[Apologetics] Bigotry in Chicago

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Tue, 18 Oct 2005, Stephen Korsman wrote:

> I don't believe that the Catholic position is indefensible.  It's simply a
> matter of deciding to what extent a spirit God can be worshipped in a
> physical way.  The Bible - New Testament as well as Old - is filled with
> physical forms of worship.

The 7th Ecumenical council dealt with this issue.  Their decision was
that images of God the Father or Holy Spirit were indeed verboten, since
"no man has seen God [the Father] at any time".  (Why is the image of
God the Father in the Sistine chapel OK?)  However, images of
Christ and Mary are needed because Christ took on the form of a man,
and Mary was a flesh and blood human also.  The Gnostic heresy
(among other things) claimed that Jesus only appeared to take on human
form, but was actually only a spirit - hence the beginning of John's letter:
"That which eyes have, our ears have heard, and our hands have handled
concerning the Word of Life."

To ban all images of Christ and the saints of history is to engage in a
form of Gnosticism (unless your culture bans images of all persons, as
some do).  The Christian School I went to went so far as to cut 
pictures of Jesus (but not Mary or the Apostles!) out of all textbooks.
This was clearly out of line in the Gnostic direction.  My Catholic
friends may disagree, but I believe that giant 200 foot floodlighted
statues of Mary with the banner "Queen of Heaven" are out of line 
in the other direction, and even if technically acceptable, certainly send the
wrong message to those not intimately familiar with Catholic doctrine.

Ok, you say, images are fine.  But not worshipping the image!  This
is a culturally relative problem.  Would you be comfortable with
active disrespect of an image or symbol of Christ?  By immersing
a cross in urine, for instance (to cite a real example)?  For my Catholic
friends, bowing before a statue of Christ or Mary is showing respect.
Just as in Oriental culture, failure to bow to another person in greeting
would be a sign of disrepect, for a Catholic to gaze upon an image of Christ
and fail to bow would be tantamount to spitting on it.  In oriental
martial arts, even in America, students are required to bow to the
instructors, and to their parents.  This does not mean that
instructors or parents are worshipped.  Catholics are required to show
visible respect for holy images.

As a Protestant, you need not bow before the statues, if to you
that would imply idolatry.  Hopefully, Catholics will have the grace
not to interpret your lack of visible respect as blasphemy.  Hopefully,
you will have to grace not to automatically interpret bowing as idolatry.

When my Dad visited Greece, he visited the pagan temple of Zeus.
Devotees brought tiny silver images of their diseases, and hung them
on a statue of Zeus to pray for healing.  Then he visited the
Orthodox church.  Parishioners brought tiny silver images of their
diseases, and hung them on a statue of Mary to pray for healing.  
Clearly, syncretism is alive and well.  But not all bowing to statues
is syncretism.

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
    Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.