Ever since the fall of man in the Garden where Satan challenged Eve to question God’s revealed Word by asking, ” . . . hath God said?” the serpent has continually invoked this strategy to deceive and destroy. It is clear from Scripture that the devil has utilized this procedure in a stealthy manner. Where God has clearly prescribed worship to be attributed to the Triune Creator alone, Satan asked Christ to bow down and worship him. In other words, we could paraphrase the temptation along the lines of the retort to Eve, “hath God said, worship God alone?” One of the devil’s master strokes was the invention of the Roman Catholic church. This institution, since the corruption of original Christianity early on in its history and continuing into the subsequent eras of Papist Christendom, has consistently lead people astray adding subjects to whom the faithful are to worship in addition to the God of the Bible. First, on this list and most troubling is the way Mary has been elevated to the status demanding the utmost devotion from the faithful. No wonder the Protestant Reformers referred to the Pope as Antichrist. Mariolatry is the term that literally means “Worship of Mary,” and has developed as a system of ordering the worship of Mary, the mother of Christ.
Here we will examine four foundational reasons garnered from the Bible that condemn the Roman Catholic practices as devilish, deviant, dark. and deadly.
First, it is clear that both the Old Testament and the New Testament proscribe any worship to any other entity but to the triune God. Also, the first and second commandments forbid us to worship the true God with the use of images and supposed likenesses. One need not go very far into a Roman Catholic meeting to encounter such horrific practices. The statues are everywhere, but the biggest sin is ironically the practice that is supposed to be the most significant when the priest holds up the Host and declares that “this is the Body of Christ.” This is a clear violation of the manner we ought to worship God, in Spirit and in Truth! Furthermore, the blasphemy in re-crucifying the Son of God every day is not even recognized by the multitudes. The book of Hebrews explains the detailed effects of Christ’s unrepeatable sacrifice for the sins of His people. The once for all nature of His cross-work is complete as He uttered the famous words, “it is finished.” Their crucifix is but another idol that is continually sending the wrong message; Christ is not being crucified over and over, nor is this Paul’s meaning in 1 Corinthians 2 about Christ and Him crucified. It is the resurrected Jesus that is victorious through His death, a historical and historic obedience on that Roman Cross, all those centuries ago.
Second, Mary has had an increasingly important role within Catholic theology in the salvation of sinners. From being declared the mother of God, to being considered sinless, and in having the capacity to intercede with her Son, Jesus, and having herself an abundance of merits to provide for the faithful, she is considered a co-redemptrix. While some Roman Catholics deny that she is an actual savior, in contrast, just as in Eastern Orthodoxy, in Roman theology and practice she is virtually the fourth member of the Trinity. One wonders how she was ever considered sinless as she specifically prayed in praise acknowledging that God was her savior. The common notion that Mary is “full of Grace,” and thereby able to bestow it to sinners is actually based on a faulty translation perpetuated by the Latin Vulgate. The Greek Testament refers to her as overly graced, not as a dispenser, but as singled out to be a recipient of God’s grace. As a former Greek Orthodox, this writer recalls as a child having the Panagia (the overall-holy one, a common term for Jesus’s mother) in an icon over his bed, and naively believed that this picture could protect him.
Third, Roman Catholicism has highly encouraged the use of the Rosary. This is like a lucky charm. Its mere presence can signify election. One 15th Century writer claimed the following, ” I do not know,” De la Roche, missionary to France says, “nor do I see clearly, how it can be that a devotion which seems so small can be the infallible sign of eternal salvation and how its absence can be the sign of God’s eternal displeasure; nevertheless, nothing could possibly be more true [sic].” The absence of prayer with the rosary is evidence of God’s displeasure. Nonsense. The rosary is a spiritual rabbit’s foot. It conveys no powers and provides no blessings. It is a sign of immaturity when simple folks hang on to these material tokens, much like the papers of Indulgence, by which the Pope could shave off millions of years in Purgatory. Simple faith it may appear to be, but it is nothing more than wishful thinking. Praying the Rosary is similar to transcendental meditation with its repetitive chants or thoughts. In this way of spiritualism, the rosary is considered a sure means to draw one closer to God. Jesus spoke of those who prayed in such a repetitive manner, thinking that they would score spiritual points of divine favor. Jesus dispelled that myth. The rosary does not please the deity. Neither will statues, candles, vigils, tears, Priests, Bishops, Cardinals, and Popes. Trinkets like prayer cards, beads, crucifixes, chains and medallions with saints engraved, as well as the rosary itself, could well be a sign of God’s great displeasure as they are drawing attention away from Jesus Christ, where His life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and intercession is the only hope for sinners.
Fourth, with its implicit faith in a mere man that is considered the Vicar of Christ, Roman Catholics have sinned in the highest way conceivable. They imagine God to be just like one of us. Catholics have devoted attention to the Pope that ought to be rendered to God alone. Some of the behavior and gestures to Popes through the ages is starkly similar to the behavior we witness by sinners approaching Christ in his ministry. From a sinful woman washing His feet with tears and drying them with her hair, to a sinful Apostle falling to his knees at Jesus’s feet, these beautiful acts of devotion would be blasphemous, was Jesus not God manifested in the flesh. As the Pope is definitely not God, it follows by necessity that such acts toward him are indeed blasphemies of the worst kind that have clearly resulted from Satan’s familiar refrain, “hath God said, worship Him alone?”
The month of October is Reformation Memorial month. It is a time where Christ’s sheep, those that have heard and followed their Shepherd’s voice, deeply rejoice in the recovery of the true grace of God and the true Gospel of Jesus that alone leads to separation from the bondage of Roman Catholicism. Hollywood and the Mass Media may recognize Roman Catholics as authentic Christians, but biblically informed people will continue to see this whole system shrouded in scandal, heresy, blasphemy, and all manner of wickedness. Its servants masquerading as ministers of righteousness are in reality agents of evil. So, though there are myriad reasons not to be a Roman Catholic, these four should keep you far from this path of destruction. Soli Deo Gloria.
