Catholic Altars and Saints

[DLedoux]

Are Catholics aloud to have altars just devoted to certain saints? Like a place where the can just pray to them? Are we allowed to give offerings to them for answered prayers or just for appreciation?

 

[Salibi]

Are Catholics aloud to have altars just devoted to certain saints? Like a place where the can just pray to them?

Yes.

Are we allowed to give offerings to them for answered prayer

No. Saints interceding for us with God is not contingent on us making some offering in front of a statue. That is an incorrect notion. You are free to leave “offerings” (although I would prefer if you just lit candles and refrained from offering say, fruit or I dunno what) as a sign of appreciation, but offerings are not necessary for a saint’s intercession. Nor is having a statue, for that matter. One can easily make a home shrine from icons or holy cards, and even these aren’t necessary to ask for a saint’s intercession. They’re just there to help you worship or for the aesthetic, but it’s not at all necessary for you to have a statue or place some offerings for the saint to intercede for you.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

It’s okay to have a little table or a corner with a statue or an icon of your favorite saint and you put some flowers or a candle there and pray. If you want to call it an “altar” I’ve heard some people do that and there are some traditions like “St. Joseph’s Day altars”, but keep in mind that these “altars” aren’t used for liturgical celebration (i.e. not like the altar at church used by the priest) and we don’t do any kind of saint worship celebration on them. I’d be more likely to call it a home shrine or a prayer corner, myself.

Also, when you say “just pray to” the saint, remember that you’re always praying to God, so you can never “just pray to” the saint as the prayers ultimately go to God. You’re asking the saint to pray with you to God.

As for offerings, I can see putting a prayer candle, flowers, or little votive offerings like a picture or a small object like silver heart, etc. Those are the normal things we would offer in a church. I wouldn’t be burning incense to the saint or leaving food for the saint to eat or any of that. That’s kind of veering into saint-worship in my opinion. I know St. Joseph’s Day altars have food on them, but it’s my understanding that the food is symbolic and it is eaten by people or given to the poor, it’s not like you’re leaving it for St. Joseph to come down and eat it.

 

[BartholomewB]

In people’s homes we still sometimes see old-fashioned shrines of this kind, either standing on a table or hung on a wall:

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