So humans(including saints?) are venerated, and gods are worshiped. What about angels?
Venerated. There is only one God, only one entity who gets worshiped.
By definition angels are not god.
Doesn’t answer the question directly. If humans(including saints?) are venerated and the god Catholics believe in is worshipped, then angels are…?
Czarcasm, do you have me on ignore? :dubious:
Angels are saints, and are treated the same way as any other saint.
Well, those who are well-behaved, of course. Fallen ones get smacked by St. George, St. Mike et al.
Honestly saw his and not yours-sorry.
Angels=saints? I am confused. I thought saints and angels were two different things-saints being a special type of human, and angels being an otherworldly creation of god. What’s up?
I’m sorry I thought I was clear. Let me try again, though Nava already answered this as well, citing the Catholic Encylopedia
(bolding is mine)
Angels are saints in the sense of being “people who are set as examples and who can act as patrons”, and of us referring to the named ones by prepending “saint”: for example, we speak of “the Archangel Saint Michael”. They are not saints in the sense of being “humans who are set as examples and who can act as patrons”, due to not being humans.
They can be set as examples because those who are set as examples are those who did not fall, that is, those who chose to toe the line.
Some people can spend many, many hours arguing over whether angels have free will or not; if they don’t, then they are not persons and they can’t be saints. But it’s the kind of discussion to which unofficial people trying to sell crystal pyramids have dedicated a lot more time than the Catechism.
If we ever meet another intelligent species and some of them convert, they’ll be able to get declared saints as well, despite also not being human.
Actually JRDelirious laid out dulia and latria earlier.
Saints are a category of persons, not a category of humans. Simply put, a saint is any person who is in Heaven. This includes, of course, quite a few humans (including, one hopes, a great many humans who have not ever been officially recognized as such), and also includes all of the non-fallen angels. The Pope or the Church do not “make saints”, as they’re often mistakenly described as doing: Only God does that. The Church just recognizes people as saints.
Of course, there’s bound to be at least some difference between how we interact with the angels than how we interact with human saints. It’s possible to seek to “be like” Theresa of Calcutta, or Simon Peter, or Kateri Tekakwitha, in a way that it’s not realistic to seek to “be like” Michael or Gabriel. But as far as worship vs. adoration vs. veneration or whatever, saints are saints, and are not God.
The same is true of the witchfinders of England (and the blokes who penned the Malleus). They were, ah, private entrepreneurs shall we say who’d travel from village to village, offering the rural schmucks to rid them of witches in exchange for food, or cash, or the property of any seized witch. And lo and behold, wherever they went, witches to be found abounded ! Life can be funny that way.
At least, that’s true for Europe.
In the Americas however the Church itself, as embodied by Spanish Franciscan missionaries, seems to have been quite content with flagging any and all Native, animist/polytheist beliefs as straight up devil worship and branded those who persisted in practicing (or leading) their traditional rites as hechiceros, spellcasters. Living in such remote corners of the Empire as they did the Franciscans regrettably didn’t have access to enough comfy chairs for a proper Inquisition, but necessity being the mother of invention they came up with plenty of interesting ways to hunt down and punish such “devilry”. The Pueblo Indians would notoriously take it a mite personally in 1680.
Am I to understand that I shouldn’t use catholic.org as a source of information when it comes to what the Catholic Church believes? It claims that Archangel Michael is not a saint.
Where do you get any of this from?
On that same catholic.org site, if you go to the “Saints and Angels” list, you will find them listed as “St. (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael) the Archangel” – they are venerated AS saints but are not “saints” in the sense of one of the departed faithful who lived a holy life. They are also assigned as “patrons” of places and persons. E.g. Gabriel of telecommunications workers.
My guess is that popular canonizing in the early church gave Michael the title of saint. The Michaelion was set up as a Christian religious site supposedly by Constainine in the early days of the church. The Catholic Church itself didn’t formalize universal canonization until the 10 or 11th centuries and by then who the hell is going to yank a title away from a popular archangel?
Yes, of course, my mistake.
At least some angels were capable of free will (or at least disobedience to God), one of them has apparently contacted the OP over several incarnations.
I thought ensoulment and free will not some level of intelligence was the requirement for sainthood.
Without free will there is no actual intelligence, no actual comprehension of the world and ability to decide. A computer may be able to beat the best human players at chess, but it can’t make any decisions which aren’t programmed; it is smart but not intelligent.