why do catholics pray to mary and tons of other saints instead of praying directly to god?

Question

catholics totally worship mary, dont deny it. you have the may crowning and everything, and then theres saints. you pray to saint whoever because your sick? just pra straight to god.

im sorry if i offended anyone or sounded rude.

Answer 1

Almost all of our prayers are prayed directly to God.

Only once in a while to we ask our family and friends in Earth or our family and friends in heaven to pray for us.

Catholics share the belief in the Communion of Saints with many other Christians, including the Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Episcopal, and Methodist Churches.

The Communion of Saints is the belief where all saints are intimately related in the Body of Christ, a family. When you die and go to heaven, you do not leave this family.

Everyone in heaven or on their way to heaven are saints, you, me, my deceased grandmother, Mary the mother of Jesus, Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II.

As part of this family, you may ask your family and friends living here on earth to pray for you. Or, you may also ask the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Andrew, or your deceased grandmother living in heaven to pray for you.

Prayer to saints in heaven is simple communication, not worship.

Asking others to pray for you whether your loved ones on Earth or your loved ones in heaven is always optional.

For more information, see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 946 and following: http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt1sect2chpt3art9p5.htm#946

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

Oh, my dear. You've made a common error among anti-Catholics here; posting a reasonably decent (if over-asked) question, and then tipping your hand with the details in your eagerness to make your point. It kind of takes away the impact of waiting to choose as "best answer" the one who most closely echoes your own opinion with an amen, sister (or brother).

One tiny problem. You are wrong. You've jumped to conclusions based on what you *think* Catholics do, instead of actually finding out the truth. It may look to you as if we "totally worship" Mary but unless you've actually spoken with knowledgeable Catholics about it, or better yet read the pertinent information in the Catechism, it's just an assumption (so to speak).

Try tending to your own relationship with God, and allowing us to do the same. It's His prerogative to judge, and His alone.

Answer 3

We Catholics do pray directly to God all of the time - first and foremost.

We ask Mary and the angels and saints for their intercession. Just like I might say to a friend or family member, "Would you pray for me" I can ask Mary and the saints to pray for me as well.

But, we do, as I said, always pray first and foremost to God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). We pray the Our Father during every Mass, which of course is the prayer Jesus taught us to say. That is the fundamental prayer in the Catholic religion. That is just one example.

We start and finish all of our prayers with, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

Answer 4

you don't know enough about the catholic church and its practices, if you did you wouldn't ask this question and be so presumptious.

do you ask a friend,family member or the pastor to pray for you? same thing. to catholics the saints that have gone and the blessed mother are more alive than you or i. catholics pray directly to god but as you and others may ask someone to pray for you we ask mary and the saints to pray for us.

here are a couple of sites that may help
http://www.scripturecatholic.com/
www.fisheaters.com

learn more about the faith before making such faulty claims.
god bless.

Answer 5

You seem a little angry with the whole "don't deny it" bit...

If you just type in your question in the search box, you'll find heaps of answers to this very same question. Are you genuinely asking a question, or just thinking that you can somehow convince Catholics to do otherwise?

Answer 6

Because they have so much sin in their lives that they don't want to turn from so they need someone who has made it to Heaven already ! Not just kidding- I have no clue why they want to pray to dead people who couldn't help them here or in Heaven. Go figure ! Just another one of those religious ideas that get them no where.

Answer 7

Catholics DON"t worship Mary. Catholic do venerate Mary, among other saints, but their is nothing wrong with this. The fact that Jesus is the One Mediator between us and the Father DOES NOT mean there cannot be intercessors:

God Desires and Responds to Our Subordinate Mediation / Intercessory Prayer
1 Tim 2:1-2 - because Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5), many Protestants deny the Catholic belief that the saints on earth and in heaven can mediate on our behalf. But before Paul's teaching about Jesus as the "one mediator," Paul urges supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people. Paul is thus appealing for mediation from others besides Christ, the one mediator. Why?

1 Tim 2:3 - because this subordinate mediation is good and acceptable to God our Savior. Because God is our Father and we are His children, God invites us to participate in Christ's role as mediator.

1 Tim. 2:5 - therefore, although Jesus Christ is the sole mediator between God and man, there are many intercessors (subordinate mediators).

1 Cor. 3:9 - God invites us to participate in Christ's work because we are God's "fellow workers" and one family in the body of Christ. God wants His children to participate. The phrase used to describe "fellow workers" is "sunergoi," which literally means synergists, or cooperators with God in salvific matters. Does God need fellow workers? Of course not, but this shows how much He, as Father, loves His children. God wants us to work with Him.

Mark 16:20 - this is another example of how the Lord "worked with them" ("sunergountos"). God cooperates with us. Out of His eternal love, He invites our participation.

Rom. 8:28 - God "works for good with" (the Greek is "sunergei eis agathon") those who love Him. We work as subordinate mediators.

2 Cor. 6:1 - "working together" (the Greek is "sunergountes") with him, don't accept His grace in vain. God allows us to participate in His work, not because He needs our help, but because He loves us and wants to exalt us in His Son. It is like the father who lets his child join him in carrying the groceries in the house. The father does not need help, but he invites the child to assist to raise up the child in dignity and love.

Heb. 12:1 - the “cloud of witnesses” (nephos marturon) that we are surrounded by is a great amphitheatre of witnesses to the earthly race, and they actively participate and cheer us (the runners) on, in our race to salvation.

1 Peter 2:5 - we are a holy priesthood, instructed to offer spiritual sacrifices to God. We are therefore subordinate priests to the Head Priest, but we are still priests who participate in Christ's work of redemption.

Rev. 1:6, 5:10 - Jesus made us a kingdom of priests for God. Priests intercede through Christ on behalf of God's people.

James 5:16; Proverbs 15:8, 29 - the prayers of the righteous (the saints) have powerful effects. This is why we ask for their prayers. How much more powerful are the saints’ prayers in heaven, in whom righteousness has been perfected.

1 Tim 2:5-6 - therefore, it is because Jesus Christ is the one mediator before God that we can be subordinate mediators. Jesus is the reason. The Catholic position thus gives Jesus the most glory. He does it all but loves us so much He desires our participation.

Answer 8

Communion of saints refers to the bond of unity among all believers, both living and dead, who are or have been committed followers of Jesus Christ. In the eyes of God, in eternity, the distinction between His People who are ‘living’ or who are ‘dead’ is not at all important. This statement is supported by the following Scripture verses:

Mk 9:4 “Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus.”

Mk 12:26-27 “As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, (the) God of Isaac, and (the) God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are greatly misled.”

Rom 12:5 …so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another.

Rom 8:38-9 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This one body in Christ is called by the Catholic Church as The Mystical Body of Christ. The concept is explained this way in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The life of each of God’s children is joined in Christ and through Christ in a wonderful way to the life of all the other Christian brethren in the supernatural unity of the Mystical Body of Christ, as in a single mystical person.” (par. 1474)

Since we are “members one of another,” we can, in Christ and only in Christ, seek the prayers and help of fellow members of the Body, both here and in Heaven. Seeing as all believers as a whole make up the one body in Christ, we are all connected to each other with Christ at the head.

What would be the point of asking for intercessory prayers if the people we are asking are not aware of us or of our prayers? Well we can find that they ARE aware of us in:

Heb 12:1 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Mt 17:3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

(If Jesus didn’t want any contact between saints on earth and saints in heaven, why did our Lord make a special point of appearing to Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Transfiguration in the company of Moses and Elijah, two ‘dead’ saints? (Patrick Madrid))

Rev 6:9-10 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?

Luke 15:10 …There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.



We have just learned that the ‘dead saints’ are indeed aware of earthly doings, but can they do anything about it? Are there intercessory prayers effective? Of course there are. Prayers of the righteous availeth much (Jas 5:16). Who are more righteous than those in heaven?

I feel I must make clear that Jesus alone is our mediator, John Henry Cardinal Newman pointed out:
The Catholic Church allows no…Saint, not even the Blessed Virgin herself, to come between the soul and its Creator…The devotions then to angels and saints as little interfered with the incommunicable glory of the Eternal, as the love which we bear our friends and relations, our tender human sympathies, are inconsistent with that supreme homage of the heart to the Unseen. (Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, p.284-285)

We can therefore see that asking saints to pray for us (whether they are ‘living’ or ‘dead’) is acceptable, approved by God, and availeth much. The communion of the Saints is nothing more that the recognition that saints after death (and angels) are more alive than us, aware of happenings on earth, desirous of aiding us, and able to be asked for help and to assist us with their prayers of intercessions, always through Jesus, just as saints who are still ‘alive’ are able to do for us.

God Bless
Robin

Answer 9

This is all such nonsense that I don't see that it matters much. Pray to god, pray to god throught saints who "intercede," whatever floats your boat. In the end, you're all just talking to yourselves and refuse to see it.

Answer 10

THey were wonderful people,Praise the LORD
but the only way is through Jesus