Would you care to explain that thought process? I mean the idolatry part. Inconsistency is pretty common along religions and nearly universal among CousinsChristian ones. I say that as a Christian, so I’m not even putting them down about it in particular.
But idolatry in particular from Catholics? That accusation is usually not based in the actual faith but I’min outside interpretations. Still, I’m open to being incorrect.
Basically this comes down to the canon of saints, and the practice of “asking a saint to pray to god for you” as a prayer. The indirection here is paper-thin veil over what strongly resembles polytheism, right down to various saints having specific charges for whatever is troubling you in life, and universal iconography for the most popular ones. I agree that this comes down to external interpretation, as the internal dogma is pretty clear about what this is. But just like with transubstantiation, the outside observer isn’t given enough context to reach the same conclusions as the church.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard the phrasing “pray to Saint Luke” rather than “ask Saint Luke to pray for you” more often than not.
I agree 100% that it is initially confusing to the outsider. I will admit that I struggle with charitable feelings when this topic gets tossed around so often and it is easily researchable. Perhaps I am just tired of having the same discussion so many times.
And yeah, the “pray to X” used a shorthand by many for “ask X to pray on my behalf” doesn’t help. It also gets further confounded by the huge number of both discrete and nuanced folk religions that exist simultaneously within members of the Catholic faith.
Their praying to and even worshiping of various saints falls firmly into idolatry. Even going so far as to build statues, pendants, and other “holy” symbols and leaving offerings to them.
Catholics do not worship the saints. The dogma is that one may ask a saint to pray on their behalf. Do some Catholics not follow this format to the letter? Nope, some do not. Some/many will follow dogma mentally but use a short hand phrase like, “pray to X,” to mean requesting intercession.
The statues, pendants, and other ornaments are not idols but just works of art or symbols of allegiance to a specific order. They hold extra significance for some, but that is effectively as far as they go.
Offerings are to the church. Leaving an offering at the shrine of a saint is not an offering to that saint. It is an offering to the church, possibly to the portion of the church maintaining that specific shrine.
I know this can feel nit-picky, but it is what happens when teachings build upon teachings for thousands of years. One can certainly argue that Catholics are wrong about any number of things in this world, but the notion that Catholicism runs on idolatry is at best an accidental misinterpretation and unfortunately is often an intentional misrepresentation by the leaders of fellow Christians.
One of the commandments (second, i think) says not to create idols of anything in the heavens or on earth. Walk into any catholic church, and you’ll quickly see this is completely ignored.
So much so in fact that this commandment has been removed and the last commandment (not desiring other people’s stuff) has been split to two: don’t desire stuff, don’t desire other people’s women (later hanged to spouse).
The concept of changing the Bible gets a little weird because we are almost universally discussing a translation of the “original” text, with the original as we commonly think of it being a Greek translation that was commonly in use in the years preceding and including the life of the historical Jesus. It gets more complex than that, but it’s a good start.
I am using the historical Jesus as a reference point because there are things that scholars, theistic and non-theistic alike, almost universally agree to as being historical as opposed to matters of faith.
Jews, Catholics, and Protestants number the commandments differently though all contain effectively the same content and total up to 10. The Catholic numbering predates the Protestant numbering by centuries. I do not know the timeline of the Jewish numbering. One could easily assume it predates the Catholic numbering, but many Jewish customs date to later eras (often medieval Rabbinical Judaism). I have not looked up the Jewish tradition recently. Regardless, the Catholic numbering predates the Protestant numbering.
Idols are an interesting thing, especially taken in the context of the belief of ancient Semitic peoples. The short version being that it takes much more than just the existence of a statue or an image to be an idol. There are cultural nuances from the time, but at the very least it requires worship of the image as on par with God. The comment you cite even includes the concept that worshipping these images is what makes them bad. The images in Catholic churches are not treated that way.
Would you care to explain that thought process? I mean the idolatry part. Inconsistency is pretty common along religions and nearly universal among
CousinsChristian ones. I say that as a Christian, so I’m not even putting them down about it in particular.But idolatry in particular from Catholics? That accusation is usually not based in the actual faith but
I’min outside interpretations. Still, I’m open to being incorrect.Edited because I am the worst phone typist ever.
Basically this comes down to the canon of saints, and the practice of “asking a saint to pray to god for you” as a prayer. The indirection here is paper-thin veil over what strongly resembles polytheism, right down to various saints having specific charges for whatever is troubling you in life, and universal iconography for the most popular ones. I agree that this comes down to external interpretation, as the internal dogma is pretty clear about what this is. But just like with transubstantiation, the outside observer isn’t given enough context to reach the same conclusions as the church.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard the phrasing “pray to Saint Luke” rather than “ask Saint Luke to pray for you” more often than not.
I agree 100% that it is initially confusing to the outsider. I will admit that I struggle with charitable feelings when this topic gets tossed around so often and it is easily researchable. Perhaps I am just tired of having the same discussion so many times.
And yeah, the “pray to X” used a shorthand by many for “ask X to pray on my behalf” doesn’t help. It also gets further confounded by the huge number of both discrete and nuanced folk religions that exist simultaneously within members of the Catholic faith.
Their praying to and even worshiping of various saints falls firmly into idolatry. Even going so far as to build statues, pendants, and other “holy” symbols and leaving offerings to them.
Catholics do not worship the saints. The dogma is that one may ask a saint to pray on their behalf. Do some Catholics not follow this format to the letter? Nope, some do not. Some/many will follow dogma mentally but use a short hand phrase like, “pray to X,” to mean requesting intercession.
The statues, pendants, and other ornaments are not idols but just works of art or symbols of allegiance to a specific order. They hold extra significance for some, but that is effectively as far as they go.
Offerings are to the church. Leaving an offering at the shrine of a saint is not an offering to that saint. It is an offering to the church, possibly to the portion of the church maintaining that specific shrine.
I know this can feel nit-picky, but it is what happens when teachings build upon teachings for thousands of years. One can certainly argue that Catholics are wrong about any number of things in this world, but the notion that Catholicism runs on idolatry is at best an accidental misinterpretation and unfortunately is often an intentional misrepresentation by the leaders of fellow Christians.
One of the commandments (second, i think) says not to create idols of anything in the heavens or on earth. Walk into any catholic church, and you’ll quickly see this is completely ignored.
So much so in fact that this commandment has been removed and the last commandment (not desiring other people’s stuff) has been split to two: don’t desire stuff, don’t desire other people’s women (later hanged to spouse).
The concept of changing the Bible gets a little weird because we are almost universally discussing a translation of the “original” text, with the original as we commonly think of it being a Greek translation that was commonly in use in the years preceding and including the life of the historical Jesus. It gets more complex than that, but it’s a good start.
I am using the historical Jesus as a reference point because there are things that scholars, theistic and non-theistic alike, almost universally agree to as being historical as opposed to matters of faith.
Jews, Catholics, and Protestants number the commandments differently though all contain effectively the same content and total up to 10. The Catholic numbering predates the Protestant numbering by centuries. I do not know the timeline of the Jewish numbering. One could easily assume it predates the Catholic numbering, but many Jewish customs date to later eras (often medieval Rabbinical Judaism). I have not looked up the Jewish tradition recently. Regardless, the Catholic numbering predates the Protestant numbering.
Idols are an interesting thing, especially taken in the context of the belief of ancient Semitic peoples. The short version being that it takes much more than just the existence of a statue or an image to be an idol. There are cultural nuances from the time, but at the very least it requires worship of the image as on par with God. The comment you cite even includes the concept that worshipping these images is what makes them bad. The images in Catholic churches are not treated that way.