Share This With An Open Roman Catholic
(You may have to duck!)
This spring I sat in a restaurant and shared the following material with a Roman Catholic man. He looked at me as if I was sharing his mother had just died. When I was finished he said, "It's impossible," referring to the Roman Catholic doctrine of Mary defined by his church. I had succeeded in putting a large crack in his Maryolotry indoctrination which brought him a step closer to trusting Christ as his Savior.
Here is what I shared.
Could you explain the following doctrine of the Catholic Church to me? The Roman Catholic Church teaches that "Every grace granted to men has three successive steps: By god it is communicated to Christ, from Christ it passes to the Virgin, and from the Virgin it descends to us." (Pope Leo XII, Jucunda Semper)
speaking of the Virgin Mary, Pope Leo XIII also said, "None receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee."
Pope Pius XI in his encyclical, Ingravescentibus Malis, says, "Every blessing that comes from Almighty God comes to us through the hand of our Lady."
How can Mary distribute every blessing and grace of Almighty God to mankind?
The form of devotion given to Mary in the Catholic Church is called "Hyperdulia." This is the highest devotion that can be given a "created being." The Catholic Church acknowledges that Mary is a created and finite being. Yet they attribute a divine task to her. Let's think about what is involved in this task.
It is claimed there are 945,000, 000 Catholics in the world. Simple math will show that if Mary ministers grace just to the catholic population, giving each catholic one opportunity in a year to receive grace, each catholic will receive .03 (3/100) of a second of her time. (Thank God that in actuality we receive thousands and thousands of times more grace from the "Father of Lights" every year.) That means that Mary has to know their need, plead with Jesus on their behalf (the premise of the Roman Catholic Church is that Jesus could not refuse the pleas of His mother) and then distribute the grace God the Father gives to Jesus for them. She has to do this in .03 of a second for each person in the Catholic Church. Since it is also taught that she ministers grace to the entire world (all created human beings) we now have to add four more billion people to her care. This means that each person on planed earth will have .0063 (6/1000) of a second of her time to minister grace to them one time in a year.
Now here is another problem. The Catechism of the Catholic Church in doctrinal Statement #2677 says this. "By asking Mary to pray for us, [in the Hail Mary Prayer these words are used '...pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.'] We acknowledge ourselves be poor sinners and we address ourselves to the 'Mother of Mercy,' the All-Holy One. We give ourselves over to her now, in the Today of our lives. And our trust broadens further, already at the present moment, to surrender 'the hour of our death' wholly to her care. May she be there as she was at her son's death on the cross. May she welcome us as our mother at the hour of our passing to lead us to her son, Jesus in paradise."
Now consider this. There are 945,000,000 Catholics in the world. It is part of the training of every catholic to pray the "Hail Mary Prayer." They all ask Mary to be at their side in the hour of their death. According to population death statistics 24 Catholics die every minute. This means that, on the average, Mary has to be at the bedside of 24 Catholics in 24 different parts of the world 24 times every minute to pray for them. She must also at the same time continue to disperse grace to each person in the world. (And I thought my mother was busy.) Yet official catholic teaching is that she is a human being. (Some of the best Scriptures for this are I Timothy 2:5; John 4:13-14; I Peter 5:7; James 1:17.)
The gentleman that I had dinner with has heard the Gospel a number of times. It makes no sense to him because he is so bound by Catholicism. I presented this material to break up the fallow ground of his heart.
Perfect tactfulness may not keep your catholic friend from getting angry. If your catholic friend gets angry that is not necessarily a bad response. Pray much for him or her, asking God to bind Satan so your friend can be set free.
The Holy Spirit labored with me in the Word for ten months, setting me free from Roman Catholicism so that I could be saved. There were also at that time things shared with me that made me angry. But it was necessary to crack loose the enormous Roman Catholic indoctrination that had bound me and separated me from simple salvation in Christ. I have had many Catholics through the years get angry, who later received Christ and were gloriously saved. Believe me -- god the Holy Spirit is not going to stop working because they get angry. They will bounce back like a rubber ball with less Roman Catholicism on them, and in them. Many of them will follow through and get saved.
