The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1920-07-24
THE VENERATION OF IMAGES.

Catholic teaching concerning images
will convince the most Skeptical that
there is nothing in it contrary to the
teaching of the Church, says writer
in the Catholic Sun" If we would
take the First Commandment on
appearances We would find that
it condemns the making of any
kinds of images. Reading the
Commandment in the light of COM
mon sense it is obvious that the
law is comprised in the first and last
clauses of the Commandment. The
Commandment says: Thou shalt not
have strange Gods before me. Thou
shalt not make to thyself any craven
thing, nor the likeness of anything
that is in heaven above, or in the
earth beneath, nor of those things
that are in the waters under the earth.
Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve
them" If we take this Commandment
in its apparent sense, the people would
have been forbidden to make an i'm
age Of anything at all. This certainly
was not the mind of God. 1t was His
intention to forbid them to adore i'm
ages or to serve them. Those who
would invoke the First Commandment
of God against the Catholic practice
would be forced to an extreme that is
obviously ridiculous.
The Catholic, no less than his nom
Catholic or pagan brother, is forbid
den by the natural law to give to any
creature the honor that is due to God.
This same natural law fOrbids the
absurdity of praying for giving any
sort Of absolute worship to manufac-
tured image. The teaching of the
Catholic Church is contained in de-
cree of the Second Council of Nice,
held in the year 1877: 1--WE define with
all certainty and care that both the
figure of the sacred and life giving
Cross, as also the venerable and holy
images, whether made in cOlors, or
placed suitably in the holy churches of
God, on sacred vessels and vestments,
On walls and pictures, in houses and
by roads; that is to say, the image
of our Lord God and Savior Jesus
Christ, of our Immaculate Lady the
able angels and of saints and holy
men. For as often as they are seen
in their pictorial representation, peO-
pie who look at them are ardently
lifted up to the memory and love of
the originals and induced to give that
hipf1l hnnnr h1t
real alteration, which according to our
faith is due only to the Divine Nature.
So that offerings of incense and lights
are to be given to these as to the
figure of the sacred and life-giving
Cross, to the holy Gospel books and
other sacred objects in order to do
them honor, and as was the pions GUS
tum of an ancient times. If honor
paid to all image passes on to its pro-
totype, he who WOrShips an image
worships the reality Of him who is
painted in it,
The reverence that the Catholic
pays to images is marked by outward
signs. They mean only what they are
understood to mean. From the very
earliest days we find the Christian
people using images. They adorned
their catacombs with paintings of
Christ, of the saints and of scenes
from the Bible. The Catacombs have
been rightly called the cradle of all
Christian art Those that have any
notion that the early Christians were
preiudiced against images or pictures
have received rude awakening by
Christian archaeologists. The pictures
and statues which date back to the
first centuries of the Christian era
indicate that the Christians had lit
tie fear of idolatry among their new
converts by the use of pictures or i'm
ages.
1t may be admitted that there was
abuse and notably just before the Icon
oclast outbreak. Though we admit
all the abuse that is ascribed to those
ages, it is impossible to believe that
even the most stupid peasant could
have thought that an image could
hear or answer a prayer. The abuse
consisted in the treatment that was
accorded to icons. They had multi
piled TO such an extent that the walls
of the church from floor to roof were
covered with them. The practice of
the worship of icons had gone to such
an extent that we read of Saint Theo-
dore writing TO congratulate an Of
fetal of the court for having chosen
holy icon as godfather for his son.
The Iconoclast outbreak brought at
least one good result, the definition
from the Council of Nice. This def
milton explained the kind of worship
that might be lawfully and reasonably
given to images and condemned all
eXtraVagances.
In the Western churches, and esre-
cially in Rome, the worship OF images
was not carried to the extent that it
was in the East. In the Eternal City
we find a reasonable and sober ex-
PLANTATION of the use of images. Saint
Gregory the Great, writing to an icon
oclast bishop who had destroyed the
images in his diocese, calls them the
book of the ignorant. He writes:
mot without reason has antiquity al
lowed the stories of the saints to be
painted in holy places. And we in
deed entirely praise thee for not al
lowing them to be adored, but we
blame thee for breaking them. For it