Praying to Saints and Angels

So..

It was my turn to lead the workplace fellowship Bible study. I forgot until it was time to go. So I had a minimum number of minutes to get ready - couldn't even remember where we were up to in the gospel. So I jumped ahead to the story of the Gadarene demoniac, and did some standard questions on that, and in the end the Bible study went reasonably well.

I noticed that the only woman in the group had not said anything, so, by way of drawing her into the topic for inclusiveness I asked her what the perspective is on demons, exorcism etc in her church, which happens to be Roman Catholic. She was glad that I had brought her into the discussion, but was rather caught on the hop, not sure what to say, so she said that they normally pray to the Archangel Michael.

You can imagine that in our predominantly non-conformist evangelical fellowship this was met with a rather stunned pause. I was able to state that other views exist on the topic of praying to angels, and then later on disagreed with the Pentecostal guy so that RC lady wouldn't feel too 'got at'.

But then the next week, she brought along a printed copy of the prayer to Michael, so when while praying for the carol service I prayed against the forces of Darkness, she got out this pre-printed prayer and read it out.

Now in our fellowship prayers are normally net with a whole hearted 'AMEN', so when she had finished it was very obvious that only one person managed a half hearted amen that might have been a cough.

Now personally, I can't say amen to a prayer addressed to anyone other than a member of the trinity. To me the Bible makes it plain that we have access direct to God in prayer, without need for intermediaries. But I did feel sorry for her, trying to contribute, and trying to follow up on my query the previous week, so afterwards I thanked her for bringing the prayer in, and explained why it was not our normal practice. This lead on to a good conversation about the RC view of prayers to angels, the single communion of believers dead and alive, and that we ask each other to pray so why not ask those who have gone before, etc. She also emphasised that they do not worship saints and angels. So we parted as friends.

But on a theological note, I remain convinced that simply saying you don't worship something means little when you bow before its statue, kiss its statue, attribute miracles to the something, or answers to prayer to the something, or assume that anyone in the world can pray simultaneously to the something ie omnipresence/omniscience...then even if you say you don't worship it then you have in practice made a god out of it, and I still think it breaches the first few commandments, and that throughout the Bible any attempt at communication between the dead and the living is forbidden eg the Saul/Samuel incident at Endor, and Lazarus and Dives. And fundamentally, prayer to anyone other than God makes them take the place that should be occupied by God alone. Which is a polite way of saying that despite her assurances to the contrary, it is idolatry.