How Are Catholics Not Comitting idoaltry

[Pedophobe]

Because the statue isn't holy it's just a depiction of something holy. They're praying at the statue not to it. It's no more idolatry than watching porn is having sex

 

[The Man With No Name]

Because the statue isn't holy it's just a depiction of something holy. They're praying at the statue not to it. It's no more idolatry than watching porn is having sex

Interesting metaphor but yes.

Catholicism believes its worshippers are baseline intelligent enough to understand the statue or efigy is representative of God or his Saints. This doesn't preclude the worship and prayer many Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants do to angels as well.

There's many people who will reject praying to angels as idolatry but even Martin Luther believed you can pray to guardian angels for intercession. They are God's servants and an extension of him. Calvinists reject this but they are retarded in many other ways too, like a misguided brother.

 

[NevskyProspekt]

There's zero difference in substance between praying to a saint and asking someone you know to pray for you. Would you refuse someone's request that you pray for them because it's "idolatry"? The word pray simply means to ask.

Saints are human individuals we know are united with God in heaven and will be able to intercede with their own prayers more effectively because their will has been totally conformed to his own. So we may not pray for something in the way God wills it, but they know what that is and can request it on our behalf. Kind of like hiring a specialist instead of DIY, God of course can answer our prayers at any time and in any form if he so chooses.

Also keep in mind there are different levels of worship in the Catholic Church. Latria is the form of supreme worship due only to God alone, which is embodied in the Mass and Eucharist and other sacraments. Dulia is the ordinary devotion to saints, with hyperdulia being the term for devotion to the Virgin Mary due to her special position as Mother of God.

I've noticed a lot of people inclined towards protestantism have a very difficult time making or understanding distinctions. It's like they have this zero-sum sense of Scripture (and Tradition, for that matter) that sucks out all of the beautiful polyvalent, multilayered meanings and perspectives. When they cannot reconcile that Scripture is often in brilliantly uncomfortable tension with itself they end up splitting like a cell, hence the huge number of Protestant sects which ironically contradicts with Christ's great prayer 'That they all may be one' in John 17:21. At its worst it devolves into an unhealthy Puritanism or makes God into an Eldritch abomination whose sole attribute is really flexing sovereign power like Calvinism. It makes a mockery of Our God who is a loving Father.

Only if you intentionally miss it without a good reason and are fully aware missing Mass on Sunday or a Holy Day of Obligation is a mortal sin. Keep in mind God doesn't play "gotchas", he doesn't want people to go to hell. God knows your intent if you are killed before you can go to Confession or are otherwise unable to do so.

If you hold off thinking you can do it on your deathbed, that's just the sin of presumption.

Even then, there is a huge variety of opinion in the Church on what the nitty gritty circumstances of the three traditional traits needed actually constitutes a mortal sin - and I don’t mean that in a liberal sense. This is a big debate even among very conservative and traditional theologians (“How do we know we know, we know?” “What constitutes full knowledge if our judgement is so clouded by living in a fallen world?”) I prefer to err on the side of caution and seek to attend Confession weekly regardless (it really helps, I regularly struggle with scruples for personal reasons anyway) before Communion. For all the stereotypes of the Church being condemnatory and obsessively legalistic, it has never declared any one person to be damned and the Catechism itself states that in hope, the Church prays for the salvation of all, no exceptions. We pray for the salvation of all with every rosary too - “Lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy.” This isn’t minimizing God’s Justice either. It’s both/and and you can’t have Mercy without recognizing the need for Justice. We simply don’t know whether or which people are in Hell - that’s above our pay grade. The only thing we are certain of is that damnation is a very, very real possibility for each and every one of us so we must seek to avoid all sin and never become presumptuous or prideful. My view is basically the one Servant of God Hans Urs Von Balthasar proposed as well as the one outlined by Pope Benedict XVI in his brilliant encyclical Spe Salvi. I want every single human being to be, somehow, in the end, reconciled with God. How dare we desire anything else when we cannot be certain of our own salvation?

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

The short version is they aren't worshiping the statues or icons. They are venerating those they represent. Add to that the fact that they distinguish between the veneration owed to the saints and that which is owed only to God and you have a very simple means of understanding why they don't see it as heresy.

 

[Derrick]

There's zero difference in substance between praying to a saint and asking someone you know to pray for you. Would you refuse someone's request that you pray for them because it's "idolatry"? The word pray simply means to ask.

Saints are human individuals we know are united with God in heaven and will be able to intercede with their own prayers more effectively because their will has been totally conformed to his own. So we may not pray for something in the way God wills it, but they know what that is and can request it on our behalf. Kind of like hiring a specialist instead of DIY, God of course can answer our prayers at any time and in any form if he so chooses.

Also keep in mind there are different levels of worship in the Catholic Church. Latria is the form of supreme worship due only to God alone, which is embodied in the Mass and Eucharist and other sacraments. Dulia is the ordinary devotion to saints, with hyperdulia being the term for devotion to the Virgin Mary due to her special position as Mother of God.

I believe you are erring when you pray to saints. You are a man who was made in God's image. You don't need to ask anybody to pray on your behalf, you can approach God yourself (Hebrews 4:16). Besides the Bible teaches us that there is only one person not on this earthly realm who can act as a mediator between you and the father, and that person is Jesus, not Mary or any Saints "For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,"-1st Timothy 2:5

I would also caution that the Bible speaks negatively towards those who communicate with the dead:
"10 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, 12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. 13 You shall be blameless before the Lord your God",- Deuteronomy 18:10-13

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

I believe you are erring when you pray to saints. You are a man who was made in God's image. You don't need to ask anybody to pray on your behalf, you can approach God yourself (Hebrews 4:16). Besides the Bible teaches us that there is only one person not on this earthly realm who can act as a mediator between you and the father, and that person is Jesus, not Mary or any Saints "For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,"-1st Timothy 2:5

Of course, there's zero obligation to perform any devotion to any angels, saint or the Virgin Mary whatsoever. You are free to pray directly to God at any time and for any reason, and all of the prayers in the Mass are directed from the congregation towards God.

However, it's no different in concept from asking another person on Earth to pray for you, the only added benefit is someone in heaven has been perfectly conformed to God's will and so knows what you really need where you may not be aware of it now. The saints may also have lives or experiences that resonate with someone's own, making it easier for them to develop their spirituality by associating their devotions with that saint.

I would also caution that the Bible speaks negatively towards those who communicate with the dead:
"10 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, 12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. 13 You shall be blameless before the Lord your God",- Deuteronomy 18:10-13

The saints aren't dead outside of a physical sense, we know they're alive and united with God in heaven. This verse applies to attempts to raise the dead or summon spirits for divination or other magical purposes, which is gravely sinful in Catholicism as well.

 

[Derrick]

Of course, there's zero obligation to perform any devotion to any angels, saint or the Virgin Mary whatsoever. You are free to pray directly to God at any time and for any reason, and all of the prayers in the Mass are directed from the congregation towards God.

However, it's no different in concept from asking another person on Earth to pray for you, the only added benefit is someone in heaven has been perfectly conformed to God's will and so knows what you really need where you may not be aware of it now. The saints may also have lives or experiences that resonate with someone's own, making it easier for them to develop their spirituality by associating their devotions with that saint.

Do you have a bible verse that backs up praying to saints? Given how Deuteronomy and Leviticus (20:27) cautions against summoning the dead in consultation I must assume the Catholic Church has some scripture to back up their position.

 

[Starved Artist]

You don't need an image of Christ. But for some reason, some people feel that you need to spend money to worship Him. For reasons.

 

[Linako 2.0]

Why is it protestants that hate fun and see anything that isn't Jesus and Jews as idol worship that takes you to hell?

 

[Candlelight Desolation]

Because they are. They pray to Mary and dead Popes. They even have an altered Ten Commandments which removes the Commandment about graven images.

 

[regginknurd]

As a raised protestant, it is idolatry. Second commandment: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image." Catholics second commandment is, what, "don't take the lord father's name in vain?" Which essentially means "oh goodness, don't bring me into this, i'm faultless in everything I created and everything you're going through... even though you have free will, which I created, until sin, which I also created... oopsie, but leave me out of it, lawl, im flawless."

This is an important commandment for non-catholics that should be enforced even though it seems redundant compared to the first. Do not replace god with your CONCEPT of god or what you BELIEVE to be the aspects of god. God can't be understood or perceived beyond what christ has portrayed to you. The only way TO god is through christ, which is also god made as a man which can be understood by men. If you make a statue or stained-glass portrait and say "yup, that's what god is," and fixate on that so much that it just becomes your ideal of what "god is," then you've missed the fucking point and lost out on everything else.

Job 38:4
"Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand."

Even though that's a shit tail in the bible, really DO YOU UNDERSTAND? No, you don't. You didn't mark the dimensions. And if you didn't then how can you mark the dimensions of god? He's the one that set them. Take a step back, breathe, and just listen to what he gave you: the word. Not a person, not a single thing, but a story to be read and mulled over and understood as you progress through life. And if your head is soft, go back to christ. Listen to his, essentially baby's-first-existence tutorial, about how not to be a vapid cunt. Love thy neighbor and all that shit

Catholics are wrong, protestants win... again!

Edit: and for those thay say "but I'm praying to Mary or st dash-board confessional for x, y, or z..." you don't have to. That's why we have Jesus FUCKING christ. He's our intermediary between life and death. That's the whole reason he got nailed to a stick by the jews (allegedly). He knew what it was like to be mortal, to be tempted. He's the only one who can convey what it's like to be fallible. God turned his sight away from christ on the cross because he couldn't handle all that sin... his own creation, HIMSELF on the cross. We don't need a little buddy Saint Bernard to let us know dogs is good, or Saint Anthony to be like "uwu, what about the lost souls we couldn't save." Christ is enough. End of story.

The short version is they aren't worshiping the statues or icons. They are venerating those they represent.

the reason behind the real second commandment is because people are dumb animals of tradition. Sure, it might have started with a tradition of "they represent a virtue to be admired or celebrated that is christ like" but over time it endsup turning into worship. Skip the middle man, just worship christ. And if that's too hard to swallow, don't swallow it at all. Go away.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, help me win this box-car race."

Those saints and all those assholes are just practicing Christ-like virtues that, over time, evolved into worship via convenience. Why spend time remembering saints? Why not remember the tails of christ, or the book of Job, or Mark, or even Genesis. The catholic church is a failed system (though not a failed power - which is a whole different conversation) trying to staple on human bullshit to make it more digestible, which it doesn't need. Read the Bible, fuck off with your saints.

More edit: combined two posts so o wasn't a double posting faggot.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

Do you have a bible verse that backs up praying to saints? Given how Deuteronomy and Leviticus (20:27) cautions against summoning the dead in consultation I must assume the Catholic Church has some scripture to back up their position.

Remember, they're not dead (in this sense intended by Leviticus) and you are not summoning them for any purposes, only asking them to pray for you. There's a lot about the saints in general in Revelation and their role in heaven.

Specifically for the practice itself, there's no direct Scriptural passage about it at all. As a practice, it goes back to the very beginnings of the Christian church itself and was not considered objectionable by any of the Church Fathers.

Keep in mind there is nothing in the Bible about the vast majority of Christian devotions because the works discussing them were not considered inspired scripture or were passed down verbally through tradition. Christianity was illegal during this time and severely punished, so a lot of practices in the early Church weren't written down and only survive through longstanding tradition.

 

[Derrick]

Specifically for the practice itself, there's no direct Scriptural passage about it at all.

If there's a spiritual practice that is controversial,and has no biblical basis, don't you think it best not to do it? Remember Jesus taught us how to pray in Matthew 6 and he instructed, at least implicitly, instructed us to direct our prayers to the Father, "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you".- Jesus (Matthew 6:6)