Words Have Meaning

This is part of the video we watched during RCIA last Thursday about Our Lady. I mentioned before that this is one of those Catholic dogmas that I struggled with over the years.

On the one hand, I didn't need very much convincing that Our Lady deserves more honor than she's given in most evangelical churches. I'd wondered more than once if the leaders of what I now regard as the Protestant Rebellion hadn't tossed the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to her.

At the same time though, I couldn't exactly fit all that in with what I knew about the Catholic Church's teachings and dogmas concerning her. And the reason for that turns out to be that I was lied to about how the Church views Our Lady. It's not "worship".

Words MEAN something. And speaking as a former-evangelical, total ignorance as to what the Church teaches and stands for is an evangelical specialty. This is especially true when it comes to the Blessed Virgin. It's the evangelical in a million who understands the difference between "veneration" and "worship". Theirs is an alarming tendency to throw words around without an iota of understanding of what they mean. "The Catholics venerate Mary! That's idolatry!" I should not that "veneration" is the act of showing reverence and honor. "Idolatry" is worshiping images of some kind. Praying to Our Lady is therefore neither "worship" nor "idolatry". Grasping those concepts isn't difficult; it simply requires brains and discernment evangelicals apparently lack.

Does this seem harsh? The objective truth is that evangelicals don't understand what the Church teaches. That's not open to debate. The cause therefore is either (A) a lack of intelligence or (B) an agenda to intentionally misrepresent the Church. Incompetence is the lesser evil, wouldn't you agree?

In any case, the Church's views of Our Lady actually make perfect sense when someone qualified to explain them breaks them down for you. So I guess it's like anything else; never trust evangelicals to explain Catholic doctrine.

Now, this all works to convince me on an intellectual level about the importance she plays in theology. But I still struggle with the idea of praying to her. Or, for that matter, any of the saints. You can take the boy out of evangelicaldom but you can't take evangelicaldom out of the boy, it seems.

But I'm working my way through it. I've decided to start small and then work up to bigger things later.

Baby steps.

More to follow...