In my previous post, I discussed the serious theological problems with praying to dead people.
However, there are a couple of common responses I didn’t get around to answering in my last post. I didn’t forget about them. I just wanted to dedicate a full post to laying waste to them.
The argument goes like this:
BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN: “You shouldn’t be praying to the dead. Asking the dead for things is a serious sin in the Bible and on top of that, it’s idolatrous. Instead, pray to the one who created you.”
CATHOLIC: “But they’re not dead! They’re alive in heaven. So it’s okay! You ask your friends and family to pray for you. Asking saints to pray for you is the same thing. I’m going to keep praying to my sinless coredemptrix heavenly mommy.”
I don’t actually know where this argument comes from. I surmise that this isn’t a traditional teaching of the Catholic church, but instead, it’s something that’s been proliferated in recent years, and Catholics have picked it up as a kind of rehearsed, but thoughtless, answer to the objection.
It seems to me that the Catholic church has traditionally understood that dead people are dead, and they’re not actually afraid to admit it. That in itself should be sufficient evidence against the “But they’re not dead” argument. Their own church doesn’t even teach this!
The way the church actually responds is by admitting that the dead saints are, in fact, dead, but death doesn’t matter to prayer and they can still hear our prayers and intercede on our behalves. That was one of the “many things” they were “put in charge of.” Here’s the official teaching of the Catholic church on intercessory prayer of the saints:
The witnesses who have preceded us into the kingdom, especially those whom the Church recognizes as saints, share in the living tradition of prayer by the example of their lives, the transmission of their writings, and their prayer today. They contemplate God, praise him and constantly care for those whom they have left on earth. When they entered into the joy of their Master, they were “put in charge of many things.” Their intercession is their most exalted service to God’s plan. We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2683 (emphasis added)
But Are They Dead?
Catholic laymen and laywomen will almost always instantly reply to the criticism that they’re praying to dead people with “But they’re not dead! They’re spiritually alive in heaven!”
Of course, this is completely dodging the issue. No protestant is trying to argue that heaven is empty, and there are no saints actually in heaven. And no Catholic (hopefully) would seriously try to argue that physical death doesn’t actually exist, and that person you saw go into the ground at that last funeral you went to wasn’t actually real.
Instead, the heart of the issue is that there’s something that differentiates physically alive and physically dead people, even if there is nothing that is different about their spirits which are both alive in Christ.
A person can have a living body and a dead spirit.
Catholics who respond this way are pretending there’s nothing different between the physical body and the spirit. Physical death doesn’t actually do anything in this view. I can chit chat with my dead great great grandmother just the same as I can sit down and have tea with my mother down the road.
That’s silly. Of course there’s a difference between a physically alive person and a physically dead one.
The difference is one is on earth and is accessible to us. The other isn’t. Death actually does something.
If we believe we can talk to the dead as if they were here with us, then we don’t actually believe in death. Death doesn’t actually do anything to us. It’s not a problem. There’s no real distinction between being alive, and whatever we call it when we get put in the ground after we stop moving or get burnt up and poured into an urn.
This isn’t hopeful. It’s hopeless. Most of us recognize death as real, because we’ve all experienced it around us in one way or another. The good news is death will be destroyed, but it isn’t destroyed yet. That means, in the mean time, death actually does something. It separates us from our body. It also separates us from our loved ones. It’s the consequence of our sin.
What’s God Have to Say About All This?
There are all kinds of references to death, actual death, in the Bible. Yes, even the death of saints. An example of this is the prophet Samuel. But how can we possibly know that Samuel was dead?
Samuel 28:3 “Now Samuel had died”
Samuel was also a prophet and a faithful man, and went to be with the Lord after his death. Therefore, Samuel was physically dead, but spiritually alive in heaven.
Then, King Saul decided to go to a necromancer (which was a terrible sin and punishable by death) to communicate with Samuel from the dead. This was not a good thing.
The story of King Saul and Samuel illustrates the issue with praying to dead saints. The saints really are in heaven. But they really are dead. And we have no business talking to them. It’s necromancy.
So They Really Are Dead. But Do Catholics Really Pray to Them?
“So,” our faithful Catholic says, “Fine. They really are dead. But it’s okay to ask them to pray for us. We’re not really praying to them. Asking and praying is different.”
This boils down to semantics. If we lived a long time ago, we’d use the word “pray” a lot more commonly in our speech. Pray really does just mean to ask someone something. It’s the same thing. Catholics really do pray to saints and there’s no way out of it. But prayer in itself isn’t wrong. It’s the fact that they’re dead that makes it wrong. Don’t get distracted in discussions of semantics. Keep the conversation on the fact that what they’re doing is necromancy and punishable by death in the Old Testament.
Our faithful Catholic again retorts, “Okay. They really are dead, and it really is prayer. But it’s okay to pray to dead people because it’s not like I’m worshipping them. Worshipping them would be wrong, but I’m not doing that.”
Hopefully I’ve demonstrated that there actually is something wrong with praying to the dead. It has nothing to do with worship. Saul wasn’t worshipping Samuel. But what he did was terribly sinful, and alongside other Godless activity, earned him the loss of his kingdom and an eventual end by the sword.
Is It Worship Though?
Many Catholics will try to make the issue not about prayer, but about worship. In fact, in my recent video and Instagram posts, I made the argument that we shouldn’t be praying to dead people and many Catholics responded with “Prayer isn’t worship.”
I never said that it was. This is probably another one of their list of thoughtless responses to the common arguments against them. But now that they’ve mentioned it, I think they actually are treating dead saints with worshipful behavior.
Worship is defined as reverence and adoration. To treat someone like God is to worship them by definition. To do something to someone that should be solely reserved for God, is to take away what rightfully belongs to God and give it to something lesser (an idol). Doing this automatically turns whatever you replace God with into an idol. Of course it’s fine to give people reverence sometimes. It’s also fine to have people in your life who you adore. The problem comes in when you revere people in the same way you ought to revere God. Or adore people in the same way you would adore God.
In my last post on this topic, I discussed how the act of praying to dead people imposes divine attributes onto them. If you believe you can pray to dead people, you are making them into gods, which is idolatrous and blasphemous.
In Conclusion
There’s no way around it. Praying to the dead just doesn’t work. It’s not Biblical, it doesn’t make sense, it creates awful holes in Christian theology, it’s idol worship, and it’s blasphemy, and worst of all, it pretends to be faithfulness. It was created by idolatrous men in silly robes and pointy hats, very likely as a way to make people believe famous people and dead relatives are listening to them to make them feel good. It also makes people believe that if you’re a good enough person, you’ll be able to have people praying to you one day, like God. That sounds awfully similar to other heretical cults like Mormonism, where you get to become like God.
It also sounds very similar to what Satan temped Eve with in the Garden.
“you will be like God”
Satan – Genesis 3:5
If we really love our dead relatives, we wouldn’t treat them like God.
I can’t imagine Mary, or any other saint, not being disappointed that there are so many deceived people praying to her instead of the God who created the universe. Just like all Godly saints, if our relatives in heaven actually can hear us, they’d likely be terribly disappointed we’re praying to them instead of the Creator of the Universe that we all have direct access to through Jesus Christ.
