J
jcrichton
Guest
Hi!Admittedly, as a Catholic I have struggled with this one. I can tell you for example that the Jewish people revered St. Michael (the archangel) in centuries B.C.
If the Church teaches that God allows Saints to hear our prayers, who am I to disagree? I will say that maybe, just maybe, not the validity of praying to Saints but some of the emphasis on it may somewhat be related to the Church being “all things to all people” (as St. Paul teaches) and the prior pagan culture of praying to many gods etc. I could be wrong - it’s just a thought. As we know the Church has absorbed and applied new (Christian) meaning to many customs including Jewish, Roman, pagan, …
But again, I’m being very careful with this, I’m not debating the ***validity ***of praying to Saints by this but rather that some of its ***emphasis/prevalence ***(e.g. All Saints Day [Halloween]) may be related to the absorption of cultures by Christianity.
For example, no one debates that the beauty of a Christmas tree (previously a pagan custom) can enhance the beauty of Christmas - right? There is nothing wrong with a Christmas tree but it’s also not required.
I have been told that praying to Saints is not required at all in personal prayer. In fact, if the only prayer a person wants to say in their personal prayer is the Our Father, then as a Catholic that is one’s own decision. It’s true that at mass there are occasional prayers to Saints and it is a requirement to believe that it’s OK to pray to them (“Communion of Saints”).
I think that the major problem that people have is not so much tradition or antiquity but with Church Authority.
How many people jump into the bandwagon against the existing calendar? How many want to go back to those times when the calendar year contained only 10 months? (webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-roman.html) Rather than fighting for let’s go back to the Roman or let’s keep the Julian, the world at large has consistently adopted the Gregorian calendar… yes, in spite of Pope Gregory XIII being Catholic! (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar)
The functionality of the Gregorian calendar is what is most important… not it’s origin or the fact that there already existed, from antiquity, a close ranking Julian calendar. Conversely, the pagan similarity/roots/practice should not be the all-consuming and totally confabulating thought in the minds of the Believers… rather, the fact that, say Dec 25 is used to Celebrate the Incarnation of the Word!
Christians fall pray to two things: a) their ignorance of Church Authority (Christ Delegate His Authority to the Church: ‘whatever you bind on earth is bound in Heaven’), and b) society’s manipulation, as with “don’t judge” and “correctness” (fallacies that have spawned divorce, birth control, abortions, etc.) as Christians ignore that they are supporting the world principles against God’s Will (‘don’t you know that friendship with the world makes enmity with God?’); rather than asking if there has been a similar practice held in antiquity by pagans, Believers should ask: “Is the Church seeking to exalt God or man?”
Remove Christmas from Christian observance on the pretense of “paganism” or “not found in Scriptures” and we aide man in removing God from our society as we, with the world, would live up to the ole adage: “out of site, out of mind!”
Remember how bad it was when public schools had prayer? …well thank, not God, that we have removed God from the public school system… a little step into that brave new world… and voilà: respect and goodness stepped in (well, in the form of violence, cruelty, apathy, the occult, culture of death… but at least no one’s sensibilities are made to suffer–free at last!). :banghead::banghead::banghead:
Maran atha!
Angel