Is Mary Omini-present ?

Not in the same way as it does prayer to God. Are you aware of the difference between hyperdoulia, doulia and latria in Catholic doctrine?

 

Not really, but I do know that entire bascilla's have been built to house statues of Mary, especially in South America, where it is believed the statue protects the village of Zappopan from floods, and I know the pope (whomever was pope in 1957) sanctioned a building to house her, and when I read the transcripts from the annual celebration of the "Virgin of Zappopan", Jesus is never mentioned. They have a similar situation in Guadalupe, and in both towns, parishoners are charged to wait in line and offer these dolls prayer.

The RCC teaches prayer to Mary, they teach she is a co-redemptix, ask her to interceede on their behalf, believe she never died, say she remained a perpetual virgin, none of which stand up to scripture.

 

No I do not pray to Mary.

 

1. Yes Mary is still alive. She is in heaven. If you meant alive physically then no. But her soul is in heaven. I hope you don't question this.

2. She intercedes for the church. Not for individuals. No for the Eastern Orthodox Church sorry Matt.

3. No I do not pray to Mary. Again Salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Mary can do nothing for you.

4. Since I am not Catholic I cannot answer you. But I believe Matt has answered this one anyway.

 

1.Personally no! I do not.

2. I said Mary was interceding on behalf of the church not on individuals. I'm refering here to the organized church or the EOC way of seeing the church not the IFBC view.

3. I would say yes that's probably heretical. Although I believe they say their prayers carry to heaven. But believing she could hear one in the way you stated would indeed be heresy.

4. I will get back to you on this point tomorrow.

 

As "co-redeemer with Christ" is this "individual redemption"?

In a 1985 address at the Marian shrine in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Pope John Paul II said:

"Mary goes before us and accompanies us. The silent journey that begins with her Immaculate Conception and passes through the ‘yes’ of Nazareth, which makes her the Mother of God, finds on Calvary a particularly important moment. There also, accepting and assisting at the sacrifice of her son, Mary is the dawn of Redemption....Crucified spiritually with her crucified son




(cf. Gal. 2:20), she contemplated with heroic love the death of her God, she ‘lovingly consented to the immolation of this Victim which she herself had brought forth’ (Lumen Gentium, 58)....In fact, at Calvary she united herself with the sacrifice of her Son that led to the foundation of the Church; her maternal heart shared to the very depths the will of Christ ‘to gather into one all the dispersed children of God’ (Jn. 11:52). Having suffered for the Church, Mary deserved to become the Mother of all the disciples of her Son, the Mother of their unity....In fact, Mary's role as Coredemptrix did not cease with the glorification of her Son" (Inseg VIII/1 (1985) 318-319 [ORE 876:7]).
[/quote]

 

Some of our Catholic brethren have argued the point by saying "you never find us worshipping Mary".

For in support of that you will NEVER find anything like the Following praise and worship to God given to Mary.

Here it is phrased as WORSHIP to CHRIST with Mary “added” as IF this adoration and worship due to Christ can ALSO be given to Mary WITH Christ.

In this form it would appear that all this praise, prayer, honor, veneration and glory applies to Mary and would even at that small level be a gross error.

So – we sure are glad that it is not out there.

However - to "correct" that quote so that it IS "exactly" what we DO find the Papal authority saying -- all we have to do is remove all the references to God - and replace them with references to Mary.!!!

Here is the correct quote – this is what Pope Pius XII “DID” write…

In this case we just TAKE CHRIST OUT of the incorrect quote above – so that it just references MARY ALONE!! Doing that gives us the EXACT teaching as the Pope actually taught it.

WORSHIP at Mary’s Altars

 

Individual prayers go to mary with individual requests from all over the world "as if" she is an all present, all seeing, all knowing and all powerful god.


All Powerful Mary –

 

Most Christians today engage in prayers to the dead. (most by way of numbers). Though they do not like to put it that way - it is a form of ancestral worship and idolatry.

The pagan religions today freely confess that they do not pray to the idols/statues - but rather they pray to the being in heaven that is represented by the idol.

This is precisely the claim made by most Christians today that pray to the dead. Their hope is to find that scripture will one day refer to the dead as "the alive in Christ" so that their prayers might be biblically termed as prayers to the "alive in Christ".

The only way to deal with this is to look at the bible teaching on the subject.

Non-Christian religions that practice ancestor worship - do not confine themselves to "going to mediums" they simply pray directly to the dead.

Catholics may argue that "they are praying to the wrong dead people"

if we assume God really wanted us to pray to the dead - (called “the dead in Christ” 1Thess 4:16 - or the "good" deceased etc) then isaiah 8 would have been a good place to include that qualifier as in "should they consult the unsaved dead on behalf of the living"?

Instead of making it so generic a prohibition, contrasting not "good" deceased from "bad" deceased - but contrasting living with deceased. It clearly prohibits contacting
"the dead on behalf of the living".


In 1thess 4 Paul himself refers to the deceased righteous as "the dead in Christ". That is a term that we can apply to them without fear of contradiction by nt apostolic teaching.


By contrast we have the following prayer to "the dead in Christ" (as Paul calls them) –

Notice that although in 1Cor 3 – Paul is directing the people of God to shun the cult-of-personality that would “recruit devotees to a given church leader” – yet this is exactly the focus of the prayer to the dead that we see in this example of the prayer to st. Jude.
Where in all of scripture are God’s people told to seek devotees who would perform devotions to them? Notice that Peter “attempts” to go down that road in Matt 17 – and the author tells us that he “did not know what he was saying”. As if Peter is insane or out of his mind due to the magnitude of the moment.
So then it is simply a waste of time - to consult the dead - they can not help you.

But is that the reason for assigning the death penalty to those who pray to the dead in the OT?

Let us take the case of those who pray to idols of stone - which are nothing - is it just because it is a waste of time that they assign the death penalty?

No- according to the apostolic teaching it is because they are unknowingly praying to demons. The sacrifices and promises being made to the dead (as
in the case above) are in fact --

This makes good sense – if the stones are not real beings. If the dead ancestor can not really hear us – then it is clear that demons have at the very least – “an opening”.

======================================

Matt 22 and Luke 20 - Christ argues for the resurrection of the dead
based on the fact that the dead have no relationship to God.

Saint Matthew actually provides even more detail –

these men have died>

Christ is participating in the debate - and will prove the resurrection in a way that totally crushes the defense of the Sadducees - even those standing around
will see that Christ took common ground and using that - boxed in the Sadducees. "having put them to silence" the story goes on..

this was the killer argument

- Sadducees could not reject the statement that God was not the God of the dead

- they could not reject the fact that God had said to Moses after the death of Abraham Isaac and Jacob - that he was their God.

Christ's point was that the only way this problem could be solved was via the doctrine
of the resurrection - and certainly the Sadducees were not about to propose that they
could find a way to solve the problem without the resurrection by having the dead
be "the alive but dead".

- as Christ said "but regarding the resurrection..." it had to mean that God was going to raise these men from the dead and that because of the fact of the
resurrection alone - "all men live unto him". If there were any other way for
God to be their God - then that is "nice" but it "kills" the argument made for the
resurrection by Christ in Matt 22 and Luke 20 .

The argument was based on common ground - so it was compelling. They were forced
to conclude his argument by the fact they already accepted the truths he based the
force of his argument upon. Perfect debate technique.

Any other solution would not be a common ground compelling argument with the Sadducees
forcing them to submit based on what little truth they still held - and we see that they submit
"in silence" they are put to silence. The witnesses confess that the Sadducees were silenced
by the compelling case made.

But if Christ had simply tossed in some argument upon which there was no common ground
to form a basis for compelling argument - then the response could only be railing and accusation
as indeed they were already doing. For if a less compelling form had been used you might
just as well have argued "and also
there is a resurrection because the Easter bunny says so".
It would carry no weight and nobody would marvel at the compelling nature of such an argument.

================================
did Jesus declare that the just dead are "equal to angels" (Luke 20:36) for God
in not the God of the dead, but of the living; "for to him all of them are
alive." (Luke 20:36) ??

<
not believe in an after life. >>

obviously the time when they are said to be "like the
angels" refers to the resurrection when they are certainly "alive" by all acounts.

"those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection
from the dead, neither Mary nor are given in marriage" -

this was in answer to the question of vs 35 "in the resurrection which one's
wife will the woman be". So in the context of what happens at the
resurrection from the dead - Christ points out that they no longer Mary one
another. At certainly all agree that after the resurrection we are no longer
speaking of the deceased - they are no longer deceased.

Remember this entire discussion was a debate over the doctrine of the
resurrection.

============================
we notice that those who have died, passed away ...are always properly called "the dead" both by Paul
and Christ.
Christ calls Abraham, Isaac and Jacob "the dead" in Matt 22 and Luke 20 -
Paul calls the saints "the dead in Christ" in 1thess 4,
Paul refers to all those righteous as "the dead" 1cor 15 etc.

Never do they state "then the living spiritually but dead physically shall be ..." anything -
where they mean to reference the deceased.

 

I gave my sources above - I don't recall anything about Guayaquil

 

Agreed. I usually quote from Catholic sources themselves. AND I agree with you - often the RC members who read the quotes of their own publications - are not familiar with the material.

It should be noted that "in return" the RC defense is never to quote from non-RC sources to show that the RC position is in fact correct.

 

Everything else you said I do not believe but could you point to Scripture that says Mary actaully had children?

 

Of the three churches that have Aposolic sucession(Anglican/Episcopal,Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Church) only the RCC believes Mary to be co-redemtrix, Immaculately concepted, or Mediatrix of All Graces. These are all false doctrines and the RCC is the only one that believes in these things.

 

To the best of my understanding she prays for the success of this is a statement made by Lutheran Theologian , Philip Melancthon, in his book Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531)

I'm not RC so I'm not going to answer your question.

No

It's the churches teaching.

No