I think most prayers, including Litanies, the Rosary, etc. make it very clear. “May very well be clear?” You must have somewhat of a poor view of the intelligence of your fellow Catholics. . .
Are you saying that people are praying to the saints and leaving God completely out? I’ve heard that old wives’ tale for decades. Strangely enough, it’s usually those of us who are ‘old wives’ ourselves who are supposedly guilty of this (the little old **Italian/Irish/Spanish/German/Polish ‘grandmas’ **who have all these holy cards, statues of saints especially the Virgin, and are always talking to ‘them’ and never to “God”. . .
And yet I, and all the other little old grannies usually know exactly who is the focus (and it’s usually we who come on as I did to say but yes, the focus on prayer is ultimately God). . . So a lot of the so-called ‘Getting lost in the saints and leaving God out of it’ is pretty much an urban/rural legend, usually brought up by the ‘better educated’ (never mind that some of us grannies have college degrees including terminal ones) and usually aimed at the ‘past’ (as if anything old automatically doesn’t get it ‘right’). I am not saying this about YOU at all personally, but so often it seems to be a variant of Rhodes’ 'white man’s burden" (i.e., the ‘educated Catholics’ attempts to prove to all and sundry that he/she is not bound by the errors of the past horde of undereducated old coots, and that we NEED to make it clear that any possible taint of that old legend shouldn’t exist and therefore we must tailor our language because we’re modern and all. IOW, rushing to defend something that certainly never existed to the extent that is usually claimed in order to placate the sensibilities of those who are only too eager to see Catholics as pantheistic, and not realizing that the quick reflex-defense actually makes it seem, to the eyes of those critical to begin with, that we are indeed guilty and need to make elaborate twistings in order to be as clear and direct as a good Protestant would be in understanding prayer! (Not to mention that it was the **Protestants who changed the meaning of the word prayer to begin with, by defining it solely as ‘communication with God.’ ** But prayer is not simply that, and that is **another reason **why our rush to push the saints into that narrow ‘we only pray to God, we pray WITH the saints’ is just playing into the hands of those who are themselves narrowing the word incorrectly.
Sometimes I feel like starting a movement, “Take back our words”. . . Take back the original definition of prayer, gay, Christian, gentleman, etc. etc. They have all been narrowed and twisted beyond recognition so that they don’t really mean what they have meant for generations and generations. Why should I jettison perfectly good words and accept poor substitutes instead?
