Why do Christians worship Mary?

[MaddLlama]

While Liguori and Catholics surely do not specifically claim that Mary is deity, you will see that they have indeed elevated her to a position that is second only to God, and at times materially indistinguishable from God. The do seem to have done just that even if they dont admit it.

Like I said before, it's not an official teaching of the church, but there are some people who do it. So what? They're going against the official position of the RCC church, and it really isn't any of your business, as a Pagan, how anybody else practices and answers for thier faith.

 

[MaddLlama]

On to what Jeremiah 7:18: says your right it does sound like the bible is talking about the Pagan Goddess. However in the post I just put up it say's she rules providentially with Christ, the King of Heaven I don't know of any Pagan Gods who call themselves christ, do you? Here again in this passage it says; Although Catholic theology attempts to draw a line between the worship offered to God and that offered to Mary, in practice these frequently become indistinguishable.
Rome may deny that Mary is worshiped as God. But to attribute to her powers which involve omniscience and omnipresence, if she is to hear [and answer] the prayers of millions, is to accord to her what belongs to God alone.

It doesn't matter. The people who worshipped Ashtoreth called her the queen of heaven because her personification was in the moon. Moon in sky = heaven. The relationship between calling two seperate entities from two seperate faiths by a similar name is, in this case, merely coincidence. Especially since for Jews, Pagans, and Christians, the word "heaven" means 3 entirely seperate things. The idea of Heaven in Christianity was unknown to the Jews at that time, so to say that the verse refers to Mary because Christ is the "king of heaven" is absurd - or, are you simply not understanding the fact that the Isrealities cannot worship something that does not yet exist?

Furthermore, the prayers themselves are phrased in such a way that it is hard to distinguish them from those offered to God. Read this prayer:

Immaculate Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil...From famine and war, deliver us...From sins against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver us. From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us. From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us. From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us. From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God, deliver us. From the loss of awareness of evil, deliver us. From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us.
Jesus Christ, not Paul, nor any other biblical writer ever gave Mary the place or devotion the Catholic Church has given her for a thousand years.
Yes this is just one persons view of this, I'm sure there are more to support & deny this too.

Maybe to you it sounds that way, but did you think that maybe you would be able to see the words in that prayer differently if you were a Catholic? You're on the outside looking in, which unfortunately makes your opinon on the subject less valid than a Catholics. Practicing Catholics know more about thier faith and how it works than people who are not and have never been Catholic. If you disagree, then next time I want to talk to someone about Wicca, I'll go talk an evagelical Christian.

Again, this is a place of debate it should not matter what my faith is, nor what yours is. I find it fun & insightful to hear peoples different views. I guess some of you don't & thats too bad.

You made it a point to assume that I was a Christian. Since you didn't read the post I made earlier, I thought I should point it out again.

 

[MaddLlama]

Just for additional clarification:

http://christiananswers.net/dictionary/queenofheaven.html
http://christiananswers.net/dictionary/ishtar.html

 

[Kcnorwood]

Ok, it seems that you don't want to read what I post or your just picking & choosing what to read.

This IS a debate or didn't you see where is says general religous debates?


You would be surprised how many people dont know about his/her religion. I'm not expert on them but it seems you are, even though you don't have a belief. :areyoucra

I'm not agreeing with anyone I'm just posting bits & pieces of info I have found. You seem to take it has my own post.

I'm not really sure what your deal is but please get over it, your the only one who seems to be taking this personally.

If you have a problem with what my post says based on outside info then you should take it up with those who wrote it. I'm sure they will vaule your thoughts considering I don't think you have a PH.D

 

[MaddLlama]

This IS a debate or didn't you see where is says general religous debates?

Yes, and essentially what it's boiling down to know is "who is right: Protestants or Catholics". There is no answer to that question, and it's not the business of a non-Christian to be deciding so anyway.

You would be surprised how many people dont know about his/her religion. I'm not expert on them but it seems you are, even though you don't have a belief. :areyoucra

Yes, I was shocked and stunned when I stumbled onto a website called "ExWitch" and found out the Gods I was worshipping were really Satan's minions. It was very enlightening.
I never claimed to be an expert on anything. Your misunderstanding of scripture (specifically Jer 7:18) is frustrating me so much because it couldn't be more wrong, and you're insisting on holding on to it. If you understand anything about the Bible, when it was written, where it was written, and who wrote it, you would know that the verse is not referring to Mary at all. It's really just that simple. I'm no expert in Biblical studies either, but for anybody who knows thier history, it's plainly obvious.

I'm not agreeing with anyone I'm just posting bits & pieces of info I have found. You seem to take it has my own post.

Fine, but you have to be willing to accept that some of the information you picked up along the way is wrong.

I'm not really sure what your deal is but please get over it, your the only one who seems to be taking this personally.

I'm not taking it personally, I just get my jollies off on informing uninformed people.

If you have a problem with what my post says based on outside info then you should take it up with those who wrote it. I'm sure they will vaule your thoughts considering I don't think you have a PH.D

Someone with a PHD told you that the Isrealites were worshipping Mary, the mother of Jesus, before Christ was born? I would really like to meet this person.

 

[Kcnorwood]

Like I've said before for every piece of evidance we both find to support the other can find the same number amount to disprove it.

I guess just the websites you find are right & everyone else is wrong,& disillusional

I'll be sure to inform those I got the info from that they are wrong, I'm sure they will be more then hapy to know that.

Funny thing about the bible & the scriptures 10 people can read the same verse & get 10 different things from it.

The website you posted means nothing they are christian sites they are baised find me a unbaised site & we'll talk.

 

[Mike182]

ok, anyone can post an argument in a religious debate - arguments are either valid or invalid arguments based on their content, not the person posting them.

I see what your saying & yes that prayer foes ask some pretty big things of Mary.

I ran across this site I thought it was intresting, please let me know what you think.
http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/omnip.htm


At some point I guess it really depends on how you wish to view her.

While Liguori and Catholics surely do not specifically claim that Mary is deity, you will see that they have indeed elevated her to a position that is second only to God, and at times materially indistinguishable from God. The do seem to have done just that even if they dont admit it.

i would need someone well versed in the history of Catholic doctrine to look at that website, it makes some claims that i can't verify as either true or false.

ok, so we have agreed that in theory, Mary is not a Deity, and we are now only discussing the implications of the practical aspect of the religion. even when i was a Christian, i believed Christianity to be polytheistic as i didn't subscribe to belief in trinity, but a lot of Christians do believe in the trinity - they have three figures of God size proportions and they want to be monotheistic. did they overcome polytheism? that's for another debate but it is clear that the majority of Christians only want one God.

i could be wrong, but i thought Mary and saints etc were believed to be mediators between the world and God because God was distant from the world - at least, that was the ptolemaic belief which i think was adopted at the early stages of Christianity. in the modern era, there is a belief in a loving God who is apart of the world, which takes away the need for any mediators between the world and God because God is already here. if this is the case, figures like Mary and the saints become problematic because they have no role, and they can't be hailed as Gods. some Christians will lean more one way than the other, and other Chrisitans will just remove Mary from their key beliefs - i think what you are seeing is some Christians promoting Mary to a higher prestiege than anything else under God, and in practical terms that equates her with a lot of power, and of course you are right, there will be some people who confuse that with equating her to God, and worship her as such - but that is not Christian teaching.

i kinda strayed into this debate without having 'ought but a basic knowledge of Catholic history, so i could be wrong about my part of the post that talks about the origins of Mary as a mediator being a carry-over from the ptolemaic system of thought, but if i am right, it does present Christians who hold Mary as key in their beliefs with a problem of what to do with her now.

am i even making any sense?

Edit: oh, and thanks Kcnorwood, i've really engaged with this ebate at my end and have deffinatley enjoyed it! :hug:

 

[michel]

I regret bto admit that I haven't been following this thread - The idea of wading through 40 odd pages seems a bit overpowering.

I always find the Catholic Encyclopedia useful for such questions; there is rather a lot written about Mary on http://www.newadvent.org/

Here are extracts of some of these passages:-

From the beginning of Christianity special veneration was paid to the Mother of God, which in the language of theology is called hyperdulia, to distinguish the honour rendered to her from that given to the other saints. It is not strange, therefore, that after the main or principal altar, the most prominent is that dedicated in a special manner to the Mother of God; and to indicate this specific preference, this altar is usually placed in the most prominent position in the church, i.e. at the right (gospel) side of the main altar. In general it signifies any altar of which the Blessed Virgin is the titular.

Devotion to Our Blessed Lady in its ultimate analysis must be regarded as a practical application of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. Seeing that this doctrine is not contained, at least explicitly in the earlier forms of the Apostles' Creed, there is perhaps no ground for surprise if we do not meet with any clear traces of the cultus of the Blessed Virgin in the first Christian centuries. The earliest unmistakable examples of the "worship" -- we use the word of course in the relative sense -- of the saints is connected with the veneration paid to the martyrs who gave their lives for the Faith. From the first century onwards, martyrdom was regarded as the surest sign of election. The martyrs, it was held, passed immediately into the presence of God. Over their tombs the Holy Sacrifice was offered (a practice which may possibly be alluded to in Revelation 6:9) while in the contemporary narrative of the martyrdom of St. Polycarp (c. 151) we have already mention of the "birthday", i.e. the annual commemoration, which the Christians might be expected to keep in his honour. This attitude of mind becomes still more explicit in Tertullian and St. Cyprian, and the stress laid upon the "satisfactory" character of the sufferings of the martyrs, emphasizing the view that by their death they could obtain graces and blessings for others, naturally and immediately led to their direct invocation.

And from http://www.answers.com/topic/mary-mother-of-jesus-2

Religious attitudes towards Mary
Veneration of Mary: Divisions Among Christians
The oldest-known image of Mary depicts her nursing the Infant Jesus. 2nd century, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome.Roman Catholic, Orthodox and some Anglican Christians venerate Mary, as do the non-Chalcedonian or Oriental Orthodox, a communion of churches that has been traditionally deemed monophysite (such as the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt and the Ethiopian Tewahedo Church). This veneration especially takes the form of prayer for intercession with her Son, Jesus Christ. Additionally it includes composing poems and songs in Mary's honor, painting icons or carving statues representing her, slightly kneeling before such images as a token of respect to the one portrayed by them, and conferring titles on Mary that reflect her position among the saints. She is also one of the most highly venerated saints in both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church; several major feast days are devoted to her each year. (See Liturgical year.) Protestants have generally paid only a small amount of reverence to the Blessed Virgin than their Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox brothers and sisters, often arguing that if too much attention is focused on Mary, there is a danger of detracting from the worship due to God alone. By contrast, certain documents of the Second Vatican Council, such as chapter VIII of the dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium [1] describe Mary as higher than all other created beings, even angels: "she far surpasses all creatures, both in heaven and on earth"; but still in the final analysis, a created being, solely human - not divine - in her nature. On this showing, Catholic traditionalists would argue that there is no conflation [2] of the human and divine levels in their veneration of Mary.

 

[Kcnorwood]

ok, anyone can post an argument in a religious debate - arguments are either valid or invalid arguments based on their content, not the person posting them.

i would need someone well versed in the history of Catholic doctrine to look at that website, it makes some claims that i can't verify as either true or false.

ok, so we have agreed that in theory, Mary is not a Deity, and we are now only discussing the implications of the practical aspect of the religion. even when i was a Christian, i believed Christianity to be polytheistic as i didn't subscribe to belief in trinity, but a lot of Christians do believe in the trinity - they have three figures of God size proportions and they want to be monotheistic. did they overcome polytheism? that's for another debate but it is clear that the majority of Christians only want one God.

i could be wrong, but i thought Mary and saints etc were believed to be mediators between the world and God because God was distant from the world - at least, that was the ptolemaic belief which i think was adopted at the early stages of Christianity. in the modern era, there is a belief in a loving God who is apart of the world, which takes away the need for any mediators between the world and God because God is already here. if this is the case, figures like Mary and the saints become problematic because they have no role, and they can't be hailed as Gods. some Christians will lean more one way than the other, and other Chrisitans will just remove Mary from their key beliefs - i think what you are seeing is some Christians promoting Mary to a higher prestiege than anything else under God, and in practical terms that equates her with a lot of power, and of course you are right, there will be some people who confuse that with equating her to God, and worship her as such - but that is not Christian teaching.

i kinda strayed into this debate without having 'ought but a basic knowledge of Catholic history, so i could be wrong about my part of the post that talks about the origins of Mary as a mediator being a carry-over from the ptolemaic system of thought, but if i am right, it does present Christians who hold Mary as key in their beliefs with a problem of what to do with her now.

am i even making any sense?

Edit: oh, and thanks Kcnorwood, i've really engaged with this ebate at my end and have deffinatley enjoyed it! :hug:

Somewhere in all this is the truth I don't think any of will know theres so much to go thought.

 

[Mike182]

Somewhere in all this is the truth I don't think any of will know theres so much to go thought.

it's impossible to say "Chrisitans think ..." because there are divisions within the religion on almost every branch of thought, and even when something is one thing in theory, it may not happen like that in practise - form an outsiders view, this makes the religion very incoherent, when the individuals inside of the religion see it as coherent because they know which branches of thought they subscribe to and disregard the others.

 

[MaddLlama]

From: http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Faith/00MarApr/Mariology.html

2. Giving Mary the title of Queen or Queen of Heaven succumbs to the idolatrous worship of a feminine, pagan deity condemned in the Old Testament. According to anti-Catholic Fundamentalist author Dave Hunt, “The only ‘queen of heaven’ mentioned in Scripture is an idol which was worshipped by the pagans and to which the Jewish women gave offerings, bringing the wrath of God upon them” (A Woman Rides the Beast, p. 441).
​

It is true that the Old Testament refers to a false divinity known as the Queen of Heaven (cf. Jer 7:18; 44:15-17) — apparently the Assyrian-Babylonian fertility goddess Ishtar. But since the Catholic Church doesn’t worship Mary as a deity — whether as Ishtar or any other goddess — the objection is flawed. Furthermore, the fact that a false goddess in the Old Testament was called “Queen of Heaven” does not mean Mary cannot rightly be given the title in an altogether different sense, as the Queen Mother of the King of Kings in New Testament. False deities in the Old Testament were often called “God” or “Lord”. Does that mean we cannot invoke the true God by these titles? The fact that a particular title is idolatrously used in one context doesn’t preclude it being non-idolatrously used in another. The fact that the Devil (or the wicked King of Babylon, depending on your interpretation) is called “the morning star” in Isaiah 14:12 does not mean we cannot use the same title to refer to Jesus, as in 2 Peter 1:19 and Revelation 22:16.

3. Many heathen converts to Christianity in the early Church retained from their pagan roots a need for a feminine deity. Mary came to fulfill this need and many of titles formerly given to pagan feminine deities were transferred to her.
​

The problem with this objection is that it succumbs to the same sort of reductionism Protestants rightly reject when it is applied to Jesus. If we argue that Catholic doctrine regarding Mary’s Queenship is just “baptized paganism,” cannot the same be said (as it is said by many anti-Christian writers) of the Incarnation, death and Resurrection of Jesus? Pagan myths of dying and rising gods abound: Dionysius, Osiris, Adonis, etc. Parallels can certainly be drawn between them and the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and Redemption. But such parallels prove nothing — certainly they do not prove that Jesus Christ is just one more dying god myth. Likewise with the role of Mary in Catholicism vis-à-vis pagan goddesses.

If you can manage to get through the whole page, it's a very informative read.

 

[MaddLlama]

Oh, and also:

http://www.searchgodsword.org/enc/isb/view.cgi?number=T7195 from The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia:

[FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, Geneva][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, Geneva][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, Geneva]In that worship the queen of heaven had a conspicuous place; and if, as seems probable from the cakes which were offered, she is to be identified with the Assyrian Ishtar and the Canaanite Astarte, the worship itself was of a grossly immoral and debasing character. That this Ishtar cult was of great antiquity and widely spread in ancient Babylonia may be seen from the symbols of it found in recent excavations (see Nippur, II, 236). [/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]

 

[logician]

You cannot prove no more then I can prove that Christ exists. Its all about experience and what is true to the believer. You cannot disprove someones experiences with a deity no more then you can prove them.

It's fact for us.

There is no hard evidence that Jesus ever lived, and certainly none that Mary and the other main characters in the NT ever did.

 

[Circle_One]

***THREAD CLOSED FOR REVIEW***​

 

[Sunstone]

This thread has been permanently closed. The thread had multiple violations of Forum rules in it, and when it was edited to remove those violations, it became incoherent. But because this is a popular topic, a new thread has been started on this topic here:

http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/showthread.php?p=693392

Please go to the new thread to debate the topic, and please when there abide by the Forum rules.