Veneration of the Blessed Mother in Europe

[Cody]

I was talking today with someone who told me that on a trip to France he witnessed that in a church the parishoners often place a different cloak around a statue of the Blessed Mother and that they will place food before her.
I wondered if anybody on this forum was familiar with this. I know that people can express veneration of Mary in different ways, but it almost seems like what could be going on could be very, very close to idolatry.
Anyone familiar with practices like this in Europe?

Thanks,

• Cody +

 

[Br.Rich_SFO]

Cody:

I was talking today with someone who told me that on a trip to France he witnessed that in a church the parishoners often place a different cloak around a statue of the Blessed Mother and that they will place food before her.
I wondered if anybody on this forum was familiar with this. I know that people can express veneration of Mary in different ways, but it almost seems like what could be going on could be very, very close to idolatry.
Anyone familiar with practices like this in Europe?

Thanks,

• Cody +

I have witnessed some things done by individuals that I have questioned at shrines. We change the “vestments” on the statue of the Infant of Prague (sp?) with the liturgical seasons,

 

[Joanna]

You don’t have to go to Europe. Yesterday I visited La Conquistadora in Santa Fe, NM. In a small side chapel of the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi, you’ll find La Conquistadora, a wooden statue, the oldest continually venerated Madonna in the United States. It was brought to Santa Fe, NM almost 400 years ago by Fray Benavides. (1625, I think.)

La Conquistadora has many dresses and they are lovingly changed on Fridays according to a long custom started by the Gomez Robledo family.

This is not idolatry. It’s a statue and an act of devotion offered with love to Our Lady. It’s like kissing the baby Jesus in the Nativity creche, another tradition here in New Mexico. Being human, some of us appreciate paintings, statues and the like that help bring a bit of heaven to earth. The tremendous reality of God, heaven, the saints and all things of the spirit seem at times so other worldly until we find a way to appreciate their immanence through sight, and touch and loving acts.

humenick.catholic.org/images/lacon2.jpg

 

[Fidelis]

Joanna:

This is not idolatry. It’s a statue and an act of devotion offered with love to Our Lady. It’s like kissing the baby Jesus in the Nativity creche, another tradition here in New Mexico. Being human, some of us appreciate paintings, statues and the like that help bring a bit of heaven to earth. The tremendous reality of God, heaven, the saints and all things of the spirit seem at times so other worldly until we find a way to appreciate their immanence through sight, and touch and loving acts

Exactly. Look at it this way: when a loved one dies, many people will visit their graves to bring flowers or just to sit. Sometimes they bring some materials to wash the headstone and maybe trim around the grave to make it look well kept and not neglected. Does any of this do the dead person any good? No, but it is a way to keep their memory alive and to at least take the effort to make some physical gesture that shows one’s affection and love for that person has not passed, even though that person (we hope) is now with the Lord and we can longer touch them and physically love them. Is this idolatry? Of course not, but one shows one’s love how one can.

 

[Chickamauga]

When my mother was on her death bed, I brought her a picture of me when I was an infant. She looked at it, said “Awww… sweet little baby” and kissed the picture. Idolatry? No. I would image that our Lord and Lady feel much about the veneration of statues of themselves as I did about my mother kissing my baby picture: loved.

 

[Joanna]

Fidelis:

…the effort to make some physical gesture that shows one’s affection and love for that person has not passed

I love this expression. So true.

Fidelis:

Does any of this do the dead person any good?

I’d go so far as to believe that the loving act is a prayer and that the soul of the person if in purgatory experiences some loving touch from God to comfort, cleanse, and perfect them (as a gift from us.)

If the soul is already in heaven, God might touch them with some accidental glory that speaks to them as a gift, as say a sunset or a rainbow, that blesses us while on earth, and so moves us to all the greater love of God and gratitude for His creation.

Chickamauga:

When my mother was on her death bed, I brought her a picture of me when I was an infant. She looked at it, said “Awww… sweet little baby” and kissed the picture. Idolatry? No. I would image that our Lord and Lady feel much about the veneration of statues of themselves as I did about my mother kissing my baby picture: loved.

How perfectly expressed!
.

 

[stellina]

I just posted something similar on the Apologetics or Miscellaneous forums (I now have brain freeze & can’t remember which! ), so I won’t go into too much detail. My point is that we Americans, even those of us who are Catholic, just don’t understand many European customs & forms of religious expression. Personally, I think it’s because we’ve been affected by the predominant W.A.S.P. sensibility here, which is at odds with its European counterpart in many ways. Europeans, in particular the southerners or Mediterraneans, are much more attuned to their senses and are much more openly affectionate, and this naturally translates to the way they worship.

Also, Europeans are still very proud of their traditions, religious and otherwise. At times this is difficult for us to understand because we are still a very young country compared to the rest of the world and we just don’t have the same depth of history and tradition.

 

[Joanna]

stellina:

I just posted something similar on the Apologetics or Miscellaneous forums (I now have brain freeze & can’t remember which! ), so I won’t go into too much detail. My point is that we Americans, even those of us who are Catholic, just don’t understand many European customs & forms of religious expression. Personally, I think it’s because we’ve been affected by the predominant W.A.S.P. sensibility here, which is at odds with its European counterpart in many ways. Europeans, in particular the southerners or Mediterraneans, are much more attuned to their senses and are much more openly affectionate, and this naturally translates to the way they worship.

Also, Europeans are still very proud of their traditions, religious and otherwise. At times this is difficult for us to understand because we are still a very young country compared to the rest of the world and we just don’t have the same depth of history and tradition.

In 1994 I went aound the world on a religious pilgrimage. We travelled together on a 747 but for the ground travel we were shuttled around on assigned buses. Most of the people on my bus were Philippinos with a sprinkling of Anglos here and there. I was one of the “Anglos”. At first I wondered about this new experience. What a blessing God had in store for me.

I’m Italian-Maltese by heritage, and one of those touchy-feely mediterranean-types you mentioned, despite my Bronx roots. Oh, how I loved following in the footsteps of my Philippino companions from country to country, touching walls and stones, and relics, kissing the feet of statues, touching my rosary beads to the “holy” hoping to take a bit home with me. I’d probably have felt foolish without the demonstrative love and example of my affectionate friends.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

stellina:

I just posted something similar on the Apologetics or Miscellaneous forums (I now have brain freeze & can’t remember which! ), so I won’t go into too much detail. My point is that we Americans, even those of us who are Catholic, just don’t understand many European customs & forms of religious expression. Personally, I think it’s because we’ve been affected by the predominant W.A.S.P. sensibility here, which is at odds with its European counterpart in many ways. Europeans, in particular the southerners or Mediterraneans, are much more attuned to their senses and are much more openly affectionate, and this naturally translates to the way they worship.

Also, Europeans are still very proud of their traditions, religious and otherwise. At times this is difficult for us to understand because we are still a very young country compared to the rest of the world and we just don’t have the same depth of history and tradition.

Even some of us Europeans can find other Europeans a puzzle - as in this.​

Feeding and clothing statues does sound very close to idolatry; The Collyridians in the 4th century offered cakes to Mary. so Epiphanius of Salamis gives them an entry in his book describing 80 heresies.

I think sometimes that we can be so tolerant of certain manifestations of Catholic piety, especially when they concern the BVM - and still more so when they are mentioned as an objection to Catholicism - that we don’t always have the horror of idolatry that we should. Idolatry, and its moral and social effects, was something the prophets could not find words to condemn strongly enough. “Other gods” are called “a lie”, “an abomination”, “filth”, “excrement”, “no-gods”, “emptiness”, “delusion”; Second Isaiah pours out ridicule upon them for chapter after chapter. There is absolutely nothing whatever to be said in favour of anything so utterly insane and debasing as worshipping the work of one’s own hands.

That may not have happened - God alone knows our hearts - but it doesn’t follow that “anything goes”. And there is a real danger of causing scandal; we cannot blame other believers for thinking we are idolaters, if we insist on doing things that look uncommonly like idolatry. It’s not as though feeding or clothing statues were an essential part of the Faith, which cannot be surrendered no matter what the cost; for it isn’t. But worshipping the Only Living and True God, most certainly is; and that we do by approaching the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

What Would Mary Want ? ##

 

[Mary_s_Lamb]

When you wrote that they left food for Mary it reminded me of something recent. After the terrorist attack at the school in Russia, many families left food and water at the site (which became a makeshift shrine.) This was in grief that the victims were denied them.

It was an expression of love. Perhaps, the same feelings of affection are also the motivation for bring food to the Mary statue. Everyone in Russia knows that the food and water cannot help the victims. But they feel compelled to do it anyway. I’m sure the people at the shrine realize that a statue cannot eat as well. But it is done out of love.

Mary

 

[Katharine]

This summer I was in Croatia. On Aug. 15, the Assumption all the businesses are closed and it is a very special day for the whole country. Everyone makes a pilgrimage to the village of Sinj where Our Lady spoke to a Croatia soldier. People walk for miles all day and night, some are barefoot they pray the rosary and sing songs as they walk, when they get there everyone goes to Mass there are also lines and lines of people going to confession. It is a very beautiful experience.