You know how once you’ve seen a pattern that you previously ignored it suddenly seems blatantly obvious?
I have had that experience many times over my 51 years on Earth and what generally lets me know the observation of the previously ignored pattern is correct is that it answers multiple questions with rather precise effect.
Questions I had not even asked.
Questions that in hindsight become obvious lacunae in our understanding of the world and which now the “new” pattern (that is newly discovered by you but always there for you to see if only you had looked) answers clearly, distinctly and rather obviously.
Once you unravel the truth about Catholicism and the Catholic Church, the position of Christianity in general with regard to the last two millennia of human history begins to make a lot more sense.
All sorts of disparate and supposedly unconnected things begin to take on a new character and once again, the hidden hand of the enemy becomes that much clearer.
If you have not yet read Believe! or RtCC, you might think I’m just your garden variety zealot pulling for his preferred pederast-infested denomination. That, of course, is what the enemy expects most people to assume of literally ANYONE that is telling the unvarnished truth about pretty much ANY topic, not just religion. Although he does have a special hatred for those who do see closest to the truth of Christianity, because such people are dangerous. They can shed light on things the enemy much prefers remain in shadow. People like me seem to be able to set fire to enemy encampments with ferocious efficiency. And that sheds light.
Allow me then, to present to you what is a very bird’s eye view of the history of Christianity. Now, before I begin, let us be clear that this is a big picture perspective and the multiple contradicting details of this or that individual or even group of individuals etc etc is utterly irrelevant in the detail itself. Such events may become relevant when and if they themselves form a pattern.
Let me give an example in order to have some clarity on the parameters and the scale I am referring to, so as to help you perceive a larger pattern than most are even lifting their eyes up to notice exists, much less observe or study. Remember this is just one example to help you see the bigger picture that is actually the whole point of this post.
Let us consider the Albigensians in the context of the history of the Catholic Church.
At first glance they might seem as perhaps a somewhat attractive or romantic ancient order of jedi with their asceticism and apprenticeship and rejection of wordly goods and affairs. Then… as you begin to examine their practices you discover it hinges on some rather nefarious concepts of Gnosticism. The idea of a demiurge and sexual practices designed to prevent reproduction as well as constant railing against the hierarchy of the Church. Of course, supporters will say that the evil and corrupt Catholic Church exterminated the poor and pious Cathars and made up a bunch of lies against them. And this is where you usually get lost in the forest for looking at the trees. Allow me to take a little detour to show you how easy it is to get lost before I return you to the broader pattern I’m interested in you seeing for the first time.
The Albigensians or Cathars were wiped out thanks to Pope Innocent III launching a crusade against them and subsequently the inquisition ferreting out the remains. But where they invariably evil degenerates practicing sodomy exclusively and corrupting people at the concept of Christianity at every turn? I doubt it. Were they then truly pious servants of God just going about their business while helping the poor, widows and visiting prisoners between bouts of reverent prayer and fasting? I doubt it. As usual there was probably a bit of both going on in some proportion or other. But in the main, we DO know they were extremely critical of the Catholic clergy and hierarchy. Of course, there are undoubtedly many examples of bad clergy throughout the history of the Catholic Church and these no doubt need and needed calling out, as they always do, but the actual hierarchy itself is not something to be disparaged, because, as I hope you will see, it has worked really spectacularly well given the extend of the corruption that lies in every human heart.
So, to that effect at least, they were indeed heretics. And their contribution to Catholicism and Christianity was in the main internal strife it would seem. Can we categorically assume they were really bad news, probably not, at least not without a lot more research than I have done in the matter (which I assume is basically about 100 times more than most people who read this ever will). On the other hand, their disappearance has not caused any real issues either and what I do know very well from my study of the real facts and figures of the inquisition is that it was one of the fairest judicial processes in human history and well ahead of anything comparable done in Protestant countries a few centuries later. I have provided some of this data in Reclaiming The Catholic Church.
On balance then, it is almost certain that the Cathars were not a net positive contribution and their existence was a probable heresy. There are, of course, many, many examples in the history of the Church of other attacks on it and major issues that threatened it such as the Arian heresy, during which some 97 to 99 out of 100 Bishops bought into the heretic view that Jesus was not co-eternal with God the Father along with some other iterations of non-trinitarianism.
But these heretic persecutions or deflections are not germane to the overall point of: What have the fruits of Catholicism been?
In that respect, without any real valid objection, it becomes impossible to avoid the fact that Catholicism is without a doubt the one philosophy and religion that is most responsible for the betterment of the human condition on Earth bar none.
Catholicism is essentially responsible for:
- The creation of the scientific method of analysis and discovery
- The muting of and eventual ending of slavery
- The treatment of women and children in a manner that, while maintaining their correct position in the hierarchy of the family as subject to the male head of household, nevertheless valued them as individuals and placed the need to look after widows and orphans as a Catholic duty
- Created multiple high trust societies
- Created multiple and numerous orders of lay people that tended to the sick and wounded or injured, in effect inventing the very concept of hospitals and sanatoriums
- Created multiple orders of lay people honour bound to protect those who could not protect themselves
- Defended Europe from the depredations, ravages and kidnapping of the Muslims
- Created innumerable works of beauty, art, architecture and cathedrals that could take a generation to complete for their majesty and detail, which ensured permanent places of worship for the faithful throughout the Earth
- Created a real brotherhood of man by ensuring the mass was done exactly the same and in the same language (Latin) no matter where it took place, the importance of this fact in creating a high trust society cannot be over-emphasised.
- Insisted in no contraception and that marriage was not subject to divorce. The importance of this in not resulting in the degenerate practices that ultimately culminate in mass abortions cannot be done justice to in writing.
If you are a Protestant, whatever argument your emotions are trying to scream at you to produce now, don’t. Stop. Think.
All of the above things happened CENTURIES before that fat, lustful, dumb-ass German, Martin Luther, and the retinue of autistic cretins that followed like Calvin and the others, were even a twinkling in their father’s eyes when looking at the bovine women that eventually birthed these bunch of degenerate and impious sexual deviants.
You literally have no argument. None.
No one else did these things.
No one else existed other than Catholics. And the “Orthodox” didn’t do jack other than hide in their ever-shrinking countries until once again the Catholics mounted various crusades to protect Christendom. And were betrayed by the orthodox every single time. And despite that the Catholics held the Outremer funded almost entirely from Catholic Europe for 200 years, and the Orthodox still refused to even man the walls of the cities and lands that the Catholics protected for two centuries when it became financially impossible to continue to remain there.
So, yeah, for all the supposed “resurgence” of Orthodoxy, especially in the USA, you’ll forgive me if as a Catholic I notice that this is only due to the fact that the Protestant factions are now disintegrating and morphing into the religious equivalent of “Caitlyn” Jenner at a speed that could be described as “demon-infested, conmen, running”. And “Orthodoxy” At least has some kind of a pedigree, isolationist schismatics and non-proliferators of Christianity though they are.
Did the last couple of paragraphs upset your fragile sensibilities my Porto-Orthodox schismatic friends?
Well, buckle up boys and girls, because if you can’t deal with the harsh realities of a few details, you sure as Hell are not going to be able to peel your eyes off the tarmac to look up and see the big picture. And the big picture is that without shadow of a doubt, Catholicism civilised humanity far more than any other event that took place in the entirety of human history. That’s an objective fact that anyone historically aware and literate simply cannot honestly deny.
And in the big picture scenario it counts for a lot. Which would seem to indicate that the Catholic Church indeed IS the one, true, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
But let us compare it to the achievements of the “Orthodox”. What did they do? They barely held on to their own lands and lost Constantinople, which used to be the seat of the Empire in the East. Did they spread the gospel far to the East? No. They did not. Which is why it was Catholic being crucified in Japan for trying to spread the gospel there, not the Orthodox. Did they spread it anywhere else? No. They pretty much limited themselves to what had originally been in any case Catholic Christianity before they split from the Church on the basis of what was ultimately a personal dispute and later rejected the offers of reconciliation by the Catholic Popes that followed.
What about the Protestants? Well, let’s see, in a bit picture scenario it is very hard to not see Protestantism as absolutely the Devil’s work, setting the early stage for the eventual destruction of the Royal houses in Europe followed by the final assault of the Catholic Church we have been seeing for the last 70 years or so in full force.
What has Protestantism achieved?
- Divorce, including no-fault divorce
- The secularisation of Christian humanity
- The normalisation of sexual relations before any hint of promise of marriage (a direct consequence of letting divorce happen in the first place)
- The normalisation of abortion, which is murder, under the guise of “family planning” if ever there was an inversion of terms, which is always Satanic, think on that one a bit.
- The introduction of literally anyone being a “pastor”
- The introduction of female “pastors”
- The introduction of lesbian, atheist, female “pastors” taking the cross down from their “Church” so it is not offensive to Muslims that might wander in by mistake (I am not making this up).
- The normalisation of homosexuality
- The normalisation of gay “marriage”
- The normalisation of sexual dismorphia resulting in the trans movement
- Increasingly the normalisation of pedophelia
- The normalisation of dyscivic practices such as feminism, single parent families, sexual deviancy of all sorts.
Now, you might say that most “pastors” of one of the 40,000 denominations of Protestantism don’t necessarily support say abortion, but you certainly cannot say every one of them is dogmatically bound to reject it. None of them are, because it is an absolute tenet of Protestantism that each man has the capacity and indeed should exercise it to interpret the Bible as he or she sees fit. Furthermore, if you bother to notice objectively, you will find that Protestant Churches are not really anything other than a business. One designed to provide profit to the ruling class that formed the corporation…err..I mean “Church” they exercise power over as “pastors”.
Most of the insanity we see around the world is produced and vomited out of one country, the united States of America. They have infected and poisoned most of the planet with their perverse and twisted ideologies, usually always in search of the worldly profit at the expense of human souls. The USA was founded by Freemasons on Freemasonic principles and they did it while bankrupting France to do it and calming the King and his admittedly odious wife Marie Antoniette. They literally lost their heads over it. So it is not any wonder to me that in the big picture scheme, though I am no fan of the Muslim ideologies, I can’t quite blame the name they have given the USA: The Great Satan. Indeed it seems fairly accurate.
Which is not to say that every individual Protestant and every individual American is a foul demon infested enemy. Most are just deceived and simple people. Many are genuinely good and generous, but as a nation (such as it may be for a brief time yet before it splinters into a collapsing giant) America is almost universally bad for humanity. And to a great extent, the fruits of America are largely the fruits of Protestantism.
It is of course a fact that the Catholic Church has been massively infiltrated over the last 200 years or more and as of 28th October 1958 only Freemasons and their puppets (Satanists) have usurped the Holy See and the throne of Peter, and what is worse, pretend to wear the name “Catholic” as though they were any kind of Christian, when in fact, by immutable Divine Law, faithfully written down in the Canon Law of the Church by the infallible Magisterium of the Church, (it is infallible because protected by Jesus Christ against error, not because any one human or Pope is in se infallible) such creatures are absolutely heretics and thus not Christian at all.
But there are two points to remember:
- First of all, the eventual downfall of even the Catholic Church is prophesied and has been for centuries. It is in essence the prelude to the final Revelation, so, while not a good omen, if nothing else, things are on track as we know they should be even if the world is actually going to Hell in a hand basket for the most part. And regardless of this point, we also have…
- The demise of the Catholic Church has been greatly exaggerated. For a series of very clear, simple, dogmatic, canonic and divine rules that are gone through in absolute detail in Reclaiming The Catholic Church, the fact we have not had a valid Pope and that most of the so-called “Bishops” and “priests” calling themselves such are not christian at all but Novus Orco abominations and impostors, does not in fact, mean we have no Church. We absolutely do. And it is composed of those lay people and clergy that are normally known as Sedevacantists (though I prefer the more technically correct term Sedeprivationists).
We are in truth the only actual Catholics left, and yes we are a tiny remnant compared to the heights of the glory of the Catholic Church sometime in the 1800s, but we are a very rapidly growing group and more and more “cradle Catholics” in a slumbering stupor and deceived from birth are beginning to become aware, to awaken, to familiarise themselves with Canon Law and actual Catholicism and with the information provided in very brief and simple format in Believe! and in exhaustive detail in RtCC and learning of what their true heritage, the one that was stolen from them by deceivers consists of.
My point then, if you are a Protestant, or an “Orthodox”, or a nominal “Catholic” with the absurd idea that Bergoglio or Ratzinger are in any way Catholic, never mind Popes, lift your eyes up from your petty pond of your personal bias and personal desires and look at the horizons of history, at the fact that the Holy Mass has been celebrated in the same fashion for almost two millennia in the Catholic Church and see the changes in the world and realise, that only a small remnant, we are told, will remain faithful. So choose wisely where you will cast your lot. Will it be with the non-prosletysing “Orthodox” who betrayed the Christians that came to rescue them from the depredations of the Mussulmans and made alliances with the Muslims instead? Or perhaps you will throw your lot in with one of the over 40,000 denominations of Protestantism, all rebelling against the one true Church that God instituted on Earth to be indivisible under God, denigrating it and lying spectacularly about it without even bothering to check if the lies they drank with their mother’s milk have any basis in fact, all the while, each one of them and indeed the individual members in each of those 40,000 branches living by one creed alone “Interpreth as thou will”.
Or will it be with the impostor Novus Orco Church filled with pederasts of the worst sort, let by a Molochian arch-enemy of Christ who pretends to impersonate a Pope while walking around carrying a Satanic staff gifted to him by two lesbians?
Or, as I hope, will it be with the remaining actual Catholics that hold to the true teachings of the Church, which have remained unchanged in their lively commanded portions for two millennia.
Join us is what I would counsel you. We are not exactly as dead as The Enemy and his minions would like us to be.
World Directory of Catholic Churches
USA Directory of Catholic Churches
I believe your strongest argument for the “Why Catholocism?” question continues to be the argument of, “By their fruits, you will know them.” This is an argument rooted in the Bible, observable reality, and history. Sure, as a Protestant, I still think you’re all somewhat silly pagans tricked by tradition into worshiping saints and Mary. But true Catholicism deserves respect for its historical achievements, among which is nothing less than creating the West as we know and love it. I hope the Sedeprivationists can restore the Church to its former glory, for we all benefit from strong actual-Christian organizations.
Did you miss the part where I stated you are raised on lies about Catholicism?
No Catholic “worships” Mary or the Saints.
You would have to understand the root of the word Prayer in Latin to grasp the concept that prayer is not necessarily worship and that the so-called worship of Mary and the saints is nothing more than asking them to pray for you. Same as you would ask of a living friend.
What you need to finally simply ACCEPT is that as a Protestant you literally have no legs to stand on at all. None. You created nothing, you continued nothing. All you did is take something others had built and then proceeded to splinter. it into 40,000 pieces. if that is not Satanic I don’t know what is.
I doubt Sedeprivationism will restore the Church proper, but it’s not a concern. If it is the end times I plan to be last man standing and swinging my two-handed at the heads of the enemy to my last breath and if it is not then eventually we will indeed rise again.In either case there is only one path. Forward.
I do understand that prayer is not necessarily worship. But here’s the deal. Catholics pray to Mary and the saints, create sacred iconography of them, sometimes wear jewelry of their likeness, created religious holidays around them, and hold celebrations of them. Obvious worship is obvious. And that’s OK. Just admit to it.
Is this the part where you call me a simpleton incapable of complex thought? Is this the part where you carefully explain the intricacies of how although you treat Mary and the saints nearly the same as God, that you don’t akshually worship them? I look forward to the creative insults in your retort.
Well, I’d say on this one you’re half-way between retarded, which is acceptable, being as your the obvious product of typical redneck incest; and a liar, which is never acceptable.
You contradict yourself in the very second sentence.
Apparently you also belong to some sect that doesn’t ever wear say a cross. Icons have been used since the beginning of Christianity and if you don’t understand why they are not idols I’d suggest you get a dictionary. But then you can’t really read so that wouldn’t help much I guess. And we hold holidays and celebrations of all sorts of people. Including heroic martyrs that have little to do with Catholicism per se. Your statement that Catholics “worship” Mary and/or the saints is a knowing lie and you further embiggen it by the absurd notion any Catholic would put anyone human as “nearly the same as God.”
As for your obvious ignorance of the history of Christianity, that is obviously your own fault.
Oh and don’t feel bad of being about the same to me as barely functional
Retards are to normies. It’s just how it is.
I agree to being less educated than you in matters of Christianity. So call that retarded. Perhaps I’m retarded on a level you previously thought impossible. That’s fine. What you have never known me to be in the past is a liar. And I won’t start that habit now. I believe the combination of prayer, iconography, bespoke jewelry, religious holidays and celebrations around any figure, in totality, amount to worship. I know you disagree with this. I would expect nothing less. Zealots are nothing if not certain.
It’s true that us Protestants are often guilty of two dimensional thinking. Catholics are sometimes guilty of running logical circles around simple notions. Obvious worship, to me, is obvious. I consider the worship of men, or women, to be treating them “nearly the same as God.” It is always possible that I am wrong about something here. I enjoy arguing with you because you make me think about my positions. Now I’ve given you more ammo, warrior Kurgan, so you may further eviscerate me if it pleases you.
Well, in that case your retardation is probably too severe to allow any meaningful discussion. Like teaching a dog to fly a jet fighter, it’s unlikely to produce anything good.
But let me try one last time.
Your “obvious worship” is absolutely nothing of the sort. Not even remotely.
In fact, your very process of classifying iconography, prayer (of intercession) and days in which to honour certain saints as treating such people as “nearly the same as God” really exposes your rotten and meaningless “faith”.
It is precisely because as a protestant you really can’t differentiate between the unmatchable and unsurpassable reverence and faith in Christ and supporting your local football team that you make such a monstrous error.
You have never partaken of the Eucharist after confession and a Latin mass. You know nothing of the sacraments and as such it’s all just dead theatre to you.
Let me try to give an analogy your atrophied Protestant brain may have an easier time grasping.
It’s the difference between talking about martial arts or seeing a film about it or reading a book about it and being in a dojo.
And in fact it’s even the difference between being in a dojo where the worst that happens is maybe one guy sprains something in all the classes that are given in a year and a dojo where every couple of years someone gets crippled or dies and there are dozens of broken bones every year.
Do you think the atmosphere is the same in those two dojos? No. It is not.
Do you think the experience is the same or comparable? It is not.
Do you think in the hard dojo when they do set work of practicing say a combination of punches and kicks, all co-ordinated, repeated time after time after time to exhaustion, that when one of the men with the personal power to lead imperceptibly the pace, that it does not inspire and carry the rest of the class? Because he does.
There has never been a real dojo I entered that you could not sense the difference as you stepped in it.
There has never been a real dojo where these experiences of men being pulled along on the energy and spirit of a more accomplished fighter is not experienced by all in it.
You are the guy who reads black belt magazine and watches YouTube videos and calls himself a martial artist.
No. You are not.
Get in a dojo. A real one. Observe. Take notes. Feel the difference note how the men in it act. Notice their humility and their power.
Go to a proper Mass.
You are completely mistaken and lost. Go see and note if you do not sense and feel and know a difference in those men who do the real thing you only play act at doing.
Thank you very much for the analogy, and the time you took constructing it and answering me. I can’t claim to have absolute knowledge of the subjects of which I speak, but only of what seems obvious given the knowledge and perspective I currently have.
Imagine you are an anthropologist. You are studying a foreign culture. You see them pray to someone, a human, they call a saint. They have religious iconography and even bespoke jewelry of this saint. They have created religious holidays and celebrations around this saint. Their culture is foreign, but the totality of their reverence for this saint seems to be equivalent to worship. That is my position – someone on the outside looking in at Catholicism.
So your advice to go to a proper mass and experience the atmosphere first hand is an argument that carries weight with my addled, Protestant mind. I know that only experience can explain many things in life. Only experience provides the necessary perspective. So I will take you up on said advice, given some relative convenience in doing so. After all, I’m in a somewhat rural, and very Protestant, part of the country.
If you have dialectic information about why I’m wrong in my perception, I’m open to it. I don’t expect or deserve such an explanation. But if you feel compelled, I’m interested. And this is for two reasons. First, as previously stated, I greatly appreciate and respect the fruits of the Catholic Church throughout history. Second, you are a no-bullshit guy who is well-versed on the subject. I may not ultimately agree with you, but I don’t fear the result of studying such information.
Well, that was a pleasant surprise.
I smiled at your description of Catholicism as being an unknown culture.
It is only unknown to you because it was stolen from you.
In fairness your retardation on the subject is not really your fault and you have shown to have a functioning mind after all, so I may have been wrong in my initial judgement.
I had not truly grasped the depth to which the enemy has thoroughly divorced you from your rightful inheritance.
Think about it. You’re like someone in 2010 after the nazis won the war in 1945, born in 1980, who believes that gypsies homosexuals and Jews are just fictitious characters used to scare children.
If you want to compare yourself to an archae/anthro pologist then do the work.
Dig. Read. Learn.
THINK.
Does it make ANY sense at all that Protestantism sprung out of nowhere and fixed everything? Or that even the nonsense Luther held as true is absolutely unrecognisable one 99% of Protestant denominations?
You really think going from one mass agreed to, revered to, understood IN CONTEXT by both illiterate peasants and royalty alike for centuries was just a misinterpretation of “a meal”?!?
For that matter, read the actual New Testament. Not the KJV rubbish either get a DR Bible and read the passage about “do this in memory of me” just read it as is.
Does it say “have a pot roast on Sundays and we call it good?!?”
No.
It does not.
It is very specific.
Learn WHY every movement, every action taken at Mass has a meaning and what that meaning is and how it tied to the gospels and was a non verbal way for the illiterate peasants to be able to know the whole story.
All lost now even to supposed Catholics and absolutely not even suspected by you historically deprived, nay, absconded from the very idea of history, poor Protestants like yourself.
This is what I meant with my previous analogy. You are like a caricature of a future ignoramus that thinks that waving your hands is equivalent to being a deadly practitioner of Dim-Mak.
Catholicism is a time travelling street fighter you’ve just inadvertently pissed off.
If you ever have such a meeting, I assure you that in a very short time you will be utterly shocked to discover that you know absolutely nothing. And that not only are you NOT a martial artist but that Dim-Mak itself is a wholly fictitious “martial art” that has never existed except in comic books.
Two supplemental points I’d like to offer:
(1) Most (all?) Protestants equate “praise *and worship*” with the practice of gathering together for a session of the warm-and-fuzzies generated by singing songs with heretical lyrics accompanied by guitar music (and, if you’re lucky enough, a drum kit). As such, their notion/definition of worship is incredibly flawed, and nowhere close to true (Catholic) worship—i.e., the sacrificial offering of Christ Himself on the Cross to God, as represented at every single (valid) Mass by the priest’s offering of bread and wine transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. As a consequence, the supposed warm-and-fuzzies Protestants perceive us Catholics experience when we properly honor Our Lord’s Blessed Mother and celebrate the lives of the Saints are readily perceived as acts of “worship.” Ironically, this weakened and deficient notion of worship to which Protestants have given themselves over reveals their heightened inclination towards idolatry. Not surprising, in light of the past five centuries.
(2) If Arkie Bear is correct in his assessment of things (which he’s not), then we Christians must all at once do away with birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, national holidays, and retirement dinners (to name only a few pagan rituals).
Precisely.
In fact, one might become… a Jehova’s witness…
It’s good to have someone else join the discussion. It may offer me new perspective. It seems Catholics and Protestants disagree over the definition of the word worship. Would anyone care to offer a Catholic definition of the word “worship?” I’m curious to see how it differs from the understanding of the word as I’ve read and been taught.
To Tom, your logic is flawed in your paragraph 2. None of those events are religious holidays, and none rise to the reverence shown toward the saints. Birthdays are very important, but they are neither reverential nor holidays. Marriage anniversaries are reverential, if the wedding was performed by properly ordained clergy before God. But they are not holidays. And secular holidays do not hold nearly the same importance as religious holidays. Retirement dinners are simply traditional secular celebrations.
Arkie Bear,
In that case, please disregard my second supplemental point (I’m not conceding anything, btw; it’s just peripheral to the main issue and not worth squabbling over).
The definition I offered is the highest form of the worship that can be given to God—that is, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—which Jesus Christ entrusted to His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church (and to Her alone).
As for the supposed “worship” of Mary and the Saints… Catholics can and do *indirectly* pay homage to God through the honor and veneration of His martyrs, angels, and saints (the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Queen of All Angels and Saints, being superiorly ranked among God’s creation). There is no danger of idolatry with this for the Christian because any such accompanying acts (both interior and exterior) are necessarily subordinate to and dependent upon the true and supreme worship owed to God alone.
That’s not to say Catholics don’t get carried away. Many are guilty of “popular piety,” which is a perversion of this and basically turns statues, relics, etc. into totems or good luck charms, forgetting the need to subordinate everything to God. Hollywood oftentimes portrays such acts of idolatry as authentic Catholic worship when, in reality, it’s just more misinformation and (((subversion))) flowing through the screen. That said, some of the anti-popes of the Vatican II sect have also publicly engaged in idol-worship and pagan rituals without the help of Hollywood (not anything depicting the saints, but actual pagan gods). Perhaps this forms some of the basis for your misunderstanding on our topic.
I would encourage you to read about the lives of the saints (note: only those canonized before 1958). Once you learn about the extraordinary sacrifices they made for Our Lord and for the Faith, you’ll feel nothing but gratitude toward God and them. You would have never heard the Holy name of Jesus without their charitable efforts and toils (made possible, of course, by God’s providence, grace, and inspiration). Moreover, you’ll want to emulate their qualities in your own life to “run the race”—and finish it—as they did. (See Hebrews 12:1-2.)
As for devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary… At the risk of understatement, our world is mired in filth, lies, and perversion to the point where true purity is either mocked and derided OR distorted to the point where we think it’s something we’re able to casually and superficially possess (the “Hate Has No Home Here” lawn signs is one, minor example). One thing I’ve come to appreciate more and more is the wretched state of my own soul and my inherently handicapped ability to approach Our Divine Lord on account of it. Our Blessed Mother, on the other hand, was immaculately conceived without the stain of original sin and was free from all sin. She goes to her Son—Our Lord—to intercede on our behalf. (See Chapter 2 of St. John’s Gospel; that’s what she wants to do for us now and always).
And as with the saints, I would encourage you to read about what has been written on Our Blessed Mother, especially by St. Louis de Montfort (1673-1716). Here are just a couple of choice quotes of his:
“As in the natural life a child must have a father and a mother, so in the supernatural life of grace a true child of the Church must have God for his Father and Mary for his mother. If he prides himself on having God for his Father but does not give to Mary the tender affection of a true child, he is an impostor and his father is the devil.”
“Let not that man presumes to look for mercy from God who offends His Holy Mother!”
Jesus’ “popular”/modern portrayal is that of an effeminate, emasculated pacifist who’s content with anyone who “just wants to be a good person.” We both know nothing could be further from the truth. His second coming will be terrible. (See Luke 23:26-32.) The only thing that’s keeping Him from striking us all down right this very instant is the gentle hand of His Blessed Mother, who—in doing so—is giving us just a little more time to get our shit together.
One thing that’s helped me get my shit together is praying the Rosary everyday (ideally with my entire family). I would encourage your to commit to doing the same (https://cmri.org/about-cmri/fatima-apostolate/how-to-pray-the-rosary/). Try it for 30 days and get back to me. As I’ve said to Protestants on SG before: you’re (supposedly) already once saved and always, so what would be the harm in doing this?
Remember: it is principally due to God that we have Our Blessed Mother, the angels, and the saints because He is the cause of all the good that is found in all creatures.
May God bless you.