Also FTA.....
WHAT ABOUT PRAYING TO MARY AND INDIVIDUAL SAINTS? AGAIN, THERE IS ONLY ONE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MAN: THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. TRADITION IN THE CATHLIC CHURCH IS EQUAL TO SCRIPTURE. THAT, TOO, IS UNBIBLICAL.
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Catholics walk a tight-rope when they claim they don’t pray to dead people; that they only “ask” those dead people to ask Christ for this or that.
That argument falls off the tight-rope every time.
On point one... the Bible is a product of our tradition. Without the Catholic Church and her traditions you would not have a canon of scripture.
On point two... please review John 3:16 and see tag line.
Only if you believe Catholics ignore the 1st Commandment.
When you ask your neighbor to pray for you, is that person acting as a mediator? No. He is merely offering his prayer as well. So why not ask your neighbors in Heaven to pray for you? Why not ask His mother? The people at the wedding feast at Cana did, and look what happened! (John 2:1-11)
Perhaps you need to recognize that the English word “pray,” has multiple meanings. If you believe that all prayer is identical, then you are constraining the definition.
Pray, as in worship due only to God, is one thing. Pray, as to petition others on our behalf, is something totally different.
Finally, are the souls in Heaven “dead?” Assuming you go to Heaven, will you be dead? NO! You will be praising God ceaselessly! As a member of the Body of Christ, you will also be petitioning Him for the souls of your brethren on Earth.
Those “dead people” are alive in Christ!
In Catholicism, the “church” includes the living and the dead who have gone before us.
Since the prayers of a righteous man is efficacious, according to James, we ask all sorts of folks to pray for us: Jesus’ mom, our dead relatives, saints who we like, our next door neighbor, the beggers who come to our door.
It’s not logical but a human impulse to ask others to pray with us to god, and we figure the more who ask the more likely he will answer us.
The Centurian asked the Jewish leaders to ask Jesus to come to heal his servant, so there is a biblical precedent for asking for an intermediary to help us.