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We pray to angels, not to ask them to save us (only God can save a man), but so they will intercede on our behalf before the Throne of God. It is done in precisely the same spirit that we ask another human being to pray for us.

It is also eminently scriptural; prophets and holy men throughout the Old and New Testaments interceded on behalf of sinners. Why would we not then pray to holy beings, like angels, for their benevolent intercession?

We agree that God can do anything He wants, A E. Am I then not to give alms to a poor man, since God can take care of this man far more easily, and far better than I? Am I not to teach the Truth to my brethren, since Jesus Christ alone can, if he chooses, obviously do so more perfectly than I, and without any of my purely human errors? Or if someone asks me to pray for him, should I refrain from doing so, inasmuch as God knows precisely what he needs and does not require my prayers?

God can do anything, but does not do everything. He works through His Creation, and asks the participation of His creatures, including His angels, in His benevolence, His will, His philanthropy, His design. We belong to a Kingdom, to God’s Kingdom, and in a kingdom each member has his fitting place, and all members work together toward a common good. Each member should indeed seek to intercede for every other; and this is true even though, and indeed precisely because, Jesus Christ is the perfect intercessor. For His ministry, and an indivisible part of his Incarnation itself, had precisely the purpose of teaching men how to become more Christ-like.

Then allow me to modify the metaphor. If my car breaks down, is it impious of me to go to the mechanic, rather than praying to God for things to be set right? Would anyone say that it is blasphemous of me to take my car to a human being, since, after all, God can fix the engine the moment He wills?

Obviously, no one would ever claim such a thing. But what is the difference between this, and asking for aid from an angel, like St. Michael, whose role or function in God’s order has been at least partially revealed to us? Each member of Creation has a place and a work; and this is right and fitting. The angels, too, have their specific places and works; the very idea of the guardian angel, which is profoundly Christian, is based on this understanding of the cosmic order.

Why, then, is it wrong to request aid from those beings whose dedication to God is total, and who have been given, by Him, determinate roles in the administration of the Divine Order?

I tell you plainly that the Catholic Church has resewn the veil that was torn from top to bottom when Yeshua died and now charges the world admission to get a glimpse of their golden stitches.

My sincere thanks to you, A E, for in even the hardness of some of your words I perceive a definite will to wake me from error, and to call me to our Lord and Savior. Despite our disagreements, I truly appreciate this token of Christian goodwill, and I hope you will believe me when I say that I do not take it lightly. I will weigh your words with all due seriousness.

I have written out a response to all of the questions you have posed, but I find the response so long as to be dispersive and hence fairly useless. I would willingly pursue each and every one of these matters with you, and I will gladly post all that I have written if you wish to read it; but for the moment I think it might be better if I limit myself to the question which has so far animated our dialogue here: whether it is right or wrong to pray to angels and saints? (Even what I am including here, as you will see, is already longer than it probably should be.) As for the rest, I will only briefly note that on several very important points (especially the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the use of indulgences or related transactions, and the “legalistic” approach to merit and demerit) we agree; you have indeed provided very searching critiques of certain doctrines or excesses in Catholicism — critiques made, however, also by the Orthodox Church.

Having said that, let me return to our analogy of the mechanic, and extend it still further. To my eyes, the situation is rather like this: we have already presented ourselves before the owner of the establishment, not once but many times, and, out of respect for his position as owner and gratitude for his impossibly generous interest in our plight, we have turned our specific requests to the mechanic — the individual who will actually be concerned with bringing the desires of the owner to actuality.

Prayer to the angels or to the saints (in the Orthodox Church) is always encompassed in, preceded by, and directed through prayers to Jesus Christ and to God. (This contextualization, incidentally, is part of the reason for the prescribed prayer routines that you have critiqued.) There is ever-present recognition that these specific prayers are a small part of a greater whole, not themselves the whole; they are another way of expressing worship of the true God and our unity with the wider community of Christians.

As I have said, the angels and the saints should never be asked to do what they cannot do (e.g. to save human souls or to pardon sins). I believe you and I wholly agree that it would be blasphemous to ask that any created being attend to what is God’s province alone; the question is where the limits are to be drawn. What pertains exclusively to God, and in what things can and should created beings collaborate?

You seem to draw a much narrower line here than I do. I truly do not think that the parallels I have made, to praying for or aiding our fellow human beings, are in any way a false equivalence. This is precisely the light in which I regard the intercession of the saints or the angels on our behalf: these beings, dedicated totally to God in all and for all, share as well in the profound love of Christ for humanity, and are called upon, in the great Counsel of God, to aid human beings in our path toward salvation and to do what they can for struggling Christians. They are workers in the vineyard, working beside us — only with far more practiced and expert hands. Why should we not turn to them for aid, for education, for strength in our times of weakness, for companions in our times of joy?

As you have quoted Revelation, allow me to do the same: in Revelation 8:3-4, an angel offers to God the prayers of the people, acting in his right angelic role (the word “angel” itself means messenger, after all). In Hebrews 1:14, the angels are called “ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation.” As for the saints, consider 2 Maccabees 15; here, Judas Maccabeus has a vision in which he sees a martyred priest praying on behalf of the people. Similar language, even clearer than this, can be found in the book of Enoch — a non-canonical book which, however, is quoted in Scripture, and was held in great respect by the Fathers.

By the Scriptural account, the angels and the deceased saints actively participate in earthly human life, for the glory of God; I cannot fathom what wrong there might be if we participate with them in common worship of our common God, or communicate with them even as we communicate with our fellow Christians.

When I pray alongside a fellow human being, when we join in mutual prayer for one another in the name of Jesus Christ, this makes a community of us. Should I not seek such community with God’s angels or with those human beings who, to use St. Paul’s words, have “fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith”? Should I not seek a greater nearness with the angel that God has assigned to protect and guide me, or with a specific saint whose life or personality in some way touches my own and inspires me to live in a more Christlike manner? Of course, it would be redundant of me to pray for the salvation of angels or deceased saints; but does this mean that our communal prayers with these beings are disallowed for some reason? Or does it not rather mean that our prayers with them are also necessarily prayers to them — prayers asking wiser, greater, more pious and more sanctified beings to help us in our troubles and our doubts, in the name of Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Spirit?

Forgive my late reply, A E; I’ve been quite overrun with work and duties. And thank you for your kind invitation to me to post my responses to your other questions. I will do so, yet with some embarrassment at the length of what follows, which I hope you will pardon. It is certainly not my intention to try to swamp you with so much chatter that any sensible reply becomes impractical; quite the contrary!

I’ve also been held up a bit because, before posting what I had already written, I wanted to begin with at least a brief note about the differences between the Catholics and the Orthodox. There was no distinction whatsoever (or almost none) between the two for the first thousand years after Christ; today, the Orthodox and the Catholics both consider themselves the authentic bearers of the original traditions and the early Christian Church. I think it is fair to say (and most Catholics would actually agree with me) that the Orthodox Church has, on the whole, more rigorously maintained a number of pre-Schism traditions (such as the discipline of fasting and the early form of the liturgy), particularly since Vatican II, but this obviously varies to some extent from church to church. There are very serious and traditionalist Catholics, and there are very lax Orthodox.

The major distinctions, however, are doctrinal. The Schism of 1054, which divided East (Orthodox Church) from West (Catholic Church), came about in large part around the question of Papal supremacy, an issue which has continued to separate Orthodox and Catholics these past ten centuries. The Orthodox Church does not recognize the universal power of the Pope over all churches, and does not accept the doctrine of papal infallibility. It is structured in a more organic way, with several Archbishops heading autocephalous churches (for example, the Russian Orthodox or the Greek Orthodox), which are all considered parts of the unified Orthodox Church. (The Catholics consider this organization disorderly and bound to lead to doctrinal confusions.) Another major disagreement between us concerns various points of doctrine, especially surrounding Mary (the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption), but also on a few other important points; for example, the Orthodox Church does not accept the Catholic teaching on Purgatory.

There’s a lot more that can be said, and even these key issues are complicated by historical vicissitudes, but for the moment I’ll leave it at that. I hope this helps to at least begin to clarify some of the most visible differences. I will also say that there are many practices common to both the Catholics and the Orthodox which I know would trouble you. We use icons (though not statuary; to my eyes a fundamental distinction), and we pray to saints and angels. While we reject in part or in whole certain Catholic doctrines about Mary, we do pray to her, and consider her the foremost intercessor behind only Christ Himself (whom we view as the sole and unique Mediator between God the Father and man). By the Orthodox understanding, even as Christ was the new Adam, so Mary was a new Eve, and thus becomes a mother and benefactress to all of humankind. She is venerated (never worshiped) in that light, for her absolutely unique role in God’s design. For the rest, we consider a human being like any human being (as against the teaching of the Immaculate Conception), albeit one who was of absolutely exceptional holiness and courage. We also keep to very rigorous liturgical practices and disciplines of daily prayer, which matters touch on several of your questions to me.

With that, I’ll come to those questions. I’ve already provided, in my last comment, some thoughts on the practice of praying to angels and to saints, so I’ll go directly to the second point on your list:

“Tell me what place these things have in scripture:

*pray to people and declared saints by the church, their relics and statues and charms hung around the neck”

To focus on the question of relics and “charms,” the Church takes great care here; there is a clear and neat distinction between an object or place through which God’s energies have acted on the one hand, and an object or place which has been imbued with magical properties, as for instance a talisman to ward off evil or a magic circle, on the other. This world is a battlefield, and every part of it is dedicated either to God or to the devil; there is no neutral territory. The reverence that a Christian, in my opinion, should rightly show toward holy places or holy objects reflects this; it is right to honor the Divine work and presence in the world.

“*pray repetitively, using memorized words (and pray that over and over a prescribed number of times)”

The repeated prayers prescribed by the Church are not meant to exclude personal prayers; we are called upon to speak to God also in our own words, with our own native expressions and thoughts. The Church-prescribed prayers, based as they are on the Psalms or on the prayers of Saints and holy men, teach us how to pray, and establish a daily discipline of prayer, which is of exceptional importance especially in the chaotic world of present. Some individuals, it is sure, possess such inner strength of faith and such a ceaseless thirst to be near to God that they can do without all such aids and propadeutics, and can strike off on their own in a constant prayer of their own making. But just because one man can scale to the top of a mountain unaided, should we deny to throngs of weaker men the ropes and staves that might help them gain some more modest prospect?

I will note that there is some difference between the Catholics and the Orthodox here. The Catholics, in a characteristically legalistic turn, often prescribe a certain number of prayers (generally the Hail Mary) as penance, almost as if it were considered a payment for one’s sins or a sort of spiritual fine. There have even been tendencies amongst the Catholics (if not officially in the Church as such, then certainly amongst parts of the clergy and laity) to use prayers almost as a means of divine bribery or spiritual exchange. This is entirely foreign to Orthodox practice and to the Orthodox mind. To the Orthodox, repeated prayers (such as, most famously, the “Jesus Prayer”) are used rather as tools to focus one’s mind, to eliminate distractions, and to attempt to bring one’s entire consciousness and being into greater awareness of and nearness to God. They represent a discipline, not a kind of exchange of spiritual goods.

“*confess to a man, who supposedly is able to forgive you himself if you do what he says to earn it”

I believe your critique of confession is probably skewed toward the Catholics, who tend also here to have an overly legalistic view of these things, and who speak of “merit” in ways that do not always seem valid to me. However that may be, the Catholics and the Orthodox agree that there can be no “earning” of forgiveness, and it is not the priest that grants it; God alone can forgive us our sins, as the Bible makes abundantly clear throughout the Old and the New Testaments.

Having said that, the question of the role of the priest in all of this is the central matter, and that is something I would not be able to treat in a mere paragraph. I would ask you if you think the priest is somehow an innovation later Church, and if so, how you see him as differing from the priests that God Himself established in Israel, or the presbyters which are recorded in the New Testament?

“*worship God ritualistically and often in a language few today understand (rituals are repetitive and detached – where is the spirit and truth?)”

There are a few questions here. Let me begin with the linguistic: the language of church services in the Orthodox faith is usually, at least primarily, in the local tongue (this will depend to some extent also on the makeup of the laity itself; I believe the Russians tend to use the Old Slavonic when there are many Russians present, but I might be wrong on this; my own parish switches between Greek, the language of our archdiocese, and Italian, the local language, only for the litanies); one of the few developments of Vatican II that was generally supported by the Orthodox was the abandonment of the Latin mass.

As for the “repetitiveness” and “detachment” of the rituals, I can emphatically say, based on my personal experience (for what little that is worth), that “detachment” is the very last word I would use; I have never felt near such “presence” in any church or religious ritual or practice I have ever experienced (and I have, God help me, experienced a great variety), than in the Orthodox liturgy. The “repetitiveness,” the stability and unchangeableness of the structure, is the very hallmark of its continuity, and for this reason precisely reveals the very “spirit and the truth” that you claim is absent from it. It is not stagnant, in the sense of being continually and rigidly identical, but rather is as a running stream of water, which, while always the same, is also always different. Through its unity in diversity, and the “variations on a theme” of the liturgical year, the liturgy makes present the things of the “past,” transforming history into immediacy, transcending time, in accord with the basic truth that Jesus Christ was, is, and will be.

I do not know of what use services with no prescribed order would be; whatever is new or surprising in them, it seems to me, must come from human beings, and hence also from all our frailties and confusions. I, at least, have never seen a spontaneous religious gathering which did not run toward chaos and impious, even absurd, confusion. But what do you look for, A E, in place of fixed rituals?

“*believe that a man has authority to excommunicate you and cast you into hell, believe that same man, handed enough money, is able to stave off such judgment and is able to likewise bury a body of a man who died in grievous sin into holy ground, thereby saving him from the spiritual condition in which he died. Because a satisfactory amount of money was paid. Because dirt a “holy” man prayed over can save a lost soul.”

Here again, it seems that part (though not all) of what you say is directed at the Catholics, and in particular the historical practice of indulgences or related monetary exchanges, which the Orthodox agree is aberrant to the extreme. (There are many Catholics who would also agree, but the question is always why this phenomenon arose so universally in precisely the Catholic Church; I believe the answer is somehow connected to the pyramidal form of the church, with the Pope at its apex.)

As for the question of excommunication as such, it is strictly connected with the Eucharist. I do not know where you stand on the question of the Eucharist, or what you think of it (there is a tremendous variety of conflicting belief on this in the wider Christian community; all the more reason to hold to the Tradition!), so I am hesitant to venture anything without understanding your position a bit more clearly. I will say, very briefly, that excommunication is not supposed to be a political tool for enforcing authority or for terrorizing people of dissenting opinions; it is rather meant as a simple assessment of the reality of the situation. When a given individual has, through unrepentant and continual breaches of the common life of the Church, demonstrated that he no longer pertains to that life, his self-imposed division is acknowledged by disallowing him to receive the communion, which is the sign and sigil of the Church’s communal life. Such a one is always allowed — nay, encouraged — to repent and to return, and in such a case, if he gives due sign of his repentance, he cannot be obstructed from entry.

The question is why would he wish to continue to take communion in a church from which he has to all intents and purposes broken? To use a somewhat forced metaphor, this is somewhat like the case of a man who renounces his citizenship in the country of his birth, but then attempts to access public grants in that same state that are earmarked for use by citizens alone. If he wished to enjoy the benefits of his citizenship, why did he renounce it?

With that, I’ll close. I recognize that I have set forth a huge number of arguments and statements here, A E, and I can hardly expect you to respond to it all. Please feel free to reply to whatever most concerns you, if you would like, and we can focus on that going forward. I hope you know I never enter conversations in order to “win,” and I will not take your silence as a victory on my part, but only as a prudent attempt to limit our conversation to a manageable amount of material.

Having said that, I remain grateful for our dialogues.

But we agree, Gem; no one is to be worshiped but God alone.

If I ask my brother to pray for me, am I worshiping him?

I’m not saying smoking is healthy, but nicotine is also shown to increase testosterone in men. Testosterone is key in men’s health and the government does nearly everything to destroy it.

The government isn’t monolithic; there are many parts to the great machine, and (at the lower and more local levels) many good and sincere people. The establishment as a whole was long in defending the tobacco industry, but then a lot of the icons for the industry started coming down with cancer and jumped ship, which certainly made an impression on the public view. I think the bottom fell out with the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, and that was hardly decided by fiat from above. The medical community also seems to have had greater liberty in those days, and there were a number of hard-hitting studies that came out in that period.

The degree of control that the super-“elites” are able to exert over the whole system is always the core question. They are never perfectly in control — quite the opposite, or else they would not be forced to hide their intentions and even their faces. A sign of their confidence in their position is how many of their objectives and figureheads they are willing to publicize, and to what extent.

Judging by this standard, we are certainly far worse off now than when Big Tobacco was dethroned, though the game is not over yet. But it’s interesting to speculate whether Big Tobacco would have taken such a public thrashing if it had risen in our own times, rather than decades ago.

You underestimate the level of planning and execution by a far long measure. The Repeaters do not own the world with a light hand. For as scripture says, the whole world lays in the hands of the wicked one.

Limiting to just the topic of Nicotine, we can see that while the US government made tobacco the bad guy and demonizing it, they simultaneously introduced chemical food and increased the obesity of their populace enormously (as well as the entire world with fast food), while turning their healthcare system into a giant organized piece of eugenics for profit. As such we see that in countries like Italy and Spain, the overall health of the populace, and their longevity far exceeds the US, even though they smoke at a far greater rate… The point is, its all a puppet show, and do not be deceived by the low level workers they use as a shield for their projections of power.

I have a huge respect for the brilliant minds in this website, but we are still humans and sometimes there are ideas that can cause headaches:
“smoking isn’t nearly as bad for you as they’ve claimed”!
“nicotine as a drug has been shown to destroy Covid virus molecules”!
Are you serious? What about addiction?
Maybe If you’re a smoker then your deep mind will of course come with such reasoning to convince you that smoking the magic solution to all health problems of the world! The exact same kind of belief that pushed the white man to adopt that mystical Indian tradition at the first place.
When i see discussions about scientific papers praising Nicotine for testosterone, and fighting infections i just wanna ask, what about scientific papers praising vaccines? Do you still believe in privately funded SCIENCE?
Tobacco companies want to become TECH companies, they are the ones strategically destroying their old product “paper cigarettes” and aggressively pushing E-CIGARETTES. Just look at the younger generations, they are all vaping!
Every single Tobacco company has now its own e-gadget, and they are making more profit that ever!
tobaccotactics.org/wiki/e-cigarettes/