Whats the point of Canonization?

[Xeno]

Sierra has been mentioning patron saints a lot over the last day or so, so this got me thinking...what exactly is the point a patron saint? I guess this question is really directed at our resident super catholics, but anyone who has an idea please feel free to share.

I mean, the whole thing seems kind of superfluous. If we assume there is a god (which it's an established fact that I don't), and assuming that this god can, and does, read our minds at all times it, that it is everywhere at all times, and it can do anything it wants because physics bend to it's will...patron saints and praying to them for things seems absolutely unnecessary when you could just ask the god instead. Is god just too busy listening to everyone complain that their spray tans are uneven and that the Banana Republic is out of khakis to be able to get around to all the requests, and that's why saints were commissioned? As I said, it all seems wildly unnecessary to me, but then again I spent a long time in fundamental oneness pentecostalism, a year in mainline protestantism as a methodist, and then became an atheist...and we don't have patron saints in any of those things.

[Hiryu]

I'm not Catholic, but this is how I think the idea goes:

"Well God has so many prayer requests that he needs other special human souls to help hear all of our prayers. So if you happen to work at a beer factory and really need something, pray to St. Augustine and he'll put in a good word for you."

Feel free to correct me otherwise.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

You should simply read this article: http://sites.duke.edu/epectasy/2013/01/02/ecumenism3/

Emphasis here:

Sooner or later, one of you will take the bait and start protesting and getting excited. If that happens to be your Evangelical interlocutor, then they’ll say something like, “Of course prayer is important — but it’s prayer to GOD! You can’t pray to people! That’s idolatry!!”

Keep calm here and say something like: “I’ve noticed that a lot of Protestants have this misconception, that Catholics pray to saints as if they were God …” and then you ask the vital question: “Tell me, do you have a prayer team at your church? Do they take prayer requests? Doesn’t the Bible say, ‘pray for one another’ and ‘pray for your enemies and those who spitefully persecute you’?”

What fascinates me is that a good number of Protestants can’t see where this is headed. They’ll say something like, “Yes, and our prayer team prays to JESUS! Not to SAINTS!” or “Yes, but what does that have to do with your idolatrous papistry?”

Then you explain that the saints who have died, whose souls and bodies have separated, are still alive with God in heaven. (Evangelicals will grant this readily.) They are therefore still part of the church universal. And they’re part of the Church’s ‘prayer team.’

You might have to explain a little bit about time — that God is not in time, that ‘the church universal’ doesn’t just mean ‘whatever Christians worship in the same building with you Sunday morning’ or ‘whatever Christians happen to be around while you personally are around on earth’ but the whole shebang from a God’s-eye-view, across space and across time. And you explain that ‘pray’ at root means ‘ask’ or ‘beg’, like in Shakespearean English (“I pray you sir, take patience; I have hope.”) It does not refer to an activity that can only piously be directed toward God — it is not the same as ‘worship.’ Catholics do not worship saints.

We ‘pray’ to lots of people all the time — we just use other words for it. Our praying to the saints means asking them to pray for us to God, just like we’d ‘pray’ to the prayer team to pray for us to God. Only we can’t send the saints an email or sign up on their prayer request list, so our asking them to pray looks quite a lot like our asking God for whatever we ask him for.

[uc pseudonym]

I was going to post something and then realized I'd be breaking our rules on theological debate. So for anyone else who needs the same reminder: this section is for answering questions, not engaging others that disagree with you. You are free to give your own opinion in response to the original question, and diversity of opinion is good, but don't directly respond to other people and get into arguments.

On a historical note, the first saints were the early martyrs. Though the canonization process wasn't clear at that time, it seems to have started as a mix of holding up role models and honoring those who lost their lives. Many early churches were built on the graves of martyrs, so it's pretty understandable how people in that area would focus on one saint in a "this is our guy" fashion - we see the same thing in the home town of any famous person. Saints started getting associated with occupations/diseases/objects somewhere in the Middle Ages, and I'll let the Catholics talk about that if they want since they'll be more evenhanded.

As for patron saints and prayer, my opinion is probably too inherently argumentative. Suffice it to say that if I was in the hypothetical situation in Ryan's article, the conversation would have gone in a different direction from the first question.

[Mullet Death]

I'm not sure I entirely understand the question? All Christians pray for one another and ask for prayer from one another. Intercessory prayer to canonized saints is nothing more than the logical extension of that thanks to our belief in the "communion of saints." http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04171a.htm

To ask why we pray to saints is to ask why we pray at all.

[Vilo159]

I'ce wondered this for a long time too. I can accept the analogy of them being a prayer team, that's fine (although that implies that it's not strictly necessary, just a nice thing to have then?). But the impression I get is the same one Xeno gets, that God somehow can't manage all the prayers at once and needs help with it, which doesn't make much sense to me. Are we simply misunderstanding this, and that's not the case at all, or is there some truth to that?

[Xeno]

That was pretty much how I was taking it. You're asking someone who is already dead and supposed to be in heaven to pray for you. It just doesn't make sense to me. It used to make sense to me to ask other living people to help you pray for things, but praying to someone who isn't god to take or to additionally pray to god just seems like extra unnecessary steps in the process. These people should supposedly have better things to do than carry your rather insignificant, by comparison, prayers to god for you.

Though I stopped believing in prayer before I stopped believing in god.

[ClaecElric4God]

Well, I'm not knowledgeable enough to make an argument about patron saints and such (that and I'm not Catholic), but I can speak for asking others to pray for you. For one thing, a strong prayer life should be important to a Christian, and that involves praying for others as well as yourself. And besides that, the Bible has plenty to say about praying for others. The verse that I consider most applicable to this subject would be James 5:16, which specifically says to "Confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another". This is the most straightforward statement about prayer requests, that I can think of. So whether it makes sense or not, I believe that we are supposed to pray for each other and ask each other for prayer.
That's just my two cents, take it or leave it.

[Mullet Death]

That was pretty much how I was taking it. You're asking someone who is already dead and supposed to be in heaven to pray for you. It just doesn't make sense to me. It used to make sense to me to ask other living people to help you pray for things, but praying to someone who isn't god to take or to additionally pray to god just seems like extra unnecessary steps in the process. These people should supposedly have better things to do than carry your rather insignificant, by comparison, prayers to god for you.

Though I stopped believing in prayer before I stopped believing in god.

The problem is that, in order for it to make sense to you, you would have to be God yourself, because you can't understand precisely how God works. You are, no matter how much knowledge you ever have, quite finite and do not see "the whole picture," and so it goes without saying that neither you nor I could ever hope to comprehend all the effects of any specific set of prayers or all of prayer through all of time. And the duty to pray for everyone else and not just yourself permeates the entirety of God's revelations to man, so it should be clear why believers do so, whether or not they can grasp why, "mechanically," it is evidently necessary for the salvation or well-being or whatever the case may be for those on the receiving end of prayer (is there a word for that? Prayerees? )

[Xeno]

So another case of
Way too much stuff gets explained away like that for my comfort. But whatever, thanks.

[LastLfan]

I'm not sure I entirely understand the question? All Christians pray for one another and ask for prayer from one another. Intercessory prayer to canonized saints is nothing more than the logical extension of that thanks to our belief in the "communion of saints." http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04171a.htm

To ask why we pray to saints is to ask why we pray at all.

Someone else who knows the apostles creed, i no longer feel lonely

[Mullet Death]

I'm not sure I entirely understand the question? All Christians pray for one another and ask for prayer from one another. Intercessory prayer to canonized saints is nothing more than the logical extension of that thanks to our belief in the "communion of saints." http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04171a.htm

To ask why we pray to saints is to ask why we pray at all.

Someone else who knows the apostles creed, i no longer feel lonely

[Nate]

The idea of asking saints to pray for me worries me because they would have to be able to read my thoughts in order for them to hear me, and if they can read my thoughts then who knows if they're just constantly reading my thoughts, all the time, for no good reason? Also since supposedly only God can be in two places simultaneously what happens if two people are praying the same saint at the same time? Do they flip a coin or draw straws to see which one they listen to? Or does God just listen to the prayers, and then tells the saints, who in turn...tell God back? I'm confused.

[K. Ayato]

Paul wrote in I Timothy 2:5 that there is one Mediator between God and man, and that is Jesus. Plus God is all-powerful. I don't think He needs a bunch of people already with Him in Heaven to help out in handling prayers.

[mechana2015]

Lets keep with the rules of the section, and stick to answering the OP's question, not debating the concept.