Ask me anything: Roman Catholic Edition

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ovibos wrote: Luke6_37 wrote: The Qur'an never directly refutes the doctrine of the Trinity. It appears to not even be aware of how it is dogmatically defined. The Qur'an refutes a belief in three divine beings: Father, Son and Mary. It also states that Jesus (despite his miraculous birth and sinless nature) was no more than a human prophet. Roman Catholics agree with the Qur'an that there is only one divine being, but there is no reason for us to accept it's claim that Jesus was merely a prophet. Everything that has been handed down directly to us from the first century by Scripture and Tradition supports the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection.  The Qur'an coming out of left field to make other claims is simply not convincing in the least. On the contrary, the Quran refutes the doctrine of Trinity (Q 5:72,73, 4:171) In my understanding, ilah (<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">ﺇﻟﻪ</span> ) in Islam, which usually translated as god, has very broad meaning. If you love someone or something more than you love God, then he/she/it will be your ilah/god. If you pray to or through someone (e.g. pray to/through Mary) other than God himself, then you have ilah/god besides God. If you say something like, "Because of this dog, the thief could not break into my house yesterday", then you commit idolatry (shirk) The Quran never states that Mary is part of Trinity.  The Quran simply states that (some) Christians worship Mary as god besides God. In Islam, if you think that Mary is the mother of God, then it will be considered as idolatry  If you pray to Mother Mary and ask salvation from her, then you worship her or having her as god besides God That also applies to prophet Muhammad. Whoever prays to Muhammad and or ask him for salvation or something like that, then he/she worships Muhammad besides Allah.

I cannot personally comment on what the Qur'an itself has to say about not worshiping "three" but every Christian scholar of Islam whose work I have read states unequivocally that the actual doctrine of the Trinity does not appear anywhere in the Qur'an.

So either the Qur'an is unaware of what the actual doctrine states, or it is warning against some other heretical understanding of Jesus, such as Docetism or Arianism.

When it comes to prayer itself, that is also an interesting concept to explore. Catholics make a distinction between prayer and worship. Prayer is just mentally communicating with someone who is spiritually, but not physically present. It can be a formal type of communication, like a get well card, or an informal type of communication, like a personal letter you write to a friend. Prayer can be a part of worship, but it is not worship itself. There are some standard prayers all Catholics learn, so that we can pray together as community, but just keeping up a steady stream of consciousness directed towards God is prayer too.

When Catholics mentally communicate with Mary & the Saints, we believe they can hear us, because they have been incorporated into the mystical body of Christ. They are literally plugged into God and so can hear our prayers by His power, not their own. Since they are not dead, but transformed, they can still act in our world or add their prayers & petitions to ours.