Patrick Madrid is a pretty well known Catholic apologist. He has his own blog linked above at his name. Here is an excerpt from a piece he wrote about Catholics and statues that goes deeper than our fundamentalist brethren normally go, when they accuse Catholics of worshipping statuary.
Frankly, I find the fundy position ridiculous itself, but here in totality is a good answer for your fundy friends when they charge you with idolatry. Mr. Madrid quotes the bible appropriately, and even provides links to the Catholic Catechism. If, of course your bible references don't mollify our brethren, I don't expect that the Catholic Catechism is going to do it. Good luck to you.
WHEN I ARRIVED ONE EVENING at a suburban Chicago parish to conduct an apologetics seminar, I noticed a life-sized statue of Our Lady of Fatima on the rectory lawn. Kneeling before that statue were three smaller statues of Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta – the children to whom Our Lady appeared. Their statues were kneeling in prayer, heads bowed before the larger statue.The rest is at the link above and also in this online PDF file here.
Turning to my colleague in the car, I joked, ―What a great religion Catholicism is! Not only can we worship statues, but our statues can worship statues.‖ We chuckled at the absurdity of the thought.
When I mentioned this incident during the seminar, the Catholics in the audience laughed at the notion of statues worshipping statues and the nonsense of humans worshipping statues, but some of the Protestants in attendance weren’t laughing. They looked puzzled. The reason, as I discovered during the Q&A session, was that some of them actually believed that Catholics do worship statues.
The disapproval many Protestants have toward Catholic religious statues and images is fueled by a suspicion that Catholics engage in idolatry by worshipping those statues. This concern is far more widespread than you might think. Most object to religious statues on biblical grounds.
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