{"id":23947,"date":"2014-04-26T07:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-04-26T14:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=23947"},"modified":"2015-02-03T23:40:18","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T06:40:18","slug":"saint-worship-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2014\/04\/26\/saint-worship-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Saint Worship"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent newsletter from the Coming Home Network there was the first part of a work by Orestes Brownson (1803-1876), entitled “Saint Worship”<\/em><\/span>. In today’s post I just wanted to post a few extracts since it ties into some of the recent discussion<\/a> concerning Our Lady.<\/p>\n

\"Saints\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Brownson begins by looking at love, worship and the things which God has created:<\/p>\n

“…love must worship, and it must worship the universal God: God in Himself and God in His works<\/span>… The worship would seem to the soul incomplete, defective, if it did not embrace the creature with the Creator, and especially if it did not include the saints, who of all His creatures are the nearest and dearest to Him<\/span>“<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

He makes the point that if say we love God, then we must also love His workmanship, specifically the Saints who are so dear to Him. He then goes on to speak of the Protestant understanding of Catholic devotion to Saints:<\/p>\n

“[Protestants] seem not to be aware that the supreme and distinctive act of worship of God is sacrifice<\/span>, and that we offer sacrifice never to any saint<\/span>, never but to God alone<\/span>.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Worship<\/a> necessitates sacrifice and in the Catholic Church sacrifice is only offered to God. Therefore, anything which we do in relation to Saints, such as asking for their intercession, cannot possibly be regarded as worship.<\/p>\n

“Having rejected the sacrifice of the Mass, [Protestants] have no offer, and therefore no supreme distinctive worship of God<\/span>; \u00a0and their [highest] worship is of the same kind<\/span>, and very little, if any, higher than that which we offer to the saints themselves”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Brownson explains the necessary consequence of other Protestant doctrines upon their understanding of the Saints.\u00a0By rejecting the belief that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, it becomes virtually impossible to distinguish between worship and devotion.<\/p>\n

“Their divine service or religious worship consists chiefly\u00a0of prayer and singing of hymns or psalms<\/span><\/span>, and comprises in kind nothing which is not perfectly lawful to offer to men”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Within Protestantism, worship is pretty much restricted to prayer and singing. However, these are not just things we do with regards to God, since we also ask our friends to pray for us and it is not unheard of to sing to each other (“For he’s a jolly good fellow…”<\/em>). What is unique about our worship to God?<\/p>\n

“It is lawful to love our neighbour<\/span>, to honour the magistrate<\/span>, to pray to those in authority<\/span>, to sing the praises of the\u00a0conquering\u00a0hero<\/span>, and to confide in our friends<\/span>. What in all this is distinctively religious worship, or that which can be given only to God?”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He then speaks about the central paradigm problem<\/p>\n

“…because Protestants…\u00a0believe<\/span> in no higher worship, it does not follow<\/span> that there is none higher<\/span>… It is not good logic to argue that because they in their worship anthropomorphize God<\/span>, we in ours divinize the saints<\/span>“<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Brownson\u00a0then concludes by speaking specifically about\u00a0Saintly intercession:<\/p>\n

“The saints honoured<\/span> by offices in the church service are not the direct object of the worship<\/span>. The sacrifice is offered to God<\/span> in thanksgiving for them<\/span>: the prayers are all addressed directly to God<\/span> and only the saints’ intercession is invoked<\/span>. [So, too], in the authorized litanies of the saints and of the Blessed Virgin, the saints are indeed invoked, but nothing is asked of them but their prayers for us<\/span>; which is no more than we all ask daily of our pastors, of our friends, and of one another<\/span>. And why may we not ask as much of a saint in heaven<\/span> as of a sinful mortal on earth<\/span>? Is the saint less living<\/span>, or less dear<\/span> to God?”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent newsletter from the Coming Home Network there was the first part of a work by Orestes Brownson (1803-1876), entitled “Saint Worship”. In today’s post I just wanted to post a few extracts since it ties into some of the recent discussion concerning Our Lady.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[400,2548,2969,2578,432,2579,263],"class_list":["post-23947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-catholicism","tag-coming-home-network","tag-featured","tag-orestes-brownson","tag-protestantism","tag-saint-worship","tag-saints"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23947"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30228,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23947\/revisions\/30228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}