Martin Luther versus the Communion of Saints

Why do Catholics pray to Dead People?

Lately, this Wolf has been having a discussion with one Mark Young over at Don Jeffries' post "Poverty, Austerity, and the New Normal".  In the course of the discussion, this Wolf has challenged Mark to prove that the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima are completely fake and ghey.  So Mark led the Wolf to this website "Are the Dead Really Dead" which does some really heavy hitting, major league style.  The implication is simple:  If the Soul of a person goes up in a puff of smoke and ceases to exist when the body dies, and a person utterly ceases to exist until the Resurrection of the Dead on the Last Day, then Our Lady could not possibly have appeared at Fatima, and the manifestations must be diabolical, part of those "Great Signs and Wonders" that would "Deceive even the Elect".  

And so, without further ado, this Wolf, since the feckle Priests and Bishops are lacking, will, to butcher several metaphors, take up the Sword of Christendom and go to bat in the Big Leagues.  Let us start where this website is utterly scholastically correct.  It quotes from the book of Ecclesiastes [Chapter 12, Verse 7] “Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it” from the King James Version.  That same verse in the Douay-Rheims is as follows: "Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it”.  

Now, this is absolutely true for a dog or a chicken.  When a dog or chicken dies, its soul utterly ceases to exist.  Fido does not go to Doggy Heaven to romp and play amid the Everlasting Hills.  Of course, dog owners need not fret.  If one has the good fortune to enter heaven, he may say to the earth "Fido, Arise!" just as Our Lord Jesus Christ bid Lazarus to come forth from the tomb, and Fido will jump up, just as he was in the springtime of his youth.  The Blessed will have immense powers.  We were given a foretaste of that when St Francis of Paoli bid a favorite pet of his to come forth from an oven where it was being roasted after having been mistakenly slaughtered by some workers.

But dogs and chickens are natural creatures, whereas men and women are supernatural creatures.  Now, the Supernatural is not Preternatural.  Angels are preternatural, meaning they have a nature above that of man.  An angel, just by contemplating a plastic wolf, can tell how many were struck from the same mold on the assembly line before it, what part of the earth its materials came from, where it was made, the day it was made, and many other forensic facts.  That is why Angels, even fallen ones, can work great signs. But an Angel cannot do anything Supernatural- that is, an Angel cannot work a miracle, although they can do things that appear to be supernatural.

Now, the Supernatural is not rocket science.  For example, stones do not move about. For a stone to move about of its own volition would be supernatural for it.  By the same token, trees do not bark.  For a tree to bark would be supernatural for it.  By the same token, Border Collies do not do Integral Calculus.  And men born in Virginia do not suddenly start speaking in French.  And by the same token, when a soul leaves the body and goes to either heaven or hell, that is a supernatural event.

Now, of course, this Wolf is not going to cite the anathemas of the Council of Trent because a Protestant adheres to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura- the Bible alone- and would regard the Council of Trent as so much babble and blather.  Fair enough.  This Wolf will prove the Communion of Saints from the Bible.

Now, one would think that the only proof we would need was the utterance of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Good Thief Dismas [Luke Chapter 23, verse 43 King James Version]  "Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise."  Obviously, something that vanished in a puff of smoke has no need of paradise.  But wait, Jesus had also said to Mary Magdalene "I have not yet ascended to My Father” shortly after rising from the tomb. [John Chapter 20, verse 17 King James Version]  Indeed.  The "Paradise" to which Our Lord went after He died on Good Friday is what in eschatology is referred to as "The Hell of the Fathers" as when we say in the Apostles Creed "He descended into Hell".  He would only Ascend to Heaven forty days later, on Ascension Thursday, in what the Chaldean Catholics especially refer to as the "Assault Mass" where Our Lord, by virtue of the Merits of His Passion, would "burst asunder" the gates of Heaven.  (Not that He was being resisted by the Holy Angels.  God forbid, as those same Angels had ministered to Him and comforted Him many times, as is recorded in the Gospels.)

Meanwhile, that website also neglects to mention these verses from the Gospel of Matthew: "And the graves were opened: and many bodies of the saints that had slept arose,  And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, came into the holy city, and appeared to many."  [Matthew Chapter 27, verses 52 and 53, Douay Rheims]

Nor, of course, does this Protestant Website cite the following from Machabees:  "It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins"  [2nd Book of Machabees Chapter 12, Verse 46 Douay Rheims]  The reason is simple.  For some reason, even though the books of Machabees had been part of the Bible for over a millennium, they were rejected by Cramner's Godly Order.

The website posits the following question: "Can you explain John 11:26: 'Whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die'?"  The answer is as follows: "This refers not to the first death, which all people die (Hebrews 9:27), but to the second death, which only the wicked die and from which there is no resurrection (Revelation 2:11; 21:8)." Since this website has made that distinction, they should be erudite enough not to conflate passages in the Old Testament, which refer to the Second Death, also known as Eternal Damnation, with natural death.  

But this they do with regard to the following: "“The living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.   Also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished; nevermore will they have a share in anything done under the sun. … There is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going” [Ecclesiastes Chapter 9, versus 5, 6, and 10, King James Version].  And also “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” [Ezekiel Chapter 18, Verse 20 King James Version].

Hopefully, this should be enough of an exposition to show everybody that Tradition, that is, the Deposit of Faith, "once for all delivered to the Saints", precedes scripture, and that scripture cannot stand on its own.  The man who attempts to derive Tradition from the Bible alone aided only by the light of natural reason is building a house upon sand.  He is not going to be able to withstand the delusions of the devil, nor does he have the aid of the Holy Ghost and sanctifying grace.

In these dark times, bereft as many are of the True Mass and Sacraments, the only access to Sanctifying Grace is the Prayers of the Most Holy Rosary.  We also can have supreme confidence in Our Lady of Mt Carmel, who gave us the Brown Scapular and promised that whoever dies so clothed will not suffer Eternal Fire.  Tragically, many Protestants infallibly believe Our Lady is a delusion of the devil and will have nothing to do with her.  This Wolf can only end with what is engraved on Stone at Lourdes: "For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible; for those who believe, no explanation is necessary."

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.  You are our only hope!