On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Iain Tatch wrote: > If he / she / it is worshipped, then regardless of what name they're > given, I still maintain it's a god.
While some people fall into that trap there are not many Catholics who worshop Mary at all. Certainly the official position of the Church is that doing so is forbidden. She's no more a God than Madonna is. Do those who adore Madonna generally do so as a god? > If a devout christian walks into a > church and kneels at the foot of a statue of Mary and crosses him/herself, > then that to me is a worship of that particular god. There is a whole bunch of teaching regarding this in the Church just as with icons. It all comes down to the same thing - focal points while considering something too big to be a single point of focus. It's also a side show of an issue. > If you send a prayer for salvation to "Jesus, Mary, and all the saints", > you're hedging your bets -- if one of those gods won't save you, at least > there's a chance one of the others is will. I've never heard a catholic send up such a prayer. The only "prayers" I've heard addressed to Mary or the saints is "pray for us". > Viewed from the outside, Christianity is an extremely polytheistic > religion, regardless of the claims of its followers. I can see that. It's also poorly understood inside the ranks too. Many people have reversed the whole thing to sanitise it. Jason Clifford -- UKFSN.ORG Finance Free Software while you surf the 'net http://www.ukfsn.org/ ADSL Broadband available now
