“Digital media can efficiently handle billionfold communications in a flash.”
Human beings are not cell phones or computers. In order to process an “infinite” amount of data, to personally hear the prayers of every person praying to them, to judge the matter and make a decision to answer it or not, they would need the divine attributes of omnipresence and omniscience. You are also stuck in the strange situation of depending on the righteousness of a created being, rather than the righteousness imputed by faith in Jesus Christ, the latter of which makes the believer very much both a King and a Priest in the sight of God (Rev 5).
“Do you understand that when one is in heaven with God, one is outside of time and space? Time and space no longer have any limiting power over the angels and the saints who are in the presence of God.”
Even if they are in infinite heaven, they’re still, by your own admission, dealing with an infinite amount of data. Furthermore, human beings praying today are not in heaven. They are on Earth, and Mary is said to be hearing, personally, the prayers and devotions of human beings here and now, manifesting herself on pieces of toast or in statues that blink or cry blood. Unless you have a heavenly UPS system delivering the prayers into eternity, which, of course, isn’t what the RCC teaches.
“So if Mary, or the Martyr Stephen, or St. Michael the Archangel, can hear many people at once, it would not surprise me in the least. Even that pathetic wizened beaten dud, the fallen spirit Satan, can probably do that. And all the citizens of Heaven are greater than Satan.”
There’s only one God, and one mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus.
True. But we use them to transmit, store, analyze, and respond to information; in other words, to communicate. They give human beings capacities which are strictly natural, finite, but beyond the physiological.
"In order to process an “infinite” amount of data...they would need the divine attributes of omnipresence and omniscience. "
True. That is why the word "infinite" makes your statement correct; but not the word "billions." Humans can receive, analyze, and respond to "billions" of communications already.
"You are also stuck in the strange situation of depending on the righteousness of a created being, rather than the righteousness imputed by faith in Jesus Christ, the latter of which makes the believer very much both a King and a Priest in the sight of God (Rev 5)."
Not true. I depend on the righteousness of no created being. I depend on the Lord Jesus Christ.
"Even if they are in infinite heaven, they’re still, by your own admission, dealing with an infinite amount of data. "
Not true. I made no such "admission". You missed the main point. They are NOT dealing with an infinite amount of data. Infinite does not equal "dozens," or "lots," or "a really, really, big number" or "billions." Infinity is infinitely greater than any number.
Humans have the theoretical capacity, even in the natural plane,to deal with anything that is numerical. Infinity is not numerical.
"Mary is said to be hearing, personally, the prayers and devotions of human beings here and now...Unless you have a heavenly UPS system delivering the prayers into eternity, which, of course, isn’t what the RCC teaches."
I have mercifully left out the nonsense about the toast. What I did assert, is that even if Mary can hear 5 or 5x101,000,000 prayers, she is still operating in a finite capacity. Even cyberscience could give a mere, finite, natural person such a capacity. It is not a capacity which (even as a natural phenomenon) would be restricted to God.
Mary's capacities are finite, but of course not technological. They go beyond technological to preternatural, that is, enhanced not by mastery of energy and materials, but by God's gracious gift. Super-communicativity is something God could grant to any person in heaven, angelic or human.
For instance, the Book of Revelation tells us ( Revelation 5:8, and Revelation 8:3-4) that the angels offer to God bowls of incense "with the prayers of all God's people." This is an image of super-communicativity. The angels are offering our prayers. Our prayers --- billions --- are going through them!
"There’s only one God, and one mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus."
True. And an emphatic AMEN!
I'm glad we can agree.