Pagan Idols of Roman Catholicism, how the saints are false gods
God alone deserves love and honour and respect and no creature can be made as important as him for he made the creature and the creature would not exist without him.
Idolatry is giving religious worship to any image.
Idolatry to the pagan gods was degrading for the gods at times had no
real power of their own so saint worship matches that
Idolatry is worshiping that which does not deserve it. It does not have to be
bad to fail to deserve it. It just has be nothing special.
Idolatry is worshipping that which cannot look after itself.
Idolatry is worshipping that which cannot look after you.
Idolatry is worshiping a thing and thereby having a degraded idea of the divine.
Idolatry degrades yourself for depending on what is not helping is hurting yourself.
Are Catholics who pray to somebody to help them in terrible trouble or to help somebody who could be a saint but is not known to be guilty of risking wasting a prayer? It is right to pray to John Smith and not St Padre Pio? To say somebody will hear the prayer is suggesting it does not matter what you pray to but the Bible is clear that dead people and dead idols help nobody. So the answer is no.
Are the saints idols? Yes in all the ways listed because if all
their power comes from God then what are they being honoured for?
ROMAN CATHOLIC FAITH MAKES GODS OF THE SAINTS
The bizarre Catholic practice of honouring saints has aided that religion to
have such tremendous clout over the world because it offers divine beings to its
audience which they can identify with. The lack of saints to be adored in
Protestantism has led to that faith not being as successful as Catholicism.
Saint worship appeals to the polytheist in people. They want more than one God
but don’t want to admit it.
Everything about saint-worship smacks of ignorance and superstition. Saint
worship is blasphemous if you believe in God.
In Catholic centering prayer, the mind is emptied and all you do is recite a
mantra such as Blessed Mother. That is unmistakeably occult for spells
involve emptying the mind to let spirits influence it while you repeat the
mantra.
God is the excuse through which the Church creates the ultimate dysfunctional
parent-child relationship. The relationship is between us and God. If you really
believe the saints bring you to God then your relationship with them must be as
distorted too.
Believers say that sin is basically idolatry and idolatry is sin. But they are
idolaters themselves. They are therefore responsible for a bad influence and the
sins that take place because of it.
Catholics deny that they are afraid of God and need saints to reason with him to calm him down. But they give themselves away when they look at texts such as Exodus 32:9 to 14 where Moses gets God to relent from punishing Israel and use them as examples of how powerful the intercession of the saints is. Moses was alive then but as the saints who are dead are alive in a sense that is beside the point.
Anybody who can reason with a perfect God is a bigger god themselves.
THE THREE TYPES OF WORSHIP
In Roman theology, there are three types of worship. Latria, Dulia and
Hyperdulia.
The worship of latria is the worship due to God alone. It is supreme worship.
Dulia is the inferior worship given to the saints. In reality it is supposed to
be God who gets all the worship for even saint worship is done for his sake. The
Catholics claim that in honouring the saints they are honouring God for they are
as close to him as a Siamese twin. Latria is due to God because he is infinitely
good and would do infinite good for you. It is just what you owe him. The Church
preaches that you owe no creature that adoration and that it is unjust to God
and idolatrous to confer it on a creature. Idolatry is turning away from the
supreme good which is God and thus all sin is seen as idolatry in a sense. Sin
is idolatry and idolatry is sin.
The Church does not just honour the saints by praying through it but actually
addresses prayers to the saints exactly in the form as used for God. For
example, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul. Jesus, Mary
and Joseph assist me in my last agony. Jesus, Mary and Joseph may I breathe
forth my soul in peace with you. Sweet Heart of Mary be my salvation.” This is
real worship.
Hyperdulia signifies the special kind of dulia which is reserved for the Virgin
Mary alone. It just means that she is singled out for most of the worship of
dulia. Hyperdulia is expressed in the popular Catholic motto: “To Jesus through
Mary”. Even when the Catholic prays directly to Jesus he means for Mary to get
involved and to become the channel through which his words to Jesus are
delivered. The result is that the Church can only allow it to look as if you
were directly praying to Jesus or God but in reality that is not what is
happening. Clearly, no Protestant who believes the saints cannot hear you or
that God wants us to go to him directly and that it is idolatry and mistrustful
of God not to can pray with a Catholic. They cannot even do the Lord’s Prayer
together. The Catholic Church has Protestants praying with her during her
ecumenical and charismatic services which shows great deceit on the part of the
Catholic Church. The idolater who believes in God and puts barriers up between
him and man is far more dangerous and crafty than the one who is openly and
obviously idolatrous because his errors are harder to see through and his power
to mislead people is increased. The Church and reason both agree that error that
contains a large dollop of the truth is more dangerous than error that does not
for it looks more reasonable.
THE IDOLS OF THE SAINTS
A saint is a person who is now morally perfect and is enjoying eternal life in
Heaven with God after being nearly perfect in life. The saint would do infinite
good for you just like God would. What you intend not what you do determines
what you deserve so the saint deserves latria the same worship due to God. Dulia
is blasphemous and unjust for they deserve more than that. If God commands dulia
then he is immoral and the saints can’t be great either when they are his close
friends who see dissenting from him as a sin. If you want to be devoted to
saints then become a polytheist.
The Bible says Christians should pray for one another. Rome says that this means
they are allowed to pray to saints or to ask saints to pray for them. Suppose
you are a Christian and a Christian friend comes and kneels before you,
imploring you with great devotion to pray for him. Would you allow him? How
would you react if he calls you his advocate, his hope, his life and refuge just
like the pope calls Mary these things when he prays the Hail Holy Queen? What if
he thanks you for the many graces you conferred on him and for delivering him
from hell? Suppose he tells you that he confines his salvation to your care and
pleads with you to stay with him until you see him safe in heaven? Does that
sound like asking a fellow believer to pray for you? Of course not! That kind of
prayer and confidence is nothing less than divine worship and it should be
directed only to the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet that is exactly the kind of
prayer that Catholics offer to Mary and the saints.
If you call yourself Catholic then have the integrity to call yourself a
polytheist. If you consider polytheism to be evil and pagan, then confess that
the apparitions of Lourdes and Fatima and Medjugorje are probably counterfeits
from Satan for they advocate the rosary which advocates the heretical prayer,
Hail Holy Queen.
Worship and honour are really the same thing. It’s just that honouring God is
referred to as worship. It’s only a word. Honouring the saint is worshipping the
saint like you do God.