[ealgeone]

“Catholics use statues, paintings, and other artistic devices to recall the person or thing depicted. Just as it helps to remember one’s mother by looking at her photograph, so it helps to recall the example of the saints by looking at pictures of them. Catholics also use statues as teaching tools. In the early Church they were especially useful for the instruction of the illiterate.

If this is all the Roman Catholic did with the idols of Mary they might have an argument.

The appeal to the pictures of one's mom or dad is a pathetic attempt of the Roman Catholic to justify the use of idols in Roman Catholicism. It's another of Tim Staple's attempt to justify idolatry in Roman Catholicism and it fails on so many levels.

However, where the Roman Catholic errs is the worshipping and serving these idols and worshipping/serving only God.

The Catholic bows to the image depicted in the idol, prays to the image depicted in the idol, etc. This is in contradiction to the Biblical injunction against making idols.

Many Protestants have pictures of Jesus and other Bible pictures in Sunday school for teaching children.

Difference being no one is bowing down to the pictures in those Sunday school classes.

Catholics also use statues to commemorate certain people and events, much as Protestant churches have three-dimensional nativity scenes at Christmas.

And again no one is bowing down or praying to nativity scenes.

“People who oppose religious statuary forget about the many passages where the Lord commands the making of statues. For example: “And you shall make two cherubim of gold [i.e., two gold statues of angels]; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end; of one piece of the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be” (Ex. 25:18–20).

People who attempt to invoke this passage forget this was God who ordained this. The Israeli's did not bow down to nor serve or pray to the Cherubim as the Roman Catholic does with the idols of Mary.

“The Church absolutely recognizes and condemns the sin of idolatry.

As demonstrated this is a false statement.

But it is understandable why the Roman Catholic does not discern the difference. They are not taught the full prohibition against idolatry.

A "traditional catechetical formula" of the first commandment reads as:

1. I am the LORD your God: you shall not have strange Gods before me.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/command.htm

The text from Exodus 20:2-6 reads as follows:

3“You shall have no other gods before Me. 4“You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.

5“You shall not worship them or serve them;

for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. NASB