Why Do Catholics Display Statues?
by Rhoda Giacomini (RCIA Team Member)
For centuries, the practice of adorning churches and homes with statues and similar images has been common. Why? Is it that we worship images and idols? And, why does the church allow and promote the practice of owning and displaying statues in our homes?
I am sure these are questions that you or someone close to you has asked at sometime.
First, how many of you have pictures of family members displayed either at home or at work? Do some of you have pictures of family members who have passed on?
Christianity is an “incarnational” religion. This means that visible, tangible realities are used to embody or represent the divine. Statues serve as visible reminders of actual persons--now deceased--who are considered sacred by the church.
Statues help us remember that saints and other holy persons were not disembodied angels but were human just like us.
Statues of saints, however, are just symbols and nothing more. Anything beyond that would be superstition. We must keep in mind that their power is symbolic only. They remind us of sacred persons but have no power themselves. It is exactly their power as symbols that make statues an element of religious faith, rather than superstition.
The belief that spiritual power exists within material things themselves, rather than in God, is the heart of superstition. The Catholic faith holds that all spiritual power belongs to God.
Finally, Catholics hold saints in esteem because they are such wonderful images or mirrors of Christ. These images can be lost or destroyed but the spiritual reality remains.
Devotion to saints comes back to our theology of image. Christ is God’s image, the saints
are Christ’s image. We honor them because we desire to imitate and remember them. We pray to them in the same way that we call upon earthly friends to do a favor for us.
Those pictures all of us have displayed or keep with us of loved ones, living and dead. Are they not the same? We wish to keep these family members’ memories honored and remembered. Is it not the same with pictures or statues of Christ, his mother, and all of his friends (i.e., the apostles and saints)?
CTK
RCIA
October 7, 2004