Perhaps nowhere is the split between Reformed, evangelical Anglicans and Anglo-Catholic, sacramentalist Episcopalians more pronounced and pernicious than around the notion of praying to saints. On the surface this appears to be a secondary or even tertiary matter of doctrine. But it goes to the heart of each group’s theology and practice and makes clear why a New Reformation is needed among Anglicans in America.
I recently became embroiled in a situation at the Anglo-Catholic church where I currently play the organ. An adult Sunday School class began a study the saints. I was surprised to learn in the first session that we were not merely going to examine the example of these heroes of the faith, but, in fact, were being encouraged and taught how to pray to them. The saints are very much alive in heaven now, it was said, loving us and wanting to help us with the most mundane of life’s vicissitudes. The teacher proclaimed that St. Francis had helped him find his lost keys that very morning.
This teaching comes straight from Roman Catholicism as the Episcopal Church has canonized no one. I searched the entire Prayer Book for one example of a prayer to a saint and found nothing. The Prayer Book stakes out the same position as that of the Bible, that saints are the people of God at all times in all places and we pray to God that we might follow their holy example. Examples! They are never portrayed as disembodied spiritual mediators deserving of our adoration. Not even the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Roman Church and their agents inside the Anglican Communion deny that they worship saints. They do so by parsing the word worship into the ancient Latin distinction between latria and dulia. God is worshipped; saints are venerated. This argument is a medieval syllogism. The issue isn’t the definition of worship. The issues involved in praying to dead saints strike at the heart of Biblical orthodoxy: the doctrine of Scripture, the doctrine of salvation, and the doctrine of the resurrection and afterlife.
To be continued ….
I have been told that "praying" to saints is (if you believe that they are in Heaven, as you do not) just asking them to intercede for us--to pray for us. Just as we ask our friends to pray for us. But "praying to saints" is much more than just asking for them to intercede for us--it gets into asking them for help--help only God can give! Can St. Francis know where the keys are? No, he isn't God. The whole thing gets really strange.
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