Since Cornelius received the Holy Spirit before he was water baptized (Acts 10), Cornelius was already saved before he was water baptized. Therefore water baptism is not essential for salvation as Catholics believe. Also only God is to be prayed to. Mary is not to be prayed to.
Answer:
To address your issues, in reverse order: 1) Regarding prayer to Mary, you seem to have less than a full understanding of what Catholics mean when we say we "pray” to Mary. We use the word “pray” here in the same sense the English do - as a request or a petition. We do not pray to Mary as if she is somehow divine and can answer our prayers in and of her own power. We ask Mary to pray for us, to Her Son, to God. We ask her to bring our petitions before the throne of her Son.
That what I’ve written is truly the way Catholics believe, and not just something I’m making up to gloss over what many believe to be “Mary worship,” can clearly be seen in the “Hail Mary,” which is the prayer you probably had in mind when writing your objection. The Hail Mary begins, “Hail, Mary, full of grace…” (which is straight from Scripture, by the way) and then it ends with the line: “…pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” Clearly, in that prayer, we are asking Mary to “pray for us.” But, pray for us to whom?
If we believed Mary to be a god in her own right, then she doesn’t need to pray to anyone for us. She can answer our prayers by herself. Yet, we ask her to pray for us. This clearly indicates that we do not believe she is divine, as we are asking her to pray for us – to God. If we believed Mary to be God, or to be a god, we would not ask her to pray to God for us.
Now, before you say, "That isn't biblical," I will say that it is. Does not Paul say that we are to pray for one another? If I were to ask you to pray for me, would you do so? If you said, "Yes, I will pray for you," does that mean that I have just prayed to you by asking you to pray for me? Of course not. But, that's exactly what we do in regard to Mary, we ask her to pray for us, just like I would ask you to pray for me. Just as it is okay for us to ask members of the Body of Christ on earth to pray for us, it is okay for us to ask members of the Body of Christ in Heaven to pray for us.
2) Regarding Cornelius and the Holy Spirit. Cornelius did indeed receive the Holy Spirit before he was baptized. God can do whatever He wants. God is not bound by the Sacraments, we, however, are. The Bible says that Baptism saves us (1 Peter 3:20-21). It cannot be any clearer than that. The Bible also says that Baptism washes away sin (Acts 22:16) and that through Baptism one receives the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38) and that through Baptism one becomes a member of the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:13). Surely you do not deny that the Bible says all of these things, do you?
Cornelius was an exception that God made to show the Jewish Christians that the Gentiles were to be included in His plan of salvation. That's why He gave the Holy Spirit to Cornelius, to make this point to the Apostles. But, what was the first thing that Peter ordered be done when he saw that Cornelius and the others had received the Holy Spirit? He had them baptized. Why? Because that's the way God set up the process of salvation. One must be born of water and the Spirit in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, as it says, very clearly, in John, chapter 3, verses 3-5. In other words, the Bible tells us that one must be baptized in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
 | About John Martignoni John Martignoni is the Director of the Office of Evangelization for the Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama and also the President of the Bible Christian Society. John's column, Apologetics 101, appears regularly in the diocesan newspaper, the One Voice. If you have a question about the Catholic Faith, please send an email to: jmartignoni@bhmdiocese.org. And check out John's free audio and written apologetics materials at: www.biblechristiansociety.com. |
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