“1. Oy! The problem is not the Church’s doctrine which she has made clear and I’ve posted here before. Whoseover becomes an objective idolater does so despite the Church’s clear teaching and warning, not because of them.”
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the doctrine is correct in its delineation of the different forms of veneration and worship. I’m not ceding that point, except for the sake of argument, to demonstrate that there is still a big problem here. I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, Christians are forbidden to engage in acts which are prone to lead brothers and sisters who are weaker in the faith to sin. According to the church doctrine, engaging in proper veneration of icons/saints/Mary is one step away from improper worship. Is it not a fact that members of the church in fact do, from time to time, take that step and engage in false worship using these very objects which are approved of by the church?
I liken this situation to if the Church were leaving the Communion wine unattended, and leaving it up to the flock to go up and serve themselves whenever they like, knowing full well that some members would be tempted to abuse it for purposes of drunkenness. Simply saying “if you do that, you’re making a mistake” is the absolute laziest and most ineffective step that the church could take to prevent such error. In fact, it’s an even worse situation when it comes to icons, since the church is required to provide the wine for an essential function of worship, while icons are a purely optional addition, and an endlessly controversial one at that.
“2. Oy again! I don’t need to “disprove a positive” but if you are positing the affirmation, you are the one who needs to put forward evidence to back up the assertion.”
Well, what evidence do I need to present? Those cults are common knowledge are they not? Certainly the heresy of Mariolatry should be known to you, you cannot deny that since it is condemned by your own church. Who engages in Mariolatry? Jews? Buddhists? Moslems? No, it’s self-evident to anyone with any awareness of these issues that Mariolatry is a heresy mostly peculiar to the Catholic and Orthodox. The heresy is peculiar to them, because it springs from a situation that is present in those churches and not present in most others, namely, that of putting the temptation towards that heresy right in front of worshippers when they enter the church, and furthermore, not taking the necessary steps to prevent it. If you wish to deny that this is an issue, then fine, I am not going to attempt to argue with someone who wishes to remain wilfully blind and feign ignorance of things which are plain to see.
“3. Like icons, money, sex, possessions, food, health, looks, fashions, politics, ideology, are means to an end and not end in themselves. When these become ends in themselves, they become idols.”
Agreed. Anything can be made an idol.
“By your logic we should completely abstain from them also, for clearly, the prohibition for idolatry also extends to them. Well, do you?”
No, this is not “by my logic”, but by your misunderstanding of my logic perhaps. First of all, it’s not possible or at least feasible for most to abstain from many things which could become objects of idolatry, for example, food, money, sex, clothing. Abstaining from these things in order to prevent their abuse would lead to death or undue burden without rational justification. On the other hand, there’s no pressing need to make graven images and bow down to them in our daily lives, and there is certainly no pressing need for them in the context of proper worship. On top of that, we know that God regards these specific types of idolatry with a special disregard, so much so that he included this activity in the decalogue and right up near the top of the list. What pressing argument could there possibly be as to why we need to allow and even endorse an activity that is specifically forbidden by God alongside such things as murder, theft, and adultery? Things which aren’t included in that list, such as homosexual activity, are rightly denounced by the church, but making and bowing before graven images is not? Where is the logic in that?
Jesus repeated and strengthened all prohibitions of the Ten commandments. Except the one about graven images.
Leave your worries about “bowing down to graven images” to the Jews and become Christian, and read the Holy Gospels every now and then.