In Defense of the Faith | thebereancall.org

In Defense of the Faith

September 1, 2018
Dave Hunt

Do Catholics Really Pray to the “Saints”?

Question: I can’t seem to get a straight answer from my Catholic friends concerning prayers to the saints. They seem ambivalent on the subject. Some admit they pray to Mary, while others deny it. What is the truth?

Response: It is not surprising that you have found ambivalence. Roman Catholic apologists generally deny that prayers are offered to Mary and the saints and insist that they only ask Mary and the saints to pray for them, just as one might ask of a friend. This deceit is promoted widely and vigorously to counter valid criticism from Protestants on this vital subject.

            For example, a recent major article featured on the cover of the official magazine of the Christian Booksellers Association made this statement: “Catholics only ask saints to pray for them – just as we ask the living to pray for us.” The author, himself a Catholic and university professor, surely knew that he was not telling the truth. And why would the Christian Booksellers Association, and evangelical body, pass along such misinformation?

            Here are just a few of the facts. Consider first of all “The Holy Father’s [pope’s] Prayer for the Marian Year [1988].” This was the official prayer for all Catholics to Mary for an entire year and came from the highest authority in the Roman Catholic Church. In it Pope John Paul II never once asked Mary to pray for Catholics. Instead, he asked her to do what she would have to be God to do: to comfort, guide, strengthen, and protect “the whole of humanity….” His prayer ended, “Sustain us, O Virgin Mary, on our journey of faith and obtain for us the grace of eternal salvation.”

Mary: As Great as God and More Sympathetic?

            For Mary to guide and protect the whole of humanity an sustain all Catholics on their journey of faith, she would have to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. What supernatural powers would it take on her part to hear millions of prayers simultaneously in hundreds of different languages and dialects, to keep them all in her memory, and to answer them all by her power! Furthermore, it is blasphemy of the worst kind to ask Mary to obtain the salvation that Christ alone has already provided through His death and resurrection and now offers freely by His grace to all who will believe in Him.

            In Denver, at the close of the Sunday Mass for the August 1993 World Youth Day, John Paul II consigned all youth and the entire world to Mary’s protection and guidance. Here again was a prayer by the Pope to Mary asking her to do what she would have to be deity to accomplish:

                        Mary of the New Advent, we implore your protection on the preparations that will now begin for the next meeting [World Youth Day]. Mary, full of grace, we entrust the next World Youth Day to you. Mary, assumed into heaven, we entrust the young people of the world…the whole world to you! (NRI Trumpet, October 1993, page 14).

Catholics only ask Mary to pray for them? If on asks prayer of a friend, one doesn’t say, “I implore your protection and entrust the whole world to you”! Yet such requests that only God could fulfill are typical of Catholic petitions of Mary, who is exalted to omnipotence and credited with caring for all who trust in her.

Both the new Catechism of the Catholic Church (approved by the Vatican) and the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) refer to Mary as “the Mother of God to whose protection the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs.” Why fly to her protection when God’s protection is available. And if this Catholic Mary can indeed protect all Catholics from all dangers and supply all their needs, then she must be at least as great as God. Moreover, she is apparently considered to be more sympathetic than God because at least a thousand times as many prayers are offered to Mary as are offered to God and Christ combined.

Mary is the “Mother of God”? Yes, Jesus is God and she is His mother. She is only His mother, however, through His incarnation. She is the mother of the body that Christ took when He came into the world. Obviously, however, she can’t be the mother of the eternal Son of God (Christ as God before He became man), for He existed an eternity before Mary was born. Yet prayers to Mary, including for salvation, are based upon her imagined status as Queen Mother of heaven.

Salvation through Mary?

The most authoritative book written on Catholicism’s “Virgin Mary” is by Cardinal and Saint Alphonsus de Liguori. Titled The Glories of Mary, it is a virtual compendium of what the great “saints” of the Roman Catholic Church have to say about Mary down through the centuries. The chapter headings are staggering, crediting Mary with attributes, abilities, titles, and functions that belong to Christ alone: Mary, Our Life, Our Sweetness; Mary, Our Hope; Mary, Our Help; Mary, Our Advocate; Mary, Our Guardian; Mary Our Salvation.”

It should be quite clear that Roman Catholics are taught to look to Mary not only for the supernatural protection and guidance and help that only God could provide, but also for that very salvation that only God through Christ could provide and, in fact, has already provided. Here is a typical prayer, once again, to Mary, taken from a popular booklet of Marian prayers, and is obtainable at any Catholic bookstore:

In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee do I entrust my soul…. For, if thou protect me, dear Mother, I fear nothing; not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them; nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together; nor even from Jesus, my Judge himself, because by one prayer from thee, he will be appeased. But one thing I fear; that in the hour of my temptation, I may neglect to call on thee, and thus perish miserably. Obtain for me, then, the pardon of my sins…. [St Alphonsus de Liguori, The Glories of Mary  (Redemptorist Fathers, 1931), pp. 82-83, 94, 160, 169-70].

The Rosary: Most Repeated Prayer to Mary

As one final example from the hundreds that could be given, consider the Rosary. This is the best-known and most recited Catholic prayer, repeated millions of times by the faithful, worldwide, each day. It concludes with this final petition:

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy! Our life, our sweetness, and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping, in this valley of tears. Turn, then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us; and after this our exile show us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus; O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.

Quite clearly, Catholics do not merely ask Mary to pray for them. They pray to her. And why not, if she is all that the Rosary says she is: our life and our hope? The Bible, however, says that Christ is “our life” (Colossians:3:4) and “our hope” (1 Timothy 1: 1)! Again Paul declares that the “blessed hope” of the Christian is “the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus:2:13). Peter confirms that the Christian has been given a “living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter:1:3). Never does the Bible suggest that Mary is also our life or hope! Christ is more than enough!

Do Mary’s “eyes of mercy” actually see everyone in the world? Isn’t that capability an attribute of God alone? Is she really the “Mother of Mercy”? Didn’t God’s mercy exist long before Mary was even born? We read of the “God of my mercy” (Psalm:59:17) and are encouraged to trust in the mercy of God (Psalm:52:8; Luke:1:78, etc.), but we never read a word in the entire Bible about Mary’s mercy toward mankind. Those who know God’s mercy have no need of Mary’s.

Regardless of what any individual Catholic may believe, the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and the practice of the vast majority of her members elevates Mary to a position where she is at east equal in power to God and is considered to be far more sympathetic than He. No wonder, then, that Roman Catholics by the hundreds of millions perpetually offer prayers to Mary for every need and desire.

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