i would like to ask why people assume that catholics worship mary and the pope ?

It's just due to under-education and false-education. Some people either don't know enough or know too much from the wrong sources - sources that are entirely false and don't understand the truth about Catholicism. It's sad but true how one lie spreads from one misinformed person to another and another and another, and pretty soon a lot of the world is mis-informed.

Btw, to the people who think that we do worship Mary or the saints, we don't - we pray to her for guidance. There's a big difference.

Unfortunately, alot of Catholics have lost sight of the truth - to be a person of kindness, forgiveness and most of all love. Why this happened I can only assume to be due to events shaping the way those people thought and passed their thoughts onto their children.

@matt89 veteran of yahoo: "Hail" doesn't always mean "praise to" - it also means "greet enthusiastically".

I admit it's silly to suggest that Catholics worship the pope. But the behavior towards Mary certainly looks like worship.

Suppose you were watching a movie about a pagan Greek or Roman. This person approaches a statue, burns incense before it, lights a candle, kneels, recites a prayer that hails the being represented by the statue and invokes its favor and blessing, leaves a gift ... wouldn't you interpret that behavior as worship? Yes, you would, because you start out assuming that the pagan Greek or Roman worships idols. This is how the behavior of Catholics towards Mary looks to those who don't know.

Saying that Fatima is a hoax and calling Mary 'the great whore' is unreasonably extreme. It's possible Fatima is a mass delusion but there's little reason to believe it a hoax.

In all honesty I think it's more than just ignorance. It's wilful bigotry and completely uneducated disrespect of the overall history of the Xian Faith in Europe.

I'm non-Catholic and I recognise the only reason that the Xian faith has been in Europe for so many Centuries is the 500+ years effort of the Catholic Church before the Reformation. The majority of the anti_catholic rhetoric originated when the Presbyterian Sects started splintering.

So everyone attending an Europe based Xian Church are bad mouthing the great grandparent of their personal Xian Sect. & the Thumbs Downers go wild cause I dare to refer to the history books.

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Many of the catholic church doctrines about mary are not based on the inspired Scriptures. They are man made doctrines. The 2nd commandment is about Idol worship. If you look at the list of the Ten commandments from the catholic church the 2nd commandment has been deleted and the 10th commandment is split in two parts. How deceptive is that?

Matthew 15 And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

“.‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;

9 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”

Simple. Ignorance, horribly disjointed logic, or hate. Those are the only reasons. (case in point - half the answers you got display this quite well)

Also - fyi, there are 1 billion Catholics, not 6 million and appealing to superior numbers is actually a logical fallacy.

Go to this site and read the book.

http://philologos.org/__eb-ttb/

It's well researched and written by a credible author.

Six million people CAN be wrong...but only because they were never given all the information needed to come to a solid conclusion regarding the religious practices instituted in the church.

It is not the fault of the catholic people that these practices go on in the church of God, but the governing members of the church that know about these religious practices and do nothing to correct it.

These practices were added onto the worship of Christ out of good intentions, trying to stamp out paganism and found it easier just to add on some of the pagan practices to make christianity inviting to the pagans, and conversion would be easier. But what they did was turn the words of Christ to the Pharisees onto themselves, "you make void the word of God by your traditions".

Check it out and then decide for yourself.

I don't make those assumptions. Last time I checked,you are free to believe whatever you want to believe.

I know what the Catholic Church believe,because I have looked at it and knew some Catholics and ......I never assumed that so. Count me out.

Some people on yahoo will barge in and talk smack about Catholics having a "Faith/works" ideology. I try not to judge.

Catholics literally pray to carved [ graven ] images of Mary...The Bible says not to...

(Exodus 20:4-5) “You must not make for yourself a carved image or a form like anything that is in the heavens above or that is on the earth underneath or that is in the waters under the earth. 5 You must not bow down to them nor be induced to serve them, because I Jehovah your God am a God exacting exclusive devotion, bringing punishment for the error of fathers upon sons, upon the third generation and upon the fourth generation, in the case of those who hate me;

Carved image....like anything...not bow down...

Even the excuse that Mary is a REPRESENTATIVE, does not 'jell'

(John 14:6) Jesus said to him: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Now when Catholics can show me scriptures that support their practices, then i may just take note.

As to the Pope...He may not have statues, but his predecessors have many paintings on the wall of the Vatican...and then there is the practice of kissing the ring...Not even Jesus accepted this...

And the practice of the Pope washing feet...this is the height of hypocracy after having a ring on the hand kissed...

You did ask...

My parents were catholic and they worshiped Mary. They had a huge statue of Mary in their house. People say things like that because they have witnessed what many catholics in their lives have done. Most people who ridicule the catholic religion have been catholics themselves but clearly not by choice as most catholics are forced to be one by their parents.

And I have to say that Catholics are the worse relgion on earth.

Well when you say that famous rosary 'Hail Mary..." that is a prayer. "Hail Mary" is a title meaning praise to Mary. Mary is not a goddess and has nothing to do with salvation. The only way to get salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ. Your sins are already paid for by his sacrifice on the cross.

The Pope and the whole system of church government is a totally foolish system and is merely a control thing. Jesus would never have liked to have seen this.

Catholics were not the church Jesus founded. The real church had to hide from Rome from AD 64 until Martin Luther came out with the truth in the 1500's on the fears that the Pope would murder them.