Open call to Catholics

You will be waiting a long time because there is no place in the bible that says to worship Mary, pray to saints or any of the other things that catholics do. However the catholic church is the oldest formal church in the world and also the largest and I would hazard to guess that the origins of such practice is from the pagan roots that can be seen in a lot of Christian churches and practices. Lets look at it for a minute, Jesus is the son of God and also is God (John 1:1) that makes Mary the mother of God, now the church wants pagans to stop worshiping their Gods and turn to the God of the bible so they gave them a Goddess, Mary. Most pagan religions have many deities, so the church gave them the saints. Now the church tells the pagans that unless they start praying to the "one true God" they will all burn in hell (a place that nobody wants to be) or worse be called out as a witch and murdered so pagans take a look at what they are being handed and find that there is a God, Goddess, and lesser deities and special days of worship coincide so why not move over to a faith of similar ways to save souls and lives. That is just my opinion of why the catholic church does the things they do. There was a time that the church told the people not to read the bible because they wouldn't understand it and the priest is trained to show them the way, so the people were at the mercy of men in power to give them the truth and teach them the right ways. As a matter of fact my recently passed grandmother remembers being told not to read the bible that she wouldn't understand it, but on the other hand my other grandmother has read the bible countless times in her life and she doesn't pray to saints and Mary. Take from this response what you will but it is the way of the church to hold the people at the mercy of their faith.