Dear Adam:

Thank you for your questions. I am happy to answer them. I see my job as primarily one of teaching the accurate truth of Catholic teaching, more than to convince anyone to become Catholic. I figure that if a person wishes to disagree with the Catholic Faith then they ought to disagree accurately.

Then those who have no opinion one way or another still need accurate information as, frankly, no non-Catholic truly understands the Catholic Faith, and sadly, many Catholics do not either.

Thus, answering questions like this is helpful for everyone as they can be exposed to accurate information about what the Church truly teaches.

1) why does the Catholic church pray to Mary, the angels in heaven, and so on, where most faiths only pray to the trinity?

We have to remember, first-of-all, that the Catholic Church was the original Church, the Church that Jesus Christ personally founded with Peter as the first Pope of the New Covenant (Matthew 16:18-19). Catholics, therefore, were the original Christians.

Thus, the real question is why do Protestants not pray to Mary and the saints? Protestants departed from the historic faith when they came on the scene 1500 years after the beginning of the Church.

But, to answer the question directly we pray to Mary and the Saint because God is pleased that His family is One. His family, as are all families suppose to be, there to help each other. Those who have gone on before us are not dead, they are more alive than us. Death in this world cannot separate us (Roman 8:35-39) They are in heaven. As the Scriptures say, "the prayers of a righteous man availeth much". There are no people more rightuous than those in heaven. Thus, their prayers to God on our behalf "availeth much."

The Body of Christ is One. Those beleivers in heaven and on earth are both part of the Body of Christ (Romans 12:5). Thus, as Christ body and the fact that death cannot separate us from Christ, to be One Body means ONE, those in heaven and earth are one. Otherwise, is the body of Christ paralyzed? That is what it would be if one part of the body has no connection with another.  We are one body and thus there is a connection, even though part of that body is in heaven.

God tells us that we are to pray for each other. This is called intercessory prayer. Thus, especially since the Saints in heaven are in perfect communion with God, we ask the Saints to pray to God for us. This is no different than you asking me to pray for you.

The differences between most Protestant and the Catholic Church are actually rather small. On those areas of disagreement, such as this one, much of the reason why the Protestants moved away from the 1500 year old practices of the Christian Faith was as a knee-jerk reaction against Catholics. They wanted to distance themselves from the Catholic Church.

When I was a Baptist I asked a prominent Baptist preacher why we did not celebrate Communion every Sunday. In the Bible, Jesus Himself tells us to celebrate Communion, "as often as you meet." So why did Baptists only do this once a month, or in come cases only once a quarter. The preacher said that to do it more often would make it nothing but a stale ritual. I replied, that I grew up in a Protestant Church that celebrated communion every Sunday and it was never stale. I also said that I have been in Baptist Churches with only monthly communion that were as stale as it could be. "Besides," I said to him, "do you only say 'I love you' to your wife once a month because to do it more often would make it stale?" He was not amused.

I told him that since we are suppose to be the "people of the book" and the book says to celebrate communion "as often as we meet" then why don't we.

I continued to push until he finally said it. He said, "Because we do not want to look like the Catholics." I replied, "We should be doing whatever the Bible tells us and not knee-jerking to any other denomination."

Thus, Baptists, who pride themselves on following the Bible, fail to follow the Bible whenever the Bible is too Catholic.

Never underestimate the power of prejudice.

2) when the ancient texts were found, on what grounds did the Catholic church deem the extra books holy? Or what inspired the Catholic church to accept the extra books in the bible?

There are no "extra" books in the Catholic Bible. The Protestant Bible is missing seven books. The Old Testament in the Catholic Bible contain the same Old Testament books as the Bible Jesus read. If it is good enough for Jesus, I suppose it is good enough for us.

The Bible that Christians knew for 1500 years was the same Bible that Catholic have today.

That changed when Martin Luther ripped out of the Bible seven books from the Old Testament. He wanted to take out of the Bible the New Testament books of James, Hebrews, and Revelations but did not succeed in getting that accomplished.

What Martin Luther did, as a means to distance himself from the Catholic Church, was to accept the Palestinian Canon of the Old Testament that excludes those seven books. The Palestinian Canon was decided by a council of rabbis in around the end of the first century.

There is a problem with this, however, since the Jewish Magisterium was no longer in power. God concluded the Magisterium of the Chair of Moses and replaced it with the Chair of Peter. This is why when Jesus died on the cross the veil in the Jewish Temple split in two. Thus, the Jewish leaders had no authority to change the canon of the Bible.

In any event, the Old Testament used by Jesus, and by the Jews at the time the Church was born, was the Old Testament that Catholics have maintained for 2000 years.

So the question is not why Catholic "added" anything to the Bible, but why Prostestant "removed" large portions from the Bible? portions that are quoted by New Testament writers several hundred times in the New Testament, by the way.

Those seven books have always been part of the Christian Bible.

3) lastly, just how many faiths founded on different versions of the ancient texts? I've heard of some that believe the KJV along with extra books (mormonisn, muslim, etc) and one faith that only believes up to the book of Deuteronomy I think?

The King James Bible is a translation of the early extant manuscripts in Greek and Hebrew, a translation, by the way, with some 300 errors (corrected in later revisions). The KJV was published in the 17th Century. As a note, the Catholic Douay-Rheims Version was published before the King James.

As for authentic faiths of the True God there are only the Jews and Christians. The Jews look to the Hebrew Text (Old Testament), and the Christians look to both the Old and New Testaments.

The Mormons are not Christian and their Book of Mormon is false. Muslims also look to a false document, the Qu'ran. All revelation from the True God ended with the Apostles in the first century. If we look to the Book of Mormon or the Qu'ran we can easily see that these texts are false as they contradict the consistent teachings of the true Bible.

God does not have a forked-tongue. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Thus, in any authentic revelation there must be a consistency and continuity and agreement. This is utterly lacking in the Book of Mormon and the Qu'ran.

While the Mormons also look to the Bible, they have to rationalize a great deal since the Bible and the Book of Mormon contradict each other.

While Muhammad borrowed from the Jewish Bible and from the Christian Bible, he created something new that is utterly inconsistent with both. Islam, thus, is a man-made invented religion, as is Mormonism, from a Christian point-of-view. Jewish and Christian Religions were created by God.

I am sure there are all sorts of weird sects out there who pick and choose from the Bible only those portions they like. Doing that is cowardice, but that is what many do. Even cowardly Christians will pick and choose only those things in the Bible they like and ignore or rationalize away the rest.

The Truth, however, lies in the whole of God's Oral and Written Tradition without any manipulations by those with an agenda.

I hope this helps.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary