By JOE SIXPACK
Two things we Catholics are often criticized about are our honoring of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints, and our use of images. Non-Catholic Christians say that what we do is a pagan violation of the First Commandment. They say that honoring Mary and the saints is tantamount to divination because we’re praying to people who are dead.
The First Commandment most certainly permits us to honor Mary and the saints, and Sacred Scripture even encourages us to do so. In speaking of the just who have passed from this mortal life, Sirach writes: “Their bodies were buried in peace, and their names live to all generations. Peoples will declare their wisdom, and the congregation proclaims their praise” (Sirach 44:14-15). In her Magnificat, Mary makes this prophetic statement: “For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48).
What Protestants fail to understand is that there are three types of honor that can be given: latria, dulia, and hyperdulia. Latria is adoration and must be given to God alone. Dulia is the honor we give to the saints on all three planes: in the Church Suffering, in the Church Victorious, and in the Church Militant. In other words, this is the honor due to all Christians in this life and the next, but it’s commonly thought of as the honor (also called veneration) given to the saints in Heaven.
Finally there is hyperdulia, that veneration reserved to the Blessed Virgin Mary alone. Hyperdulia is reserved to Mary because she is the most special saint of human history. The Catholic Church has always paid special honor to the Blessed Virgin Mary, because God honored her above all creatures by granting her the highest dignity He could confer: the divine maternity.
The Church honors the Mother of God in the liturgy and various devotions. She encourages the faithful to know, imitate, love, and pray to the Blessed Virgin in a special way. After all, from the beginning of her Son’s public ministry until today she’s been His chief evangelist, as she proved when she first spoke the words, “Do whatever He tells you” (John 2:5).
We also honor the saints because they are God’s special friends who, through His grace, led holy lives and reflected His virtues to a heroic degree. By honoring the saints we honor God Himself. And this should not seem unusual to non-Catholics, as honoring people has always been common practice. We call ministers Reverend, judges Your Honor, and refer to politicians as The Honorable. Furthermore, God Himself commands us to honor our mother and father. And in compliance with God’s law, traditional wedding vows call upon the wife to love, honor, and obey her husband.
Karl Keating says that “if there can be nothing wrong with honoring the living, who still have an opportunity to ruin their lives through sin, or the uncanonized dead, about whose state of spiritual health we can only guess, certainly there can be no argument against giving honor to saints whose lives are done and who ended them in sanctity. If merit deserves to be honored wherever it is found, it surely should be honored among God’s special friends” (Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, pp. 260-261).
We also get a hard way to go about our use of sacred images, such as holy cards, statues, and crucifixes. The claim is that we are illicitly using “graven images,” a violation of the First Commandment. Yet God’s law certainly allows for the use of images, provided they don’t become objects of false worship. God forbade the Jews to make graven images because they lived among pagans, and that influence made them inclined to worship images.
Those who accuse Catholics of violating the First Commandment because of our use of images fail to properly interpret this Commandment. We know that the Jews didn’t interpret this Commandment as an absolute prohibition against images. There are many examples in Sacred Scripture to prove this. God forbade images in the First Commandment, yet He ordered the brazen serpent, and the golden cherubim atop the Ark of the Covenant (cf. Numbers 21:8-9; Exodus 25:18-20). Then there were also the carved garlands of flowers, fruit and trees, and the carved lions that supported the king’s throne (cf. Numbers 8:4; 1 Kings 7:27-37).
To criticize Catholics for the use of images isn’t honest. In order for these critics to be honest they’d have to forbid themselves the use of coinage, currency, photographs, sculptures, paintings, and even television.
We’re also accused of praying to the images of Christ and the saints when we pray before statues and crucifixes. They again fail to realize that we aren’t praying to them, but rather to the person whom they represent. Many of us carry photographs of our wife or children, but we never mistake the photo for the wife herself, and neither do our detractors.
Because the images we use are sacred images, they must be treated with respect. Indeed, they should be treated with even greater care than we would treat pictures of our loved ones. Abuse of any sacred person, place, or thing is a sacrilege, as you learned last week.
Next week we will look at the Second Commandment: “You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain.” We’ll be learning, among other things, the differences between cursing, profanity and vulgar language.
If you have a question or comment you can reach out to me through the “Ask Joe” page of JoeSixpackAnswers.com, or you can email me at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com.
Hey, how would you like to see things like this article every week in your parish bulletin as an insert? You or your pastor can learn more about how to do that by emailing me at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com.
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