Can't fundamentalists get anything right about Catholic Saints?

Question

The fundamentalists chief problem in accepting that saints can hear prayers is that thier notion of heaven and the afterlife are attenuated. For many of them the afterlife is hardly a life at all. They, like many Christians, draw a blank when they try to explain what heaven is like. Some can imagine nothing other than the stereotypic harps and choirs. Others say heaven is an impenetrable haze and that all we can know is that we will be happy there.
One thing that certainly can be said is that those in heaven are alive to God. "Have you never read in the book of Moses how God spoke to him at the burning bush, and said, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?' Yet it is of living men, not dead men, that he is the God" (Mark 12:26-27). The saints in heaven are more alive now than we are. In the arms of God, they are more solicitous of us than when they were on earth. Just as Paul asked the other disciples to pray for him (Rom 15:30;Col 4:3; 1 Th 1:11

so now we can ask Paul and the other saints in heaven to intercede for us with God. We are not cut off from fellow Christians at death, but are, strangely enough and contrary to our unreflecting thoughts, brought closer. We continue in one communion, the Communion of Saints.
To fundamentalists the term communion of saints and its allied term, the Mystical Body of Christ, mean nothing. They have never heard of them, except for those who once were Catholics, and probably none of them ever understood the phrase. It is enough to remind fundamentalists of the image of the vine and its branches (John 15:1-8). They accept this as a metaphor of our relationship to Christ, he being the vine, we the branches that live through him. They can see that if we are connected to Christ, we are connected to one another, but they tend to forget that those in heaven are not suddenly cut off the vine. The saints remain as branches, which, if the symbolism means anything, means they remain related

related to us.
Veneration of Saints: There is the veneration offered to Angles (Jos 5:14; Dan 8:17; Tob12:160. This veneration is based on the angels' supernatural dignity, which comes from their union with God (Mt 18:10). Since the saints are also united with God (1Cor 13:12; 1 John 3:2), it follows that they are also worthy of veneration.
The ancient Jews believed in the intercession of saints. Judas Maccabaeus saw in a vision "most worhy of credence" how two deceased men, the high priest Onias and the prophet Jeremiah, interceded with God for the Jews (2 Macc 15:11-16). And Jeremiah himself wrote that Moses and Samuel made intercession for the Jews, apparently meaning after their deaths (Jer 15:1). We learn God's feet (Tob 12:12; Rev 5:8, 8:3), which is to say that they support the prayers with their intercessions. These verses also mean, that the angels and saints are the ones prayed to and that they then take these prayers to God.

Answer 1

Ohhh....well, I for one, appreciate you explaining to this Catholic why the Fundamentalists don't get that the saints can hear us asking them to pray to God for us like we ask people on earth to do. I couldn't figure out why they found this such a difficult concept to grasp, but now that you explained that "their" heaven sounds lousy, I get it. "Theirs" doesn't sound a whole lot better than hell. It's a strange concept of heaven. Thanks!

Answer 2

The 7 books removed from Protestant Bibles are known by Catholics as the "Deuterocanonical Books" (as opposed to the "Protocanonical Books" that are not in dispute), and by Protestants as the "Apocrypha."


In the 16th c., Luther, reacting to serious abuses and clerical corruption in the Latin Church, to his own heretical theological vision , and, frankly, to his own inner demons, removed books from the canon that lent support to orthodox doctrine, relegating them to an appendix. Removed in this way were books that supported such things as :


Prayers for the dead (Tobit 12:12; 2 Maccabees 12:39-45),

Purgatory (Wisdom 3:1-7),

intercession of dead saints (2 Maccabees 15:14),

and intercession of angels as intermediaries (Tobit 12:12-15)

Luther wanted to remove the Epistle of James, Esther, Hebrews, Jude and Revelation. Calvin and Zwingli also both had problems with the Book of Revelation, the former calling it "unintelligible" and forbidding the pastors in Geneva to interpret it, the latter calling it "unbiblical". The Syrian (Nestorian) Church has only 22 books in the New Testament while the Ethiopian Church has 8 "extra." The first edition of the King James Version of the Bible included the "Apocryphal" (ie, Deuterocanonical) Books.

Answer 3

Intercession by the Saints was once explained to me this way. It is much like when a child approaches an older sibling with a problem, rather than go to his parent, for fear that he would get into trouble. So it is with us, in our human frailty, doubt and weakness, we can relate better with a saint, a spiritual sibling in heaven, who can pray for us.

In all fairness to non-Catholics, intercession by the Saints is not necessary for Salvation.

Answer 4

I will answer your great post with this, when everyone feels free to interpret scripture then anything and everything goes.
By the way many fundamentalists rely more on the writings of Saint Paul than the saying`s of Jesus Himself, so as to make scripture fit their dogma`s.

Answer 5

Oh, they *could,* but most of them choose to believe the silliness that they've been taught by their ministers or fellow church goers. Instead of talking to someone who's studied the Catholic faith and knows why we believe what we believe, it's just easier to swallow what they've heard from someone else. That's especially true if the person doing the teaching is in an authority position.

It's a case of "Pastor So-and-So told me that Catholics worship Mary, so it must be true. He's a minister and he went to school." Intellectual laziness probably contributes to a lot of the misconceptions that fundamentalists have about us and our beliefs.

Answer 6

catholic saints are statue's...all are asleep until the day of judgment....

Moses, Abraham and a few others were taken up to heaven and are part of the 12 judges before the throne.....prayers are to go to Christ only our high priest before God

Answer 7

yes they are more alive than we are but that doesn't change the fact that we don't pray to them... we go before God directly and Paul was asking his brothers and sisters here on earth to pray for him
and using your example of the vine and the branches... notice the branches are connected directly to the vine.... there is no need for a middle man

Answer 8

Fundies have a hard time getting anything right, much less bothering to learn about differing views and beliefs.

That's what makes 'em fundies, after all.

Answer 9

Praying to saints is not biblical. Paul asked the other disciples to pray for him, not "to" him. They of course were praying to God, YHWH.