Catholics Worship Mary?
Catholics believe in the Eucharist, you don’t and they don’t deny it. Catholics believe in going to confess their sins to a priest, you don’t and they don’t deny it despite your criticism and condemnation of the practice. Catholics believe in anointing of the sick, honoring the saints and many other things which you do not accept, yet they don’t deny all these.
Why then are you insisting that Catholics Worship Mary when they have eloquently denied it? If Catholics didn’t hide or deny their doctrines you don’t accept, why would they deny worshipping Mary if they do?
The fundamental problem is worship. How can you accuse someone about worship when you guys don’t share same understanding of what worship is?
For you guys, worship means gestures and gesticulations like bowing, kneeling, prostrating, and other verbal and non verbal reverential acts. This is a shallow and reductionist understanding of worship.
The term worship can be used beyond what we do in church or religion. When you hear expressions like “he worships his wife, she worships her husband” it doesn’t mean idolatry, it expresses deep reverence that these spouses have for the other, it doesn’t in any way mean that they worship each other as deity.
What about reverence? Yoruba’s prostrate to greet their elders, the same prostration the Elders in heaven give to God in Rev 4. Does it mean that the yorubas worship their elders? Long before Christianity came, yorubas also had deities they worshipped, so you can’t say they didn’t know God then and that’s why they prostrated for fellow humans.
They worshipped their gods and still prostrated before elders, only an ignorant person will call that prostration idolatry. Bowing down is not an exclusive religios gesture, it is a sign of respect among humans, we bow to show respect and it is never idolatry.
In the court, a magistrate is addressed as ‘your worship’. Judges are called Lord. These are same terms used for God and human beings yet they mean different things in relation to the subjects. Your legal counsel ‘prays to the court” to deliver judgement in your favor, is that idolatry?
Many of you think God is as petty and unreasonable as you often are. The biggest idolatry happening now is the attempt to create God in your own images and likesness. Many people are reducing God to their shallow perceptions and conceptions, trying to fit God into their emotional and sentimental projections.
Physical gesticulations aren’t the core of worship, they are part of it, but the smallest aspect. God has shared those gesticulations with humans and does still. What is exclusive to God is your heart, mind and body, all yielded to him. Rom 12:1 says: “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, dedicated and acceptable to God; THAT IS THE KIND OF WORSHIP FOR YOU AS SENSIBLE PEOPLE”.
Did you see the word SACRIFICE in that text? That’s what defines God’s exclusive worship. That’s why the mass is the central and highest form of Liturgical or group worship in the catholic Church. It is so because it is a sacrifice.
Then, of course Jesus talked about worshipping God in spirit and in truth.
Point is, most of you that heckle Catholics with “Where is it in the bible” are pretty ignorant. Arguing or discussing scriptures with you is like discussing quantum physics with market men and women who didn’t even complete secondary education. You need to go through the rigours of the academic fundamentals before you can make sense of certain things.
Catholics don’t worship Mary, but if you still insist that we do, come and beat us, we will never stop.