I’d just like to add that, notwithstanding “divine nature” as defined by the Catholic Church, we’re still talking about the practice of praying to multiple invisible beings – the Catholic stand simply divests executive authority from all other invisible beings save one.

Me, I prefer to simplify it all and pray to Joe Pesci.

I wasn’t addressing the cartoon. I was responding to two comments above:

1) Asylum Seeker’s question: “are guardian angels an actual part of Christian theology, or is that just more random, extra-Biblical schmultz”

2) pseudonymn’s claim that: “the idea [of guardian angels] only goes back to the 400’s CE.”

You’re still promoting the idea of multiple divine agents

If by multiple divine agents you mean multiple human and angelic beings that act as agents for one divine being, then yes, I do promote that.

If you mean multiple beings that have a divine nature, then no, I don’t promote that.

If it bugs or amuses anyone, I’m fine with that.

Praying to Mary or one’s guardian angel is, to many non-Catholics, practically indistinguishable from polytheism.

It’s a neat trick that Catholics do, parsing prayer to God and prayer to intercessors, but it’s still disingenuous – you’re still promoting the idea of multiple divine agents, which bugs Protestants and simply amuses atheists.

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.” (Matthew 18:10)

Furthermore, Christians addressed the following prayer to Mary at least as early as 250 AD:

Beneath your compassion,
We take refuge, O Mother of God:
do not despise our petitions
in time of trouble:
but rescue us from dangers,
only pure, only blessed one.

“The hymn Sub Tuum Praesidium was first found in Greek in the Coptic Orthodox Christmas Liturgy of the third century and dates approximately to 250 AD. It is used to this day in the Greek liturgical tradition. Versions of this prayer also occur in the Ambrosian rite, Roman, and Byzantine and Coptic liturgies of today and in numerous languages.” (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub_tuum_praesidium)

Such prayers are acts of honoring and requests for saints to pray for us. They are not acts of adoration/worship, which is due to God alone. Thus they are not acts of idolatry.

From a purely entertainment-oriented perspective, I think more gods = more interesting. The Greek/Roman gods, the Hindu gods, the Norse gods – they all make for much more entertaining reading than Allah and Yaweh and Jesus. Lightning and sex and adventures and tricksters > deserts and diseases and preaching.

1. Greater numbers are greater than lesser numbers.
2. God’s greattness requires that the amount of God He is must be as great as possible.
3. God cannot be >= 200% God because then there would be two or more gods.
4. Therefore the amount of Gods is infinitely close to 200% and the number of gods is 1.9999.