No offense, but the "artical" is hard to take seriously.
It is the official position of the Roman Catholic Church that Catholics do not pray TO saints or Mary, but rather that Catholics can ask saints or Mary to pray FOR them.
Why "saints or Mary"? Mary is a saint. And what source does the author have for saying what our "official position" is? I personally have no problem saying that I pray to saints and angels as well as to God. They're all personal beings, and prayer is a form of request.
Heck, I pray to my cat, Clint Junior Lightning, who is probably more in the demon category, as in, "Would you puhLEEZE remove your claws from my toe! It's three in the morning!"
Catholics view Mary and saints as "intercessors" before God.
Catholics view all Christians as intercessors before God.
They believe that a saint, who is glorified in Heaven, has more "direct access" to God than we do. Therefore, if a saint delivers a prayer to God, it is more effective than us praying to God directly.
Source? "Official" source? That is practically a cartoonish or nursery school depiction of what I think, so imprecise as to be virtually useless for any serious discussion. It is taking one inadequate metaphor, often used for those not theologically inclined, and blowing it up into an argument.
Ah, the old I Tim 2:5 argument. I haven't seen that in, wow, it must be minutes, maybe even hours! How time flies!
In the normal or garden variety use of the word intercessor or mediator, anyone who asks something on someone else's behalf. In the normal use of words, therefore if Paul, also in the Timothy correspondence, directs us to make supplications, prayers, intercessions (koff koff), and thanksgivings for all men shall we conclude that Paul is contradicting himself? Or shall we rather look into one theme of Paul's discourse, that of being members of Christ and "in" Christ, and wonder if the head of a body normally acts alone, or if in an integrated person the body does what the head directs?
However, the practice of many Catholics diverges from official Roman Catholic teaching.
It would have been more fruitful and less controversial to stay here. Yes, the thoughts and practices of some Catholics are superstitious and erroneous.
Oh no -- not the "need" argument! Clearly the work of the Son and the intercession of the 2nd and 3rd persons of the Trinity is all we "need". So why does Paul tell us to make supplications and the rest? Maybe it's not about "need"? Maybe it's about being members of the one intercessor -- and acting like it? Something in that neighborhood? Is your side opposed to the asking for prayers threads which appear on FR? I mean what is the "need"?
Catholics argue that praying to Mary and the saints is no different than asking someone here on earth to pray for you. Let us examine that claim.
Let us indeed. Actually this Catholic would claim that praying to the saints, among whom he considers the Mother of God to be preeminent though not different in kind, is not importantly different from asking someone on earth to pray for us. The Bible does not say 2+2=4, but we are allowed to use our heads.
The omniscient argument! I greet it affectionately as I would an old and disreputable, but still endearing, neighborhood drunk!
Look: Even in his evidently rapidly advancing dotage, Ahnold the Gubernator is stronger than I, and richer than I. By the reasoning presented here, I am saying he possesses all strength and all wealth. If we say the saints in heaven have something more than we, how does it follow that they have it all?
As to the wizened and bewhiskered necromancy argument, we Catholics think something happened on Easter Weekend approximately 1970 years, give or take, ago. And what the witch of Endor did with Samuel is as different from what we do with saints is as different as rape is from wooing.
There is absolutely no basis or need to pray to anyone other than God alone.
So there is no Biblical basis for the threads on Free Republic which ask Freepers to pray for someone? Paul is wrong to ask for the prayers of the Ephesians? This is an example of what I mean by saying it's hard to take this seriously. The point under contention is whether there is some basis or "need" for asking the saints in heaven for their prayers, isn't it? Why not stick to that point? Instead in the peroration this "artical" says there's no basis or need to ask for anyone's prayers, which is plainly contradicted by Paul's own words.
As for "Biblical", we find in the Bible promises that God makes to His Church. For us, that's enough. I try, I do not always succeed, not to pick and choose which of God's promises I will stake my life and thought on.
The article blends erroneous practices with "official" teaching, which it declares but does not support with citations. It confuses MORE power with ALL power. It is ludicrously imprecise, saying here there is no Biblical basis to ask ANYONE for prayers and giving there the very citation of Paul's asking for prayers. It takes analogies and images as theological arguments. It confuses the necromantic compelling of shades with prayerful petition of those who live to God. In general it sends out a sledge hammer to do a scalpel's job. There is a significant difference in our thought. This article fails to present it, IMHO.
Asking the dead to “go over to Christ or God” and use some sort of special pull the dead must have, outside of anything in the Bible, is crazy.