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<\/a><\/p>\nLucas Banzoli<\/a> is a very active Brazilian anti-Catholic polemicist, who holds to basically a Seventh-Day Adventist theology, whereby there is no such thing as a soul that consciously exists outside of a body, and no hell (soul sleep and annihilationism). This leads him to a Christology which is deficient and heterodox in terms of Christ\u2019s human nature after His death.\u00a0He has a Master\u2019s degree in theology, a degree and postgraduate work in history, a license in letters, and is a history teacher, author of 25 books, as well as blogmaster (but now inactive) for six blogs. He\u2019s active on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is my 30th refutation<\/a>\u00a0of articles written by Lucas Banzoli. As of yet, I haven\u2019t received\u00a0a single word<\/em>\u00a0in reply to any of them (or if Banzoli\u00a0has<\/em>\u00a0replied to anything, anywhere, he certainly hasn\u2019t informed\u00a0me<\/em>\u00a0of it). Readers may decide for themselves\u00a0why<\/em>\u00a0that is the case. I use RSV for the Bible passages unless otherwise indicated. Google Translate is utilized to render Lucas\u2019 Portugese into English. His words will be in\u00a0blue<\/span>.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n I\u2019m replying to Lucas\u2019 article, \u201cVamos rezar aos santos, porque Deus \u00e9 ocupado demais. Ou: at\u00e9 onde algu\u00e9m vai para justificar sua idolatria\u201d<\/a> [Let\u2019s pray to the saints, because God is too busy. Or: How far will someone go to justify their idolatry?<\/span><\/em>] (5-20-15).<\/p>\n That the Roman Church is idolatrous and pagan, everyone already knows.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know that at all. I\u2019ve been in the Church for 32 years and am one of her professional apologists. I know that there are so many (who knows how<\/em> many) individual<\/em> Catholics or \u201cCatholics\u201d (including many in Brazil: so I have been told, as in the United States and everywhere else) who are abysmally ignorant<\/em> of what their own Church teaches and what they are required to believe as an observant, obedient Catholic.<\/p>\n This is always, of course, the case in all<\/em> religious groups, as a function of human nature and the variability to be found in large groups of any sort (I was a sociology major). Don\u2019t even get me started on the ignorance and heterodoxy (by internal Protestant standards) that one can find in Protestantism. One of my earliest apologetics projects in 1982 (as an evangelical \u2014 and charismatic \u2014 Protestant myself) was a refutation of the \u201cname-it-claim-it \/ God always heals by command\u201d<\/a> idiotic mentality. Anyone who claims that that nonsense represents historic Protestantism is an ignoramus.<\/p>\n But the existence of such people who are \u201cidolatrous and pagan\u201d <\/span><\/span>in their own practice and belief has no bearing whatsoever on official Catholic teaching<\/em>. I keep saying this until I am blue in the face, yet sophists and slanderers like Lucas never get<\/em> it (or they do<\/em> and they simply don\u2019t care<\/em>). One of the oldest tricks in the book of sophistry parading as genuine apologetics, is what Lucas again does here: set up straw men and pretend that the distortion or misunderstanding of Catholicism is<\/em> Catholicism (\u201cdistortion of a<\/em> = a<\/em>\u201c), and then triumphantly blast and dismiss this imagined enemy, or what is called in common usage: \u201cthrow the baby out with the bath water.\u201d<\/p>\n But it\u2019s getting so brazen lately that it\u2019s even lost its fun.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n I know the feeling well. This is my 30th exhaustive reply to Lucas\u2019 writings, and \u2014 believe me \u2014 my patience is hanging by a thread<\/em> at this point. I ask for my readers\u2019 prayers to help me endure the fathomless imbecilities and inanities entailed in any of Lucas\u2019 anti-Catholic monstrosities. This asinine garbage is not worthy of any response in and of itself. But people are being led astray by these lies, so it falls to someone like myself to do all I can to prevent the tragedy of people being led down a wrong path by believing in lies.<\/p>\n It\u2019s my duty<\/em>, and a function of charity for souls. If I weren\u2019t an apologist, I wouldn\u2019t give this worthless, witless horse manure a moment\u2019s notice, because my time is very valuable, and I want to use it wisely. But helping people not to leave Catholicism (or Christianity altogether in some cases) is a very<\/em> worthy goal. So I press on.<\/p>\n To justify the existence of sculptured images that supposedly serve as intermediaries between us and God<\/span><\/p>\n See:\u00a0Statues in Relation to Bowing, Prayer, & Worship in Scripture<\/a>\u00a0[12-26-17]<\/p>\n \u2013 instead of asking God directly \u2013 <\/span><\/p>\n I just completed a massive refutation<\/a> of Lucas\u2019 false and quite unbiblical notion that we must always go \u201cstraight to God\u201d yesterday.<\/p>\n they have now reached the incredible and sensational conclusion that God is equal to the President of the Republic: he is \u201ctoo busy\u201d<\/span><\/span> , and that\u2019s why we\u2019d better talk to those who can take the messages to him\u2026 Tell the truth: are you not angry with these evil Protestants, who \u201cknow nothing about the Catholic Church\u201d and have the audacity to bother God with their prayers directly to him? These rebellious sons of Luther are so cheeky they don\u2019t even wait in line to get their ticket until the super busy Catholic God with no time to take care of everyone else\u2019s problems can finally decide to listen to what you have to say to him. So it\u2019s better to ask the \u201csaints\u201d, because that way the message gets to God faster!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve never heard any minimally catechized and informed Catholic talk like this. It\u2019s a ridiculous and absurd proposition, that God is too \u201cbusy\u201d for anything<\/em>. Catholicism never taught this at any time. God is outside of time<\/em>, (which is Catholic dogma: while many Protestants, incidentally, are presently vigorously denying it: it\u2019s called open theism<\/a> or process theology<\/a>); therefore, He can never<\/em> be \u201ctoo busy\u201d.<\/p>\n C. S. Lewis, the great Anglican apologist (and my favorite writer these past 45 years), wrote the following about God in his masterpiece, Mere Christianity<\/em>:<\/p>\n His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty \u2014 and every other moment from the beginning of the world \u2014 is always Present for Him. If you like to put it this way, He has all eternity in which to listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Granted, Catholics can be found who say absurd things about this issue of God and time. But why should anyone care about that<\/em>? If indeed it\u2019s Catholic teaching, it will be present in our official doctrines and dogmas.\u00a0Yet Lucas never troubles himself (what a surprise!) to prove that<\/em>. He knows it\u2019s much easier and more melodramatic to find an example of a lousy, ignorant Catholic and then pretend that this is the sum total of Catholic teaching on the topic.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t fall<\/em> for it, folks! Don\u2019t let this sophist insult your intelligence with such unworthy, dishonest tactics. If Lucas wants to bash a \u201cGod in time\u201d Who is too \u201cbusy\u201d to occupy Himself with human problems, that\u2019s actually<\/em> found in various Protestant<\/em> strains of thought that have denied the classic Catholic (and mainstream Protestant) theology of God, or what\u2019s called \u201ctheology proper.\u201d<\/p>\n The conclusion is that God is not \u201ctoo busy\u201d to answer our prayers that pass through the saints and then reach him, but he is \u201ctoo busy\u201d to answer prayers that are offered directly to him.<\/span><\/span> Let everything we\u2019ve learned about God\u2019s omniscience and eternity go to the dustbin \u2013 it\u2019s a real free-for-all to save Catholic idolatry!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n This is the \u201cconclusion\u201d<\/span> of fools who neither know nor understand Catholic theology; therefore, ought not to pretend to represent<\/em> it.<\/p>\n If you think that it is only the \u201cCatholics\u201d who enter this wave of madness and insanity, follow this post by Prof.<\/span><\/span> Felipe Aquino, one of the master idols of the Catholics:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [Lucas shows a photo of Mary, with the text: \u201cDoce cora\u00e7\u00e3o de Maria, sede nossa salva\u00e7\u00e3o\u201d (\u201cSweetest heart of Mary, seat of our salvation\u201d]<\/p>\n Yes, believe me: it is Mary, not Jesus, the \u201cseat of our salvation\u201d.<\/span><\/span> And then they still want to have the nerve to say that they are monotheists and not idolatrous!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Like all Catholic Marian devotions and pious language, this is understood as a secondary and non-essential participation in the distribution of the salvation that comes solely through Christ and His work on the cross on the behalf of mankind. Scripture (especially, Paul) often refers to such human participation in the work of salvation:<\/p>\n Romans 11:13-14\u00a0<\/b>. . . I magnify my ministry [14] in order to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.<\/p>\n 1 Corinthians 1:21<\/strong> . . . it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.<\/p>\n 1 Corinthians 3:5<\/strong>\u00a0What then is Apol\u2019los? What is Paul?\u00a0Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.<\/p>\n 1 Corinthians 9:22<\/b>\u00a0I have become all things to all men, that\u00a0I might by all means save some.<\/p>\n 1 Timothy 4:16<\/b> . . . by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.<\/p>\n James 5:20 <\/strong>. . . whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Thus, when Catholics associate Mary with salvation, it is understood in the same sense that Paul and James speak of the same thing. God simply utilizes Mary in His plans to a greater extent, because it was His will. He chose her to bear God incarnate, and He gave her the appropriate grace so that she would be be a fit person to do so.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve written about the devotion to the immaculate heart of Mary<\/a> too. We are honoring her sinlessness and holiness in the devotion to her immaculate heart, rather than worshiping her. St. Paul refers to his own \u201cheart\u201d in similar fashion: \u201cBrethren, my heart\u2018s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved\u201d (Rom 10:1; cf. 9:2-3; 2 Cor 2:4; 6:11; 7:3). Therefore, one could speak of Paul, based on explicit biblical data, in much the same way as Mary, referring to his \u201csaving\u201d of others, and of returning to his \u201cheart\u201d \u2014 that is, to conform to his will, just as he urged his followers to imitate him (1 Cor 4:16; Phil 3:17; 2 Thess 3:7-9), as he imitated Christ (1 Cor 11:1; 1 Thess 1:6).<\/p>\n The detail is that this publication was made by one of the main leaders of Can\u00e7\u00e3o Nova and one of the most \u201crespected\u201d in this medium, and had no less than 21 thousand likes and almost seven thousand shares, which shows that in the mentality of the common Catholic there is no problem in this sentence, because they are already so used to idolatry that they can no longer understand the magnitude of the nonsense that represents such a thing.<\/span><\/p>\n There is<\/em> no inherent problem, not because these Catholics are idolaters, but because they understand the Christological and biblical \/ Hebraic context in which such language is always intended to be used. It\u2019s Lucas and the minority of vehement, bigoted anti-Catholic Protestants who think as he does, that make no attempt to understand Catholic Mariology. They can\u2019t comprehend even honor and veneration, because they are erroneously taught that only God can be given any kind of honor at all<\/strong><\/em>. That\u2019s very far from biblical truth: a Bible which informs us that God even shares His glory<\/em><\/a> with us.<\/p>\n They have a compressed, skeletal, stunted, minimalistic Christianity that has lost comprehension of a great deal of the depth and breadth of historic Christianity. And so all they can see is idolatry. If we honor a saint (which is explicitly referred to in the Bible<\/a>), it must<\/em> be idolatry: so they wrongly think: because they aren\u2019t thinking biblically<\/em>. Yet this is a Bible that teaches us that we are temples of God; that all three Persons of the Holy Trinity indwell us; that we can and should \u201cbecome partakers of the divine nature\u201d (2 Peter 1:4) and indeed, that we can \u201cbe filled with all the fulness of God\u201d (Eph 3:19), and Jesus gives us His literal Body and Blood in Holy Communion. Scott Hahn once observed, after a Protestant asked him if he had received Jesus into his heart: \u201cnot only that: I receive His Body and Blood into my belly at every Mass!\u201d<\/p>\n How much closer can God possibly get<\/em> to us? All of that is obvious in the Bible, yet Lucas and those who think as he does are unable to comprehend or conceptualize that venerating and honoring Mary, and God using her to help spread His grace and salvation, takes place precisely according to God\u2019s will, and is not<\/strong><\/em> \u201cidolatry.\u201d<\/p>\n It was years and years of brainwashing that gradually made the individual\u2019s mind more and more susceptible and receptive to idolatry and decentralization of Christ, in such a way that not even a shred of common sense or genuine Christianity was left in this environment. He comes to accept idolatrous phrases without even thinking about them. It is a slow process of mastering the mind to make it more and more open to paganism and closed to Christ. Idolatry is preached explicitly and they no longer care. And the worst thing is to see that there are Catholics so deceived that they defend this type of declaration in debates!<\/span><\/p>\n Now we need to take a step back and ponder the biblical definition of idolatry. Lucas clearly doesn\u2019t comprehend that<\/em>, either. So I will take this opportunity to help him get up to speed. I already wrote about<\/a> it three years ago. I wrote in that article:<\/p>\n It is of the essence of idolatry to be from one\u2019s heart and soul and will. If one is replacing God with something else, that is an interior decision. It\u00a0has<\/span><\/em>to be; otherwise, the whole thing would be reduced to robotic actions of an agent with no free will. This sort of thing is presupposed also in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus shows how all sins begin in our hearts: hatred is the seed of murder, lust the kernel of adultery, et cetera. All sin is like that (at least the sin for which we are responsible). As for its being a matter of the heart and soul: the Bible establishes that, I think:<\/p>\n Isaiah 66:3<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0like him who blesses an idol. These have chosen their own ways, and\u00a0their soul<\/span><\/em>delights in their abominations.<\/p>\n Ezekiel 14:4-5<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0Therefore speak to them, and say to them, Thus says the Lord\u00a0GOD<\/span>: Any man of the house of Israel who\u00a0takes his idols\u00a0into his heart<\/span><\/em>and sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I the\u00a0LORD<\/span>\u00a0will answer him myself because of the multitude of his idols, that\u00a0I may\u00a0lay hold of the hearts\u00a0<\/em><\/span>of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from me through their idols.<\/p>\n Ezekiel 20:16<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0because they rejected my ordinances and did not walk in my statutes, and profaned my sabbaths; for\u00a0their heart<\/span><\/em>\u00a0went after their idols. (cf. Ezek. 36:25; Sir. 46:11)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Another biblical motif is God\u2019s disgust over men \u201cserving\u201d idols (which is from the heart and the will: 2 Kings 17:12; 2 Kings 21:21; 2 Chron. 24:18; Ps. 106:36; Ezek. 20:39; 1 Thess. 1:9). St. Paul locates idolatry firmly in the interior disposition:<\/p>\n Romans 1:21, 24-25<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0[F]or although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless\u00a0minds<\/span><\/em>were darkened. . . . Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their\u00a0hearts\u00a0<\/span><\/em>to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the\u00a0creature<\/span><\/em> rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. . . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Idolatry is an internal disposition \u2014 the conscious worshiping of something other than God and replacing God with a creature or inanimate object.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Catholics (i.e., the ones who actually understand<\/em> Catholicism, and not a caricature or simplistic version of it) simply aren\u2019t doing that. Mary is not seen as a replacement<\/em> of God (i.e., an idol, by definition), but rather, as someone who helps<\/em> God (to an extraordinary degree) as a servant, to help implement His desire that none perish, just as St. Paul and many others did, and just as God, many times \u2014 so He reveals in His inspired written Word \u2014 , regarded us as His \u201cco-workers\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n But of all the papist aberrations that are thoughtlessly believed, nothing, nothing, NOTHING compares to this: Yes, for them, God came into being because of Mary [Deus passou a existir por causa de Maria<\/em>].<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n Of course, this is referring only to the incarnation<\/em>: the incarnate God could come to earth because Mary cooperated with God to make that happen. The historic term is Theotokos<\/em>, usually translated as \u201cMother of God\u201d but literally meaning \u201cGod-bearer\u201d: clearly referring to the virgin birth of Jesus, Who is God. Lucas, however, is ignorant and clueless enough to actually ludicrously believe that Catholics are saying that Mary gave birth to God the Father!<\/p>\n This sort of stupifying, profound imbecility is what we Catholics have to deal with when we come across anti-Catholics like Lucas. They sit there scolding us like snot-nosed children, as if we don\u2019t understand the very basics of Christianity, yet they<\/em> believe something this<\/em> outlandish, absurd, and false. They show themselves far<\/em> more stupid and uneducated than they imagine us<\/em> to be. I already thoroughly refuted Lucas\u2019 banalities on this topic: \u201cMother of God\u201d: Refuting Lucas Banzoli\u2019s Absurdities<\/a> [6-3-22].<\/p>\n And believe me: their minds are already so enslaved to Rome that if a Papist is reading this text he will now have the courage to say that he sees no problem with a statement of this nature.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n No we don\u2019t, and that\u2019s because we properly understand<\/em><\/strong> it. Lucas doesn\u2019t<\/em>. He\u2019s the ignorant and clueless one here.<\/p>\n\n
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