3 top objections to Catholicism

Cameron Bertuzzi interviewed a Catholic apologist Matt Fradd:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmX190JG8-8

Cameron asked him how Mary could process so many prayers. His response:

Just because we don't know the mechanism by which something works doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't work, so I don't have any clue at all of how a YouTube livestream...But I guess I'd say God makes the prayers known to the saints. 

1. If we have evidence that something is the case, then we don't have to know how it works to know it's real. If something is actual, then it must be possible. If, however, the truth of the claim is the very point in dispute, you can hardly appeal to the claim as if that's a given to deflect the objection. 

It's not as if the intercession of Mary is a revealed truth. Divine revelation never says that Mary intercedes for supplicants. That's based on sheer ecclesiastical fiat.

2. In addition, the problem isn't merely due to lack of evidence but prima facie counterevidence. If we don't know that something is a fact, and we have reason to believe it can't be true, then that cuts against the credibility and rationality of the claim. It must overcome a presumption to the contrary.

Sure, God can reveal things to the saints. Reveal things beyond their natural sources of knowledge. But there are limitations on what even an omnipotent God can do with a finite medium. God can often bypass a finite medium to produce an effect directly, but if God is working through or by means of the natural medium, then that imposes a build-in limit on what he can do because creatures have built-in limitations. There are things God cannot enable a creature to do, due to the essential finitude of what it means to be a creature. 

3. Fradd says you won't find church fathers criticizing prayer to the saints. But fallacious appeal to authority. Although there's nothing inherently fallacious about the argument from authority–sometimes that's valid, sometimes invalid–there's no reason to think church fathers are privy to what Mary's heavenly activities. 

4. Fradd said that according to Calvinism, there is nothing on your part that you do. But that's a half-truth It's true with respect to things like election and regeneration. Beyond that, there are things that Christians must do to be saved. But in Calvinism, they make no independent contribution to their salvation.

Marian prooftexts

Over the years I've commented on Marian prooftexts, but it's helfpu to collect and analyze the stock examples in one place. Some of this repeats what I've said elsewhere while some of this is new. 

Joseph's fiat

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

973 By pronouncing her "fiat" at the Annunciation and giving her consent to the Incarnation, Mary was already collaborating with the whole work her Son was to accomplish. She is mother wherever he is Savior and head of the Mystical Body.

The "fiat" alludes to the Vulgate rendering of Lk 1:38:

fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum

“let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). 

Catholic theologians act like this means God was putting the plan of redemption up for a vote by giving Mary a veto. Of course, the Annunciation is an announcement of what God will bring to pass. 

I've read Catholic apologists claim that if the virgin birth was nonconsensual, then it was rape. That overlooks the elementary fact that rape requires sex: penetration of sexual intercourse. But of course, the virginal conception is nonsexual. Sexless rape?  

Be that was it may, let's play along with the Catholic argument for its own sake by drawing a comparison. In Mt 2, Joseph receives some revelatory dreams. These are premonitions of danger. The dreams implicitly raise the specter of alternate futures. If Joseph stays, his young son will be murdered by Herod's henchmen. But he can avert that hypothetical outcome if he gets out of Dodge in time. If things continue as is, along their current trajectory, Jesus will die a premature death. 

iii) This raises a question for Christian libertarians. Was failure to heed the angelic warning a live option for Joseph? Pause to consider what that would entail. We're not just talking about the fate of a lone individual. The fate of the whole human race would hang in the balance. The Incarnation would be in vain. Centuries of providential preparation would go up in smoke. God would have to start from scratch. So by parity of argument, why does Catholicism single out Mary's "fiat" but ignore Joseph's "fiat"? 

For that matter, the logic of the Catholic argument extends to so many other players in the history of redemption. Take the call of Abraham. 

Artemis, Diana (4Th Century Pagan Goddesses), Pachamama, and Mary

Everett Ferguson writes,

In the Latin west and in the Greek east the church won only by detouring the traditional piety [pagan] to other objects. The martyrs and the saints received the homage once given to the heroes and nature and household spirits. The similarity between the cult of heroes and spirits in ancient Greece and Rome and the cult of the saints in medieval Christendom (Roman and Greek) has often been observed.

…. When Christianity replaced paganism, the saints took over the functions of the specialized local deities. The situation may be described as “the old firm doing the same business at the same place under a new name and a new management”. This perhaps says too much. It was not the ancient religion itself that survived but the mentality that was part of it. (Ferguson, “Backgrounds of Early Christianity”, pg 182.)

Every emperor, every municipality, every household, in fact, had its own “gods”, its own statues. The people of the ancient Roman empire didn’t wish each other “good luck”. They wished each other, instead, the good will of the “gods”.

The conservative and traditionalist Roman Catholics who are all up in arms about the Pachamama statue ought to keep this mind, and they ought to stand back and watch as the current hierarchy of the Roman Church invokes a process of “development” that will bring the Pachamama into its pantheon of “saints” in just the same way that such “development” brought the Greek goddess Artemis (Roman Diana) into that same pantheon as “the Virgin Mary” in the fourth century.

Abductions and apparitions

There's an interesting comparison between Marian apparitions and alien abductions:

i) Many people claim to have experienced alien abductions

ii) Many people claim to have experienced Marian apparitions.

iii) In many cases, I don't think they experienced anything at all. 

iv) In other cases, I think they probably did experience something which they misidentify. 

In some cases I think they probably experienced something supernatural, which they misidentify. 

v) We evaluate reported alien abductions and Marian apparitions in light of our plausibility structures. What we think the world is like. What we take to be possible, impossible, probable, or improbable. Take the stock objection that it seems impossible for aliens to traverse the vast distances between their home planet and our planet. 

There's also the question of why, if aliens are making first contact, it's so elusive and ambiguous. If they want human beings to be aware of their existence, they could do so unambiguously. If, on the other hand, they wish to conceal their existence, why are they making contact with so many human witnesses? It's too little to be convincing but too much to be undetected. 

vi) I don't think there's any antecedent objection to the existence of intelligent alien life on other planets. However, making contact with the human race would be theologically confusing, disruptive, and subversive. It would become a compelling rival religion. I don't think God would allow that if they're benevolent aliens.

The alternative is that they're malevolent aliens. If so, their intrusion into human history would amount to a false religion to delude hundreds of millions of humans, apart from a faithful remnant. The only reason God would allow that is if this is a prelude to the Antichrist. 

And, from a Protestant perspective, Marian apparitions have the same effect. So Mary wouldn't do that. Only a malevolent agent would do that. That, too, could be part of an apocalyptic countdown. 

Mind you, reported alien abductions and Marian apparitions are not as of yet on a large enough scale to sway the human race away from Christianity. So there's no reason at this point to invoke an apocalyptic explanation.  

There’s an “Our Lady” of Just About Anything. Why Not “Our Lady of the Amazon”, Pachamama?

Pachamama, Our Lady of the Amazon

Traditionalist and conservative Roman Catholics (see here and here, for example) are going apoplectic over the notion that Pope Bergoglio brought Pachamama statues into the Vatican. “It’s a pagan idol” they say.

That should be beside the point. There’s a legal pope endorsing it, there’s a group of Italian bishops who wrote a prayer to Pachamama. Call it #developmentofdoctrine.

There’s an “Our Lady” of just about anything you can think of. “Our Lady of the Amazon” (Pachamama) certainly can fit into this calendar.

What follows below is from the “Marian calendar” published by a website called “Roman Catholic Saints & Heroes!” – Interesting that “Heroes” is added.

The site is owned by a layman, James Fitzhenry, “Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary”, who prays “that the example of their lives may inspire all Catholic children to imitate their virtues, and serve as well to remind men of our age of the great things that can be accomplished through dedication to purpose and the grace of God.”

There’s just about one for every day of the year:

The historical Mary

On Facebook a couple of Catholic women took umbrage at my "Ave Pachamama" post. Here's an edited version of the exchange:

Hays 

No evangelical denies that Mary was blessed to be the mother of the messiah. That's a red herring.

Beatrice

I am sure Jesus approves of you mocking his mother. All of you biblical scholars should also be aware of the status given to mothers in OT/Jewish tradition.

Hays

If Catholic Mariology was limited to the status of mothers in OT tradition, there wouldn't be an issue. I'm satirizing the typology of Catholic apologists like Scott Hahn and Brant Pitre. 

Beatrice

I have seen her myself, so I take your mockery extremely personally. Open your heart and pray..be not afraid.

Hays

i) Okay, we need to lay down some ground rules. There are Catholics, especially lay Catholics, who live in their religious bubble and become reflexively offended when Protestants criticize their faith. Guess what–it's a two-way street. Catholic theologians and Catholic apologists routinely criticize the Protestant faith. Just recently I was reading Cardinal Müller (former Prefect for the CDF) attack the Protestant faith. I didn't get bent out of shape over that. If Catholicism is true, then it should be able to bear up under rational scrutiny rather than retreating into hurt feelings.

ii) You indicate that you witnessed a Marian apparition. Whatever. I didn't see what you said you saw, so your experience has no evidential value for me. 

iii) I honor the historical Mary–the NT Mary. I don't honor Catholic Mariology. That's just a sectarian theological construct. 

iv) Imagine a Mormon saying to me, "I'm sure Jesus approves of you mocking him. I take it extremely personally when you mock my Jesus!"

Well, I'm not mocking the historical Jesus. I'm not mocking the NT Jesus. I'm mocking the Mormon Jesus, who's a completely different kind of being, with a completely different backstory, than the historical/NT Jesus.

v) I would no more open my heart and pray to Mary than I'd open my heart and pray to Krishna. 

Gabriella

And Paul seeing Christ on the road to Damascus has no evidential value for you either?

Hays

That's a good question:

i) Muhammed said the angel Gabriel appeared to him. Swedenborg said he had tons of visions. Joseph Smith said the angle Moroni appeared to him. Oral Roberts said he had a vision of a 900-foot Jesus. Do all those purported visions have evidential value or credibility as the Damascus Road experience? 

ii) There are different ways to assess such claims. If it comes from someone I know and trust, someone who in my experience is a level-headed person, then I may well find it credible. 

iii) Likewise, some psychological reports have veridical elements. Some promotions, near-death experiences, and out-of-body experiences have corroboration. 

iv) If there's a pattern of reported experiences by independent informants, that's cumulative evidence that they experienced something.

v) Another consideration is if the informant has something to gain by telling tall tales or–conversely–something to lose. Paul had a lot to gain by not becoming a Christian and a lot to lose by becoming a Christian. Another example would be Muslims who convert to Christianity based on dreams or visions of Jesus. 

vi) In addition, if there's compelling evidence that the Bible is true, then that's evidence for what it reports. So the source of a reported event can confer credibility on the reported event.

vii) There's also the question of theological consistency. Christianity and Mohammedanism can't both be true. Christianity and Swedenborgianism can't both be true. Christianity and Mormonism can't both be true. So that affects how we assess the purported visions and apparitions of rival religious claimants. We have a standard of comparison. And the same considerations apply to purported Marian apparitions.

Gabriella

Why would Marian apparitions be doubted or totally denied by fellow Christians? Maybe a bias against a woman from heaven?"

Hays

i) Actually, I've written a fair amount about postmortem apparitions, including grief apparitions and crisis apparitions. I've cited two crisis apparitions in which a deceased Christian mother appeared to a grown child. So I have no bias against women from heaven. My position on that is a matter of public record, so your misandrist narrative has no factual basis. 

ii) However, Marian apparitions would be theologically confusing, disruptive, and subversive. Catholics view it differently, but a theological bias comes into play when traditional Catholics assess reputed visions and apparitions claimed by Muhammed, Swedenborg, Joseph Smith, Oral Roberts et al.

Who's the dragon?

A quick sequel to this:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/10/is-mary-woman-in-revelation.html

Catholic apologists argue that since the child in Rev 12 is an individual (Jesus), and the dragon is an individual (Satan), then in consistency, the woman is an individual (Mary). But let's take a comparison:

2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. 3 He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended (Rev 20:2-3).

It's the same dragon we find in Rev 12. So who is the dragon in Rev 20? Suppose you say it's Satan/the Devil. After all, the text explicitly identifies the dragon/serpent as Satan/the Devil. And Satan is an individual. So that supports the Catholic argument, right?

Not really. Certainly the Satanic identification is true as far as that goes. But is that the only referent?

Consider this: would it make sense for God to bind Satan to prevent him from deceiving the nations while God allows billions of demons to continue deceiving the nations? (I don't know how many demons there are, but there doesn't seem to be a shortage.) 

Why would God bind just one fallen angel (Satan) but let all the other fallen angels have free rein to deceive the nations? So I understand "the dragon/serpent" in this vision to be a synecdoche for all the fallen angels, using the leader of the pack to illustrate the principle. The binding includes Satan, but he's being used as a representative figure for demonic and diabolical deceivers in general. 

If that's correct, then the same holds true for the dragon in  Rev 12. The referent isn't restricted to one individual in particular, but functions as a synecdoche for angelic adversaries of God, Jesus, and the people of God (faithful Jews and Christians). 

Is Mary the woman in Revelation?

Many commentators identify the woman in Rev 12 as a feminine personification of Israel, and they cite OT passages to bolster that identification. Catholic apologists counter that if two of the three figures in Rev 12 are individuals, then it creates the presumption that the women is an individual, too:

1. The Serpent = The Devil                            Individual (Satan) 

2. The Child = The Messiah                           Individual (Christ) 

3. The Woman = Mother of the Messiah        Individual (Mary)

But there are some problems with that argument:

i) Jews thought not merely in terms of parentage but ancestry. Family trees. Indeed, the NT contains two genealogies of Jesus (Matthew, Luke). So while the mother of Jesus is an individual (Mary), the symbolic maternal figure in Rev 12 can easily be a corporate emblem. 

ii) While the Devil is an individual, it doesn't follow that the Satanic figure in Rev 12 only represents the Devil. After all, Revelation also depicts demons. So the Satanic figure in Rev 12 can function as a synecdoche, not only standing for the Devil but his entourage of fallen angels. It's not just Satan who is defeated in Revelation, but the dark side generally. 

Ave Pachamama

L'Osservatore Romano

Last Friday, at The Pontifical Gregorian University, Scott Hahn and Brant Pitre gave a joint lecture on Pachamama to lay to rest the recent controversy and clarify Her true identity. In Andean Sacred Tradition, Pachamama is:

• Cosmic Mother

• Mother Earth

• Mother of the sun god

• Fertility Goddess

• Associated with harvest festivals

• Associated with mountains

• In Pythagorean numerology her numerical value is 3 

Pitre and Hahn then drew attention to many astounding typological adumbrations:

1. The New Eve

The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living (Gen 3:20)

As fertility goddess and Mother Earth, Pachamama is a type of Eve.

2. The New Jerusalem

In her association with mountains, Pachamama is a type of Mount Zion, the Temple Mount, and the New Jerusalem. 

3. Mother of God

I am the light of the world (Jn 8:12; 9:5). 

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth…She gave birth to a son (Rev 12:1-2,5)

• Jesus is the light of the world (i.e. sunlight as a spiritual metaphor).

• Pachamama is mother of the sun god.  

• Pachamama is the Cosmic Mother clothed in the sun, with a starry crown and lunar slippers

4. Hostess of the Messianic banquet

The wedding at Cana (John 2) prefigures the Messianic banquet in the new age. Pachamama is hostess of the Messianic banquet by virtue of her association with harvest festivals as well as her role as the sun god's mother (see under #3).

5. Eschatological icon of the Trinity

In Pythagorean numerology, her name has the numerical value of 3.

6. Mother of the Church

26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” 27 and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home (Jn 19:26-27).

"Your mother"=Pachamama 

7. Queen of Heaven

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head (Rev 12:1).

As the Cosmic Mother, Pachamama is the Queen of Heaven

8. The Assumption of Pachamama

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.(Rev 12:1)

St. John saw Pachamama in heaven. Mother Earth ascended. 

9. The Immaculate Preconception

As Cosmic Mother and Mother Earth, Pachamama was never conceived in sin inasmuch as she was never conceived at all. Rather, she is the source of all conception. 

10. Hyperdulia

16 He then brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord, and there at the entrance to the temple, between the portico and the altar, were about twenty-five men. With their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east (Ezk 8:16)

Just as worshippers in the temple bowed down to the sun, Catholics should bow down to Pachamama, mother of the sun god. 

11. Vicar of the Queen

The reason there are so many queens in the Vatican is because the Vatican represents the Vicar of Pachamama, Queen of Heaven. 

Quoting from St. Alphonsus Liguori's The Glories of Pachamamma, Scott Hahn said "You can't have God as your Father unless you have Pachamama as your Mother. You can't have Jesus as your King unless you have Pachamama as your Queen."

How Catholic apologists abuse typology to teach Mariology

Does a masterful job dismantling faux Marian typology:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p7DIQnRYO8

The Catholic feminine

Over at Called to Confusion, Tim Troutman did a 4-part series. It's basically a pretext for Marian dogma. I'll comment on part 3: 

https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2019/08/the-catholic-feminine-part-iii-sex-and-virtue/

I agree with Troutman that there are stereotypical physical and psychological differences between men and women. That's to be celebrated. However, he indulges in some sweeping claims of dubious factuality. There's nothing wrong with generalizations, per se. That's unavoidable. The problem is not exceptions to generalizations. The problem is when the claims aren't even true in general. 

He makes very confident statements, but I don't know where he's getting his information. He's getting some of his information from Alice von Hildebrand's The Privilege of Being a Woman. Perhaps that's the uncredited source for most of his sweeping claims.

Touch and taste are the most material of the senses...The natural gaze of the woman tends towards the family, towards the earth. The gaze of the father, as a natural priest of the family, tends towards the heavens, towards God...In music, higher notes are more inclined to signify heavenly beauty, and the lower notes signify the mundane, the earthen. 

This reflects a classic dehumanized piety in Catholic theology, where true holiness is ethereal and otherworldly. Yet humans are creatures. Humans are earthy. We're not angels. 

And the power of sight most strongly corresponds with the power of reason. Thus, we often use the act of sight as a metaphor to describe the act of grasping a concept by reason.

The problem with that claim is that we often use the act of hearing as a metaphor to describe the act of grasping a concept by reason. 

Women are more oriented towards the touch which is more mundane...

Is that true? Are baby boys less responsive to caress than baby girls? Are young boys less responsive to hugs than girls? There are basically two kinds of touch: platonic and erotic. Men are quite sensitive to both. Because humans are nearly hairless, we have a huge expanse of bare skin. That makes us acutely sensitive to touch–even if it's covered by a thin shirt or blouse. In addition to the fact that we don't have a fur, our skin is probably more sensitive than wild animals, which have a higher pain threshold and pain tolerance. 

Women are more beautiful than men, and beauty per se is not mundane. Beauty itself is by no means superficial. As regards the possession of beauty, women have the greater share in dignity. In her book, The Privilege of Being a Woman, Alice von Hildebrand noted that otherwise in nature, it is the male in the species that is more beautiful (e.g. the peacock, the lion, etc.) This inversion of natural beauty is undoubtedly meaningful. Von Hildebrand suggests that it signifies that sexuality is something different, something higher for man than for animals.  She is correct.

Women are more beautiful than men from the viewpoint of normal men. But women have an eye for handsome men. 

Higher things, physical or abstract, always signify more noble things. Thus a king’s chair is always above the people, never in a pit. Moses ascends the mountain to meet God; Jesus ascends a mountain to pray and to appoint His Apostles. The heavens are above the earth, not below. 

So skyscrapers signify something more noble than lily ponds. A barren volcano signifies something more noble than a lush river valley. A bomber in flight signifies something more noble than an alpine meadow. 

In music, higher notes are more inclined to signify heavenly beauty, and the lower notes signify the mundane, the earthen. Modern music tends to be heavy with bass and drums – the lower, more primitive and mundane tones.  Most popular music is inherently ordered to draw man to earth – to incline man to look at himself – to draw him away from heaven. Sacred music is just the opposite; it tends to be played on instruments that excel in the upper ranges, and the voices tend towards higher notes (not exclusively of course). 

i) I wonder how many cellists share his intuition. What about all the great solo parts for alto and bass in the sacred music of Bach and Handel?

ii) His generalization is ironic in light of Catholic music, with the tradition of Gregorian chant sung in unison by monks. Male voices singing in the chest register. With a basically baritone range, along with some excursions into the tenor range. 

iii) It's true that there's something special about the soprano line in choral music. However, Troutman is glossing over complications. Consider the difference in timbre between boy sopranos and opera divas. Many opera divas have a sensual, womanly timbre. 

Women have a higher pitch in their voice than men. This again signifies a greater share in beauty.  The higher pitch in their voice not only signifies a greater inner beauty, but also a vocation — their voice is physically more adept to elevate than to bring down and their vocation mirrors this. Hence they are natural encouragers, nurturers, comforters. The physical characteristics of their voice are symbols signifying that women are ordained5 to lift up, to turn our attention to the heavens. How many male saints would without the briefest hesitance credit their mother or grandmother with pointing them towards God? I am no saint, but I owe what little saintliness I have to women in my life and above all to the blessed virgin Mary.  

That's literal nonsense. Pitch isn't actually higher or lower. Maybe that's a metaphor, or more likely, that's based on conventions of musical notion. But pitch is literally or actually about faster or slower frequencies. 

Women are less inclined to be attracted to merely external beauty than men. Again, in this respect, they have a greater share in human dignity by their nature. The gaze of man tends towards that which is most beautiful according to the mode of apprehension. 

I'd like to see more evidence for that claim. What about sunsets and flower gardens or wildflowers in meadows? What about the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe?

Where does figure skating belong in Troutman's classification scheme? What about women as poets, novelists, and short story writers?

My impression is that Troutman's comparisons don't begin from a study of men and women. Rather, he's shoehorning cherry-picked examples into a preconceived theological grid. Casting about for examples to illustrate the feminine side of Catholicism. There's a grain of truth to some of what he says, but he needs to be far more discriminating. 

Pray to Mary

Marian prayer is central to Catholic piety. If it's God's will that Christians pray to Mary, why didn't God simply tell us to pray to Mary? Why not a single verse in Scripture commanding Christians to pray to Mary? 

Since we don't have that, Catholic apologists cobble together a Jack-that-house-built argument for Marian prayer. A chain of inferences like:

i) Jesus is God

ii) Mary is his mother

iii) That makes Mary the Mother of God

iv) Jesus is the king

v) That makes Mary the Queen Mother

vi) Honor your father and mother

vii) King Solomon genuflected to Bathsheba

viii) Therefore, Mary has Jesus on a leash. He comes running whenever she yanks the leash.

That argument is full of holes, but more to the point, it would make things so much simpler if there was at least one verse in Scripture which said: "Pray to Mary!" 

Mormon prayer and Marian prayer

There's a striking parallel between Mormon prayer and Marian prayer. When Mormon missionaries run out of arguments, and it doesn't take long for them to bottom out, their last-ditch appeal is a challenge to pray about the truth of Mormonism:

"And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost" (Moroni 10:4).

Years ago, when I used to talk to Mormon missionaries, I'd point out that there's no reason to think the Mormon god can hear and answer prayer. In traditional Mormonism, the first god in the Mormon pantheon was a deified man. He lives on the planet Kolob. So he's a humanoid divinity who receives information through the five senses, like human beings. As such, it makes no more sense for me to pray to the Mormon god than to Zeus or Thor or Krishna. Even if they existed, they are physical beings with finite knowledge. 

Prayer has a presuppositional framework. In classical theism, God is the absolute Creator. He subsists outside of space and time. He doesn't use sensory perception as a source of information. He doesn't learn anything. Rather, he made everything–directly or indirectly. In Calvinism, God knows everything that happens because he predestines everything that happens.  

When you excise prayer from that presuppositional framework and transplant it to a pagan framework, prayer loses the metaphysical underpinnings that make it feasible. The concept of efficacious prayer doesn't exist in a metaphysical vacuum. It needs something adequate to back it up. 

Even in Catholic theology, Mary remains a human creature. It makes no more sense to direct millions of daily prayers to Mary, in scores of foreign languages, than it does to pray to Zeus, Thor, Krishna, or the Mormon god. 

Conversely, if a Catholic apologist says that despite her humanity, Mary has superhuman cognitive abilities, then why can't a Hindu or Viking or Mormon postulate the same superhuman abilities in reference to their humanoid deities? 

Is the PVM a big deal?

Is the perpetual virginity of Mary (hereafter PVM) a big deal? A few considerations:

1. What's at stake

In itself, the PVM is not a deal-breaker for the Protestant faith, but it is a deal-breaker for the Catholic faith. If the PVM is true, that doesn't falsify the Protestant faith–but if the PVM is false, that falsifies the Catholic faith. It's dogma. If even one Catholic dogma is false, the Catholic faith is false. Protestants don't have the same stake in the issue that Catholics do. In principle, we can take it or leave it . 

2. Burden of proof

i) As a rule, we should avoid giving credence things without sufficient evidence. Gullibility is not a theological or epistemic virtue. As a practical matter, we can't avoid forming many beliefs without sufficient evidence, and that's frequently innocuous, but sometimes it's harmful. In addition, religious beliefs are more important than many mundane beliefs because there's more to gain if you're right and more to lose if you're wrong.  

ii) The onus is not on Protestants to provide evidence to the contrary, but on Catholics to provide sufficient evidence. It's not incumbent on me to disprove something for which there's no good evidence. If you tell me there's a genie in the bottle, the burden of proof is not on me to prove you wrong. 

iii) There's a standing presumption that Jewish couples had sexual relations. Is there compelling evidence to overcome that presumption?

3. Rationale

Ironically, the reasons Catholics give in support of the PVM may be reasons to reject it. Considered in isolation, it's not a big deal one way or the other, but the justification may make it a big deal. Consider Brant Pitre's contention that it was dangerous for Joseph to have marital relations with Mary because she was the ark of the covenant. For Joseph to have sexual relations with his wife was equivalent to unauthorized personnel venturing into the Holy of Holies. If you did that you got zapped. 

In effect, that makes Mary radioactive. A hazard zone. Did they requires separate beds? Was it safe to hold hands, or did Joseph have to wear latex gloves lest he combust through skin contact with his wife? 

4. Dogmatic authority

A Protestant might be open to the possibility of the PVM, but that's not nearly good enough from a Catholic standpoint. Rather, you are obligated to believe it. You must have a level of certitude disconnected from the level of the evidence. 

Ultimately, church authority is the makeweight. Believe it on the authority of the Roman magisterium. If, however, you reject the claims of Rome, that's a reason to reject the PVM. 

5. Exaggerated importance

Something can become important, not because it's intrinsically important, but because people make it more important than it is. Making something optional or inconsequential mandatory or all-important creates a problem where no problem existed. 

6. The cult of virginity

It lays the foundation for monasticism. The notion that normal family life can't be as holy as the single state. To be saintly you must be celibate.

7. Virginity in partu

According to Catholic dogma, as I understand it, either Jesus didn't pass through the birth canal, or even if he did, that didn't rupture the hymen. 

That treats the process of childbirth as impure or defiling. But human beings are essentially earthy. We have souls, but we're embodied agents. We are earthy by design. That's not a result of the Fall. 

To take a comparison, have you ever considered what it means that the Son remains Incarnate? It carries the presumption that even now, Jesus must eat, breathe, drink, itch, sneeze, sweat, sleep, excrete, trim his hair, fingernails, and toenails. Maybe he snores. He's not a heathen deity with elixir flowing through his veins.