Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames. CATHOLICISM

– GUILTY OF MARIOLATRY?

"Our Lady is the surest, the easiest, the shortest and most perfect means of going to Jesus Christ" - St Louis de Montfort

The Holy Spirit is bypassed in favour of Mary. Whoever thinks that it is not enough to go to Jesus directly is really just praying to Mary while pretending it brings him closer to Jesus. If Jesus is as approachable and understanding and as human as the Bible says there is no need for Mary. To go to her is really bypassing Jesus while pretending that this bypassing isn't happening. Indeed the only Jesus it can bring one close to is the one in one's head not the real one. The Catholic Church believes Jesus is physically present in the Eucharist or communion. To say that you need Mary to go to Jesus is strange if the Church really believes one is united with Jesus in tremendous intimacy by receiving communion. Clearly then one must keep one's focus on Mary even then. That is like having sex with your wife while looking at your wife's mother and giving her the attention.

The Catholic Church teaches that God is to come first but that we must pray to the saints and his angels and especially to Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ who is God, who is the greatest creature in Heaven. The Church says we must give full worship to God and he must be the reason we do all we do. We only pray to the saints for the sake of God and to honour God. Mary is singled out for special devotion. I find this eccentric for when people are only honoured for God it is God who is really being honoured so why address Mary and say her Rosary which has ten times more prayers to her than to God? The real reason Mary is prayed to is to put her before God. It has to be. Mary-worship represents defiance of the divine command to love God only.

Yet the Church argues that it was God himself who exalted Mary above all created beings when he made her the Mother of God so by giving her special love and devotion we are only copying him. But what about those who receive the body and blood of Christ in holy communion? Their union with God is deeper than carrying God incarnate in one's womb! Also, God might have exalted Mary but did she accept this exaltation or reject it? If she rejected it then she is the lowest creation of God and refused to rise to her potential.

St Bernadine of Siena wrote that even God obeys the Blessed Virgin and she is omnipotent because God has given her the same privileges as Jesus the King for she is queen and power is equally shared between the Son and the Mother. Jesus was omnipotent by nature and Mary by grace (page 20, Why I am not a Roman Catholic).

A Fr Oakley wrote that the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist is really the flesh of Mary from whom he was made so he who eats the Son also eats the mother (page 20-21, ibid).

Rome was big into book-burning when it was able to use the law against heretics but it never touched theirs.

Mary being Jesus’ mother does not mean that she has the most influence with him now though Rome maintains that it does. Jesus said that doing God’s will was more important to him than giving birth to him (Luke 11:27, 28). The king may have a mother but that does not mean that he does or should do what she says. Jesus did not have to choose the holiest woman in the world to be his mother so it is mad to say that he did and therefore Mary being the best creature is now at his right hand in Heaven.

The Roman Church makes a lot out of Jesus telling Mary that his time for doing miracles had not come and then doing one – the changing of water into wine – allegedly at her behest (John 2). It is supposed to show the supreme influence that Mary holds over God. There is no evidence that Mary changed Jesus’ mind in the story. He would not have told her that the time wasn’t right and then do a miracle when he shouldn’t. Something else could have happened that made the time right and it happened subsequently. He told her he would not obey her. Even if he did what she said eventually, it only proves that he wanted to do it and not that he was doing it to obey her. He may have done it to please himself and not her.

The words Jesus said to Mary, “It is not my time yet”, can be translated, “Is this not my time now?” The footnotes in the Catholic New American Bible admit this. Rome says the latter is an unlikely rendering because the time or hour mentioned here means the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection (John 13:1). It cannot for Jesus could not have meant that he couldn’t do miracles without dying first! The Cana story does not back up Rome’s doctrine of Mariolatry.

1 Timothy 2:15 states that woman will be saved through bearing children. What is this salvation referred to here? Is it saying a woman needs to be a mother to be saved? Some Christians say it does not but means that woman will be saved from an unfulfilled life and having the wrong role in life if she bears children. Either way, if a woman refuses to have children she is doing wrong. This condemns the Catholic belief that Mary though she had Jesus, she refused to have any children though she was married and that this was right. If Mary did what the Church says, then she can't be the greatest saint in Heaven.

There were apocryphal gospels that the Church never destroyed and some of these pornographically describe Mary's vagina being examined after she gave birth to Jesus Christ. Could you imagine modern Catholics wanting to think about that? Those traditions came from a time before Mary was turned into a goddess. The Church didn't condemn these gospels in the hope that there might be some truth in them.

Rome says that Mary is the heavenly being who is next to God and whose prayers have the most influence with him. That isn’t very fair considering that there are many sinless angels in Heaven who achieved more than she did. She was not even necessary to do God’s work for God could have given the world the saviour without her or any woman. Mary did not give up as much for God as some saints did so how could she be better? If she had signs from God unlike them then they sacrificed without being as sure of a reward as she was.

But the thing we are concerned about now is the idea that it is okay to pray to beings other than Mary. It is surely immoral to pray to the likes of St Martin de Porres when their prayers aren’t as mighty as hers are. Saint-worship and Mary-worship are incompatible.

Rome reasons that as Mary was chosen to carry God made man for nine months she must have been an exceptionally holy woman. This is nonsense for the Church itself holds that we carry Jesus inside us in a far more intimate way when we receive his body in Holy Communion. Rome reasons that Mary must have been the greatest saint when she agreed to be the mother of Jesus. That is nonsense for priests don't have to be exceptionally holy to be able to turn bread into Jesus or to eat him in communion.

Rome calls Mary the mother of all Christians. It alleges that Jesus gave us his mother to be our mother too. The pagan origin of this notion is obvious from the following observation. Mary is not just our mother in name but in fact according to the Church. We are adopted by her as her sons and daughters. She looks after us then. She can do this only by interceding with God for us for she supposedly has no power of her own. But if that is how she looks after us then it follows that St Martin de Porres is our father for he is doing what makes her a mother! There is a major contradiction then in Roman theology. Calling Mary mother in Roman theology despite their denials must be an attempt to make her a goddess for she cannot be mother just by interceding. She must have magic power of her own and perhaps the power to force God to do things against his will. Satan must be working behind the apparitions of Mary in which she calls for her flock to acknowledge her as mother.

The Bible says that Jesus is the only mediator between God and man. The Catholics say that the Bible authorises asking others to pray for you. So they conclude that one mediator means only that Jesus paid the price only he could pay to save us from sin and get us everlasting life in Heaven. They deny that it means he was the only intercessor. But there is no need for any intercessor only Jesus. And its an insult to ask a sinner to pray for you instead of asking Jesus. To ask a saint to pray for you when Jesus can do it is disrespectful to Jesus and undermines him. Also the Bible simply says Jesus is the only mediator. A mediator is an intercessor. The Church is twisting the meaning. If there is such a thing as a mediator of redemption (person who pays for your sin to get you forgiven) and a mediator of intercession who prays for you then the Bible must mean both for it simply says mediator. It would clarify if it meant that Jesus was the only mediator of redemption.

Jesus supposedly paid the price for us - he had to sacrifice himself in love for God to make up for our failure to love God. He paid our fine for us. A person who redeems you or pays your fine or for your sins is not a mediator. That person is a saviour. I steal. Somebody comes along with the bail money to get me off. The person helps me by paying the money not by asking for my release. Its the money the judge wants not a plea for mercy. Mediators plead for mercy. The idea of a mediator of redemption or who bails you out is wrong. Mediators have to do with intercession. The Bible says that the only person who can help us by praying for us in Heaven is Jesus. Even if the saints pray for us, God only hears his Son. There is a distinction between praying for us and interceding for us. The saints praying for us means they only wish blessings on us. They may not intend to intercede or urge God to do things for us.

Asking another to pray for you can only then mean that it is a way of asking Jesus. Sending a letter is a way of communicating. Its another way of asking. You don't see the letter as interceding for you or anything. Same idea. So to ask others to pray for you in the Bible does not mean you are asking them to intercede. The Catholic doctrine that Mary intercedes contradicts the Bible.

Finally...

Idolatry is the worship of what is not God as sacred. It's a violation of the right God has to be worshipped.

Many people get a nice glow inside them when they pray and think of God. They pray without realising that they are praying to this feeling.

The best theologians say that God is being itself and you cannot talk about what God is only about what he is not. They say that the thought of a God who is in time and like us is idolatry.

If you adore your perception of God, you are not adoring God. Even if your perception is right that is not the point. You are still intending to honour what you think God is not what he is. It would take a miracle for a person to really honour and worship God.

Our hearts deceive us very well. We could think we are adoring him when we are actually adoring a mental and emotional image of him.

When people who pray to God find idolatry so hard to avoid, it must be nearly impossible to honour a saint and pray to a saint without being an idolater. The veneration of saints then must be rejected outright as blasphemous and heretical and corrupting. It is a turning away from the true good which is God.

Mary is treated as a divine being or goddess in Catholicism though that faith denies it vehemently. No pagan Goddess ever received the kind of reverence that Mary gets from Catholics. For example, did the pagans not see Aphrodite as a whore and a retard compared to Athena? The pagans believed their gods and goddesses often got their powers from higher gods and goddesses. And you find Catholics saying the saints get their powers from God. So they are really gods and goddesses and not saints.