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guanophore
Guest
I think you responded well. I ask them if the people in this picture:
Are worshipping the chair, or the sound system, or the podium, or the box of kleenex.
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Are worshipping the chair, or the sound system, or the podium, or the box of kleenex.
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Cat_Herder
Guest
What is the pure sacrifice in Malachi 1:11?
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PRmerger
Guest
And, as JonNC wickedly and slyly noted: one has to wonder what the people who are kneeling behind the man in the blue shirt are worshipping.I think you responded well. I ask them if the people in this picture:
http://martybraemer.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/altar_call.jpg
Are worshipping the chair, or the sound system, or the podium, or the box of kleenex.
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PRmerger
Guest
If it’s past tense then how is it that Christians today apply the atoning death of Christ to their present day repentance?
If it’s past tense, does that mean that only those who were present at the crucifixion are saved?
Or, rather, is it as the Catholic Church presents it: the sacrifice was once, for all, but is present eternally before the throne of God, and thus, even 2000 years later Christians can merit heaven from the atoning death of Christ?
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PRmerger
Guest
I think the Church, while admittedly doing an abysmal job in lots of other areas of catechesis, has done a fine job in this area.
If you ask even the most obtuse Catholic, pew-warmer, sitting in the pews on any Sunday, “See that statue of Mary over there? Do you worship that?” he’s going to say, “Um…I don’t think so.”
He has been properly catechized, in this area at least.
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guanophore
Guest
That is exceedingly rascally, and clever!And, as JonNC wickedly and slyly noted: one has to wonder what the people who are kneeling behind the man in the blue shirt are worshipping.
I’ve not been through Catholic catechesis, and even I think the Catholic Church has made it abundantly clear.
Jon
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guanophore
Guest
I think sometimes people think of Catholics as so ignorant and low functioning that we do mindless things. One of the keys to responding to the accusation is to make the point that worship cannot happen without intentionality. If a person is not purposefully idolizing the statue then it can’t qualify for worship.I’ve not been through Catholic catechesis, and even I think the Catholic Church has made it abundantly clear.
Jon
I have had non-Catholics on this board insist that “bowing down” is a form of worship, and you cannot convince them otherwise.
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Truthstalker
Guest
That picture is complicated by the traditional view of the Emperor as divine.
At least he is facing the right way and is not wearing a blue shirt.
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PRmerger
Guest
And that comment is complicated by the fact that Japanese bow to each other, not just to the Emperor.
Heh.
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Kathryn_Ann
Guest
youtube.com/watch?v=NG3QdH7Z74s
Hi, Kevin,I think you are doing an excellent job of helping others understand things. The above link might also help in some way.
And you can simply re-affirm that we’re not worshipping the statues, that we believe in the Communion of Saints and in* venerating* our Holy Mother, etc. Just as you said, we’re not worshipping food when we pray over it. Everything is done in gratitude to God our Father, and for the family of saints we are all a part of. Even in the Old Testament times, kings would honor their mothers, who would sit on the king’s right hand side in a special place of honor. Icons remind us of our heritage, and only point to the reality we know as our family in Christ. Statues, icons, all these things are not worshipped in themselves, but help us by pointing to the truth behind them.
If they’re protestant, they need to be reminded that every scripture they quote came down through the ages through oral tradition before the Holy Bible as we now know it was even begun to be collected and put together. There was no other Christian faith or "denomination,"for over 1500 years. Christ handed the Keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter, and that the Catholic Church was here over 1500 years before the Schism. Best wishes as you face the non-believers. You may make a great difference in their lives!
Kathryn Ann
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Truthstalker
Guest
Can I bring up the whole thing of statues that “do things”? I’m talking about crying, bleeding, etc. If they are only like family pictures, well, my family pictures don’t do that. If you are venerating such an item, are you in danger of venerating the item as opposed to what it represents? Don’t you believe that items can carry grace, so that they are not merely an objective item, but a carrier of grace? If that is true for a statue, then it is more than wood, plaster, or stone. But what do you consider it?
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PRmerger
Guest
No. This is (another) mistaken understanding of Catholicism.
Perhaps you have read an anti-Catholic website proclaim that this is a Catholic belief, but I suggest you search the Catechism or the Vatican website to see if there is any mention of these items being “carriers of grace”.
You will not be able to find that coming from the Catholic Church.
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pablope
Guest
This article may help you to discover the Jewish and OT roots of relics…calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/relics-saints-and-the-assumption-of-mary/
As a seminary student, I was superficially aware of the cult of saints in Christian antiquity. I had read Augustine’s Confessions with their favorable mention of the practice. I knew something about the cult of martyrs in the Church. But, I dismissed these as as sort of periphery to the “real heart” of Christianity: grace and justification. I benignly tolerated Augustine’s belief in relics the way I tolerated his Neo-Platonism: an unfortunate hold-over from his pagan environment. The first real blow to this interpretation came when I read Peter Brown’s book, The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity.
Brown challenged my view that the place of saints and relics in the church was a mere holdover from paganism, and that the practice was somehow peripheral to true Christianity. Instead, Brown painted a picture of ancient Christianity and paganism in which relics were indispensable to the former, and repulsive to the latter. Far from a holdover from paganism, the place of relics in the Church appeared as something intensely Jewish, Hebraic, and Old Testament. Pagans, like Julian-the-Apostate, found the practice revolting and legislated against it. (Paganism, with its notions of ritual purity, had strictly delimited the realm of divine worship and neatly separated it from the realm of corpses
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petite_foireuse
Guest
That’s a good one. Let me take up the challenge
Even though statues are part of Catholic heritage and life, the faithful are repeatedly warned to be careful when they encounter this kind of unusual phenomena, as with apparitions. They can be a help if understood properly, but they are not necessary to the Faith since they are not part of Revelation. Anything a “talking” statue or an apparition “says” or does undergoes a rigorous review in Rome before it is declared acceptable for veneration (crying, bleeding, and such being usually only part of the phenomena before some kind of message is given, as far as I know).
Unfortunately, people often rush in without using their heads and/or heeding the Church’s warnings. Statues that cry and bleed can and are often used by the devil to lead people astray. He is unfortunately very good at using means that appear innocuous or even praiseworthy to “get in”, so to say, and if you then start focussing too much on these false “miracles”, will give you more and more to “keep you busy” while leading you little by little away from the core of the Faifth. This is why many rather conservatist priests tell their flocks over and over not to pay attention to such phenomena (btw, focussing too much on apparitions is sometimes called “apparitionism”, with the “-ism” suffix used to indicate exageration).
The Church knows about this problem, but the solution is not to forbid statues and images alltogether. Again, I think this is a matter of being “mature” in the Faith. Statues and images were forbidden alltogether to the Israelites because they were not capable of dealing with them, like a father forbids any kind of alcohol to his children until they are old enough to understand when, where, how much. With the coming of Christ, that prohibition has been lifted, but nobody said you shouldn’t use your head! Personally I have always seen 1 Cor 13:11 as a veiled reference to this: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away the things of a child”.
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Truthstalker
Guest
As far as I can tell, these are good and reasonable answers. I just thought there should be some discussion of the subject while we were in the area.
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guanophore
Guest
We don’t believe they carry grace intrinsically, but that God can pour His grace through inanimate objects. You are right, it is important to venerate the One who is using the inanimate object to show us His grace. A couple bliblical examples of this:
2 Kings 13:20-21
20 So Eli’sha died, and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. 21 And as a man was being buried, lo, a marauding band was seen and the man was cast into the grave of Eli’sha; and as soon as the man touched the bones of Eli’sha, he revived, and stood on his feet.
Acts 19:11-13
11 And God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, 12 so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.
The Catholic reverence for the bones of the holy, and objects of theirs, originated with God working through these objects.
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Truthstalker
Guest
Actually I got that from Catholics.
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PRmerger
Guest
Catholics, sadly, are often divorced in doctrine from the Catholic Church.Actually I got that from Catholics.
Best, always, to check the source: the Catechism or the Vatican websites.
You are aware, yes, that you can get “from Catholics” that the Church is for abortion, or same sex marriage, or divorce and re-marriage, or women’s ordination…
Again, best to go to the source.
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Truthstalker
Guest
Agreed.
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