www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Blunt Question about Mary and EC Churches

To be blunt, Wife & I are averse to all the Mary worshipping and praying to that we see in the Roman Catholic Church (contrary to what the Catechism actually teaches).
Do Eastern Catholic churches pray to or worship Mary?
I realize that neither is taught even in the RC church but what is in practice is something different.
Are the EC churches a place for us or should wife and I seek someplace else.
Again I don't have a problem with intercessory prayer, just don't believe that it should inhabit the majority of one's prayer life.

Catholics do not, repeat, *do not* worship the Theotokos. Not Roman Catholics, and not Eastern Catholics. We worship God and God alone.

Mary, as the mother of Our Lord is honored, revered, and venerated.

All Catholics pray to Mary, as we pray to the saints, to intercede with her Son on our behalf.

Never have I seen or heard of *any* Catholic worshiping Mary.

I'd be really curious to know what it is you're seeing that makes you say that Mary is being worshiped in the Roman Catholic Church.

Dave,

?????

Did you ever ask for the intercession of your guardian angel or patron saint?

Have you ever asked anyone to pray for you?


Have you ever prayed for anyone else?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions then you have your answer.

Christ is risen!
Fr Deacon Paul

You must live in a very hispanic area, where the cultural expression of devotion to Mary is very different that what many of us are used to. I do understand what you mean, though. One time, the local newspaper was doing a story on Our Lady of Guadeloupe. I cringed when I read this quote from one interviewee: "She is our God." There was a longer context, but that was the end of the quote. No attempt was made to clarify that this is not the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Of course the Eastern Churches pray to Mary. It is integrated into the Byzantine liturgy in a way that is not present in the Roman Rite. And we have the beautiful Moleben to the the Theotokos, the text of which can be found in this thread.

I know what you mean as regarding certain illegitimate excesses regarding the veneration of the Theotokos, and I wish that the Church would take a stronger position on these problems. Addressing them through a redoubled catechism would be the best course of action, given their seemingly-ingrained nature in certain cultural iterations.

However, I agree that praying to her is no different than asking my priest, family, or friends for prayer. If we believe (as the Catholic and Orthodox Churches do) that Mary was bodily assumed and is with Christ, then she is very much a real, living person (indeed a more real and "more living" person than we are). If we might ask our own mother for prayers, of course we would ask the mother of God for them! (all the while granting she is not a mother to God in exactly the same sense as our mothers are to us...i.e. as pre-existing us)

I felt I needed to quote myself since at least a couple of posters maybe didn't read my whole post.

Let me give you some examples:
-- I have a RC prayer book that literally has 50 prayers to Mary, 5 to Jesus and 2 to the Trinity.
-- Many RC's believe that Mary (not God) will answer your prayers when all other forms of prayer don't.
-- ALL grace comes from Mary (none, zero, zilch) comes from anyplace else... like say the Holy Spirit.

lex orandi, lex credendi -- if someone places Mary in a position as I described above or at the center of their prayer life it is worship.

It's not merely the part in RC Mass where we say "I asked Blessed Mary Ever Virgin, all the angles and saints, and you my brothers and sisters to pray for me to the Lord our God"

Dave:

Chrsit is Risen!!

As to your first point, did you look inside the cover for the first page where the "imprimatur" is? I, too, was given a prayerbook with this kind of prayer total. However, it wasn't anything official--that is, coming from a Church source. There are people out there who pretend to put out Catholic prayerbooks, but the books are far from it. There are people who claim to have had various visions and visitations from the Mother of God and various other saints that have been investigated and found not to be authentic--but these people still press their calims and various books.

There are lots of people who have beliefs that are not official; not well-formed; not according to the teachings of the Church. They can be found in every Church and ecclesial community. They are not official, so why give them so much attention?

Ditto your third point.

I used to know someone who all but claimed that Italians were exempt from the Ten Commandments because the Pope was Italian and that gave all of them an exemption to do whatever they wanted. He thought that a lie was as good as the truth and that extortion was all part of good business. His father was part of organized crime at one time. Does that make any of this so?

I won't even touch some versions of Protestantism--a Lutheran thelogian of my acquaintance once remarked that the problem there is that if you don't like what the Chruch teaches, you take your Bible, put a cross on your garage, and start your own version of Church.

So why give such great weight to these unorthodox teachings of people wihtout the authority to teach?

Bob

Dave:

Christ is Risen!!

To take what Father Deacon Paul ahs written one step further--

Our practice of invoking the intercession of the Theotokos, saints, and angels comes from Scripture. St. Paul teaches that we should pray unceasingly. I don't know about you, but I pray and then have to go off to work and fulfill my other duties as a father, husband, and professional. So in this area I fail miserably. My work is not the same as prayer, no matter what some people try to make it out to be.

But while I'm off doing other things and not giving my full attention to the Lord and conversing with him, these other in the Mystical Body of Christ pick up my slack. So I ask my Mother--by Christ's gracious gift of her to all of us from the Cross--to pray for me so I'm not lost. I ask my patron saints to do the same; ditto my Guardian Angel; and my deceased relatives--a couple of whom have promised that if they make it they would keep interceding until I make it there, too.

Is this what you call "worship"? BTW, worship involves sacrifice and I never thought of prayer as worship per se. Prayer is our extension of worship. Prayer is, too, one of the ways in which we participate in communion with Christ and the other members of the Mystical Body--the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant. I've asked so many people to pray for me because I believe I need all the help I can get. Again, these same people go off to work and to fulfill their duties and there is a potential break in unceasing prayer. So who picks up the slack?

As an aside, the youTube segments about Valaam Monastery in Russia have a part in which they show the monks praying for people round the clock perpetually. They take two hour turns and the lists of people in their books is tremendous. Of course, monasticism is the life of the angels on earth so if you think of it as translated to the realm wherein there is no distraction in prayer, you might get a better idea of what real intercessroy prayer by another should be about.

Sure there will be all types of misunderstandings but you can't paint the whole enterprise by them.

Bob

Bob,
Thank you again for your wisdom. I'll have to ponder prayer vs worship definition.
Peace,
Dave

Dave,

I have one friend who was abused by her father and her brother, so asking her Heavenly Father or His Son for help with anything was out of the question for her. She just didn't have any trust whatsoever that a man was going to take care of her. It was just too big of a leap. And isn't it all about trust?

In our topsy-turvy society, everyone seems to have a problem with men. They do not find comfort or security or consolation at all in the idea of a Father figure. In some "Matriarchal" cultures, the idea of a man being in charge is preposterous.

Enter the Theotokos. For many, she is the only one they can trust to open their hearts to. And through her, many have been healed of their "daddy issues" so that they can eventually reach out to the Father or the Son. Maybe their worship and prayer isn't exactly "orthodox" but I would rather they give their full devotion to the Mother of God than deny the masculinity of the Father and the Son, which many do.

There's no perfect Church because there are no perfect people. Your job is to learn to love enough to see past the imperfect people, right?

Go to a small town in the Southwest. Go to any little Roman Catholic Church. Before and after Mass, watch everyone walk blindly past the tabernacle and the altar and fall on their knees in front of the giant shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and pray devoutly while lighting one of the hundreds of candles in front of her while the Shrine to the Sacred Heart stands dark in the corner.

I grew up in Dallas, not too far from where you are, Dave. I became a Christian in college (in Chicago) and had the same resistance to what I saw as Mary worship that you are expressing. One of my Catholic friends there explained it along the same lines as Fr Dcn Paul did above: If we believe that those who have died are alive in Christ, then why should we not ask their prayers and intercessions, just ask we ask our friends and family to pray for us? That made enough sense for me to stop freaking about about the whole "communion of saints" thing.

I became a Latin rite Catholic in grad school, going through the RCIA. Discussions of Mary were set aside as matters for private devotion, not doctrinal essentials for baptism or confirmation. I was glad of that, because I really had a hard time with the little I'd seen: The doe-eyed, "Oh, She's WONDERFUL," didn't sit well with me.

From my perspective, the "problem" with Mary in the Western traditions is that, given the structure of the eucharistic celebration -- Liturgy of the Word, Liturgy of the Eucharist -- she doesn't fit in. A recitation of the rosary might get stuck on before or after the service, but Marian prayers make no sense liturgically, so the only exposure most Sunday-only Roman Catholics have to Mary is in the rosary and in bad art. Because the Sunday liturgy makes no room for her, people who want to have a devotion to her are left to their own devices, and their devices do indeed get quite lopsided and IMHO sometimes border on heresy.

It was only when my husband and I journeyed to the East that I began to appreciate her. And my understanding and appreciation came through the prayers of the liturgy -- and the good art. Unlike "the Mary chapel" in many Roman Catholic churches, in which our Lord and Savior is nowhere to be found (no wonder non-Catholics think we worship her!), almost all the icons of the Theotokos include Jesus. These icons put the honor and reverence of Mary in its proper context, as the Mother of God.

After nearly 20 years in the Melkite church, praying through the liturgy and reflecting on the icons, I can safely say that I now begin to understand and appreciate and even revere the Theotokos.

I don't know if this helps any, but I offer my testimony (if you will) because, having grown up in Dallas, in the Bible Belt, I understand the difficulties you and your wife have with Catholic devotions to the Mother of God.

You can't go through the First Antiphon without praying to Mary. If you do not want to pray to Mary, the Byzantine Liturgical tradition is not for you.

Actually, it says, "through the prayers of the Theotokos, O Savior save us!

Bob,
I don't think prayer = worship. But worship doesn't necessarily include sacrifice. I did a quick look thru the NT and found that worship includes praise and bowing down to. Doesn't the greek word for worship mean to "bow down" or "to prostrate" in reverence?