Mass, the Eucharist and various other sacramental practices are far closer to the original Christian Churches than those of the modern fundamentalist Protestants.
Another help was reading other Deutrocanonical early Church writings like the Didache, the basic creeds (The Apostles, the Nicene) and the writings of the Saints (like the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians).
There is such a wealth of knowledge in these early writings, passed down orally from the Apostles and Disciples (like St.Irenaeus learning from St. Polycarp who learned from St.John The Evangelist who sat next to Jesus at the last supper), or just from learned teachers interpreting the scriptures (like Augustine or John Chrysostom)
The Didache is a genuine treasure. All of the writings you mention are great gifts, of course, but I am especially fond of the Didache.
This verse does not disown Jesus’ mother and family, it expands His family to all the saints.
ME: DS, im not sure of the NIV as the catholic version (RSV) has that exchange thusly:
46 While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him.
48 But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”
49 And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!
50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
ME: to me this is self explainatory in that he simply states that those who wish to be his ‘family’ will do the will of his father in heaven, not that he is excluding Mary, or his cousins, who are waiting for him outside.
YOU:
will have to go back and read the account of the wedding in Cana again. How do Catholics interpret the account found in Matthew 12:46-50. Here is what it says in the NIV version.
While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.
How many people can a person listen to at once? Logically, it would be ridiculous to expect one person to be able to really listen to millions of people at the same time.
If I accept that it's possible for Mary to hear prayers, and if I accept that she can filter out millions of prayers to hear a single individual, that means that you're better off playing the lottery than praying to Mary.
We have a promise when praying to Jesus. The pseudo logic of praying to saints is so full of unsupported assumptions that I can't find the benefit other than a placebo.
"Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that, when he shall appear, we shall be like to him: because we shall see him as he is."
-1 John 3:2
>>If I accept that it’s possible for Mary to hear prayers, and if I accept that she can filter out millions of prayers to hear a single individual, that means that you’re better off playing the lottery than praying to Mary. <<
Do you think Mary still has an Earthly ear?
Do you think time is the same in Heaven?
Why can’t people in Heaven have powers that people on Earth do not? How do you know what heavenly bodies are like?
>>You can pray for my wife who is fighting Leukemia and I don’t care if you ask a saint to relay the message to God as long as he gets the request.<<
I’ll pray for your wife!
May Our Lord bless her and guide the doctors with healing hands!
May both of you have good news and peace!
Thanks for proving my point. The number of unsupported assumptions required to believe in prayer to the dead is astonishing.
How do you know what heavenly bodies are like?
Exactly. We have no idea what heavenly bodies are like. We just don't know. But I'll tell you what we do know. We know that Jesus has promised to hear our prayers. So who are you going to pray to?
“He Who Shall Not Be Named”
These are not unsupported assumptions. These are the time honored christian traditions handed on to the apostles, entrusted to the church and written about by the early church fathers....there is no assumptions involved.
A very, very good question. I really don’t know.
The saints in heaven are not "separated" by death from the community of the Church (Romans 8:38-39) as we are all one Body in Christ (Romans 12:5; 1 Corinthians 12:12) and Christ "abolished death" (2 Timothy 1:10 ). Therefore, the saints in Heaven can pray for us just as anyone here on Earth can. In fact, better, as they are presently in His Presence. The Virgin Mary asking God to help you should "carry more weight" so to speak than having your best friend on this earth praying for you. In fact, Christ's first public miracle was performed upon the "intercession" of His own mother (John 2:2-11).
Below is a prayer to St. Joseph that dates back to 50 A.D. - long before the last Apostle had died and less than 20 years after the death of Christ. If the early Christians asked the "dead" foster father of Christ to intercede for them and it was "wrong," why is there no "documentation" from the Twelve Apostles "reprimanding" them for this? Surely, the Apostles would have corrected the early Church had It been in err?
Here is the big question. If you are comfortable in your worship, why do you care what I do?
Im always amazed that when topics like this come up, the entire early church history from the resurrection up to thru the first five hundred years, features the church WHO HAD ACCESS THE SCRIPTURES, THE CHURCH, THE ACTUAL APOSTLES THEMSELVES (the earliest church fathers)AND THEIR SUCCESORS, and wrote about all they were taught and experienced, and NONE say anything disparaging praying to the saints or Mary for intercession, in fact, their writings are full of admonitions to do so..
why do modern day critics ignore all that?
I see that someone has responded to this,...pretty much in the same way that I would have.
The difference is that you are actually listening for a response out of genuine curiosity, whereas on some occassions, I have given this same answer to other Christians (we pray “for Saints to pray with and for us”) and they simply do not wish to hear a response. In fact, many are spoiling for a fight.
To be fair to these other denominations, I should say that I’ve also had a bit of a snarl in this area with ex-Catholics who deliberately mangle the Church’s teaching to serve their own desires and sew discontent.
I think that devotion to the Blessed Mother has always been a part of the Catholic Church, but there are certain traditions that I believe were off-loaded by protestants, after the break, as simply being “too Catholic”.
I don’t run into it so much today, but some Christians have a strange way of defining themselves in opposition to my church.
I sub in my son’s school, a private Lutheran school. The staff is mixed, the students are various Christian denominations and it’s an awesome ecumenical environment. It is as it should be between our churches. We pray together. We don’t accentuate areas where we are not together in doctrinal or liturgical terms. My kids say The Pledge to the Christian flag and they learn more about Jesus and the Bible than they possibly could in the hour of religious instruction that they have at home. Of course, additional instruction is given at home, too.
Who can comprehend God’s Holy will and how all Christians may be reuniited again someday? I wish that our churches were together, but things are certainly much better than they were when I was growing up.
In the meantime, we all need to work together as Christians and truly be ecumenical, which does not require that we change our own positions, simply that we respect them.
Unfortunately, FR can be a real flashpoint for religious arguements. I prefer to stay out of them.
Most of the people that I know have decided not to obey the ten commandments. How many people do you know that obey the fourth commandment? To remember the Sabbath Day, and to keep it holy, with 6 days to labor and one day to rest.
Sunday is not the Sabbath Day, for it is the First day of the week.
As a Protestant, I don’t see all that much difference between the two lists, with the exception that most Protestants have changed the wording of the commandment to, “Thou shall not commit murder.”
What makes you think there is "time" in Heaven? Do you know what "eternity" means, theologically?
St. Joseph is one of my favorite saints. He also helped me sell my house!
I believe he is the patron saint of departing souls.
Thank you for your post!
The saints are not dead, as the gospel teaches in numerous times -- they have everlasing life. So it is not an unsupported assumption that they are, in the words of Jesus, "like onto angels". But an angel is one employed by God in serving men on earth. It is not unreasonable to conclude that the saints have a similar function. Indeed, the scripture teaches so; Hebrew 11-12, for example, describes how the martyrs of the Church form a "cloud of witnesses over our head", and says that we should be encouraged by them to endure our own suffering. In Apocalypse 5 and 8 we see prayers of the saints delivered to God.
So this is what we know from scripture. We also, of course, have evidence of the intercession of saints in the miracles they work. "What heavenly bodies [of saints] are like" we indeed don't know, but neither do we presume to know as we pray to them.
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