http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1607763/posts?page=12#12
2. I don't understand your comment about Elias, as referenced in the Epistle of James. It seems unrelated to the discussion, as I don't think it has to do with the intercession of members of the Body of Christ, but perhaps you will explain.
3. The entire NT doctrine about the Body of Christ emphasizes that we are continually sharing spiritual goods with each other, continually praying for each other, continually bearing each others' burdens --- and that we all need each other. Jesus Christ clearly also teaches that the faithful who have gone on before us are not dead, because certainly they are all alive unto God. Therefore they are a part of this continual intercession.
It is this awareness that the Body of Christ really IS alive in the sense of His Church's continual giving and receiving of love in Him, which has inspired His Church from the beginning to pray for each other.
It appears to me that many don't quite see the church as the pillar and foundation of the truth, though the church is His Body and His Bride.
Regardless, a Christian should no more kiss a Qur'an or show such affection to that idolatrous book than he should do so to a figure of Dagon.
And JP2 certainly has been criticized by conservative RCs.
I don't understand your comment about Elias, as referenced in the Epistle of James.
It was the next verse after the one you quoted, and the point was that Elijah did not pray to anyone else but the Lord, nor did any other believer. The Lord Himself instructed, Our Father," not "Our mother." And the Spirit cries "Abba, Father," (Gal. 4:6) not "Mamma, Mother." Only pagans made supplications to other beings. To address anyone else in Heaven infer deity, thus Christ is prated to as the only Heavenly intercessor btwn man and God, and only God is shown having the power to hear the multitudinous prayers to Heaven.
The entire NT doctrine about the Body of Christ emphasizes that we are continually sharing spiritual goods with each other, continually praying for each other, continually bearing each others' burdens --- and that we all need each other. Jesus Christ clearly also teaches that the faithful who have gone on before us are not dead, because certainly they are all alive unto God
Therefore they are a part of this continual intercession.
Typical vain egregious extrapolation, as your premise utterly fails to warrant your conclusion. Outside being examples, the interdependence of the Body of Christ shown to be practiced on earth. Being alive in glory as part of the body of Christ simply does not translate into hearing prayers addressed to them and and making intercession in response! You have to know better than that.
The Bible nowhere teaches that the departed are dependent on us, nor that they are receiving prayer addressed to them, or still sharing things with us, nor even that any created being of Heaven could communicate with those in this realm unless both parties were somehow in the same realm in a personal encounter.
Only God is shown able to hear all the prayers of earth, whom believers can commune with without a earthly visitation of sorts
Yet despite the absence of even one single prayer to created beings in all the Bible, Caths presume to add as a doctrine what the Holy Spirit left out, despite prayer being a most basic practice, with about 200 prayers being recorded! So then they attempt to argue for it based upon the false premise of correspondence to earthly relations, as if complete, but which Scripture also fails to support.
It appears to me that many don't quite see the church as the pillar and foundation of the truth, though the church is His Body and His Bride.
What? You want to extrapolate the novel (in Scripture) practice of praying to created beings in Heaven out of 1Tim. 3:15?! That is specious desperation, and which incredibly presumes the Scriptures do not say enough on prayer so that you must cook it up out of false premises.
Give it up. You would be better off just admitting it is not of Scripture, but of tradition.
As French historian Jacques Le Goff states,
“It then becomes clear that at the time of Judas Maccabeus - around 170 B.C., a surprisingly innovative period - prayer for the dead was not practiced, but that a century later it was practiced by certain Jews.” — Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, p. 45, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.