"I don’t believe in the deity of Mary nor the saints"

Continuing the series of posts responding to Pastor Pete's numerous objections to the Catholic faith (start at the bottom of the link and work your way up) brings us to this rather common one:

I don’t believe in the deity of Mary nor the saints.  This one will require further explanation.  If a young child asks how God can hear millions of people pray at the same time, our likely answer will be because He is God, He is deity.  But I find no answer how Mary or the saints could possess this omnipotent power, except to deify them, which I am compelled to reject.

Let's first begin by stating unequivocally that Catholics don't believe in the deity of Mary or the saints either.  From the Catechism as to the particularity of Mary's humanity:

Jesus has only God as Father. "He was never estranged from the Father because of the human nature which he assumed. . . He is naturally Son of the Father as to his divinity and naturally son of his mother as to his humanity, but properly Son of the Father in both natures."

Fr. Joe at Busted Halo expounds:

Devotion to Mary goes back a long way in the Catholic church. But Catholics do not believe that Mary is divine and we don’t pray to Mary. God, made flesh in Jesus and present in the Holy Spirit, is the only One to whom we pray.

We do believe that Mary holds a special place among the saints of the church, and that the saints are part of a community of faith and love that doesn't end with death. This “communion of saints” includes both the living and dead. We don’t “pray to” the saints either, but we believe that we can ask those who now live with God to pray for us, just as we pray for persons who have died.

Catholics don’t worship Mary; rather, we honor her. We honor Mary as the mother of God, as the first disciple of Jesus, and as the mother of the church. All three of these titles have their origins in the fact that in Mary’s life the Word of God became flesh and blood and that is the vocation to which every Christian is called — to live in such a way that God’s generous compassion becomes alive in our flesh and blood, in in our words and actions.

We look to Mary as a model in whom we can trust, and as a mother who supports and nurtures our own journeys of faith. Turning to her as the first of Christians, we ask her to pray for us.

As to the question on whether or not Mary and/or the saints can hear our petitions, I found this from Robert H. Brom, former Bishop of San Diego, that I think answers the question more than adequately:

As Scripture indicates, those in heaven are aware of the prayers of those on earth. This can be seen, for example, in Revelation 5:8, where John depicts the saints in heaven offering our prayers to God under the form of "golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." But if the saints in heaven are offering our prayers to God, then they must be aware of our prayers. They are aware of our petitions and present them to God by interceding for us. 

Some might try to argue that in this passage the prayers being offered were not addressed to the saints in heaven, but directly to God. Yet this argument would only strengthen the fact that those in heaven can hear our prayers, for then the saints would be aware of our prayers even when they are not directed to them! 

In any event, it is clear from Revelation 5:8 that the saints in heaven do actively intercede for us. We are explicitly told by John that the incense they offer to God are the prayers of the saints. Prayers are not physical things and cannot be physically offered to God. Thus the saints in heaven are offering our prayers to God mentally. In other words, they are interceding. 

...

Some objections to the concept of prayer to the saints betray restricted notions of heaven. One comes from anti-Catholic Loraine Boettner: 

"How, then, can a human being such as Mary hear the prayers of millions of Roman Catholics, in many different countries, praying in many different languages, all at the same time? 

"Let any priest or layman try to converse with only three people at the same time and see how impossible that is for a human being. . . . The objections against prayers to Mary apply equally against prayers to the saints. For they too are only creatures, infinitely less than God, able to be at only one place at a time and to do only one thing at a time. 

"How, then, can they listen to and answer thousands upon thousands of petitions made simultaneously in many different lands and in many different languages? Many such petitions are expressed, not orally, but only mentally, silently. How can Mary and the saints, without being like God, be present everywhere and know the secrets of all hearts?" (Roman Catholicism, 142-143).

If being in heaven were like being in the next room, then of course these objections would be valid. A mortal, unglorified person in the next room would indeed suffer the restrictions imposed by the way space and time work in our universe. But the saints are not in the next room, and they are not subject to the time/space limitations of this life. 

This does not imply that the saints in heaven therefore must be omniscient, as God is, for it is only through God’s willing it that they can communicate with others in heaven or with us. And Boettner’s argument about petitions arriving in different languages is even further off the mark. Does anyone really think that in heaven the saints are restricted to the King’s English? After all, it is God himself who gives the gift of tongues and the interpretation of tongues. Surely those saints in Revelation understand the prayers they are shown to be offering to God. 

The problem here is one of what might be called a primitive or even childish view of heaven. It is certainly not one on which enough intellectual rigor has been exercised. A good introduction to the real implications of the afterlife may be found in Frank Sheed’s book Theology and Sanity, which argues that sanity depends on an accurate appreciation of reality, and that includes an accurate appreciation of what heaven is really like. And once that is known, the place of prayer to the saints follows. 

Some may grant that the previous objections to asking the saints for their intercession do not work and may even grant that the practice is permissible in theory, yet they may question it on other grounds, asking why one would want to ask the saints to pray for one. "Why not pray directly to Jesus?" they ask. 

The answer is: "Of course one should pray directly to Jesus!" But that does not mean it is not also a good thing to ask others to pray for one as well. Ultimately, the "go-directly-to-Jesus" objection boomerangs back on the one who makes it: Why should we ask any Christian, in heaven or on earth, to pray for us when we can ask Jesus directly? If the mere fact that we can go straight to Jesus proved that we should ask no Christian in heaven to pray for us then it would also prove that we should ask no Christian on earth to pray for us. 

Here's to hoping Pastor Pete, and others like him, are prayerfully considering each of these responses, not, unless God wills it, so that they might become Catholic but minimally so that they might know more about what has become for me a deep and so very rich faith.

Carry on dear reader.

Comments

[mathman]

Deity is said to be characterized by omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. That is the way I learned it, anyway.
There is no dispute that the Rosary addresses requests to Mary. She is asked to intercede on the part of the person praying the Rosary. To intercede infers that she first hears the requests. Since there are over 1 billion Catholics, most (?) praying the Rosary, that means close to 1 billion intercession requests. In several thousand languages, at that. How does Mary do this, not being blessed with Omnipresence and Omniscience?
The First and Great Commandment instructs us to worship One God, and Him Only. That means bow down, adore, give reverence to, and praise. Anything short of this is forbidden.
Yet churches are named after Mary, statues are made in her image, candles lit and flowers left before her image, and whole organizations dedicated to her.
You can tell me there is no worship of Mary as many times as you like.
The evidence is otherwise.
We ask Christians to pray for us, the ones who are alive now (that is), because that is part of the Living Church.
The Saints have gone forward to their well-earned rest.

[Rick aka Mr. Brutally Honest]

I would posit that Bishop Brom more than adequately answers your questions mathman. Did you miss his response?

I do have related questions for you. When we revere and honor the dead, whether they be war heroes or simply beloved family members, by building commemorative statues, placards, when we leave flowers and mementos at their grave sites, when we pay tribute to pictures and places that remind us of them, are we worshiping them? Do we consider them divine? The answer is of course, we do not. We are simply holding them in high esteem and attempting to honor their memories. It seems ludicrous then to hold we who honor the very mother of God to a different standard. Ludicrous.

As to your necessity that Mary be divine to hear our petitions and turn them into prayers, was Peter divine when he supernaturally walked on water? Were the Apostles divine when they healed the sick? What about when they drove out demons in Christ's name? Were they divine? Of course they were not... instead, God worked in and through them to carry out His purposes... why should Mary then be seen to be necessarily divine to carry out God's wishes?

And as to your reference that we ask those who are alive for prayer but that we should not of the saints for they have gone forward to their well earned rest... are the souls of these saints resting or are they not alive in Christ? Think for but a moment at Christ's words to the thief who hung beside him. Did He not promise the thief paradise on that very day? Did He not tell the thief that he would be with Him? Wouldn't it make sense that he would be with Him fully alive and spiritually awake?

I think we play games here, not to seek the truth but to accentuate the Protestant/Catholic divide... and in doing so we entertain double standards and such to bolster our position.

If we honor our beloved with statues, pictures, tributes, etc and yet think them to be fully human, why can't we do the same to Mary and/or the Saints?

If we believe that God divinely infused the Apostles with Holy Spirit power to do divine things while remaining human, why would we then suggest that Mary must be divine to do what Catholics believe she does?

Help me understand.

[mathman]

Yes, we honor our war dead and our political leaders. In no way do we worship them or expect them to do anything for us NOW. We recall their service and give thanks for their lives.
Peter walking on the water, Peter and Paul raising the dead, the Apostles healing, were simply obedient servants of their Master. That is what He told them to do.
As I read Revelations I find the saints engaging in worship of the Lamb. I do not find them passing prayer requests along to the Throne. In our Requiems we pray "Give to the departed eternal rest." Being required to respond to a billion petitions a day does not seem very restful to me.
Was it not enough that Mary's Sacred Heart was pierced when her Son died on the Cross?
Must she be subjected to endless requests for intercession? Is there no rest for her?
This has nothing to do with protestant/Catholic divisions. This has to do with simple logic. Who wants to be a Saint and spend one's entire "time" in Heaven passing along prayer requests?

[Rick aka Mr. Brutally Honest]

I'm amused at this point mathman by the obtuseness on display.

A God who can use humans to heal the sick, to raise the dead, to walk on water is apparently in your mind a God who cannot assist supernaturally in aiding the saints and Mother Mary to hear our petitions for prayer? Seriously? C'mon man, you're playing with me now.

And I noticed you completely ignored the point that the saints are far from dead but spiritually alive in Christ. How come?

And are you really suggesting that time in the hereafter is measured as time is measured in the here and now? Really?

I think we're done here.

Truly.

[Rick aka Mr. Brutally Honest]

More for those interested on this from Kathy Schiffer.