Catholics VS Protestants Debate Thread

[emjay]

I'm not a Christian any more but to whatever extent I can still have doubts about it from time to time, that doesn't extend to Catholicism. In other words since I was indoctrinated a Protestant I'd never give Catholicism the time of day even if I did return to Christianity...  much less as an atheist. Too much idolatry... turning every man and his dog into tantamount to a god to be worshipped (saints and the virgin mary), not to mention the reliance on graven images. Sorry about that... just letting out a bit of my inbuilt (read indoctrinated) Protestant anti-Catholicism even though I'm not a Christian any more

Catholics don't worship statues or worship saints, that's a common myth among protestants.
First, where are you getting worship? The definition of pray is "1) to utter petition to God, 2) to make a fervent request, 3) to beseech, implore, 4) to make a devout or earnest request for." Where in the definition do you see the word worship or anything like worship? To pray is to make a request or petition to God. When we pray to God, we are uttering a petition to Him, and when we pray to Mary and the saints we are making an earnest or devout request for prayers from Mary and the saints. In the medieval times, when people would say "I pray you would do this," were they worshipping whoever they were talking to?
        
The Seventh General Council shows the difference between venerating Mary and worshipping God. It showed that Latria - is adoration that is given to the trinity alone, and always refers to God (John 16:2, Romans 9:4, Heb 9:1-6), and hyper-dulia - which is veneration to Mary. There is a difference. The bible also shows this difference. Take a look at Exodus 18:7, saying, "then Moses went out to meet his father in law, and bowed down and kissed him." This is veneration.
      By praying through Mary, we are not taking away focus from Jesus. In Luke 1:46-49 Mary says, "My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.
For He has regarded the lowly state of his maidservant;
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed." Praying through Mary magnifies the focus on Jesus and magnifies Him. It's like asking someone for prayers. When you ask someone to pray for you, are you worshipping them? It's no different with Mary. When we pray to Mary, we ask her to pray for us to God, and her soul magnifies Him. Then, we add some respect, or veneration, not worship. If you knew someone was praying for you would you not thank them?
         Thus, we do not worship Mary or take our focus off God to put on Mary, but we pray through Mary, and venerate her, not worship her.
God Bless!

Okay, thanks for the clarification. So they've become like conduits to God... kind of like proxy servers Why not give the poor guys and gals a break?... they've done the hard work and got themselves to Heaven and instead of chillaxing they have to spend eternity praying on behalf of millions of Catholics

But I get what you're saying about the difference between reverence and worship because it's similar with Buddhism. Buddhism is an atheistic 'religion', with reverence for a wise teacher rather than worship of a God, but there is widespread confusion about that among the ignorant (which includes me) which isn't helped by the bowing, chanting, and graven images of the Buddha. I'm not a fully-fledged Buddhist... I don't believe in any form of afterlife including reincarnation, but I do see a lot of wisdom in it in practical terms for this life. So when I go to a Buddhist temple I still feel decidedly uncomfortable when it comes to that part of the proceedings... intellectually I know it's only reverence, but it does give the impression of being more like worship, especially since I don't speak the language of the chants and therefore don't know what they're saying.