IMAGES ARE NOT REALLY NEEDED FOR WORSHIP SO USING THEM IS A COVER FOR IDOLATRY

You know the difference between a faith needing images in worship like paganism did and  religion that merely treats them like an option that is not that important.

The Roman Catholic Church uses images in worship like it cannot do without them. 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.
 
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 Church says that the saint or God is with you. If that is true, then you don’t need images.
 
Affection can exist without love. You can feel affection for your dog and still maltreat him. The Catholic really must feel affection for the image.

There is no need for images as helps to worship which proves that the veneration of images is idolatrous. 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.
 
Human nature is irreparably fond of making a God that suits itself. We are prone to idolatry. Accordingly, it is impossible to believe that God would set up a religious system that is so easily abused by those who hide their idolatrous ways.

The early Church used no images in places of worship. It did not use religious pictures and statues. The Council of Elvira in Spain banned the use of holy pictures in Churches. The Church was so against idolatry that there was no way it could even have imagined that bread and wine could be turned into God incarnate! The latter idolatry led to other forms and vice versa.
Uncanny valley means that our brains are wired to recognise real faces. If a face is not real like the face of a doll that unsettles us. It makes us uncomfortable. Yet Catholics and Orthodox adore images with rather disturbing faces or do they? Is this just a way of how humanity has always tried to associate with dark forces in the belief they would get them on their side? Is it a case of you are better off with the Devil you know?
 
Catholics are idolaters. Catholics are pagans using Christian terminology.
 
BOOKS CONSULTED

ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME, Michael de Semlyen, Dorchester House Publications, Bucks, 1993
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS CATHOLICS ARE ASKING, Tony Coffey, Harvest House Publishers, Oregon ,2006 
BORN FUNDAMENTALIST, BORN-AGAIN CATHOLIC, David B Currie, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1996
COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES Benjamin B Warfield, Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1995
FROM FASTING SAINTS TO ANOREXIC GIRLS, Walter Vandereycken and Ron van Deth, Athlone Press, London, 1996
MAKING SAINTS, Kenneth K Woodward, Chatto & Windus, London, 1991
OBJECTIONS TO ROMAN CATHOLICISM, Ed by Michael de la Bedoyere, Constable, London, 1964
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, Dublin, 1998
THE MISSIONARY POSITION, Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, Christopher Hitchens, Verso, London, 1995
THE PRIMITIVE FAITH AND ROMAN CATHOLIC DEVELOPMENTS, Rev John A F Gregg, BD, APCK, Dublin, 1928
THE VIRGIN, Geoffrey Ashe, Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. London, 1976
WHEN CRITICS ASK, Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, Victor Books, Illinois ,1992
VICARS OF CHRIST, Peter de Rosa, Corgi, London, 1995