The Church simply keeps a list of the people who lived exceptionally Christian lives that we can be inspired by. They are called canonized saints, but usually people drop the word canonized and just say the saints.
Hey thanks alot Lazer! Your words really do help shed some light!!!People can think like this because the vast majority of people, Protestants especially but also most Catholics, simply don’t understand the Catholic Church and what it really teaches. Also, there is a very strong anti-Catholic attitude out there. When I was a Protestant, I did it too. Because of the way Protestants are taught, they often take issue with the most minor of things (like this). When it comes to important things, like Mary, they will say the beliefs are wrong, take away from Christ, and say other things that pertain to salvation and important matters. When it comes to less important things, like what a Saint is, or something about nuns, they will just ridicule the beliefs. In other words, they’re not important enough to condemn, but they are representative of the opposed (at best) or despised (at worst) Catholic Church to make fun of and deride as gibberish.
As far as this specific teaching is concerned, you may want to explain to your friend that the Catholic Church believes that all Christians are saints too. (and this is a very simple explanation but it’s good enough to tell to a Protestant
This may not be what you are looking for, but to say we are all the same is crazy.
I have often wondered about this. Can you shed some light on why some groups teach children these things? Why do they bother? Is it a scare tactic?
That’s another thing I wonder about. How does admiration of or asking for prayers from a great Christian take away from Christ?
It’s not a scare tactic. It’s actually a loving thing (usually, some misguided Protestants probably are filled with hate, but not most). It’s because they legitimately believe Catholicism is very wrong and dangerous, and it just gets passed from generation on down. Same thing as how people would always learn black people were bad because their parents taught them and so on (except that wasn’t out of love! lol )
It doesn’t, but they don’t think that’s what we do. Most Protestants simply don’t understand it (a lot of Catholics don’t, so how can we blame the Protestants when we can’t even get “our own” to understand?). Many think, because they have been mistaught, that Catholics worship Mary as another god or something. Sometimes they believe that not out of being mistaught, but because they may see Rosaries being prayed or something, and since all they have is the IMAGE of it, they don’t understand (sort of like watching a TV with no sound). Other Protestants simply are anti-Catholic, so they look for ANY Catholic belief to attack (again usually out of love, I know it sounds weird when I use words like attack but it’s true). In other words, they believe the Catholic faith is wrong in GENERAL (from being taught such things) so they look for things wrong with SPECIFIC parts of it. This leads to things like finding “There is but one mediator between God and man” in the Bible, and misapplying it because it seems to support their belief that Catholics are wrong.
You lost me here.
Come to think of it, that’s the same crowd that ridiculed Catholicism.