“Asking a Saint to pray for you is perfectly reasonable, just like asking FReepers to pray for you.”
Except that you can communicate directly with FReepers and FReepers can communicate with God through Christ and engage in intercessory prayer. A middle-man fantasy “saint” (a powerless dead guy) is neither necessary nor effective, so why waste time? Pray directly to God through Jesus. (For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. I Tim. 2:5)
Every born-again Christian is a “saint”. In the Bible, there is no higher-level guy who was decreed to be a saint, e.g., Paul, Stephen, etc. ALL Christians are saints, which is clear in Paul’s epistles. He wrote to, and referred to, “the saints” who were ALL the members of The Church, not just some of them — not just the cool ones or wo were extra spiritual.
We believe in adhering to the U.S. Constitution literally. Why can’t we give the Bible the same respect? Does Thomas Jefferson deserve more respect than God? What made the early popes believe that they had power over God to change His words and make up funky new stuff?
He's not dead.
So you can’t pray for the poor guy’s loved one, just deliver a sermon?
I’ll pray twice, to make up for you.
What a strange construction of reality. There's no evidence that the early popes believed they could do that, nor DID they do that.