If you say Catholics worship statues, can you prove it?

Question

Can anyone show me anywhere in any Catholic source that we believe statues are anything but statues? If not, will you finally listen to us when we tell you, like we do every day, that we do not pray to statues?

Answer 1

According to the Catholic Catechism:

* IV. "YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FOR YOURSELF A GRAVEN IMAGE . . ."

2129 The divine injunction included the prohibition of every representation of God by the hand of man. Deuteronomy explains: "Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a graven image for yourselves, in the form of any figure. . . . "66 It is the absolutely transcendent God who revealed himself to Israel. "He is the all," but at the same time "he is greater than all his works."67 He is "the author of beauty."68

2130 Nevertheless, already in the Old Testament, God ordained or permitted the making of images that pointed symbolically toward salvation by the incarnate Word: so it was with the bronze serpent, the ark of the covenant, and the cherubim.69

2131 Basing itself on the mystery of the incarnate Word, the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea (787) justified against the iconoclasts the veneration of icons - of Christ, but also of the Mother of God, the angels, and all the saints. By becoming incarnate, the Son of God introduced a new "economy" of images.

2132 The Christian veneration of images is not contrary to the first commandment which proscribes idols. Indeed, "the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype," and "whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it."70 The honor paid to sacred images is a "respectful veneration," not the adoration due to God alone:

Religious worship is not directed to images in themselves, considered as mere things, but under their distinctive aspect as images leading us on to God incarnate. The movement toward the image does not terminate in it as image, but tends toward that whose image it is.71

476 Since the Word became flesh in assuming a true humanity, Christ's body was finite.112 Therefore the human face of Jesus can be portrayed; at the seventh ecumenical council (Nicaea II in 787) the Church recognized its representation in holy images to be legitimate.113

477 At the same time the Church has always acknowledged that in the body of Jesus "we see our God made visible and so are caught up in love of the God we cannot see."114 The individual characteristics of Christ's body express the divine person of God's Son. He has made the features of his human body his own, to the point that they can be venerated when portrayed in a holy image, for the believer "who venerates the icon is venerating in it the person of the one depicted".115

Holy images

1159 The sacred image, the liturgical icon, principally represents Christ. It cannot represent the invisible and incomprehensible God, but the incarnation of the Son of God has ushered in a new "economy" of images:

Previously God, who has neither a body nor a face, absolutely could not be represented by an image. But now that he has made himself visible in the flesh and has lived with men, I can make an image of what I have seen of God . . . and contemplate the glory of the Lord, his face unveiled.27

1160 Christian iconography expresses in images the same Gospel message that Scripture communicates by words. Image and word illuminate each other:

We declare that we preserve intact all the written and unwritten traditions of the Church which have been entrusted to us. One of these traditions consists in the production of representational artwork, which accords with the history of the preaching of the Gospel. For it confirms that the incarnation of the Word of God was real and not imaginary, and to our benefit as well, for realities that illustrate each other undoubtedly reflect each other's meaning.28

1161 All the signs in the liturgical celebrations are related to Christ: as are sacred images of the holy Mother of God and of the saints as well. They truly signify Christ, who is glorified in them. They make manifest the "cloud of witnesses"29 who continue to participate in the salvation of the world and to whom we are united, above all in sacramental celebrations. Through their icons, it is man "in the image of God," finally transfigured "into his likeness,"30 who is revealed to our faith. So too are the angels, who also are recapitulated in Christ:

Following the divinely inspired teaching of our holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church (for we know that this tradition comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells in her) we rightly define with full certainty and correctness that, like the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, venerable and holy images of our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ, our inviolate Lady, the holy Mother of God, and the venerated angels, all the saints and the just, whether painted or made of mosaic or another suitable material, are to be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, walls and panels, in houses and on streets.31

1162 "The beauty of the images moves me to contemplation, as a meadow delights the eyes and subtly infuses the soul with the glory of God."32 Similarly, the contemplation of sacred icons, united with meditation on the Word of God and the singing of liturgical hymns, enters into the harmony of the signs of celebration so that the mystery celebrated is imprinted in the heart's memory and is then expressed in the new life of the faithful.

Answer 2

The Catholics don't worship statues. The statues exist to remind people of the heritage of their belief. Many religions use the same technique (Buddhists pray at shrines with a depiction of Buddha).

Islam doesn't depict a person to give them focus. They have chosen a place (Mecca). So their focal point is to pray with their bodies oriented in a given direction. In the mosque this direction is obvious by either the architecture or decor.

Protestant Christians usually have a cross at the front of their sanctuarys and they pray oriented in that direction.

Shintos have various objects in their shrines.

All of these religions use their objects to allow them to focus their attention to the act of praying. Nobody believes that the objects are anything other than objects.

Answer 3

First, I don't say Catholic's worship statues. That said, I encourage you to define worship...no, really. To worship something, someone, is to give them honor, and standing above all others. To outsiders, the Catholic forms in worship could be misunderstood as worship to the very present statues in the cathedrals. They are often decorated, placed in positions of honor, lifted up and carried through the streets, and so on. The protestant reformation reacted against the use of intermediaries as targets of prayer and declared that Jesus alone was the mediator between humanity and God--not saints. Jesus was to be worshiped, not those who lived exemplary lives following after Him--not even those we choose to declare as saints. There was a whole lot of backlash against "idols" --anything that was substituted for the God-place in worship. Statues of saints in Catholic churches, regardless of how present day faithful regard them, continue to echo these fears for those who do not choose to understand.

You know what you believe, I invite you to show the compassion born of the beliefs you hold to those who lash out against you.

Answer 4

Oh come on - that would spoil all their fun. They like to believe that Catholics worship statues, and Mary and saints and commit idoltary.

If they got rid of that what could they hold against Catholics?

Very few Catholic haters that I have met have changed their minds. And usually that happens because they challenge Catholics and they recieve real answers from the bible.

And it requires work to learn what Catholics believe. Most don't want to disregard what their pastor tells them. It is so much easier letting someone else tell you what to think then to find the truth on your own.

Answer 5

Many Christian Fundamentalists like to believe this is so, simply because there are statues in the Catholic churches, when in fact, many of them are guilty of praying to crosses and putting their pastors on pedestals of worship.

Answer 6

statues are just a symbol of what Catholics believe. We don't worship the statue but we worship the meaning of it. We don't worship the "statue" of Jesus, we worship Jesus. Jesus is the Lord. Jesus is the best. You may choose to believe otherwise, that's your decision, we dont care. We will continue to worship the Lord until the very last day. I will die believing in Jesus even if I'm the last Christian left on earth.

Answer 7

Catholics do no longer worship the statue, in basic terms the graven image that the statue portrays. 2d commandment Thou shalt no longer make unto thee any graven image. for sure Catholics does no longer have such worshiping documented. yet tell why do you pray to saints, whilst God is the only one which hears and solutions prayers. If i'm incorrect, I say sorry.

Answer 8

They won't listen, they dont understand the idea of "veneration" v. "worship". You have to understand, compared to a Catholic, the Protestant world view is very small. Do you realize that many of them actually refer to themselves as "Christian" and us as only as "Catholic"? Never mind that we were the first Christianity. Anyway, it all stems from the fact that they do not understand that it is human nature to have difficulty focusing on abstract concepts (like "faith", "heaven", etc.) without a tangible device like a statue, a picture, or a pendant.

Answer 9

You are absolutely right, to actually pray to and have faith in the statue itself would be idology and a sin. The statues are no different than if our churches hung paintings of Jesus and the saints on the wall.

Answer 10

I was raised catholic, in a rural parish with a rather beautiful little church. And believe me, nobody was worshipping our Saint Patrick statue when we had to move him in order to varnish the floor -- that old fella was HEAVY.

Answer 11

I was brought up in the Catholic religion and dont remember bowing down to anything but Father speaking at the alter