Replies

It is very easy to point a finger at non Catholics and to seek their demise on FR because they interfer with your agenda ...but the truth was spoken by your own and never heeded...that is why the Spirit departed..he will not always strive with men

I am not the issue ..the light is the issue

Erasmus feared that the ceremonies outweighed the meanings in the Catholic Church; he wanted to teach people to revere and think about those meanings.

Erasmus's teaching rejected the material means to salvation so often peddled to the laity, emphasizing that such things distracted from discovering Jesus. Like Luther, he was particularly scornful of popular Catholic attitudes (and the clergy's exploitation of those attitudes) toward saints, writing in 1503,

Now there are not a few who are given over to the veneration of saints, with elaborate ceremonies. Some, for example, have a great devotion to St. Christopher. Provided his statue is in sight, they pray to him almost every day. Why do they do this? It is because they wish to be preserved from a sudden and unprovided-for death that day. There are others who have a great devotion to St. Roch.... This has gone to the extent that each nation has its own. Among the French St. Paul is esteemed, among us Germans St. Jerome has a special place. . . . This kind of piety, since it does not refer either our fears or our desires to Christ, is hardly a Christian practice. [3]

The saints were good, and one should respect their teachings, but "we kiss the shoes of the Saints and their dirty handkerchiefs and we leave their books, their most holy and efficacious relics, neglected." [4] Erasmus asked his Christians to return to the primary, to their Christ.