Do Catholics Worship Statues?

"Catholics worship statues!" Some people still make this ridiculous claim. Because Catholics have statues in their churches, goes the accusation, they are violating Gods commandment: "You shall not make for yourself a graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow down to them or serve them" (Ex. 20:45); "Alas, this people have sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold" (Ex. 32:31). The sin of idolatry is a grave sin. But calling Catholics idolaters because they have images of Christ and the saints is based on misunderstanding or ignorance of what the Bible says about the purpose and uses of statues. If people were to "search the scriptures" (John 5:39), they would find the opposite is true. God forbade the worship of statues, but he did not forbid the religious use of statues. Instead, he actually commanded their use in religious contexts! The Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566) taught that idolatry is committed "by worshipping idols and images as God, or believing that they possess any divinity or virtue entitling them to our worship, by praying to, or reposing confidence in them." (374) "Idolatry is a perversion of mans innate religious sense. An idolater is someone who transfers his indestructible notion of God to anything other than God." (CCC 2114) The Church absolutely recognizes and condemns the sin of idolatry. What anti-Catholics fail to recognize is the distinction between thinking a piece of stone or plaster is a god and desiring to visually remember Christ and his mother and Saints in Heaven by making statues in their honour. The making and use of religious statues is a thoroughly biblical practice. Anyone who says otherwise doesnt really know the Bible.

And another thing

All Christians derive the Ten Commandments from Ex 20:1-17 (and Deut 5:7-21). Our First Commandment says, You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol (Ex 20:3-4) Using a slightly different numbering system, our Protestant brothers and sisters count these verses as two separate commandments, giving rise to a separate commandment addressing the worshipping of idols. This can sometimes lead to the misunderstanding that we Catholics remove the worshipping of idols from our commandments to justify our so-called worshipping of statues. To fully appreciate the significance of statues and other holy objects in our faith, one needs to analyse the historical and social context the Ten Commandments were originally given to Moses. At the time, the Israelites have just left Egypt and were prone to the religious and cultural practices of their former masters, which include the worshipping the many Egyptian gods. Hence, God gave the people this commandment as these false gods as leading the people away from the one true God. So, do all images lead us away from God? Certainly not! In fact, in the episode of the bronze serpent (Num 21:4-9), God specifically commanded Moses to fashion a bronze serpent on a pole, so that all who look to it may be saved from the bites of poisonous serpents. In Jn 3:14, Jesus affirmed the practice as a prefigure of the worshiping of the Saviour on the Cross. In another example, when instructing the people to build the Ark, God commanded that two cherubim be built on the Ark (Ex 25:18-20). In explaining our veneration of holy objects, the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited these same examples (CCC 2130) and state that by becoming incarnate, the Son of God introduced a new economy of images (CCC 2131). Hence the veneration of holy objects is not contrary to the First Commandment, as they lead us towards God. Ponder this for moment, in Exodus times, the images of the Egyptian gods led the people away from God. In this modern time, what are our equivalence of the Egyptian gods?