Dear Tim:

Thank you for your condolences.

I was a Southern Baptist. Like any fundementalist or evangelical we saw any prayer other than to God to be idolatry.

We completely missed the fact that Mary is called the Mother of God in Luke 1:43 "And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?"

We took this verse to means that Elizabeth recognize that Mary was the mother of Jesus in human form but was not the mother of God. How can any human be the mother of God? How can the creature be the mother of the creator?

This is a dishonest interpretation of course. Elizabeth did not say "mother of Jesus", she said "Mother of MY LORD." This was not the landlord. "Lord" refers to God.

The Church began to use this phrase, "Mother of God," to counter a heresy that suggested that Jesus was human and not God.

There are many passages of Scripture that are interpreted by non-Catholic in a bias way. This has to be done in order to justify not joining the only Church established by Jesus personally.

Back to the "prayer to Mary." We interpreted "pray" to mean "worship." Only God is to be worshipped. There does not exist in that world a distinction between worship to God (latria)  and veneration (dulia).

But, worship is not the only definition of "prayer." A second definition is "to petition." If we ask our spouse to pass the salt, we have just prayed to her. Shakespeare use the term "prayer" in this way and so does the law. In legal documents to the court there is the "prayer". As my lawyer friend says, "I guarantee you I am not worshipping the judge."

Not to mention that if you ask me to pray for you, you have just prayed to me. In addition, in terms of Jesus the Intercessor. If those people really believe that no one can be any kind of intercessor other than Jesus, then why to they ask others to pray for them. If we pray for someone other than ourselves, we are acting as an intercessor. But, fundamentalists and evangelicals, in addition to not really knowing their bible very well, then to also lack abilities at simple logic.

Some anti-Catholics are so bigoted they will ignore this fact. One anti-Catholic site says that Catholics are lying when we say that "prayer" means "to petition." The writer then cites the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 3rd Edition. I happened to have that very edition of the dictionary. So I looked it up. The first definition does indeed refer to the word as a form of worship, but he second definition refers to "petition." This bigot deliberately avoided to mention the second definition because it supported the Catholic view.

Now, I say "deliberately", but actually she could have been deluded and literally not registered the second definition in her head. Either way, it is a phenomena of bigotry.

When I became Catholic all this came to an end. I wrote an essay about it, Obedience, the First and Foundational Virtue.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary