veneration

[Maria1993]

Just to be sure, we as Catholics venerate the cross, correct?

 

[Sunflake9]

As far as I know we do.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Just to be sure, we as Catholics venerate the cross, correct?

It is even called adoration, but not in the sense of adoration that is due to God alone. It is a reverence for the instrument of our salvation.

 

[Elizium23]

Can someone explain this Catholic Encyclopedia passage to me?

Following Bl. Albertus Magnus and Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas, and a section of the Schoolmen who appear to have overlooked the Second Council of Nicæa teach that the worship rendered to the Cross and the image of Christ is that of latria, but with a distinction: the same worship is due to the image and its exemplar but the exemplar is honoured for Himself (or for itself), with an absolute worship; the image because of its exemplar, with a relative worship. The object of the adoration is the same, primary in regard to the exemplar and secondary in regard to the image. To the image of Christ, then, we owe a worship of latria as well as to His Person. The image, in fact, is morally one with its prototype, and, thus considered, if a lesser degree of worship be rendered to the image, that worship must reach the exemplar lessened in degree. Against this theory an attack has recently been made in “The Tablet”, the opinion attributed to the Thomists being sharply combated. Its adversaries have endeavoured to prove that the image of Christ should be venerated but with a lesser degree of honour than its exemplar.

 

[Bayoubeefmaster]

Yes we venerate the cross but by no means worship it. God alone do we worship

 

[JamesCaruso]

Yes we venerate the cross but by no means worship it. God alone do we worship

And “adore” can be used in the sense of veneration, not worship, as we have become accustomed to.

The Catholic Encyclopedia says elsewhere regarding the ceremony of adoration of the cross:

The essential note of the ceremony is reverence (proskynesis) which has a relative character, and which may be best explained in the words of the Pseudo-Alcuin: “Prosternimur corpore ante crucem, mente ante Dominium. Veneramur crucem, per quam redempti sumus, et illum deprecamur, qui redemit” (While we bend down in body before the cross we bend down in spirit before God. While we reverence the cross as the instrument of our redemption, we pray to Him who redeemed us).