"A Humble Servant's Catholic Blog"

Why do Catholics, and other Christians who honor Christ's Mother, ask her to pray us? It's because we know she can help lead us to Christ like no other person can. In fact, everything about Mary magnifies God and points us to Christ. Mary is the most pure Virgin, conceived without sin. From the very first instant, she was made entirely immaculate by God, her Savior. Gloriously full of grace, she is the mother of our God, the Queen of Angels and of men. We humbly venerate her as the chosen mother of our Savior, Jesus Christ. The Prince of Peace and the Lord of Lords chose Mary, from among all other women that existed, or ever will exist, for the singular grace and honor of being His beloved mother. By the power of His Cross, He preserved her from all sin. Therefore, by His power and love, we have hope and bold confidence in her prayers for our holiness and salvation. We pray that her prayers will bring us to imitate her holiness and submission to Jesus and the Divine Wil...

Someone was sent the following, explaining how veneration and worship are supposedly the same things, and that venerating the Saints is the equivalent of giving them the worship due to God alone. " The simplest definition of worship is to “ascribe worth.” Worship can be more completely defined as “showing respect, love, reverence, or adoration.” Based on the dictionary, no clear difference between veneration and worship exists. In fact, veneration and worship are often used as synonyms for each other. The Catholic Church has different degrees of worship: dulia, hyperdulia, and latria. Dulia is the honor given to the saints. Hyperdulia is the honor given to Mary alone, as the greatest of the saints. Latria is the honor given to God alone. In contrast, the Bible always ascribes honor, in the context of worship, to God alone [ 1 Chronicles 29:11; 1 Timothy 1:17; 6:16; Revelation 4:11 ]. Even if there were biblical support for different levels of worship, there still would be no bi...

A friend of mine once posted a video blog about society setting up role models for itself (sports figures, war heroes, etc.). He spoke about how much he appreciated, during points in his life as he struggled with faith and morality, having a particularly awesome role model; the Mother of Jesus Christ. He spoke of being able to look up to her and follow her example of saying "yes" to God, no matter what the neighbors would say [of her seemingly untimely pregnancy], or no matter the hurt she would feel [when her Son was given up on the cross]. He recounted the great instructions she left all of humanity when she said, "Do whatever He tells you". And he mentioned how great it is to have such a great role model in whom we find no moral faults such as drug or porn addiction, spouse abuse, adultery, or other moral faults to which so many of our role models fall prey. And somewhere in the comments, he mentioned how great it is to ask such a great role model to pray for ...

In response to THIS post on how praying to Mary brings our focus to Christ, Steve responded with a series of off-topic questions and some claims. Since he jumped off topic right off the bat, I decided to make his reply a separate post and will respond to it point-by-point here. His words will be in italics , mine will be in bold . IS PRAYING TO DEAD PEOPLE A SIN? - This question is irrelevant to the topic, Steve [see link above to original post]. Catholics don’t pray to the dead, we pray to the living. Don’t you remember what Christ said when correcting the Scribes in Mk 12:26-27? He said "God is God of the LIVING, not of the dead". If you are trying to suggest that praying to saints is the same as praying to the dead, you are making the same mistake as the Scribes. Or perhaps you are purposefully trying to mislead the readers to believe something false about the Catholic Church? You aren’t trying to do that are you Steve? Is it a sin to pray to the Virgin Mary and ot...

*Item 45 appears in the 1965 edition, not in the original 1962 publication To keep this from being a 10-part series, I’m going to cover more per post and attempt to lump things into similar groups. This means longer posts…so I’ll let Mr. Ariss’ examinations speak for themselves and add my own comments in blue where I feel more clarification is needed. Everything in black ink, from here on, is quoted directly from Wayne Ariss (with his generous permission…see link in the very first part of this series) : "4. Veneration of angels and saints, and use of images....375. The veneration (or respect) paid to angels can be found in the First Apology of Justin Martyr (148 AD). In Chapter VI, he states that "the host of the other good angels who follow and are made like to Him...we worship and adore" [7]. Likewise, Athenagoras of Athens wrote in Chapter X of the Supplication For the Christians (c.177 AD): "Nor is our teaching in what relates to the divine nature confi...