“Once art is called “religious” art one is ascribing holiness to the art.”
No. That’s like saying sports art is athletic rather than it represents athletic people and acts of athleticism.
“As I said above, would one toss the art in the garbage without giving it a second thought ?”
Would you throw pictures of your family in the trash without giving it a second thought? Would you throw away a baseball card collection without at least considering its worth? What you’re saying makes no sense.
Vlad, it’s not like sports at all.
Holiness is not sportiness.
Things are either Holy or they are not.
A statue is either Holy or it’s not.
The Bible tells us there are no Holy statues.
The Lord’s Day, Sunday, is a Holy Day. But statues are not Holy at all. They are simply objects. The second commandment forbids us to ascribe any special religious character to any object.
As you can see from the Vatican website quotes I posted above, the Vatican contradicts - quite obviously - from Scripture in their teachings on this subject.
Regarding tossing away pictures of my family - such pictures are not Holy. So doing so would be a decision based on how to dispose of an OBJECT. I may have old pictures that I have replaced with new ones that are much better pictures that I want to keep. In that case, I’d dump the old ones without worrying about it at all - they would be refuse to me. If such a picture gets lost or misplaced, I might be bothered a bit as if I misplaced my car keys, but it would not be like I lost a Holy relic, because they are just OBJECTS. Mere physical things. Earthly things. Wordly things. As long as I desire or require objects, I keep them, when they are no longer useful, they can be disgarded like a worn-out shoe.
Every single object I’ve owned or ever owned is nothing to me relative to the importance to me of God the Father and Son.
And I’m sentimental and have old things from when I was a kid, things from grandparents, etc. But I realize that ultimately those things are just things. I can’t take them beyond the grave - they are useless to me in terms of my salvation, and they provide me nothing in terms of my Christian faith. My faith in Jesus Christ is independent of physical objects, completely.
This subject always brings to mind the movie Memphis Belle when the one gunner pretended to throw the other gunner’s “medal” of some saint out the window of the plane on their last mission, and the guy completely freaked out. That is superstition, plain and simple, and all too common. That medal had NO USE WHATSOEVER to protecting the fellow - and his thinking that it afforded him any safety at all is - superstition - and contrary to Scripture.