Why its a mistake to give the Catholic Church support via membership or donations

CATHOLIC SAINTS ARE FAKE GODS
 
"And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which showed me these things. Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God." Revelation 22:8,9

The angel though he could hear and see John would not accept worship on the grounds that he was a mere servant of God. This contradicts Catholicism in claiming that it is because the saints are servants of God that they may be invoked.

Idolatry is simply worshipping as God what is not God or worshipping something with questionable morals. It is bad because God is thought to be perfect love and you end up adoring and ruining yourself by focusing on what is imperfect and depending on it.  In other words, you lower your standards and yourself by worshipping that which has vices and a potential bad side.  So to avoid idolatry:

-You decide that a God if he exists is to be just and perfectly loving

-You decide that this God exists and worship him. 

The Catholic Church has Catholics praying to saints in Heaven for the saints are supposedly closer to God than what they are. The Church denies this is idol worship and claims that the saints are merely being asked to pray with you to God. If that is true they would pray along the lines of, "St Anthony hear me. Pray for me that I will be more like you so that God will hear my prayers like he does yours." If God accepts you as you are as long as you really intend to become as holy as a saint though you fall short, to claim that you pray to a saint because he or she is closer to God than you is to tell a lie and to insult God's mercy.

Your sinful side would like you to go for spiritual help to that which cannot help so that you feel you are doing something about it but are not really threatening it. It is easy to pray for conversion to idols when you love your sin for it cannot work.

If God has not authorised praying to saints or asking them to intercede with him for you then it is idolatry to invoke the saints.

If you do not trust the love of God so that you prefer to get a saint who is the perfect man and woman in your view to ask him for favours for you that is idolatry. All worship of idols is seen as a grave sin in the Bible because it is rooted in the inner ego or one's own lower nature. Feeding that nature only leads to worse idolatry and addiction to religious lies and obstinate refusal to turn to God properly.

The Church itself says it is idolatry to pray to a saint purely because they are thought to have magical powers or miracle influence with God. It is supposed to be primarily about having a relationship with the saint so that you develop something of that saint's virtue and holiness in yourself. But then the Church turns around and tells you that God will not answer certain prayers unless a saint intercedes or influences him to do it. It is an awkward attempt to conceal Catholic polytheism.

The Church then might respond that God has direct power and the saints do not. He uses his power through them but they have no power at all of their own. Then they tell you that this is the reason the saints are not gods (small g) or Gods (big G). But the Catholics say it is really God's love and not his power that matters. It is his love that makes him God to us - and therefore deserving of worship - rather than his power. The saints do have love of their own. Therefore the saints are gods.

THE SAINTS AND THEIR INFINITE KNOWLEDGE

Idol worship of statues is condemned for statues cannot hear or help you. If the saints cannot have an intimate knowledge of you, then it is idolatry to pray to them.

Those who say that idolaters deep down are not mistaken that there is a higher power such as God so they intend to worship him after all are only lying and making politically correct excuses for the idolaters. The excuse overlooks the fact that they are called idolaters because they treat what cannot hear or see or pity them as if it can.

The Bible never says that the saints by default know all the secrets of our hearts and know enough about what is going to happen so as to be able to intercede for us. Protestants sometimes think the saints pray for us just the same way as we pray for each other - we do it as a gesture of good will and are not claiming to try and get God to do something as if he needs to be told and needs to be kept on the right path. Praying for another person is not necessarily the same as interceding for them. If you think the saints should try to influence God then what about the butterfly effect? Every event no matter how small changes how the future will be. For example, had one of Napoleon's ancestors simply walked past the girl at the market instead of talking to her there would have been no sex at a certain point in time and the person destined to be his great grandfather was never born. Thus there would have been no Napoleon. If there had been it would have been a different Napoleon. There is no such thing as a straightforward situation. A saint cannot try to influence God to help you unless the saint knows all things. If the saint knows all things then the saint is a god. Even the pagan gods did not claim such a degree of power. The saint would have to be God or better than God. It would be blatantly arrogant and irresponsible to try and influence God when he knows all things and you do not.

THE SAINTS ARE NOT HOLY

Saints for Catholics are those who go straight to Heaven at death.

No saint could possibly go straight to Heaven. A true saint would agree, if asked by God, to suffer incredible torment for all eternity so that God could use it to save souls from Hell. The saint's torment however would not be Hell for the saint would not be divorced from God. But it would be as painful. The only way to be sure a saint would do this is for him to actually do it. The saints wouldn't do it meaning that though they might be charming enough their attitude is full of self. They would commit the ultimate betrayal of letting people suffer forever so that they could enjoy heavenly bliss forever. Thus the Catholic saints are not saints at all. Thus the traditional Catholic doctrine that perfect contrition, meaning you turn away from sin because you would sacrifice anything for the love of God, is difficult is nearly vindicated. What is vindicated rather is that it is impossible, instead of difficult. Thus plenary indulgences are also impossible. They are based on the notion that you can detach yourself from sin completely in order to gain remission of all the punishment due to your sin.

Lets repeat: the person who will not suffer forever for others is committing the greatest sin possible. The only thing worse is how many others he or she lets down. It is graver to refuse to help save a billion billion people than two.

The Catholics cannot say they expect nobody to suffer to the uttermost forever. They expect the damned to do it over a stupid refusal to repent over sin. So it would be more reasonable to expect saints to do it.

The saints are really demons. Its honouring those who hide their vices in the robes of false virtue.

Those who revere hypocrites will become like what they revere.

To consult with the saints in prayer is the sin of necromancy, the ultimate black magic.

PRAYING TO SAINTS IS PAGAN

Catholics pray to the saints and they say they are asking them to intercede for them to God.

The official Catholic line is that when they pray to saints it is merely a different way of praying to God. So you are praying to God alone by praying to the saints. So strictly speaking the Catholics are allegedly praying to God through the saints and are not praying to the saints.

People who prefer saints to God would say all that anyway. The official Catholic teaching overlooks the fact that some people do not intend to pray to God but to get others, the saints in this case, to do it for them. The Church does not believe its own explanation for it says all are obligated to pray to God themselves and cannot be always asking others to do it for them.

Prayer to God would necessarily be trying to focus on God. Prayer to a saint would not necessarily be trying to focus on God. Which form of prayer then is inferior? Which one honours God best?

The Church may say, "If I offer prayers to God through a saint, I am really treating the saint not as an intercessor but as a way of focusing on God. When I revere a saint I revere him because of what God has made him to be - he would not even exist without God. God has given him all he has and made him all he is. So in other words, to revere a saint is about God and not the saint." This presupposes that there is no goodness without God and if God is a person then goodness is a person. The trouble is the Church teaches that logic can tell us what is right and wrong and denies that something is made good just because God says so.

To honour a saint as a manifestation of good is then to make a god of the saint. Good is independent of God thus it is not to honour God at all. It is not true that to honour a saint is to honour the saint's goodness that comes from God for God is the servant of goodness as we are.

Most people do not pray to the saint as a mere manifestation of what God is like. And it is not true it is about honouring the saint and desiring to be like her for saints are nearly always venerated by people who don't know enough about them. Catholics pray to Mary despite knowing barely anything about her and her virtues and how she puts them into practice.

Also, we know that goodness cannot be a person. Goodness is an abstract thing. You may as well say 1 is a person and 2 is a person. Something is not good just because God commands it. Goodness is goodness even if God does not exist. You can only venerate a saint as an agent of goodness. God himself is an agent of goodness. God has to discover what is good. He does not make things good.

Praying to a saint is saying to the saint, "Pray to God instead of me." Or, "I don't want to give those prayers to God. You do the praying for me." The Church is blatantly lying. It's praying to the saint instead of God.

In Catholicism, when you invoke a saint for help, you are reportedly just praying to God though it doesn't look obvious that you are. But if that is true then you can pray to the Devil or to anything and that is the same as praying to God as long as you intend it for God. And if you really intend to pray to God then why not just do so? Why not just pray to God without thinking of saints? Why would you pray to the supreme and absolute goodness that is God indirectly when you can pray directly? Do you sincerely believe that he is that good? You ask the best person to help you not someone far below them. And God is supposed to be the best!

Just because somebody says that venerating the saints and praying to them is really just all about God that does not mean that it is. And if it can be all about God, that does not necessarily mean that anybody prays to a saint intending the honour for God only.

The notion that just because a saint lives by and depends on God that honouring the saint is honouring only God is a strange one. God as personal entity and as power are not the same thing. It is the power that the saint depends on and lives by. You can honour God's power and that is not the same as honouring God as a person. You can honour the king but curse his authority.

If to honour what depends on God because it shows something of his goodness is to honour God then we can worship the dog and the cat and the beer mat. Indeed we should!

The Church might say that it is like when you talk to your lawyer, you are really talking to the judge and the jury through him. But we have to communicate through a lawyer. If the judge were all-knowing like God we would not need the lawyer. The Church is giving us a false analogy. When God hears all and sees all why would you pray to a saint who cannot know all and see all like he can. Idol worship is said to be immoral for it is praying to what cannot help you like God can. Venerating the saints by invoking them is idolatry.

The Church states that the saints have nothing apart from God. They have no power or dignity of their own except what God has given them. Thus to ask them for their help is really to ask them for God's help. They can't act without his empowerment and help. It has been observed that the Bible never teaches that God is the source of all. It is known that the story of the creation seems to suggest not that all things were really made from nothing but that God may have used substances to make all things that like himself just always existed and were never created. If so, then it proves the Church's argument unbiblical and that saint invocation is idolatry. God did not give them all they have. He didn't snap his fingers so that nothing turned into the universe and all that is in it.

The Church says that it is God who makes people saints for nobody can be holy without his grace. And it says that God has made the saint out of nothing and all the virtues that the saint has have been developed not by the saint but by God working in the saint. It argues then that because the saint is God's work, to honour and pray to the saint is to honour and pray to God.

So Catholics claim that to talk to a saint is really talking to God as if the saint was his temple for the saint is his work.

If they really believe all that, why can’t they pray at Mass, “Mary you are Holy indeed the fountain of all holiness. Let the Spirit come upon these gifts so that they may become for us the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ". Why can’t they address the whole Mass to Mary? That is forbidden for it is thought to be idolatry. But how can it be wrong if they are telling the truth that their prayers to the saints are really prayers to God alone?

Its an odd claim that to pray to saints is to pray to God for you pray not to them but to what God made them and its all grace. Why pray to saints then unless the intention is idolatry? If you can talk to the doctor face to face and refuse to do it except through his receptionist that indicates some kind of uncharitable dislike for the doctor.

The Church is lying that there is no idolatry involved in invoking saints. It lies that no disrespect is intended towards God.

Most Catholics reject the notion of divine sovereignty - ie that God controls everything. They say we have the power to act independent of God. They say the saints get all they have from God simply by consenting to him working in them. So the saint is in a position to help us not because they have God's power but because they co-operate with God. It follows then that going to the saint is not the same as going to God.

Praying to the saints is trying to communicate with the dead and that is forbidden in the Bible. Even when the Catholic is not seeing a vision or an audible message from the saint, the Catholic expects the saint to communicate by doing something in response to the prayer. For example, if you pray to St Therese the Little Flower for flowers and you get them that is her way of communicating.

If you do good while adhering to sin, your goodness is sinful. It is done with the attitude, "I care about good only when I want to do it. I do it not for its sake but because I want to." Evil looks attractive for it is about doing and winning good by using the wrong means. The more praying and devout works a person does while adhering to sin the better the person will feel about failing or neglecting to repent and purify her heart. She will soon lose sight of sin and lose a sense of sin. She will end up being capable of rationalising great evil. She may break up a marriage by telling a wife her husband is seeing other women and not feel bad about it. Most of those who pray to saints are conscious of sins in their heart so they use the saint in order to get God to treat them as if they were not sinners and not in need of chastisement. They use the saint as a tool to manipulate God.

The person who adheres to sin and who prays to God and who does not want to repent is less manipulative than one who prays to a saint. The first faces God with his sins and the second won't face God and uses a saint to hide behind. To see the holiness of the saint is to see holiness that is less intimidating than the awesome holiness of God. The more you pray when you adhere to sin though you may act like a pious person for no reason seemingly that you want to, the more you disincline yourself to repent. Saint venerating leads to this blindness or near-blindness.

The Church says it does not know how the saints hear our prayers. The pagans who prayed to the dead and their very human gods in Heaven said the same thing. They were condemned for doing so by the Bible. So it follows the Catholic Church is condemned too. It would be bizarre to imagine that when you die you have the power to hear thousands of people talking to you at the one time and that you can see into their hearts to see if their prayers to you are genuine and sincere.

Most Catholics believe that the saints influence God. Indeed official doctrine says the saints are intercessors which means they must use their influence. If God is all-wise and all-perfect then he cannot be influenced. If he answers prayer, it is not because he was influenced, but because it is the right thing to do. God being influenced implies he is not perfect and needs nudging to do the right thing.

The Church says that the saints ask God to benefit us if we ask them. Logically if we can do that, then we can also ask a saint to ask a saint to pray for us.

The Church says sincere prayers are never unanswered. If you pray to a saint then they always respond though not necessarily in the way you expected. They must be more generous than God!

Jesus said we must love God with all our mind. We are not doing that by thinking of some saint. We do not love God totally if we feel we need a saint to do the asking God for us.

MARY

Mary is the Catholic saint who is singled out for special attention in the Catholic pantheon. If we pray to saints, then not pray to a saint asking her or him to pray to Mary for us? If we can ask Mary to pray for us to God then why can’t we ask some saint to pray to her? The absurdity of this shows plainly that invoking saints is really pagan worship in disguise. The saints are treated as gods or goddesses. The Church perceives this which is why it doesn't have prayers along the lines of, "Dear St Anthony, go to my mother Mary in Heaven and ask her for a new bicycle for me."

In paganism, you ask gods and goddesses to pray to the higher gods, the real bosses, for you. The lesser deities were considered gods and goddesses despite their lack of freedom to do what they wanted. This refutes the Catholic claim, "The saints are not gods for they have no power of their own."

The Roman Catholic Church says the charism of infallibility was used by Pope Pius IX when he proclaimed that the Virgin Mary was conceived without sin and lived a sinless life.

The Bible says that all human beings have sinned. St Paul taught that in the Bible. The Catholic Church says it excludes obvious exceptions like Jesus, babies and the Virgin Mary. But there is no evidence that anybody believed in those days that Mary was sinless. And Paul did include babies for he said that the power to die is a sign that there is sin. Jesus was the only obvious exception to this rule. Mary was not very important in the primitive Church. Therefore she was not an obvious exception.

Mary was never sinless. Matthew says that the wise men went to King Herod and told him that the Messiah was born in Bethlehem. Herod told them to return to him and tell him where the Messiah was if they found him. They visited Mary and Joseph and saw the child. They did not return to Herod for they had come to believe that he wanted to kill the child. Herod realised that the men were not coming back and he sent his men to Bethlehem to kill all the baby boys of two and under. Mary and Joseph took Jesus away from the danger and didn't even warn others that Herod was on his way to kill. They knew there was a risk of him killing all the babies.

Also the gospels say that the women who served Jesus stood at a distance when he was dying on the cross. Mark says that. And that the Jews mocked Jesus. The land was dark indicating that all were in darkness. Jesus felt so abandoned that he said he even felt God had abandoned him. He cried out Eloi Eloi lama sabathanai. My God, My God, why have you deserted me. The Jews said that he was calling Elijah. He must have cried it out several times. The Jews were so shocked at a man saying he was God's Son accusing God of forsaking him so they thought they must have misheard and it was Elijah he was calling. All that indicates extreme abandonment. Jesus' mother abandoned him too and she was therefore a sinner. John says she came to the cross but does not say that she cared.

The Church sometimes says it prays through Mary to God not to Mary. This is a lie . “Hail Holy Queen! Mother of Mercy! Hail our Life, our sweetness and our hope!” If the Church was really praying through Mary it would say, “O God hear my prayer in Mary’s name.” Not, “Mary do this and do that!”

The saints do not need to be asked to pray for us. They would be doing that anyway in a general way for it is making gods of them to say that they know all about us and are in a position to make very specific prayers. Asking people to pray for us does not mean we should ask the saints to do so.

IDOLATRY UNAVOIDABLE?

Idolatry is the worship of what is not God as sacred.

Many people get a nice glow inside them when they pray and think of God. They pray without realising that they are praying to this feeling.

We read in the Book of Exodus how Israel was rescued by God from slavery in Egypt. An image of God was made in the form of a golden calf and Aaron told the people to behold their God who saved them from Egypt. The people danced and celebrated. They really felt they were using this image to honour God. They felt the honour they gave the image went to God whom it represented. They had a great time!

The prophet of God, Moses, was out of the way. They took advantage of this. He came back carrying stone tablets with ten commandments and he smashed them upon seeing the idolatry. God destroyed many of the people for this sin. The lesson is that people like Israel who see the power and glory of God and who have a relationship with him can fall away very quickly in the absence of a prophet or the word of God. When they fell away fast, surely most of today's Christians would do it faster! They have not seen and experienced what the Israelites seen and experienced.

Using an image of God to give him honour is intolerable according to the Bible. Imagine how much worse it is to honour the saints and Mary if you are doing this to honour God!

The Bible God communicated and had a relationship with Israel directly before the Golden Calf episode. After that he kept his distance and only spoke to them indirectly. Moses had to tell them what God said. The Torah says God is merciful and forgiving. Was he acting like he held a grudge? The Bible implies no. It implies rather that the people damaged themselves with their sin and so even after it was forgiven the damage was still there and they wanted some space between themselves and God. The lesson is that the Bible says idolatry is a very serious and damaging and corrupting sin even though at first glance it looks as if there is no big deal! Though God forgives the corruption caused is still there and as insidious as ever.

The Bible says that idolatry sows attraction for selfishness and evil in the heart and feeds it. If you ask the wrong god to make you virtuous it won't work for he cannot hear you.

Worship can be intended for the one true God and still be idolatrous. How? The Bible says that God rejects worship for whatever reason and that rejection makes it idolatry. He said in Amos that he hated the feasts of the Jews. If God may reject the worship you directly give him imagine how he is more likely to reject the worship given to him by us through saints?

The best theologians say that God is being itself and you cannot talk about what God is only about what he is not. They say that the thought of a God who is in time and like us is idolatry. The veneration of saints in Catholicism is based on the human crave for a God who is almost human, like a superman who is going to solve all your problems. They cannot have such a god so they use the saints as a substitute.

If you adore your perception of God, you are not adoring God. Even if your perception is right that is not the point. You are still intending to honour what you think God is not what he is. It would take a miracle for a person to really honour and worship God.

Our hearts deceive us very well. We could think we are adoring him when we are actually adoring a mental and emotional image of him.

When people who pray to God find idolatry so hard to avoid, it must be nearly impossible to honour a saint and pray to a saint without being an idolater. The veneration of saints then must be rejected outright as blasphemous and heretical and corrupting. It is a turning away from the true good which is God.

The saints themselves prayed to saints meaning they never should have been saints except to idolators.