Posted on 01/25/2007 8:45:51 PM PST by Salvation
The "burying the statue of St. Joseph" is some sort of strange Italian folk-custom. Personally, I'd call it superstitious, not idolatrous. (You don't normally bury objects of worship, do you? And upside-down, at that!)
It's hardly been the subject of any sort of formal church approval. It has roughly the same sort of relationship to Catholicism that "prayer-cloths" and snake-handling have to Protestantism: an oddity on the fringe.
If you can separate superstition from idolatry, then I see your point. But it really is an odd custom!
I thought of another one while driving to dinner tonight. The age-old custom of wearing a St. Christopher's medal while traveling. I've even seen St. Christopher bobble-heads in taxis!
I guess you can lump all this stuff into the same category of idolatry: Worshiping dead people as gods.
There are no "gods," there is only one God, and people can't make "gods" no matter how hard they try.
If you think there are "dead people" in heaven, you have bigger problems than worrying about my alleged idolatries. Specifically, you aren't a Christian anymore.
And the claim is ridiculous on its face. If I ask someone for something, I've made them a god? I'll remember that next time my wife asks me for something. "Hey, honey, thanks for deifying me!"
If someone burns a candle in front of a statue, he's worshiping an idol.
You might as well claim that putting flowers in front of someone's picture, or flowers in front of their tombstone, is worshipping an idol as well.
Superstition and idolatry aren't the same thing.
Worshiping dead people as gods.
That's just silly. By that logic, wearing a t-shirt with the name of a school on it is worshipping that school as a god. No faithful Catholic "worships dead people as gods". Get over it.
No, that's called free advertising. As a staunch capitalist, I am dead set against giving value without getting value in return.
Great verse...Reprove them if they don't line up with the written word...Rebuke them...Encourage them to follow the scripture...
And if they don't like it, tell 'em to take it up with God...It was His idea...
so many have a disdain for "learned men"
For the record, I never said people need to go to "learned men"
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