Replies

“Mary, for example, doesn’t need to handle “millions of prayers per second” (those are scare quotes, not direct quotes, BTW); she has all eternity in which to respond to them.”

Anyway, you didn’t actually address my point, since my point was about omniscience, not omnipotence. In order to hear prayers from all over the world, especially silent prayers that are made inside a person’s head, requires omniscience, which is one of the attributes of a deity. Saying that there is no time in heaven doesn’t address that difficulty with the Catholic position.

“Mary, for example, doesn’t need to handle “millions of prayers per second” (those are scare quotes, not direct quotes, BTW); she has all eternity in which to respond to them.”

Man, I sure hope none of those prayers are not urgent! Your whole argument just shot down any reason why we should believe you should pray to Mary.

Imagine a soldier on a battlefield, or someone in Hospice care, with little time to live.....and they're praying to Mary for their salvation.....

Opps....sorry, she didn't have time to get to you before you died. Now what happens to that person if Mary couldn't intervene on their behalf??

See how ridiculous this business about praying to mary is?

The original poster's point is well made, but you just took it to another level.

Ha! So your concept of heaven is one where Mary is just eternally working her way through an “inbox” that is overflowing, with requests that God (being actually omniscient and omnipotent) could just take care of with no effort at all. I think that is even sillier.

I'm not surprised that anyone would find their own silly straw man to be silly, since it's designed to be silly.

There's no reason at all to cast the situation in such a crass, sneering light. (One might as easily denigrate motherhood by portraying it as "an endless stream of dirty diapers"... which insinuates that there is nothing WITHIN or BEYOND that mundane chore, and such a comment says far more about the commenter than about the thing about which the comments were made.)

Anyway, you didn’t actually address my point, since my point was about omniscience, not omnipotence. In order to hear prayers from all over the world, especially silent prayers that are made inside a person’s head, requires omniscience, which is one of the attributes of a deity.

...and I suppose Acts 5:1-11 (St. Peter vs. Ananias and Sapphira) required that St. Peter be omniscient, since he knew that the two of them had lied about their property? If we're willing to admit that God enlightens those whom He wills in that case, why is it such a stretch that He could enlighten the Communion of Saints in Heaven to whatever prayers He wishes them to know?

Saying that there is no time in heaven doesn’t address that difficulty with the Catholic position.

It wasn't meant to do so. One of the more baffling prejudices I've found in some Evangelical Protestants (especially those of the anti-Catholic-Church type) is the idea that God somehow does not WANT anyone but Himself involved in the business of handling the needs of the faithful. You say that "God (being actually omniscient and omnipotent) could just take care of with no effort at all"; and that is certainly true; but isn't that also true of every need which exists? Why pray for ANYONE else, EVER, since God both knows the needs before we ask, and God has the power to deal with them with no effort? And yet, God plainly wants us to pray for one another... mainly because our two purposes for EXISTENCE are: (1) to be united to God, and (2) to be united to each other in the Communion of Saints. (Think of the two greatest commandments: love God, and love neighbor... and then ponder why these are commandments AT ALL. They exist to direct people toward that two-fold union.) The idea that God would somehow be passionately desirous of our prayers for each other while on earth, but would (for whatever reason) absolutely prohibit any such prayer by the Saints IN Heaven for those still on earth, is absurd.