On March 17, Tim Staples posted a blog article titled “praying to dead folks” on the Catholic Answers blog. In it, he quoted very briefly from one of my books that has been out of print for nearly two decades. Here is his citation:
In his book, Answers to Catholic Claims, A Discussion of Biblical Authority, James White attempts to make that discussion a moot point because he says there shouldn’t be any of this praying to dead folks to begin with:
The Bible strongly condemns communication with the dead. It does not matter if those who died were good or bad, saintly or evil, there is to be no communication between the living and the dead. The only communication with spirit beings that originates with man that is allowed in Scripture is that of prayer to God and He alone.
Biblical texts like Deut. 18:10-11 and Isaiah 19:3—each of which condemns necromancy—are employed to say “communication with the dead” is condemned absolutely.
Ironically, even when citing from a book that is not available to his audience any longer, Tim Staples managed to misrepresent even this resource. First, I should note, for the few that do have that book, that the proper page reference is page 126. Allow me to provide the full citation:
