Posted on 10/16/2002 7:13:23 AM PDT by meandog
Pope John Paul II marks 24th anniversary of his papacy
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope John Paul II marked the 24th anniversary of the start of his papacy with a prayer for strength Wednesday, asking the Virgin Mary to help him continue in his mission.
Pope John Paul II, who will celebrate the 24th year of his papacy, has announced he will make changes in the Rosary.
Tens of thousands of pilgrims cheered, waved Polish flags and held up white handkerchiefs as the 82-year-old pope was driven into St. Peter's Square.
He announced he was making changes in the Rosary, a series of prayers said by Catholics using sets of beads, signing the document as he sat on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica. He also announced the beginning of the Year of the Rosary.
In making the changes to the Rosary, John Paul said recently that he wanted Catholics to "rediscover the beauty and depth of this prayer."
The frail pope, who has repeatedly brushed aside reports that he might step down, recalled words said during his August trip to Poland, when he asked the Virgin Mary for the strength "in body and spirit" to continue his mission "until the end."
"I repeat those words today, giving thanks to God for the 24 years of my service to the Church in the See of Peter," he said. "I once again entrust to the Blessed Virgin my future."
He is already one of the longest serving popes in history and has outlived many of those seen as possible successors.
"It's the start of the 25th year of John Paul's pontificate," the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano declared in a special edition, as if to emphasize the pope's resolve.
The day was a Vatican holiday, but his fellow Poles were planning to mark the occasion by serenading below his window in St. Peter's Square, and John Paul went ahead with his regular general audience.
The Vatican issued a spate of statistics to underscore the records of his papacy — including 98 foreign trips covering 742,020 miles, elevating 464 saints and holding 1,430 audiences and meetings with political leaders.
Only four popes have served longer than John Paul, and he is closing in on two of them. By Vatican count, the record is held by St. Peter, the first pope, listed as serving either 30 or 37 years.
The pope is frail, suffering from the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, as well as knee and hip problems. Vatican officials improvise to accommodate his ailments, now wheeling him around during public appearances on a cart-like vehicle.
Although a proposed trip to the Philippines in January has been ruled out, a sign that John Paul is slowing down, Vatican officials insist that the most traveled pope in history will continue foreign pilgrimages with a visit to Croatia next spring.
EXODUS 20:1-3--AND God spake all these words, saying I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me...
Is it immoral to ask anyone for help under any circumstances, because a helping hand is idol-worship?
Please elucidate your muddled thinking.
Did I miss something? What specific changes is he making?
These new mysteries focus on the events which revealed Christ's divinity and mission: His Baptism, His first miracle, His announcement of His Father's Kingdom, His Transfiguration and His Institution of the Blessed Sacrament.
Pope John Paul repeats that fundamental message several times in his apostolic letter. He writes: "With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love." And later he adds: "To recite the Rosary is nothing other than to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ."
You speak of the heretical schsimatic followers of the mad german monk. I used to fault the Catholics for their "vain repetitions" of invocations to the mother goddess. However, I now notice how charismatic services also sing endless repetitive sentance fragments to induce altered states of consciousness. So, there's always room for improvement!
An earlier thread on this topic, which is still current on the religion forum devolved almost instantly into boilerplate ugliness from the protestant side. You'd think people who claim to be Christians would speak positively about meditating on significant events in the life of Jesus Christ. You might even expect a lengthy thread filled with scriptural and patristic discussion of the significance of those events. But Nnnoooooo, that's too much to hope for. Maybe we can make this thread turn out better.
The Rosary is a series of prayers, many dedicated to the Virgin Mary, that are recited over and over again with the help of sets of beads that the faithful hold.
Traditionally, Catholics are supposed to contemplate three periods, or mysteries, of Christ's life as they recite the prayers: the joyous mysteries of his birth, the sorrowful mysteries of his crucifixion, and the glorious mysteries of his resurrection.
On Wednesday, John Paul proposed adding another set of mysteries: the "mysteries of light," which highlight five different periods of Christ's life.
They are: his baptism; the wedding feast at Cana, where according to the Bible, he transformed water into wine; his proclamation of the coming of the Kingdom of God; the Transfiguration, when God commanded the apostles to listen to Christ; and the institution of the Eucharist.
Because that's exactly the subtle way the Evil One prefers to deceive the Church -- prayers to anyone (Mary, the Saints, the Pope, our dearly departed) or anything (amulets, charms, idols, statues) BUT to the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit is indeed an abomination according to scripture.
Hmm. I wonder if the Big Three are going to become the Big Four.
Who wants "it"? We get Him, Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, though. You're welcome to join us.
Keep in mind some of us protestants hold Catholic sympathies - so dont wield that "heretical" brush too widely my kind brother - though you are right to paint the calvinist as such
The wedding couple at Canaan asked Mary for help, and she asked her Son Jesus to help them. Did not Jesus say it was not His time, yet He still performed the miracle.
Mary is the "Mother of God". Is also the only woman addressed by an angel as being "full of grace", and when her cousin Elizabeth met her (when Elizabeth had the unborn John the Baptist in her womb), Elizabeth said that the baby leap in her womb. Elizabeth said that she was also "Blessed among all women" -- and rightly so -- for she was the Mother of God -- the Word Incarnate as the Gospel of John refers to Jesus.
Finally, when the Sons of Thunder, James and John, asked to be seated at the Right and Left of Jesus in Heaven, Jesus said that He could not determine who would be at His right and left hand in Heaven. That was up to the Father.
Finally, the prayers of the rosary are based on the Bible and an important early Christian prayer.
The "Our Father" is found in various Gospels and is the way that Jesus said to pray to the Father.
The "Hail Mary" is taken from passages from the Gospel of Luke, and the final part is "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of death. Amen". This latter part of the "Hail Mary" is totally in line with scripture, unless one is not knowledgable of proper theology.
There is nothing to say that at point of Judgement that the Apostles and even Mary may be present to help people and "intervene", just as Mary was the instrument that allowed Jesus to perform His first Public miracle.
He never puts forth an argument to defend his interpretation of Scripture, because he knows that the referenced passage, if read carefully, does not support his point.
That's why I asked him a question he doesn't have the guts to answer.
As an Orthodox, though, I still find the particular form of prayer--imaginative contemplation--far too open to 'logismoi', thoughts which draw us earthward rather than to God. It is in this--the possibility of substituting one's own imagining of Christ for Christ Himself--that the danger of idolatry lies, not in the Marian form of the prayer. As Orthodox iconography shows, Mary always points us to Christ.
APOSTOLIC LETTER OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
TO THE BISHOPS, CLERGY AND FAITHFUL
ON THE MOST HOLY ROSARY
INTRODUCTION
1. The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a prayer loved by countless Saints and encouraged by the Magisterium. Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third millennium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness. It blends easily into the spiritual journey of the Christian life, which, after two thousand years, has lost none of the freshness of its beginnings and feels drawn by the Spirit of God to "set out into the deep" (duc in altum!) in order once more to proclaim, and even cry out, before the world that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour, "the way, and the truth and the life" (Jn 14:6), "the goal of human history and the point on which the desires of history and civilization turn".
2 Mac 15:11-16> Onias/Jeremias intercede
2 Mac 12:39-46> prayers for the dead
Sir 46:20> prophecy from the grave
These texts are not in F16Fighter's abbreviated version of the Bible.
In fact, the reason why his Bible is missing these important texts is because the original Protestants were uncomfortable with their doctrinal content, so they left them out.
This creates a wonderful circular argument.
The Rosary is intended to bridge the gap between the discursive and the meditative.
So you believe that Ps 103:20-22 is an abomination? How many other Scripture passages do you consider to be abominations?
For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophesy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book.
If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
It is all there in Rev., we are not allowed to add any other books to the Bible, nor are we allowed to take any away. It ends with Rev. 22:21...PERIOD. Woe to anyone who would add books to the Bible, the Divinely inspired word of God.
Can you cite a Scriptural reference stating that Mary died?
So why does your Bible leave out books that were used by all Christians everywhere, prior to the "Reformation"?
Clearly you have never participated in a Democrat voter registration drive.
The Hail Mary:
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray FOR us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Point 1: the prayer is not addressed to Mary as a deity but in her role as the mother of God. If it is idolatrous to address Mary in this fashion, then it was idolatrous of the angel sent by God to address her in so high a fashion as well.
Point 2: the prayer specifically asks Mary to pray for us. Christians have always asked others to pray for them. I'm sure you ask people to pray for you all the time.
Conclusion: whenever anyone asks someone else to pray for them, they are praying through that person to Christ. It's very hypocritical of you to maintain that you are not an idolater when you ask another follower of Christ to pray for you, but that I'm an idolater when I ask the very first follower of Christ to pray for me.
The logic of your position is that it is immoral for anyone to pray for anyone else, because they thereby rob Christ of His Mediatorship. That's preposterous.
Therefore, those who use the Protestant Bible are obliged to answer for themselves, and to explain why they use a Bible which is missing books which Christians everywhere accepted as Scripture for 1500 years.
Martin Luther and John Calvin took it upon themselves to judge which books of the Bible were true and which were false. Who gave them the authority to make this decision?
If you are going to quote scripture, please quote the ENTIRE tract.
In the preceding four verses (1 Tim. 2:1-4), Paul instructs Christians to pray for each other, meaning it cannot interfere with Christ’s mediatorship: "I urge that prayers, supplications, petitions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone. . . . This is good, and pleasing to God our Savior." We know this exhortation to pray for others applies to the saints in heaven who, as Revelation 5:8 reveals, intercede for us by offering our prayers to God: "The twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
Typical of so-called catholic "christians!" Resort to long-distanced name-calling, bub, 'cause you wouldn't say it to my face...hope you remember me next time you're in the confessional.
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