The Catholic Church supports so-called statues that drip blood? Can you document that? Where did you get that idea from? I suspect you're incorrect about that.
The Catholic Church is extremely cautions about claiming miracles. Over the past 45 years the Catholic church has proclaimed only four miracles. All four miracles are related to scientific, medical advances that have given us the cures for diseases.
I think that the masses flocking to fluid dripping icons personify a primitive mystic side of an exceptionally productive and sophisticated theology. From what little I know, it borders on and icon worship and in some promotes it, appealing to the most base side of our spiritual instincts.
Catholic masses flocking to fluid drippings? I don't think so. I'm not sure how you come to such a belief. Hopefully it's not based on a faith in So. Park.
About icon "worship", I know plenty of Catholics and I don't know one Catholic who believes that an icon is a god. I've sat through plenty of Catholic masses. I've never seen anything that is part of a Catholic mass that recognizes that an icon is a god or even that the Virgin Mary is a god.
Sure, icons are treated with veneration and religious respect. That's because they are associated with what is divine and not because they are divine.
But, icon respect is not strictly Catholic in the least. It cuts across all human behavior. People respect pictures of deceased family members. People venerate wedding rings, cemeteries, battle fields and even winning lottery tickets. And then there is our flag.
These are all icons. These are things treated by people of all religions and even agnostics, with respect based on association and what these things symbolize.
Treating icons with respect is a normal activity and is as common in human behavior as dirt is on the ground. Having faith in a god and believing in what one can't prove -- such as miracles -- is also common behavior and it cuts across all religions. Such faith is worthy of mutual respect from people of all religions. Such faith is worthy of a uniform level of respect from those who have no religious beliefs.
So. Park is fallible.
Every notice that protestants don’t pray to statues and other icons decorating their churches? They choose the other side of the trade off that I described in my last post. It can’t simply be dismissed as akin to admiring “winning lottery tickets”. There’s more than I want to dig through here in STATUES OF SAINTS" GOD ORDAINED OR IDOLATRY? and a more critical piece here.
Like I said, the Church probably supports something bordering idolaty (not statues that drip blood like you said) because it attracts troubled or uneducated converts (not the people you go to church with like you said). But it enables crowds rushing to fluid drippin icons like these that are fodder for South Park. I grew up seeing reports of these at various levels of credibility and crowd appeal. This is one of the more humorous. It’s so much more common in Catholicism because of their promotion of borderline idolatry and miracles. I see here that Pope John Paul II attributes his visitation to the Our Lady of Fatima miracle shrine for his survival of the 1981 an assassination attempt. That’s how it’s supported and enables the behavior that South Park lampoons.
This is not a subject that I’m really interested in. I’m only explaining it because you said that you don’t understand the rationale for criticism of miracle chasers or Catholic’s borderline idolatry, as if it’s something unique to South Park. You won’t agree with it or be persuaded, but that‘s not why I took the time to look it up. I just wanted to help you to understand it.
Regards