Catholics pray to dead saints! Answers to common objections I, seriatim.

o there I was, inno­cent­ly mind­ing my own busi­ness, when some­one hands me the fol­low­ing “I love you but let me attack you” piece of anti-Catholi­cism:

I love you sis­ter and I’m sor­ry that you think I’m per­se­cut­ing you because I’m not. I nev­er once judged or con­demned you. I was expos­ing the false church itself and now I will talk about a few rea­sons why it is blas­phe­mous. [But he’s not “judg­ing” or “con­demn­ing.”] I can con­fi­dent­ly say that because they go against what God says in the Bible. First thing would be pray­ing to dead saints, this is idol­a­try since prayer is a form of wor­ship. The def­i­n­i­tion of prayer is: “a solemn request for help or expres­sion of thanks addressed to God or an object of wor­ship.” Pray­ing to Mary is also idol­a­try for the same rea­son.

Sec­ond rea­son is priests some­how being able to for­give us of our sins even though they’re human just like us? Only God can for­give sin.

Anoth­er rea­son is the Catholic doc­trine con­cern­ing com­mu­nion. It is sup­posed to be done pure­ly has a sym­bol or metaphor of the body and blood of Christ. How­ev­er in Catholic mass before every­one par­tic­i­pates in the com­mu­nion, the priests con­duct a rit­u­al that they call tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion. They believe this ritual/prayer turns the bread and wine into Christ’s lit­er­al body and blood which is not true and this is cannabilis­tic in nature. Yes I know that it’s still bread and wine, but the inten­tion of eat­ing his lit­er­al body and blood is there in that per­son­’s heart which makes it sin­ful in nature. Same idea applies to how Jesus says that even if you look at some­one with lust in your heart, it is the same as actu­al­ly com­mit­ting the phys­i­cal act of adul­tery.

Anoth­er rea­son is His Catholic priests are called “father.” Why is this wrong? Matthew Chap­ter 23 has the answer: (Matthew 23:8–10) But you, do not be called ‘Rab­bi’; for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren. Do not call any­one on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heav­en. And do not be called teach­ers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ.

Anoth­er rea­son is because they bap­tize infants. In the Bible, water bap­tism is a con­scious act of faith that some­one does when they accept Jesus Christ as their sav­ior. An infant is not old enough to have the men­tal capac­i­ty to accept Jesus Christ by their own free will. Also in the Bible, water bap­tism is always done with the new born again believ­er being ful­ly sub­merged under the water (this is a sym­bol of your death and res­ur­rec­tion through Christ).

The Bible nev­er men­tions pur­ga­to­ry ever yet Catholic doc­trine teach­es there is such a place.

Last­ly, the ori­gin of the Catholic church comes from the Roman Empor­er Con­stan­tine. The empire start­ed to crum­ble so he tried to uni­fy the pagans and Chris­tians in the empire by his “Chris­tian­iza­tion” of pagan beliefs which is what gave birth to the Catholic church. Chris­tians who read and knew their Bibles reject­ed the Catholic church because of these rea­sons that I have talked about. A famous believ­er who did this lat­er down the road was Mar­tin Luther.”

This per­son, who is full of love and does not wish to con­demn, not at all, no, end­ed with a warn­ing that you can’t drink from the cup of the Lord and the cup of dev­ils, and linked to the cred­i­ble source gotquestions.org.

(By the way, is it also your expe­ri­ence that peo­ple like the one I quote above do not so much have a dis­cus­sion as a food-throw­ing par­ty? What I mean is, they can’t just talk about one ques­tion at a time; they throw every­thing on the table at the wall, all at once, to see what sticks as it were? Or to try to over­whelm you with sev­en­ty-five dif­fer­ent claims at once? It takes about 300 words to make all these claims, and maybe about 300 pages to clear away all the errors. Just an obser­va­tion.)

But here are sev­en to get us start­ed. In spite of the fact that objec­tions like these have been answered to death, in Chris­tian­i­ty, the dead rise; and I thought it might be use­ful to have a sin­gle place where they are all tak­en up again, one per blog arti­cle; so that you, dear read­er, can post links around the inter­net when some long-refut­ed claim comes back to life.

•••

So what about this “Catholics pray to dead saints” claim?

Well, the answer real­ly does depend on how you define pray. Our interlocutor—let us call him Mr. Y—does attempt to take up this impor­tant point.

The def­i­n­i­tion of prayer is: “a solemn request for help or expres­sion of thanks addressed to God or an object of wor­ship.”

Right. You can find that wery def­i­n­i­tion here. The prob­lem is, the def­i­n­i­tion is incom­plete. Accord­ing to Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies Dot Com, this is the def­i­n­i­tion “in U.S. Eng­lish.” Per­haps Mr. Y thinks that Eng­lish is only spo­ken in the Unit­ed States.

But no. Mer­ri­am Web­ster is more com­plete. To “pray” also means “to make a request.” Dictionary.com has the same: “to make an ernest peti­tion to a per­son.” And Cam­bridge Dic­tio­nary defines it: “a force­ful way of say­ing please.”

Even the orig­i­nal source, Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies, says that the word “pray” derives from the Latin pre­car­ius, which means “to make a request.” And you can find this usage of pray—to make a request inde­pen­dent of wor­ship or whom you are addressing—all over the place. You can find it in Shake­speare:

I pray you, in your let­ters, / When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, / Speak of me as I am. (Oth­el­lo V.ii.356–358)

 

I pray you, do not fall in love with me / For I am falser than vows made in wine. (As You Like It III.v.81–82)

 

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pro­nounced it to you, trip­ping­ly on the tongue. (Ham­let III.ii.1–2).

And you may mul­ti­ply these exam­ples with lit­tle effort. Indeed, the word “prithee,” also com­mon in Shake­speare, is a con­trac­tion of “I pray thee.”

So yes, Catholics do “pray to dead saints.” (Though we would object to describ­ing them as “dead.” That’s anoth­er arti­cle.) If by “pray” you mean no more than “make a request,” that’s exact­ly what we do when we pray to saints. We ask them to obtain some­thing for us.

And of course, what we do obtain in this way comes not from the saints them­selves, but from God. It is no dif­fer­ent than if I were to ask my moth­er to pray for me. If God answers this prayer, God answered it, not my moth­er. I can use all the help I can get, includ­ing from an inter­ces­sor.

That’s the sense of “pray­ing to saints.” We believe them to be inter­ces­sors; we do not believe them to be divine.

So I pray you, stop it with that false charge.