SAINTS PRAYERS FOR US ARE NOT REWARDED

Jesus I love you - Protestant.

Jesus I love you so much I want you to bring your friends around - Catholic.

This is how we are supposed to understand why we should worship Jesus with his friends instead of just going to him.

Notice how it slams Protestants as lying about how much they love Jesus.  It accuses them of insulting and dismissing his friends. And what about those who worship Allah?

There is no real love in such a teaching and the lack of love is coming from the Catholic side.  If that is their attitude then they cannot truly respect saints anyway.  They want something from them and that is it.

The Catholic Church says that prayers to saints are effective for they go to God for us.  While it is true that prayer is affirmation that only God is love in the proper sense and submission to his will, it is also true that all prayer is petition.  When you tell God you love him for example that is implicitly saying he helps you love him and you are consenting.  You are asking.  Asking a saint to get you money to feed your children is one thing but asking a saint to get God to help you love him is very strange indeed.

All families in Christendom have had babies who were baptised and died soon after.  The Church says these are saints and they pray for their parents and brothers and sisters without ceasing.  Yet why is it supposed to be the likes of St Anthony and Padre Pio who are reported to be the best at answering prayers?  Something is amiss.  The Church replies that a saint represents the gospel and Church teaching so by drawing you to these figures God wishes you to be more familiar with the teaching of the Church, their teaching, and to commit to it.  The baby doesn't know what Church teaching is so that is a different matter.  But the problem is prayers to giants of theology such as St Alphonsus and St Thomas and St Pope John Paul don't seem to be as good.  Confirmation bias is at work here not religion.

DECLARES SAINTS WORTHLESS

Catholics pray to the saints - dead people who are presumed to be with God in Heaven. Yet St Bernard wrote, "The saints have no need of honour from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs. Clearly if we venerate their memory then it serves us and not them. But I tell you, when I think of them I feel inflamed by a tremendous yearning...a longing to enjoy their company."

Salvation from sin and death and suffering in Heaven is a gift and not a reward according to the Bible and even the Roman Catholic Church. But you receive rewards there for the good you have done in life.

The Roman God does not reward good deeds done in Heaven or give all who live there the same degree of happiness (Radio Replies, Third Volume, Pages 230, 231) for he only rewards what has been done on earth not after (2 Corinthians 5:10). (See also the Catholic book, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, page 275-6). In Matthew 26, Jesus punishes the damned and rewards the just solely on the basis of what they did when they lived on earth. The saints will not gain from helping us if they pray for us.

It is impossible to imagine what the rewards the saints get in Heaven could be. Heaven is not like earth and the saints are wrapped up in God so a good book wouldn’t impress them. And they can metamorphose at will so they don’t need clothes. The rewards are just another lie told by the Church.

Their God is not grateful for the kindness of the saints when he won’t reward them. His generosity is limited. They praise and adore God and deserve rewards for that too. You cannot avoid the mean God doctrine by saying that the saints know nothing about us and do not think of us.

Perhaps their only reward is pleasing God? They are mental if they consider pleasing a miser to be a reward. A good God would want them to take rewards just to please him. The Handbook of Christian Apologetics says that Heaven is not a bribe to do good but is the reward of perfected love (page 267). In other words, the reward of love is making you love better and making you holier. But this is not a reward for love is sacrifice and self-forgetful in the Christian system.

Rome says God is free to reward nobody for he doesn’t owe anybody anything. That is not true if we are forgiven and he has forgotten our sins and are perfected and able to do perfect good in Heaven. He sees us as worthy. If we have free will and choose God’s grace and mercy we are doing a good work in choosing that must deserve the grace and mercy we get. The work is of as much meritorious value as the grace for it chooses as much value. This is why the Calvinists who say that free will contradicts the biblical idea of grace which is a free unearned gift are correct. The Bible opposes Roman Catholic free-willism and the saint who claims to be in Heaven through choosing God is a fraud. Reason tells us that all are equally well off in Heaven even if scripture does not mention it and denies it. If the saints pray for others and honour God then they must get rewards. The biblical assertion that God rewards goodness and that he doesn’t reward the saints implies that the saints don’t earn the rewards. They must be zombies without free will or asleep and dreaming the whole thing in Heaven.

By the way, the religious and Bible doctrine that rewards are not a bribe to do good and such bribes are wrong shows that the heart is put before your welfare. I mean it is considered okay for God to let a kidnapper torment you for weeks and not stop him by bribing him. Is religion about making the world a nicer place at all?

If God won’t reward the saints then the saints are not really good for they submit to his will in all things. If God would reward the saints then they don’t pray for anybody if the Bible is right. This still makes both God and his saints bad news. Purgatory would not be a place of purification but a place where purity of virtue is destroyed in preparation for the immorality of Heaven.

It is wrong to say that God hears the saint’s prayers for sinners for the saint’s sake. When he is mean to them can he be sincerely concerned about being kind to them or sinners? If he does it for the person who requested saintly intercession we have the same problem for if he were really altruistic towards that person he would not have decided to neglect that person until the saints started praying for her or him.

There is absolutely no reason why God can’t reward the good done in Heaven. Christians say we would not do as much on earth if he did but earth life is only a small part of our existence anyway. It is not the main thing.

The biblical doctrine of the miser God contradicts the Roman dogma that we may pray to the saints.  A God who makes you look at a baby that isn’t baptised as an outcast who needs to be brought into the Church and a baby that is baptised as a brother and sister in Christ is a miser in the extreme.

BOOKS CONSULTED
ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME, Michael de Semlyen, Dorchester House Publications, Bucks, 1993
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS CATHOLICS ARE ASKING Tony Coffey, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 2006
BORN FUNDAMENTALIST, BORN-AGAIN CATHOLIC, David B Currie, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1996
COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES Benjamin B Warfield, Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1995
FROM FASTING SAINTS TO ANOREXIC GIRLS, Walter Vandereycken and Ron van Deth, Athlone Press, London, 1996
MAKING SAINTS, Kenneth K Woodward, Chatto & Windus, London, 1991
OBJECTIONS TO ROMAN CATHOLICISM, Ed by Michael de la Bedoyere, Constable, London, 1964
PURGATORY, Rev W E Kenny BD, Church of Ireland Printing, Co Dublin, 1939
SERMONS OF ST ALPHONSUS LIGUORI, Tan Books, Illinois, 1982
THE BANNER OF THE TRUTH IN IRELAND, Winter 1997, Irish Church Missions, Dublin
THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988
THE LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS, by Hippolyde Delehaye, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1998
THE MISSIONARY POSITION, Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, Christopher Hitchens, Verso, London, 1995
THE PRIMITIVE FAITH AND ROMAN CATHOLIC DEVELOPMENTS, Rev John A F Gregg, BD, APCK, Dublin, 1928
THE VIRGIN, Geoffrey Ashe, Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. London, 1976
VICARS OF CHRIST, Peter de Rosa, Corgi, London, 1995

THE WWW

The following two sites show just what a liar Mother Teresa was and her callous heart is laid bare. They show the deceit of Pope John Paul II who is eager to make a saint of her.
 
OPEN LETTER TO MOTHER TERESA, Aroup Chaterjee
http://website.lineone.net/~bajuu/chatlet.htm

MOTHER TERESA THE FINAL VERDICT Aroup Chaterjee
http://www.meteorbooks.com/index.html
This fascinating book reveals shockers such as that the pope has beatified Archbishop Stepinac of Zagreb who stood idly by as Jews and Communists were hounded to their deaths and the notorious fascist Cardinal Schuster of Milan.



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