OBJECTIONS TO CATHOLIC IDOLATRY CONSIDERED
What is idolatry? Idolatry is simply the worship or treatment of what is not divine as divine. Anything can be an idol – a statue or even a mental picture.
Idolatry is the worship of what is not God as sacred. It's a violation of the right God has to be worshipped.
Idolatry is popularly assumed to refer to people thinking images an see and hear and thelp them and be worshipped as Gods.
No idolater worships a statue just because it is a statue.
1 The idolater may hold
that the entity he or she worships is present in the image. So the image is not worshipped but the being
residing in it.
2 Sometimes its thought that the entity or even magical power that needs
to be prayed to before the power can work has become the image.
3 The third possible view
is that a deity is simply represented by the image and that there is no god or
saint inside the image so that the reverence and respect paid to the image is
really meant for the divine person depicted.
You can see that 1 and 3 are in every practical sense identical. In both cases the image is a representation
of the god. It is just that 1 has the
god inside it and the other hasn’t.
What about 2 where the deity puts magical power in the image that you can
draw on by honouring the image or the idea that the deity is turned into the
image just like bread is turned into Jesus in the Catholic faith. Even in those it is not the image that is
worshipped but the god. The image is
worshipped because it is the God which differs in no practical sense from the
idea that the god is inside the image. What
if the image is not the god? Then the
mistake is not in worshipping a statue but in where the god is. You can honour the king even if you
mistakenly think he is in the palace or mistakenly think that the figure you
bow before in the fog is him.
It follows then that if idolatry is wrong then all three of these
approaches is idolatry and wrong. They stand
and fall together. In all three, the
image represents the God. That is the
main thing. The image wouldn’t be used
for the god to dwell in if it didn’t represent her or him. Also, where the god is is not as important as
treating the image as the representation of the god for he can get the worship offered
before it whether he is in it or not.
Catholics practice idolatry according to the third approach and also the
second for they regard communion as the body of God.
Many people get a nice glow inside them when they pray and think of God. They pray without realising that they are praying to this feeling.
The best theologians say that God is being itself and you cannot talk about what God is only about what he is not. They say that the thought of a God who is in time and like us is idolatry.
If you adore your perception of God, you are not adoring God. Even if your perception is right that is not the point. You are still intending to honour what you think God is not what he is. It would take a miracle for a person to really honour and worship God.
Our hearts deceive us very well. We could think we are adoring him when we are actually adoring a mental and emotional image of him.
When people who pray to God find idolatry so hard to avoid, it must be nearly impossible to honour a saint and pray to a saint without being an idolater. The veneration of saints then must be rejected outright as blasphemous and heretical and corrupting. It is a turning away from the true good which is God.
Imagine then how bad it is that Catholics worship the Eucharist as Jesus Christ! They pretend that a wafer in which no physical change has taken place is still physically changed into the real body and blood of Jesus! That is worse than anything the pagans ever did!
To honour alleged God-men like Jesus, statues of saints and relics is idolatry. God is goodness. So if you sense his goodness and worship what you sense that is true worship. Images and relics and the Jesus God of the Catholics are not directly focused on goodness. A man who sits with his wife by the fire and ignores her to focus on her photo is not really honouring her at all. A man who instead of seeing the goodness that is God inside his heart and chooses to focus on some sense object such as Jesus or a communion wafer or a holy statue is rejecting God for sense stimulation. He is not honouring God but only making it look like as if he does. He is not really even honouring true goodness.
Christians objected strenuously when the Catholic Church had people touching images of saints and God and carrying them in procession and kissing them and crowning them. They said this was idolatry and condemned by God in the Bible as false worship. The Catholics responded that those activities were not wrong in themselves and that God was only objecting to honouring images of fictitious gods implying he had no problem with images of him. This answer in effect implies that you may treat an image as if it were God himself and this is fine. But its still degrading idolatry. It implies that worshipping images of God is okay but worshipping images of Zeus is not. It ignores the point that the image is really a substitute for God. An image of God would be more dangerous than an image of a fake god. Why? Because the fake god is a bad counterfeit of God while the other is a better one. The Church says that Satan does far better not to tell lies to mislead believers but to distort and pollute much of the truth they have and he will use even the truth for his own ends. The deceived end up blinded to the reality. If he told them loads of lies instead they would see through them.
The Bible teaches that only fools deny that there is a God and Romans 1 says all on earth have an impression that there is a God. So the idolater worships idols before he would have it be thought that he has no God. That is his way of dealing with his attraction towards God. He worships God in his idols. But that doesn’t mean that God approves of idolatry. On the contrary he reveals that it is the greatest and most dangerous sin possible. The sin may largely consist of a man needing God and refusing to go to him but choosing to quiet the need with a fake god.
The Church says that there are traces of sin in all that we do. We might do a really good and praiseworthy thing but there will be traces of sin in it. It's not perfectly holy or good. It says we have a bias towards serving ourselves and being independent of God. Clearly then we must have a predisposition to idolatry. You would need to be a perfect saint - impossible for even the saints didn't claim to be perfect - in order to honour a statue without being idolatrous. It is more natural to be idolatrous in your venerating the saints than it is statues. It gets worse and worse. The Catholic who venerates an image is one thing but if the image is of a saint the idolatry is multiplied!
When you go into a Roman Catholic Church you see images of Jesus and the
saints. The faithful come up and kneel
before them and adoring address prayers to them as if they were the beings they
represented. They light candles before
them and touch them as if to absorb some of the magical power they are thought
to contain. Priests bless the images to
make them vehicles of divine power. This
reminds one of witches putting magical power into occult tools such as magic
wands and pentacles before they can be used in religious rites.
The Catholic Church claims that its ecumenical councils are infallible when they intend to be. The infallible Council of Trent recommended idolatry in its catechism while claiming to utilize the authority of God, “It is lawful to have images in the church and to give honour and worship unto them. Images are put in churches that they may be worshipped.”
Session 25 decreed, "The images of Christ and of his Virgin Mother and of other saints are to be kept and retained especially in Churches. And a due honour and veneration is to be given to them. This is not that any divinity or power is believed to be in them, for which they are to be honoured, or that any prayer can be said to them, or that any trust can be placed in them as was done by the pagans in former days who put their confidence in idols but because the honour that is bestowed on them goes to the original which they picture and represent. Therefore by the images we kiss, and before which we uncover our heads or kneel, we worship Christ and we venerate his saints whose likeness they stand for" (page 235, THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS, James Cardinal Gibbons, Forty Ninth Edition, John Murphy and Co Publishers, Baltimore, London, New York, 1897 (TAN Books keep this book in print).
The Catholic Church prays to the blood of Christ. In the prayer called Anima Christi, it prays,
“Blood of Christ inebriate me”. And
even, “Water from the side of Christ wash me.”
The Catholic Church prays, “O Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust
in thee”.
In the Creed of Pope Pius IV, Catholics are told to say, “I most firmly
assert that the images of Christ, of the Mother of God, Ever Virgin, and also
of the saints may be had and retained, and that due honour and veneration are
to be given them” (page 10, Why I am not a Roman
Catholic).
In the Summa of St
Thomas, it is written that Catholics must give an image of Jesus the same
honour and worship that God gets for Jesus is God (III, 25:3,4). He said that the image should be adored with
the adoration due to God. Pope Leo XIII
commanded that the schools of philosophy must conform to
The old Roman Missal instructed in a rubric that one should say a prayer
to the cross on Good Friday. The cross
was worshipped and called the only hope.
On the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross which happens on the 14th
September the cross is adored as better than the stars and was worthy to bear
the body of Jesus and the sweet wood and the sweet nails are adored. This bit is worth citing, “O kindly cross who
has obtained attractiveness and beauty from the limbs of the Lord take me from
men and restore me to my master.” This
adores the cross without Christ.
What should we make of this then? “If it be said that there is no idolatry because it is not the image, but what the image represents that is dealt with, it may be answered that that is precisely the assertion of many of the heathen about their idols. It is absurd to suppose that the Israelites believed that images of wood, or stone, or metal were actually gods; they were visible representations of their objects of worship” (page 12, Why I am not a Roman Catholic).
Catholics who follow the Devotion to Divine Mercy approved by Pope John Paul II pray, "O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in you." Jesus supposedly told the Church to pray this prayer at 3 pm daily. The Church might "explain" that it means, "O Jesus whose heart gushed forth mercy for us when it bled water and blood, I trust in you." But then why doesn't the prayer say that? The words are actually a block to meaning that. They make it difficult to mean that. Most people will find themselves praying to the actual blood and water. The Bible severely warns that people have a predisposition to idolatrous worship. Thus the prayer is dangerous.
The prayer of consecration to Divine Mercy runs, "Jesus, the Divine Mercy, I consecrate my entire life, from this day on, to You without reserve." This is hypocrisy. Even the greatest saints complained how they were unable to reach Jesus' uncompromising ideals. If the prayer really came from God as devotees of Divine Mercy allege, it would run, "Jesus, the Divine Mercy, I want the strength to consecrate my entire life, from this day on, to You without reserve."
Jesus promised that devotees of Divine Mercy who spread the prayers would never go to Hell and he would "particularly defend each one of them at the hour of death." Protestant theologians might see this as an attempt to lull devotees into a false sense of security so that they will be drawn down to Hell forever.
The Roman Catholic Church uses images in worship. Catholics will kiss statues as a sign of love
for the saint they represent. They hold that
honouring the statue is honouring the saint in the same way that kissing your
darling’s photo is offering love to your darling. They say the honour isn’t meant for the photo
but the person in it, “Strictly speaking, the worship is not for the image.” But it is for the image too! The image benefits from it.
That is a Catholic lie.
Why use pictures of holy beings or statues? Why not get Madonna to dress up as the Virgin
Mary and wine and dine her to honour Mary?
Because you know that it really is idolatry.
You kiss the photo for yourself to satisfy your feeling of love not to
give love. You cannot give a person love
this way. It would be like kissing the
photo of your loved one when your loved one is with you. That would be strange. The saint or God is with you so you don’t need
images.
There is no need for images as helps to worship which proves this. If you can’t pray without a holy picture it
is a bad sign. You should need awareness
of God alone. The image is a substitute
for the love of God – a bad habit.
Catholics say that it would be idolatry to worship the images as if they
were the saints and that is wrong and that they are helps in worship. You can pray better the harder you find it to
pray for effort is what matters not success to God. Images reduce the element of sacrifice in
prayer.
If you can’t pray without images, the Bible God says he understands that and takes your effort to do without statues to be first class prayer for it is the best you can do. Thus, it is idolatry to venerate images for they are not needed. It is a sin to use statues when they lead to what even Catholics would see as idolatry. Actually, that is what the statues are for – to get people to train themselves towards idolatry for they are good for nothing else.
The Ten Commandments teach the evil notion that we must be motivated to help others for God's sake and not their own.
The first commandment says God is the Lord and there must be no other god worshipped besides him. The commandment does not say there are no other gods. It says only that no other god must be worshipped.
The second commandment says that the people must not bow down before images. It is said that this commandment is not a ban on worshipping other gods because the first commandment already dealt with that. It is merely saying that images must not be used in the worship of God. The images are not worshipped as God but used to help people worship God. It is said that the pagans used images to trick their gods into giving them favours. But not all did that. The majority believed that the god freely helped anybody who used an image to worship him. There is no reason to say that the commandment only forbids the use of images when it is hoped to use them to manipulate God. The commandment talks about not what to worship but how to worship. It condemns the Catholic form of idolatry that honours images not as living beings but as represnations of the saints adn Jesus. The honour is not given to the image but to the person trhe image stands for.
Is the Bible against using images to help you to worship in the Catholic
sense?
The Bible says that we are forbidden to bow down before images of
anything in Heaven or earth or to worship them or serve them for God is jealous
(Exodus 20:2-6). Anything in Heaven
includes himself and the angels and the saints.
He did not merely mean, “You shall not make images of other gods”. If he had, we would be finding the word god
or gods in it which is vitally important for interpreting the passage right if
that is what its import is. God said
anything, so even images of the sun or moon were forbidden.
Exodus says first you shall not make the images and then that you shall
not bow down before them and serve them.
This is significant. The ban on
making images is separate from the ban on bowing down before them and serving
them. Then do not think he only bans
images that are made for serving and bowing down before. He says you shall not make images of other
gods. He doesn’t say do not make other
gods which he would have said had the Catholic interpretation been right that
he didn’t forbid images but only images that were treated as gods.
God didn’t say what he meant by bowing down so we should take him to mean
just bowing down. Catholics say bowing
down meant to give them the worship due only to God. Catholics believe in other types of bowing
down in worship such as that before saints.
They consider that acceptable. So worship and bowing down are made very
vague by them. God didn’t make Catholic
distinctions and they should not be read back into the Bible. Bowing down meant any kind of worship or
reverence whatsoever. End of.
Later we read that God had images of angels put on the Ark of the
Covenant. God did not forbid images but
only images for worship or religious images. The images on the ark were images of angels
but were not religious images. They were
for decoration and not to be given any religious significance just like a
picture of Jesus in a Bible printed by anti-image Protestants. And the ark was rarely seen and was kept
covered which shows that God considered revealing such images to be
dangerous.
God told us not to lift up our eyes to the sun and the moon in adoration
and did not tell us not to look at them.
So when these beautiful things which are treated as idols by many may be
looked at it shows that he was not against all images.
It is very important to notice that the majority of the attacks on
idolatry in the Bible never speak in terms of an image taking the place of God
who is shut out entirely. Most scholars
agree that it is most plausible that when
God said that no image of God should be made and explained that that was
why nobody was ever shown a likeness when he appeared. This indicates that they were most likely to
create idols based on him rather than actually adore other Gods.
God was supposed to be everywhere and so to honour an image that he is
inside for he is there is condemned. How
much worse would it be to honour a saint’s image when the saint is in Heaven
and not in a statue? How much worse it
would be to honour an image of God as representing him ignoring the fact that
he is present inside the image. The
Catholic Church then practices the form of idolatry that offends the Bible God
the most.
It would be worse to honour a statue of a saint which is also to honour
the saint than it would be to honour a statue of God for the latter activity is
closer to approaching God.
Images of God and by implication of the rest are banned in Deuteronomy
4:15, 16 by Moses God’s mouthpiece. He
does not say if he forbids the notion of statues becoming God, being
tabernacles of God or simply things that represent God which are used to help you
worship him. This lack of specification is
important for it proves that he was opposed to all three approaches. The Catholic practice is idolatry for God
states that he ignores worship that is given to him through a statue. He makes it idolatry by not accepting it.
Catholics say that it is easy to forget that God was complaining about
worshipping the statues as statues.
It is certain that nobody would worship an image just because it is an
image so it is simplistic to think that it is this that is forbidden. The condemnation was written against real
concerns.
To honour the statue believing
that God is inside it would not be idolatry as long as you focused on God, who
is everywhere, being within it and used the image to help you be conscious of
that. (The Hebrews honoured God in
nature and in themselves.) But when God
rejected this worship it implies he would reject the theory: “It is God that is
meant to be worshipped therefore he would accept it. The error is not in who the worship is given or
why to but in how it is given.”
If the statue was thought to have become God
what then? Some would say that then they would not be honouring
the image but the person of God that has taken the image’s place. But if God is not the statue then you are
practicing extreme idolatry unless these people think that intending the
worship for God is enough for God to get it which would be tantamount to
denying that idolatry is possible.
The nearest one can get to adoring the statue as
a statue is by treating it as that through which the god is honoured. To teach that the statue houses the god or
the god is turned into the statue is further away from worshipping the statue as
a statue than the theory that it is simply a representation of the god is. Worshipping the representation is so close to
worshipping nothing that it might be called worshipping the statue for it is as
close as you can get to adoring a piece of metal or wood or stone. That must be what is being condemned in
Deuteronomy.
But those who use images in worship believing that the worship pleases
God are indeed honouring the image. They
are treating it well even if it is not for its own sake. The ban on idolatry forbids the Catholic
practice of venerating images.
When the Bible never authorises image worship
before Isaiah 42:8 which has God saying that he will not give his glory to
anybody else or his praise to graven images the verse can only be taken
literally. It means that God will not allow images to be
used in the worship of himself. To honour a statue of Jesus is to give it
some of the glory that God gets. Take
the ban literally. That is the principle
of proper interpretation. These images
would be used to worship God with so he is saying he will not be worshipped
through them.
Idolatry would not exist if sincere worship of an image went to God because it was meant for him or would be if the person knew any better. Condemning idolatry is saying that sincerity is not enough with God. This alone condemns Catholicism for having a Word of God and a Man-God that make this mistake.
The Catholic Church reads in the Gospel of John chapter 2 how Jesus went berserk in the Temple. Jesus made a whip and put the sellers all out. He told those who were selling doves to get out for they were making a market place of his father's house. Nothing at all in the episode indicates that these people were doing anything dishonest. Jesus doesn't accuse them of that. He accuses them of making a holy place a marketplace. To me the episode proves that Catholic shrines with their bookstalls and shops full of tacky religious souvenirs and Catholic priests getting a salary out of religion, indeed any kind of paid ministry that calls itself Christian, is actually so enraging and disgusting to Jesus that it would make him resort to violence. The Church makes money out of shrines that are based around religious images such as the Turin Shroud and the Tilma of Guadalupe. If men selling in the Temple enraged Jesus so much, how much more would images enrage him? Jesus when he spoke of the Temple being God's house was referring to a room in which there was absolutely nothing. This room was believed to house the invisible God and its emptiness spoke of the inadequacy and vulgarity of religious images.
If there is no problem with images, why is it that the Church can't venerate statues of Jesus with an erection? Even old people with no libido wouldn't be allowed to do it. If the Church really believes sex is good and that Jesus as a man would have had involuntary erections then there should be no problem with old people venerating the statues!
Catholics are definitely idolaters. Catholics say that we have got them all wrong for images were venerated in the Old Testament.
THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS, James Cardinal Gibbons, Forty Ninth Edition, John Murphy and Co Publishers, Baltimore, London, New York, 1897 (TAN Books keep this book in print) says something interesting. It says that Catholics are not idolaters because Catholics believe that there is no virtue or divinity in the images they venerate but that the images only picture the saints and Christ (page 235). They have the nerve to boast about that and then turn around and worship the communion wafer which they do believe there is virtue and divinity in. Moreover, they believe that because Jesus is everywhere and so is Mary they are indeed inside their images and pictures.
God told Moses to have statues of angels put on top of the Ark of the
Covenant. Catholics say, “The ark was a
symbol of God’s presence and the people prayed towards it and honoured it. In principle, God sees nothing wrong with the
Catholic practice of honouring images.
Even if there had been no statues on it their venerating the box would
prove image-veneration to be lawful”.
But the ark was not seen by the people and may have been covered up when
it was taken out of the Tabernacle.
Catholics answer, “ But they knew it was there with its angels on it and
venerated it. They saw it in their minds
and venerated this picture. It said that
the people prayed in the direction of the ark.”
The ark was regarded like a throne of God. It was not the ark but who used it as a
throne that was the focus of the devotion.
The ark was not a representation of God but a throne. God was believed to be invisibly present
between the angels in a special way. It
was this presence that was worshipped not the ark. The ark far from detracting from an invisible
image less God in fact supported it.
To honour something that God is enthroned upon is not to say that images
should be honoured as temples of God for God is enthroned everywhere and not
just on the ark. The ark seems to be a
reminder to the people that God though everywhere was enthroned among
them. Wrong. It was the invisibility above it that was the
reminder.
If this were incorrect and the ark really was a reminder of God in the
Catholic sense that a statue would be, the ark business would be an exception
to the law against images and would imply that it is not right to hold that God
has made something his throne or tabernacle unless he has said so. The ark might have been an authorised idol
for God explicitly commanded Moses to have it made. If it was then by what authority do Catholics
worship statues of Mary and St Teresa?
But if you assume God is consistent then you must assume that the ark
was not honoured or an authorised idol but the presence above it was the focus
which is by no means the same as adoring an idol thinking God is inside it for
with the ark you had to forget about the ark and think of who was upon it. God appeared on a throne in the Bible. The ark was another of his thrones.
The Jews not being allowed to touch the ark would imply that they were
not pure enough to go near God. It was
God not the ark they respected.
The fact that images of angels were made despite God’s rigid ban on
anything that could attract the people to idolatry shows that angels were not
objects of worship for since God refused to take the form of anything the
people could make an idol of when he appeared to them on Mount Sinai in case
they would do that indicates that angel worship is forbidden. The veneration of angels, and therefore
saints, as in the Catholic Church is condemned.
Just as God said it as serious sin to adore gods who were not gods so
the Church of Rome has saints that are not saints. It has relics which are not true relics. Pius VII confirmed that the relics of St
Francis were real though they were duds (page 369, Handbook to the Controversy
with
The bit in the Bible where those who looked at a bronze serpent were cured
does not establish the veneration of images as lawful for the snake was no more
venerated than a sunset one looks at to lift one’s mind.
Solomon put images of angels in his temple but that is not to say that
they were venerated. God did not say he approved
of what Solomon did. He sometimes didn’t
bother correcting him and does he bother correcting any of us?
Catholics argue that when God became Jesus he made image worship right. Then God let people worship him in and before his body. But bowing before an image is not bowing before God but what represents him while Jesus was God according to Catholic dogma. The situations are different. Jesus had to have a physical form. Perhaps Jesus gave all who saw him the grace to focus on God and not God as represented in the body of Jesus. There is no evidence that Jesus claimed to be God so he cannot be used as an excuse for idolatry. When God would not appear in any form that could be made into an image though the form would be God he would not appear in the person of Jesus. If the New Testament says Jesus was God and agrees with the Old Testament then it follows that Jesus was symbolically God for he was so like him and was the one we have to get to know to see what God is like.
If Jesus was able to change the Jewish law he had to be explicit that he was doing so. Laws have to be changed by the book. He never said he allowed image worship.
The Catholic Church is a pagan religion.
It worships false Gods for the Bible says that worshipping or venerating
even images of the true God is to adore other Gods. God speaks of himself as being jealous and
that he will punish idolatry with the most severe sentences possible. Catholicism then is a dangerous
religion. There is no Bible authority at
all for Catholic image veneration. The
arguments here were all given to the Church leadership when it was declared by
the iconoclasts in the first millennium that image worship was idolatry but
because the people mostly wanted their idols and saints the Church ignored the
arguments and put popularity first.
Nobody argued, incidentally in those days, that
since the papacy approved of images that it must be right which is interesting. It shows that the papacy today as the head of
the Church and the supreme earthly teacher of the Church was a subsequent
invention of the Church.
The Catholic Church has many miraculous images and has the Turin
Shroud. Apparitions of Mary for example
encourage images and want basilicas set up around images of the
apparition. According to scripture these
things are the work of the Devil.
The Church fails miserably in showing that statue veneration is permitted by God.
When Critics Ask, Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, Victor Books, Illinois ,1992 demonstrates how Catholic use of images in worship is against the Bible.
The book lays out a table as follows - see page 84 and I have made clarifications.
| FORBIDDEN | PERMITTED |
| Images as objects of worship are forbidden | Images that are not objects of worship |
| Images appointed and set up by man, eg images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and statues of Mary | Images commanded by God. Roman Catholicism has accounts of apparitions of Jesus and Mary that commanded the use of images. This is the same thing as men not God authorising the images because the Church holds that revelation ceased two thousands years ago. The apparitions only look back to that revelation and can't add to it. They are only reminders and that is why you are allowed to disbelieve all apparitions if you so choose. So the apparitions don't have any authority of their own. |
| Images for religious purposes for flowers to be put before them, for them to be carried in procession, for them to be bowed before. If you really honour say a saint, you will not be bowing before the image but trying to stir up a likeness to the saint in your heart. For example, instead of looking at a statue of St Zita the saint of housekeepers, try and be a Zita and honour her like that. | Images for the purpose of education including religious education |
| To represent what God is like, nothing can adequately capture God. God must be seen inside yourself and you must sense his goodness working in you rather than looking at and bowing before a representation of him. Seeing God's love and goodness working in you is the only way you should be interested in seeing God and picturing God. Even that can lead to idolatry for God is so much bigger than our ideas of goodness. But in that sense it is a necessary evil. Using images then would be an unnecessary evil - an act of disobedience to God and an act of idolatry. | To express the truth, no image of God was ever permitted or used with God's permission in the Bible |
| Used without restrictions or qualifications - eg despite the universal tendency for us to prefer to invent our own gods and have idols the Church provides holy statues for simple people and superstitious people without restriction or caution. These people will easily treat the image as if it were divine or a god or a saint. You can be an idolater without even realising it. | Severe restrictions in the use of images to avoid the risk of idolatry -eg how the cherubim on the ark of the covenant were rarely seen. The ark was kept out of view. The cherubim on the ark were never prayed to for the people prayed to God not angels or saints. They did not represent beings to be prayed to. |
Conclusion
Catholics are idolaters. Catholics are pagans using Christian
terminology.
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BORN
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COUNTERFEIT
MIRACLES Benjamin B Warfield, Banner of Truth Trust,
FROM FASTING
SAINTS TO ANOREXIC GIRLS, Walter Vandereycken and Ron van Deth, Athlone Press,
MAKING SAINTS,
Kenneth K Woodward, Chatto & Windus,
OBJECTIONS TO
ROMAN CATHOLICISM, Ed by Michael de la Bedoyere, Constable,
PURGATORY, Rev W
E Kenny BD, Church of Ireland Printing, Co Dublin, 1939
SERMONS OF ST
ALPHONSUS LIGUORI, Tan Books, Illinois,
1982
THE BANNER OF THE
TRUTH IN IRELAND, Winter
1997, Irish Church
Missions, Dublin
THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS, James Cardinal Gibbons, Forty Ninth Edition, John Murphy and Co Publishers, Baltimore, London, New York, 1897 (TAN Books keep this book in print)
THE GREAT MEANS
OF SALVATION AND PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988
THE LEGENDS OF
THE SAINTS, by Hippolyde Delehaye, Four Courts Press,
THE MISSIONARY
POSITION, Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, Christopher Hitchens, Verso,
THE PRIMITIVE
FAITH AND ROMAN CATHOLIC DEVELOPMENTS, Rev John A F Gregg, BD, APCK,
THE VIRGIN, Geoffrey Ashe, Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.
WHEN CRITICS ASK, Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, Victor Books, Illinois ,1992
VICARS OF CHRIST,
Peter de Rosa, Corgi,