1) Do Catholic worship idols?

Question

2) Do you have pictures of your friends and family in your home?

Suzanne: From your authority?

Imachatholic2 and Mark, you just have excellent answers...both of you.

Answer 1

Statues and icons in Catholic and Orthodox churches were first placed there, because they were meant to tell a visual story to people who were mostly illiterate.

So the challenge to the painter or sculpteur was to sculpt or paint a depiction which told a lot of information in a sinlge statue or a single painting.

The image had to appeal to people from many different classes and levels of education and sophistication. This was a lot to ask of the artists, but many of them were true geniuses, like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

Consequently, the dying Christ in the arms of Mary his mother is a remarkable sculpture in the Vatican which communicates many different human and heavenly ideas, at the same time.

Inevitably, some people began to worship the statues in the churches, and to mistake the statue of the Saint represented for the actual spirit of the Saint. But really, now, Who cares?

Jesus and the Madonna and the Holy Saints do not worry and judge whether the poor child laying a flower at the feet of a statue has the 'correct' theology! They accept our faith as feeble and frail, and answer our prayer for our faith, not because we might mistakenly 'worship' a plaster or marble statue.

Protestants like to point a finger at Roman Catholics and call them 'idol worshipers.' These people are missing the important point -- and the point is simple:

"Man looks upon the outward appearance of things, but the Lord who is the only One qualified to judge, looks upon the heart."

I encourage all men to pray as they see fit. Condemning their prayers or calling them idolators is a mistake (maybe even a 'sin' which some have called self-rigtheousness and arrogance).

I have a Teddy Bear who comforts me when I cry. Is Teddy an idol? I have been known to ask Teddy to protect me and to bring my sweetheart home save - Am I an idolator, or just a sappy and sentimental kind guy, huh?

My Grandma has a marble monument over her grave, where I leave flowers once a year. Am I honoring/worshipping my ancestor's idol? Well, yes, I guess I am, but maybe some snotty religious people should look in a mirror and mind their own business.

Answer 2

1) Do Catholic worship idols? No.

2) Do you have pictures of your friends and family in your home? Yes.

As your questions suggests, statues and pictures of people we love are not idols.

Statues and paintings of Jesus and the saints are just like pictures of the people we love and respect.

The King James Version of the Bible states in Exodus 20:4: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth"

Why were the Jews commanded not to make graven images? Graven images were the standard method of pagan worship. They were representations of false gods.

This is a very clear command.

However God commanded the Jews in Exodus 25:18 and 1 Chronicles 28:18–19, "And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them"

And in 1 Kings chapter 7 Solomon made bulls and other images out of precious metals.

It seems obvious that the Jews did not worship the cherubims and Solomon did not worship the bulls he had made. These images did not violate the command of God. Therefore, an image not made for worship is acceptable.

In Numbers 21:8-9, "And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and if anyone who has been bitten looks at it, he will recover." Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he recovered."

And in John 3:14-15, Jesus says in correlation, "And just as Moses lifted up the [image of a] serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

How can a statue of our Lord Jesus Christ dead on the cross be considered an idol to a false god? A crucifix is the message of the Gospel without words held up for all to see, a visual reminder of the sacrifice of Jesus, no different from a painting, a play, or a movie.

Catholics do not worship statues but the almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

With love in Christ.

Answer 3

1) yes

Many people say "We don't pray to the statues they are just symbols that help us focus on God."

The ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, etc prayed to statues of Zeus and other gods and they knew that it was not literaly Zeus. Zeus had many temples with many statues, so the statue represented Zeus. They knew that it was only a symbol. So yes you are praying to the statues or else why would GOD say not to do it. When you make idols you don't elevate your concept of God rather you debase it by confining an omnipotent, ominpresent God into a "graven image".


2) Yes I do. There were also angels carved into the walls of the temple and there were angels on top of the ark. God had no problem with those. Why? because they were not the focus of the worship. No one prayed to them or burned incense to them or laid gifts before them. But people did pray to idols, burn incense, give offerings and kiss and adore idols of Baal, and this is also practiced in the Catholic church. It IS idolatry

The better question is "What do catholics call idolatry?"

Christianity comes out of judaism yet we never see a synagogue where they have statues of Moses or Elijah or any of the other prophets that people pray to and burn incense to and leave gifts to. Why because it is not of God, it comes from paganism that crept into the early church.



Exodus 20:4,5

Answer 4

Yes, I do have pictures of friend and family in my home.
Yes, Catholics worship idols ....although they never admit it.
Their term is "an aid to worship,"
If you are making a rapport between family pictures and idol worship, my my, what a big stretch.
I have yet to kneel before any of my family pictures, pray to them and hope to receive some answer.

Answer 5

Yes I think Catholics worship idols. Half of my family is Catholic and if you compare (as everyone does at one time or another) Catholic and Pagan religions they are closely related. Wine/Blood, Bread/Body, Holy Trinity, Mary/Goddess, etc... I don't think not one member of my family doesn't have a crucifix over their bed, or a picture of Jesus on their walls.

Yes, I have picture of friends and family. Yes, I worship them with love and honor.

Answer 6

They dont worship idols. If they do, it is wrong because they are not obeying the first commandment itself. They keep the statues and pictures just like a memorial object just like we keep pictures of our family and friends.

Answer 7

No, Roman Catholics do not worship idols (or saints, or anything other than God).

Yes, I do have pictures of friends and family in my home. I don't worship them either.

Answer 8

Nope when I was a Catholic I never felt like I was worshiping anything. This is just nonsense that people who want to bash Catholicism say.

love and blessings Don

Answer 9

They say that they do not but if you are Catholic, have ever seen a Catholic church or mass then you know better... idol worship is everywhere!

Answer 10

Have no idea, I am to busy trying to live the way God wants me too to worry about others. Yes but I don't worship them.