idolatry, images, icons, Catholic and Orthodox Devotion, Lutheran, Anglican Views

Hey!, Wanna See Some Sin?

"Cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet and show my people their transgressions and . . . their sins." Isa. 58:1

5. Idolatry

Page 5.e.: Literal, or "religious" idolatry (cont.)

The official Catholic approach to Images
      The Catholic "Reverence" for Images
     "Idolatry" or "Veneration"?
     "The Veneration of Images"
     Definitions from the dictionary, from the Hebrew, and from the Bible
     Using objects to "buy" time
     What are Indulgences?
     "To Worship, or Not to Worship"
     "It depends on the definition . . ."
     The Orthodox "Devotion" to Images
     Lutherans and Images
     Anglican/Episcopalian and Images

It is not our purpose here to judge or to condemn anyone. We all judge or condemn ourselves by our personal choices and actions. We are all answerable to God, not to one another. Our purpose here is to point out the meaning of certain words regarding the sins of idolatry. And in that context, to look at related, official church doctrines and established "traditions".
To place anything or anyone in place of, or ahead of God is to commit idolatry. Most of the world does that through materialism and the pursuit of happiness. Some commit idolatry in more than one way.

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Page 5.e.

The Catholic "Reverence" for Images

" . . . the rosary which can be called the mystical crown of the heavenly Queen."
Ad Caeli Reginam
His Holiness Pope Pius XII
Encyclical on Proclaiming the Queenship of Mary
Promulgated October 11, 1954
http://www.newadvent.org/docs/pi12ac.htm

"In both East and West the reverence we pay to images has crystallized into formal ritual. In the Latin Rite the priest is commanded to bow to the cross in the sacristy before he leaves it to say Mass ("Ritus servandus" in the Missal, II, 1); he bows again profoundly "to the altar or the image of the crucifix placed upon it" when he begins Mass (ibid., II, 2); he begins incensing the altar by incensing the crucifix on it (IV, 4), and bows to it every time he passes it (ibid.); he also incenses any relics or images of saints that may be on the altar (ibid.). In the same way many such commands throughout our rubrics show that always a reverence is to be paid to the cross or images of saints whenever we approach them. The Byzantine Rite shows if possible even more reverence for the holy icons. They must be arranged according to a systematic scheme across the screen between the choir and the altar that from this fact is called iconostasis eikonostasis, "picture-stand"); before these pictures, lamps are kept always burning. Among them on either side of the royal door, are those of our Lord and His Mother. As part of the ritual the celebrant and the deacon before they go in to vest bow profoundly before these and say certain fixed prayers: "We worship (proskynoumen) Thine immaculate image, O Christ" etc. ("Euchologion", Venice, 1898, p. 35); and they too throughout their services are constantly told to pay reverence to the holy icons. Images then were in possession and received worship all over Christendom without question till the Protestant Reformers, true to their principle of falling back on the Bible only, and finding nothing about them in the New Testament, sought in the Old Law rules that were never meant for the New Church and discovered in the First Commandment (which they called the second) a command not even to make any graven image. Their successors have gradually tempered the severity of this, as of many other of the original principles of their founders. Calvinists keep the rule of admitting no statues, not even a cross, fairly exactly still. Lutherans have statues and crucifixes. In Anglican churches one may find any principle at work, from that of a bare cross to a perfect plethora of statues and pictures."

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, Copyright © 1910
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07664a.htm      (emphasis ours)
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"Idolatry" or "Veneration"?

"An essential difference exists between idolatry and the veneration of images practised in the Catholic Church, viz., that while the idolater credits the image he reverences with Divinity or Divine powers, the Catholic knows "that in images there is no divinity or virtue on account of which they are to be worshipped, that no petitions can be addressed to them, and that no trust is to be placed in them. . . that the honour which is given to them is referred to the objects (prototypa) which they represent, so that through the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover our heads and kneel, we adore Christ and venerate the Saints whose likenesses they are" (Conc. find., Sess. XXV, "de invocatione Sanctorum").
. . . .
Men were led to idolatry first by disordered affections, inasmuch as they bestowed divine honours upon someone whom they loved or venerated beyond measure."

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, Copyright © 1910
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07636a.htm
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"The Veneration of Images"

[Dict.: Veneration - an act expressing reverence.]

"Distinct from the admission of images is the question of the way they are treated. What signs of reverence, if any, did the first Christians give to the images in their catacombs and churches? For the first period we have no information. There are so few references to images at all in the earliest Christian literature that we should hardly have suspected their ubiquitous presence were they not actually there in the catacombs as the most convincing argument. But these catacomb paintings tell us nothing about how they were treated. We may take it for granted, on the one hand, that the first Christians understood quite well that paintings may not have any share in the adoration due to God alone. Their monotheism, their insistence on the fact that they serve only one almighty unseen God, their horror of the idolatry of their nieghbours, the torture and death that their martyrs suffered rather than lay a grain of incense before the statue of the emperor's numen are enough to convince us that they were not setting up rows of idols of their own. On the other hand, the place of honour they give to their symbols and pictures, the care with which they decorate them argue that they treated representations of their most sacred beliefs with at least decent reverence. It is from this reverence that the whole tradition of venerating holy images gradually and naturally developed. After the time of Constantine it is still mainly by conjecture that we are able to deduce the way these images were treated. The etiquette of the Byzantine court gradually evolved elaborate forms of respect, not only for the person of Ceesar but even for his statues and symbols. Philostorgius (who was an Iconoclast long before the eighth century) says that in the fourth century the Christian Roman citizens in the East offered gifts, incense, and even prayers, to the statues of the emperor (Hist. eccl., II, 17). It would be natural that people who bowed to, kissed, incensed the imperial eagles and images of Caesar (with no suspicion of anything like idolatry), who paid elaborate reverence to an empty throne as his symbol, should give the same signs to the cross, the images of Christ, and the altar. So in the first Byzantine centuries there grew up traditions of respect that gradually became fixed, as does all ceremonial. Such practices spread in some measure to Rome and the West, but their home was the Court at Constantinople. Long afterwards the Frankish bishops in the eighth century were still unable to understand forms that in the East were natural and obvious, but to Germans seemed degrading and servile (Synod of Frankfort, 794; see ICONOCLASM IV). It IS significant too that, although Rome and Constantinople agree entirely as to the principle of honouring holy images with signs of reverence, the descendants of the subjects of the Eastern emperor still go far beyond us in the use of such signs.

The development was then a question of general fashion rather than of principle. To the Byzantine Christian of the fifth and sixth centuries, prostrations, kisses and incense were the natural ways of showing honour to any one; he was used to such things, even applied to his civil and social superiors; he was accustomed to treat symbols in the same way, giving them relative honour that was obviously meant really for their prototypes. And so he carried his normal habits with him into church."

"Veneration of Images", Catholic Encyclopedia
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07664a.htm
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From the Dictionary:

Reverence - an obeisance or respectful act, as a bow.
Obeisance - a bow or curtsy; an act of reverence, or deference; worshipful respect, submission.

From the OT Hebrew:

Heb., idol - 4656, miphletseth - a terror, i.e. an idol. (Something worshiped in fear [fear of divine wrath, but not necessarily in terror.) (1 Kings 15:23).
- 5566, cemel - to resemble; a likeness, figure, idol, image.(1 Chrn. 33:7).
- 205, aven - nothingness. (Isa. 66:3).

In other words, having or demonstrating such feelings toward any object or human, including those who would claim to stand in Christ's place as intermediary, or in the place of God.

From the Bible:

"And God spake all these words, saying,
I am the LORD thy God, which have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
You shalt have no other gods before me.
You shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
You shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; (Ex. 20:1-5).

Idolatry is a form of hatred against God. (Ex. 20:5)

Idolatry is a form of adultery.

"For you shall worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:
Lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call you, and you eat of his sacrifice;" (Ex. 34:14-15).

whoring: Heb. 2181, zanah, to commit adultery, to commit idolatry (Ex. 34:15).
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Using objects to "buy" time

"Norm 17. The faithful who use with devotion an object of piety (crucifix, cross, rosary, scapular or medal) properly blessed by any priest, can acquire a partial indulgence.

But if this object of piety is blessed by the Supreme Pontiff or any bishop, the faithful who use it devoutly can also acquire a plenary indulgence on the feast of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, provided they also make a profession of faith using any legitimate formula."

His Holiness Pope Paul VI
Indulgentarium Doctrina
Apostolic Constitution on Indulgences
Promulgated on January 1, 1967

http://www.newadvent.org/docs/pa06id.htm
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What are Indulgences?

". . . it means a more complete payment of the debt which the sinner owes to God."
"An indulgence is the extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment due, in God's justice, to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the Church in the exercise of the power of the keys, through the application of the superabundant merits of Christ and of the saints, and for some just and reasonable motive."

"In the Sacrament of Baptism not only is the guilt of sin remitted, but also all the penalties attached to sin. In the Sacrament of Penance the guilt of sin is removed, and with it the eternal punishment due to mortal sin; but there still remains the temporal punishment required by Divine justice, and this requirement must be fulfilled either in the present life or in the world to come, i.e., in Purgatory. An indulgence offers the penitent sinner the means of discharging this debt during his life on earth."

" In other words, sin is fully pardoned, i.e. its effects entirely obliterated, only when complete reparation, and consequently release from penalty as well as from guilt, has been made."

"An indulgence . . . not only releases the penitent from his indebtedness to the Church or from the obligation of performing canonical penance, but also from the temporal punishment which he has incurred in the sight of God and which, without the indulgence, he would have to undergo in order to satisfy Divine justice."

"The satisfaction, usually called the "penance", imposed by the confessor when he gives absolution is an integral part of the Sacrament of Penance; an indulgence is extra-sacramental; it presupposes the effects obtained by confession, contrition, and sacramental satisfaction. It differs also from the penitential works undertaken of his own accord by the repentant sinner -- prayer, fasting, alms-giving -- in that these are personal and get their value from the merit of him who performs them, whereas an indulgence places at the penitent's disposal the merits of Christ and of the saints, which form the "Treasury" of the Church."

"Christ, as St. John declares in his First Epistle (ii, 2), "is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world." Since the satisfaction of Christ is infinite, it constitutes an inexhaustible fund which is more than sufficient to cover the indebtedness contracted by sin, Besides, there are the satisfactory works of the Blessed Virgin Mary undiminished by any penalty due to sin, and the virtues, penances, and sufferings of the saints vastly exceeding any temporal punishment which these servants of God might have incurred. These are added to the treasury of the Church as a secondary deposit, not independent of, but rather acquired through, the merits of Christ. The development of this doctrine in explicit form was the work of the great Schoolmen, notably Alexander of Hales (Summa, IV, Q. xxiii, m. 3, n. 6), Albertus Magnus (In IV Sent., dist. xx, art. 16), and St. Thomas (In IV Sent., dist. xx, q. i, art. 3, sol. 1)."

"As St. Thomas says (Suppl., xxv. a. 1 ad 2um), "He who gains indulgences is not thereby released outright from what he owes as penalty, but is provided with the means of paying it." The Church therefore neither leaves the penitent helplessly in debt nor acquits him of all further accounting; she enables him to meet his obligations.
In granting an indulgence, the grantor (pope or bishop) does not offer his personal merits in lieu of what God demands from the sinner. He acts in his official capacity as having jurisdiction in the Church, from whose spiritual treasury he draws the means wherewith payment is to be made. The Church herself is not the absolute owner, but simply the administratrix, of the superabundant merits which that treasury contains. In applying them, she keeps in view both the design of God's mercy and the demands of God's justice. She therefore determines the amount of each concession, as well as the conditions which the penitent must fulfill if he would gain the indulgence."

"An indulgence that may be gained in any part of the world is universal, while one that can be gained only in a specified place (Rome, Jerusalem, etc.) is local. A further distinction is that between perpetual indulgences,which may be gained at any time, and temporary,which are available on certain days only, or within certain periods. Real indulgences are attached to the use of certain objects (crucifix, rosary, medal); personal are those which do not require the use of any such material thing, or which are granted only to a certain class of individuals, e.g. members of an order or confraternity. The most important distinction, however, is that between plenary indulgences and partial. By a plenary indulgence is meant the remission of the entire temporal punishment due to sin so that no further expiation is required in Purgatory. A partial indulgence commutes only a certain portion of the penalty; and this portion is determined in accordance with the penitential discipline of the early Church. To say that an indulgence of so many days or years is granted means that it cancels an amount of purgatorial punishment equivalent to that which would have been remitted, in the sight of God, by the performance of so many days or years of the ancient canonical penance. Here, evidently, the reckoning makes no claim to absolute exactness; it has only a relative value.

God alone knows what penalty remains to be paid and what its precise amount is in severity and duration."

For the Dead

"The Church in granting an indulgence to the living exercises her jurisdiction; over the dead she has no jurisdiction and therefore makes the indulgence available for them by way of suffrage (per modum suffragii), i.e. she petitions God to accept these works of satisfaction and in consideration thereof to mitigate or shorten the sufferings of the souls in Purgatory."

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, Copyright © 1910
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm      (emphasis ours)

In other words:

According to Catholic doctrine, baptism remits all "penalities" for sin up to that point. Afterwards, all new sins require confession to a priest, and the "guilt" and "eternal punishment" is removed by the penance he assigns, but the "penalty" or "temporal punishment" must still be carried out in this life or by spending time in "purgatory".

The "Church" has a "Treasury" which contains "merits" which can count toward the payment of the "penalty" or "temporal punishment" of sin, either now or when one is in "purgatory". These "merits" are on deposit in the "treasury" because of Christ's "infinite" "satisfaction". There is also a "secondary" deposit of "merits" in the account due to the "works, penances, virtues and sufferings" of the "saints" which exceeded their own debt of "temporal punishment."

Through "devotion" to an "object of piety (crucifix, cross, rosary, scapular or medal) properly blessed by any priest," the faithful can "acquire" an "indulgence".

Although "God alone knows what penalty remains to be paid and what its precise amount is in severity and duration.", the Pope or priest will grant a (plenary) "paid in full" indulgence or a (partial) "partial payment" indulgence.

Indulgences have previously been "prepaid, lifetime, and unlimited":
" At the Council of Clermont (1095) the First Crusade was organized, and it was decreed (can. ii): "Whoever, out of pure devotion and not for the purpose of gaining honor or money, shall go to Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God, let that journey be counted in lieu of all penance". Similar indulgences were granted throughout the five centuries following (Amort, op. cit., 46 sq.), the object being to encourage these expeditions . . . " The spirit in which these grants were made is expressed by St. Bernard, the preacher of the Second Crusade (1146): "Receive the sign of the Cross, and thou shalt likewise obtain the indulgence of all thou hast confessed with a contrite heart (ep. cccxxii; al., ccclxii).

Indulgences granted for visiting a particular church: "old Temple Church in London, which was consecrated in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary", -- 60 days indulgence.

Indulgences can granted when saints are canonized -- (length unknown)

For volunteer work in Catholic hospitals -- 40 days indulgence.

A plenary ["paid in full"] indulgence was granted in 1300 by Boniface VIII to those who visited the basilicas of Sts. Peter and Paul, as long as they were "truly contrite and having confessed their sins".

A "Get out of jail, free" Card?

According to the Catholic articles above, if one has an object "properly blessed" by the Pope or by a bishop, one can acquire a plenary (Paid in Full) indulgence on any June 29th (Feast of Peter and Paul) and avoid spending any time in "purgatory".

Credit is Transferable

The indulgence "merits" can be submitted toward the account of someone already dead, to shorten their time in "purgatory".
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"To Worship, or Not to Worship", Is that a question?

". . . the "Catechism of Christian Doctrine" used in England by command of the Catholic bishops. In four points, this book sums up the whole Catholic position exactly:
-"It is forbidden to give divine honour or worship to the angels and saints for this belongs to God alone."
-"We should pay to the angels and saints an inferior honour or worship, for this is due to them as the servants and special friends of God."
-"We should give to relics, crucifixes and holy pictures a relative honour, as they relate to Christ and his saints and are memorials of them."
-"We do not pray to relics or images, for they can neither see nor hear nor help us."

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, Copyright © 1910
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07664a.htm
--------------------------------

"It depends on the definition . . . " -- Former President Clinton, while still denying his affair with Miss Lewinsky.

The Catholic Church clearly states that it "worships" (lateria) God, and "worships" (proskuneo) images, saints, and icons. But Catholic writers emphatically deny that this constitutes idolatry.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, Copyright © 1910
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07664a.htm

On the subject of worship, the New Testament makes no such semantic distinction (between lateria and proskuneo).

"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship (proskuneo) him in spirit and in truth." (Jn. 4:24).
The Greek lateria is not translated in the NT as "worship" but as "service" (to God), and it only appears five times.
The Greek proskuneo is translated as "worship", "worshipped" and "worshipping" 46 times and is used only in the context of worshiping God, or in false worship including devils, the "dragon", the "beast", and the "image of the beast".

Several other Greek words are also translated as "worship". They also only refer to worship of God or to false or vain worship. One refers to living people, but actually means "glory" in Greek, not "worship".

Nowhere in the NT or OT, are there examples of anyone who is righteous, "worshipping" (by any standard definition) anyone or any thing other than God and Christ. Christ instructed that prayers be directed "to the Father" and that they be made in his (Christ's) name. There are no examples of the apostles praying to or teaching others to pray to or through Abraham, Issac, Jacob, David or any of the other "righteous" dead, who are mentioned by name (Heb.11). [It's interesting that none of these, although praised by God, have ever been "sainted" by the Catholic Church, nor are they even included in the Catholic lists of "saints".]
There are no examples of people directing their worship toward or through objects or representations of divinities.
There is however, a frequent condemnation of idolatry (Rom. 1:23, 25; 1 Cor. 5:11, 10:7,14; Gal. 5:20; Col. 3:5 Eph. 5:5; 1 Pet. 4:3-4 ). These condemnations include worshiping the "host of heaven" (Acts 7:42), or angels (Col. 2:18). Offering incense to "flat images" in paintings or frescos is called "wicked abominations" (Eze. 8:9-10).
The NT warnings are in sermons and letters to Jewish people who had for generations clearly understood the prohibition against "religious" images and their worship. Paul warned those already "in the churches of God", who had never and would never bow down to statues or icons, about "idolatry".

This brings us to secular or "virtual" idolatry which will be covered in the next section.

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The Orthodox "Devotion" to Images

Are your images "one dimension short of an idol".

"The conclusion then is that the principle of adorning chapels and churches with pictures dates from the very earliest Christian times: centuries before the Iconoclast troubles they were in use throughout Christendom. So also all the old Christian Churches in East and West use holy pictures constantly. The only difference is that even before Iconoclasm there was in the East a certain prejudice against solid statues. This has been accentuated since the time of the Iconoclast heresy (see below, section 5). But there are traces of it before; it is shared by the old schismatical (Nestorian and Monophysite Churches that broke away long before Iconoclasm. The principle in the East was not universally accepted. The emperors set up their statues at Constantinople without blame; statues of religious purpose existed in the East before the eighth century (see for instance the marble Good Shepherds from Thrace, Athens, and Sparta, the Madonna and Child from Saloniki, but they are much rarer than in the West. Images in the East were generally flat; paintings, mosaics, bas-reliefs. The most zealous Eastern defenders of the holy icons seem to have felt that, however justifiable such flat representations may be, there is something about a solid statue that makes it suspiciously like an idol."

"It IS significant too that, although Rome and Constantinople agree entirely as to the principle of honouring holy images with signs of reverence, the descendants of the subjects of the Eastern emperor still go far beyond us in the use of such signs."

"Icons, especially in the East, were taken on journeys as a protection, they marched at the head of armies, and presided at the races in the hippodrome; they hung in a place of honour in every room, over every shop; they covered cups, garments, furniture, rings; wherever a possible space was found, it was filled with a picture of Christ, our Lady, or a saint. It is difficult to understand exactly what those Byzantine Christians of the seventh and eighth centuries thought about them. The icon seems to have been in some sort the channel through which the saint was approached; it has an almost sacramental virtue in arousing sentiments of faith, love and so on, in those who gazed upon it; through and by the icon God worked miracles, the icon even seems to have had a kind of personality of its own, inasmuch as certain pictures were specially efficacious for certain graces. Icons were crowned with garlands, incensed, kissed. Lamps burned before them, hymns were sung in their honour. They were applied to sick persons by contact, set out in the path of a fire or flood to stop it by a sort of magic. In many prayers of this time the natural inference from the words would be that the actual picture is addressed."

"Nestorians, Armenians, Jacobites, Copts, and Abyssinians fill their churches with holy icons, bow to them, incense them, kiss them, just as do the Orthodox."

"But there is a difference not of principle but of practice between East and West, to which we have already alluded. Especially since Iconoclasm, the East dislikes solid statues. Perhaps they are too reminiscent of the old Greek gods. At all events, the Eastern icon (whether Orthodox, Nestorian or Monophysite) is always flat -- a painting, mosaic, bas-relief. Some of the less intelligent Easterns even seem to see a question of principle in this and explain the difference between a holy icon, such as a Christian man should venerate, and a detestable idol, in the simplest and crudest way: "icons are flat, idols are solid." However, that is a view that has never been suggested by their Church officially, she has never made this a ground of complaint against Latins, but admits it to be (as of course it is) simply a difference of fashion or habit, and she recognizes that we are justified by the Second Council of Nicaea in the honour we pay to our statues just as she is in the far more elaborate reverence she pays to her flat icons."

" The Byzantine Rite shows if possible even more reverence for the holy icons. They must be arranged according to a systematic scheme across the screen between the choir and the altar that from this fact is called iconostasis eikonostasis, "picture-stand"); before these pictures, lamps are kept always burning. Among them on either side of the royal door, are those of our Lord and His Mother. As part of the ritual the celebrant and the deacon before they go in to vest bow profoundly before these and say certain fixed prayers: "We worship (proskynoumen) Thine immaculate image, O Christ" etc. ("Euchologion", Venice, 1898, p. 35); and they too throughout their services are constantly told to pay reverence to the holy icons."

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, Copyright © 1910
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07664a.htm   (emphasis ours)
---------------------------

Lutherans and Images

"Lutherans have statues and crucifixes."

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, Copyright © 1910
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07664a.htm
--------------------------------

Anglican/Episcopalian and Images

"In Anglican churches one may find any principle at work, from that of a bare cross to a perfect plethora of statues and pictures."

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, Copyright © 1910
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07664a.htm
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