Dana
Will has done a fairly good job of providing a response to this essay. This will then not be my focus although I may comment on a couple of things. I am trying, Lord help me, to answer the question �why is this offensive?�
Before I begin I should specify my background as it may be relevant to what I say here. Many would say I am not actually Catholic. I am divorced, for one thing. I do not believe that the Pope is infallible. I have not received sacraments in many years. Thus my views do not represent the catholic church in any way, but are again merely an answer to a specific question as to MY reactions.
Nonetheless, I attended a convent school in Canada and for a time wanted to be a nun. I took Church teaching very seriously and read a great deal on the topic. So I know enough to say a little although I may not say all there is to say or say it all correctly.
So. You know, I just re-read this essay and Mike may be right� if you cannot see how offensive it is, it is hard to know what to tell you. What we have here are a lot of assertions about a religious faith which are a) wrong and b) make it look silly and even stupid.
The heart of Catholicism as I know it is a sense of wonder. God is not knowable, anymore than the sun is knowable by a mayfly. The mayfly may see the effects of the sun and even give praise for them but it cannot understand the sun nor can it hope to influence it, although perhaps it is the nature of the mayfly to want to do so.
This does not mean that God is not present in our lives. God is everywhere, literally all of the time. If I look up from my computer and look out the front door of the office to see the leaves of the tree there dancing in the sunlight, I see the grace of God in the beauty of the world he has given us. To see that grace is a blessing. To attain a state of grace oneself, to become a manifestation of the glory and goodness of God, and to remain so, is to achieve sainthood. Sainthood is becoming a vessel for the grace of God.
Has the Church ever declared someone a saint who in fact was not? No doubt. The Church is made up of men and men cannot ever fully know the workings or the reasons of God. For hundreds of years the Catholic church was unquestionably a corrupt political organization. Does this mean that truth cannot be approached through its teachings? I think not.
Would the Church agree with me on this? No, because it teaches that the pope is infallible. Not that he is God, just that he has special knowledge of how God manifests himself and that he cannot be wrong on this subject. I think that this teaching has been very convenient for the Church over the years. Does this mean that all of the people over the centuries who have devoted themselves to God through the centuries have done so in vain? Perhaps by doing so they furthered a corrupt regime. But if I sit in a cathedral built to reach up to the heavens and listen to the soaring voices of a choir I believe that perhaps I may glimpse the hand of God.
Saints may be prayed to but are not worshipped. Perhaps I feel an affinity to a certain saint or feel that he or she would understand the particular problem I am facing. I may pray to that saint to intercede for me with God. I don�t think I have ever done this myself, but it is done, and it is done because the saint is closer to God than I.
I hope that the above may give some insight into what it is to be Catholic. I think that many Catholics do think about these issues in shades of grey. Faith is complex and involves knowledge of the unknowable as well as rational thought about the teachings of the Church. So there are probably many people out there who feel that the Church is wrong on this issue or that, but who still believe in its teachings. Kerry manages to consider himself a Catholic and yet be pro-choice, apparently. For example. I do not believe this to be an example of wishy-washiness as my beliefs are similar. I believe that abortion is a sin and perhaps it is murder. Nonetheless I cannot believe that a compassionate God would damn all women who have had one. Perhaps, maybe, the women who did so lightly and with no respect for the sanctity of life. And ultimately, that woman has to take responsibility for her own immortal soul. I cannot do so for her and it would be wrong for me to impose my beliefs on her and to force her to suffer their consequences.
I do not think that it is possible to mindlessly accept the teachings of the Church in this day and age. Almost anyone who is Catholic will know of abortions or divorces and will have to reconcile what they know of those people with the teachings of the Church.
Now. Perhaps by talking about what Catholicism is I make it clear why it is offensive to portray it as something ignorant. �Those times are over and the idols should be taken down.� Excuse me? Is �idol� not an offensive term? Does it not mean a false god of a false religion? First of all, the statues in a Catholic Church are not repeat NOT gods. They represent the human forms of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. They are no more idols than is the Mona Lisa.
If a Catholic prays to a saint or to the Virgin Mary he does so in the humble knowledge that he cannot apprehend the mind of God, and the hope that someone holier may be able to intercede for him. Comes a born again Christian, many of whom seem to conceive of God as some sort of bearded guy in the sky, and he tells me that the cathedral of Notre-Dame is an abomination because it contains graven images, and this is not offensive? It is like saying that� that a beautiful and innocent child is sinful because he touched his mother�s knee. The sin in my opinion is in the failure to appreciate the beauty that is there.
This woman does not quite say that. But let us look at the words she does use, in this paragraph alone. Let�s start with �illiterate.� And �those times are over.� So Catholicism is a product of primitive and ignorant minds, and we are much more sophisticated now. So sophisticated, in fact, that we are able to know the mind of God. Bah. Perhaps we cannot conceive of it; perhaps we reduce it to a travesty of its beauty and wonder by thinking we can do so.
And where do we get �should�? Should. Should, because some �non-denominational� �Christian� church, one which may have been in existence as much as a decade, has decided in its infinite wisdom that it knows, that it is possible to know, how God wants us to worship him. I am not sure that he cares whether we do or not. God simply is. To say that he will somehow get his feelings hurt if there are statues in a church built in his name and in his praise is utterly incompatible with my concept of God and reduces him to a vengeful old man. To take this caricature and use it to pass judgement � �should� now, this is clearly a normative statement � on a complex layered and multidimensional concept of his being is breathtakingly wrong. And insulting. I will not even ask who �should� be taking these images down. What if we refuse? �Should� they be taken down for us?
Let�s take �should be destroyed.� Granted that I do not think that Jesus was blond and blue-eyed, what exactly is being advocated here? Destroyed? Not taken down. Destroyed. And why is the Catholic church responsible for Hollywood�s portrayal of Jesus? I think that the blond Jesus is more likely a product of the thinking that if we can see ourselves in the human form of Jesus (or Mary) we will be more likely to be able to apply the lessons of their lives to our own. And thus we have the Virgin of Guadeloupe. It is a cultural not a religious phenomenon in my opinion.
The writer asks why we pray to images. We do not. We pray to those the images represent. She says �Some say that these statues are not worshipped. Then why do people bow down to these idols and pray to them instead of to the living God?� There is a subtle point here. Essentially she is asking, �if you do not pray to these statues why then do you pray to them?� Again, we do not. This seems to be an idea that she has already encountered. And yet, she is curiously unwilling to accept it. Because, after all, we pray to them. There is a more than a soupcon of invincible ignorance in the circularity of this argument, and I sincerely hope that I am wrong about that. The referral to the Book of Judges is irrelevant because ---once again -- these are not idols, nor is what we pray to �lifeless.� How could God, the source of all being, possibly be lifeless? And is lifeless not a derogatory term?
Let me stop there for now. I think I have proved my point. But then, I would have thought that the point did not need to be made, so clearly we have differing perceptions.
I realize that I have portrayed some Protestants as rather shallow in their religious beliefs. I do not make this as a blanket statement and would avoid the portrayal at all if it did not underlie my perception that those who are so vastly oversimplify not only Catholicism but the nature of God himself. I have tried to explain without offending, which may be difficult considering the subject matter� but I have tried. I hope I have succeeded. If there are further questions I will attempt to answer them, but will have to do so slowly as the subject matter is such that you really have to try to do it justice.
Dana
=Idol worship. See Exodus 20:3. Some say that Catholic statues and icons =were created to tell stories to an illiterate public. Those times are =over and the idols should be taken down. Especially the =Hollywood/Renaissance picture of Jesus should be destroyed. Check out =Isaiah 52 and 53. The Messiah was/will be not comely to look at. He was =marred beyond any other man. Some say that these statues are not =worshipped. Then why do people bow down to these idols and pray to them =instead of to the living God? See the book of Judges and how many times =the Lord tried to get people to turn back to Him from lifeless idols. We =all need to check with the Lord as to what people, matters for things are =modern idols in our lives and turn to God from idols.
>LOL, it does go through and chides you at the same time.
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