MARY IS NECESSARY

In Defense of Sacred Images
BAR

Under the sponsorship of the Blue Army, the Pilgrim Virgin Statue, the image of the Mother of God as she appeared in Fatima, Portugal, has been crisscrossing continents, stirring the hearts and minds of people everywhere to hear and heed the call to prayer and penance.

For many reasons, some people use the word "idolatry" to refer to the Catholic use of sacred images. These people recoil from statues of Mary, and Angels and the Saints, and even from the figure of Christ crucified. Because the Pilgrim Virgin Statue in our time is an instrument of God's grace to men through Mary, it should be helpful to review briefly the history of sacred images in worship.

One of the scriptural passages most frequently quoted to oppose sacred images is this:

I, the Lord, am thy God, Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage . . . Thou shall not have strange gods before Me. Thou shall not make to thyself a graven 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. [Exodus 20: 2-5]

But in the same book, the Lord tells Moses:

Thou shalt make also two cherubims of beaten gold on the two sides of the oracle. [Exodus 25: 18]

Since God is not contradictory, it is clear that He forbids strange gods and idol worship of any kind. No person, thing, or idea shall supplant God's primacy. At the same time, God specifically directed that images of Angelic beings were to be made to adorn the propitiatory, which was placed on top of the Ark of the Covenant, the very place where God promised to meet with Moses. From earliest times, then, God was pleased to encounter man in the presence of sacred images.

It is hard to believe that there are still people who believe that Catholics worship statues. Do Americans worship Robert E. Lee, or George Washington? There are statues of historical personages throughout the civilized world. Such works of sculpture create in citizens a sense of historical continuity, reverence, and love of homeland. In this way they contribute to the stability and order of the state. Statues of religious subjects also create for the people of God a sense of historical continuity with the Church's pilgrimage in time. They inspire religious reverence and devotion, and move people to virtuous acts.

What Christian is not moved with sorrow when viewing the Pieta-----the sorrowing Mother with her crucified Son? We are filled with the hope of salvation when gazing at Michelangelo's massive figure of St. Peter. We feel the protecting arm of God in the figure of St. Michael the Archangel. The figures represented in sacred images are the figures of beings who inhabit Heaven, the final destiny of faithful Christians, their eternal homeland.

On the other hand, to find Idolatry we need not look to sacred images. Power, Money, and Lust are contemporary idols whose temples of worship are filled to overflowing.

A rejection of religious images grows out of man's rejection of his own creaturehood. God created man's body from the dust of the earth, made him a part of the natural world, the world of matter. He endowed that material body with five senses. God himself became a part of that matter in the Incarnation, the central point of history. G. K. Chesterton states it well:

There really was a new reason for regarding the senses and the sensation of the body and the experiences of the common man with a new reverence . . . It had hung upon a gibbet. It had risen from the tomb. It was no longer possible for the soul to despise the senses, which had been the organs of something that was more than man . . . Plato might despise the flesh; but God had not despised it. The senses had truly become sanctified.
[St. Thomas Aquinas, The Dumb Ox, p. 118]

From its earliest beginning until the present time in history, the influence of the ancient anti-life religions of Asia has plagued Christianity, particularly in the form that attempted to blend the pagan and Christian beliefs.

Manicheism held that nature, the world of creation, the world of matter of which man is a part, is evil, associated with darkness, and created by Satan. Good is associated with the spirit and light. Begun by the Persian prophet Manes in the century after the death of Christ, [Danielou, J. & Marrou, H. I., The Christian Centuries, McGraw-Hill Book Co., N. Y., 1964, Vol. 1, p. 192] the wild fire of Manicheism, billowing smoke and fumes, licked the gates of Christendom and sent sparks cascading over her walls, sparks that ignite heresy. In the eighth century, the Iconoclasts rose up, led by Leo the Isaurian, Emperor of Constantinople. The Iconoclasts believed that sacred pictures and images made worship impure. Pure worship should not lower itself to associate with things of the senses. As a result, the churches were stripped, their art demolished.

The Manichean influence continued and fathered many errors in Western Christendom. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the moral and social structures of northern Italy and southern France creaked and groaned to near collapse under the gale winds of Albigensianism-----a Manichean heresy. The Albigensians believed man's purpose in life was to free himself from the world of matter, i. e., darkness, evil. While the Church teaches that purity leads to fruitfulness, on the natural or supernatural levels, the Albigensians began depopulation by means of the great lie-----purity is sterility. Marriage was forbidden, and suicide permitted, in fact, encouraged. Here is Leo XIII's description:

Carrying the terror of their arms everywhere, they extended their sway far and wide by massacre and ruin. . . . [But] God in His mercy raised up against this scourge, a man of great sanctity, . . .[the] Father and Founder of the Dominican Order. . . .[T]his hero, quickened by the Spirit from on high, did battle with the enemies of the Catholic Church . . . not with violence and force of arms but with the utmost faith in that devotion to the holy Rosary which he was the first to introduce and which his followers carried to the four corners of the world. [Supremi apostolatus (Sept. 1, 1883), quoted in the Benedictine Monks of Solesmes, The Holy Rosary, Papal Teachings, translated by Oligny, Rev. P. J. OFM, St. Paul Editions, Boston, Mass., pp. 46 and 47]

Through St. Dominic, Our Lady of the Rosary dampened the fires of heresy with a rain of grace, and led her people back into the bright sun of God's creation, to praise Life, to praise Being, and to praise their Creator. The Manichean spirit surfaced again during the 16th century.

Luther, the Augustinian monk, weighed down with revulsion at the corruption of morals, the greed and indolence of the clergy, the externalism of religious practice, reacted by teaching that man was radically corrupted. Man's will is useless, his reason useless, and his good works meaningless. According to Luther, man was incapable of resisting evil; he rejected the idea of holiness and Sainthood. In one fell swoop he abolished the Saints, monasticism and the Mass.

During the Reformation, Iconoclasm was raised from its eighth century grave. Here is Fr. John A. O'Brien's account:

The destruction of images was revived by Luther and the other Reformers of the sixteenth century. The churches and monasteries were the great museums of the art of the Middle Ages. Many priceless paintings and statues were demolished, frescoed walls were whitewashed; and gorgeous stained glass windows with figures of Christ and His Saints were ruthlessly smashed. The iconoclastic campaign was especially vehement in Germany, Holland and the British Isles. A traveler to these countries, visiting some of the desecrated Catholic churches which are now being used as Protestant houses of worship can scarcely fail to note the mutilated statues of Christ and the Saints still standing in their niches. [O'Brien, Rev. John A., The Faith of Millions]

Under the new Manicheanism, religion became a drab and colorless business. The joy and richness of man's art-----his noblest attempts to recreate and mirror the beauty of the Eternal-----were scorned.

Although the Reformers were motivated by zeal to purify the worship of the Church they unfortunately chose to use the destruction of art, music, and holy images as a major part of their methodology.

It is essential to understand that when God created man, He did not make a pure spirit, but a creature of spirit and matter: "And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul."
[Genesis 2: 7] The material senses of man's body fuel the faculties of his soul-----his intellect, his will, his memory. The early Church understood the value of images using them to teach the truths of the faith. Today, the need for symbols and images continues; we need to return to our churches, our statues, our pictures, our traditional Stations of the Cross. The most effective media today-----television-----makes vital use of these truths. The mentors of Madison Avenue know that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Yet some still are suspicious of the use of sacred images. Clinging to negative emotions about the Church gives rise to false notions about her teaching and practices. Throughout her history, the Catholic Church has consistently and adamantly forbidden the worship of images. Catholics pray to Mary, to the Angels and to the Saints. They worship God alone.

Just as the destruction of religious images was in times past a violent exterior manifestation of Christian disunity, the acceptance by Christians of images and symbols in religious worship will be a sign of genuine inner unity.

Mary, the Mother of God, appeared in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917 to warn man that he is poised on the razor edge of the bottomless abyss. The image of Mary, Our Lady of Fatima, has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. Will this image of the Holy Virgin be the sign under which all Christians everywhere re-unite?

A part of the Catholic world, as well as Christians in general, have kept Mary under a cloud for centuries. John Henry Cardinal Newman observed:

Catholics who have honored the Mother still worship the Son; while those who have now ceased to confess the Son, began by scoffing at the Mother. [Newman, quoted in the preface to St. Louis De Montfort, True Devotion to Mary, Montfort Publications, Bay Shore, N. Y.,
11706, p. 11]

During the same period in history, Father Faber writes,

Here in England Mary is not half enough preached. Devotion to her is low and thin and poor. It is frightened out of its wit by the sneers of heresy. It is always invoking human respect and carnal prudence, wishing to make Mary so little of a Mary that Protestants may feel at ease about her. Its ignorance of theology makes it unsubstantial and unworthy. It is not the prominent characteristic of our religion which it ought to be. It has no faith in itself. Hence it is that Jesus is not loved. . . . [Fr. Faber, Preface, p. 12 (see note 5)]

Dr. Lacy, a Methodist minister, sounds the keynote for ecumenism of the future:

It is devotion to the Blessed Mother that helps unite us as Christians. When Protestants lose their widespread hang-up that Roman Catholics have worshipped and do worship her, they can perceive by the power of the Holy Spirit an authentic ecumenism that calls us "to be one". When many Roman Catholics stop apologizing for their emphasis on her in order not to offend the Protestant community, they can put her back where she rightfully belongs. . . . [Lacy, Dr. Donald Charles, Devotion to Mary Should Transcend Denominations, The Criterion, July 22, 1983]

In the beginning God tells Satan, "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: she shall cruch thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." [Genesis 3: 15] Maximilian Kolbe, a Sainted prisoner of Auschwitz, emphasizes the role of the woman of Genesis for our own day:

Modern times are dominated by Satan and will be more so in the future. The conflict with Hell cannot be engaged by men, even the most clever. The Immaculata alone has from God the promise of a victory over Satan. [Franciscan Marytown Press, Kenosha, Wisc., Immaculata Magazine]

Source: The Wonders She Performs
LOUIS KACZMAREK
Trinity Communications, 1986

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