A Great Cloud of Witnesses
Every Christian owes a debt to believers who went before. Hebrews 11 is a hall of faith, and the next chapter calls them so great a cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1). Scripture tells us to remember faithful leaders, whose faith follow (Hebrews 13:7). Honoring the faithful dead is biblical.
Rome builds much more on that honor. Catholics ask the saints in heaven to pray for them, keep their feast days, take their names at baptism, venerate their images, and honor their relics. In 1563 the Council of Trent taught that it is “good and useful suppliantly to invoke them,” and that the relics of the saints and their images are to be venerated (Trent, Session 25). The Catechism says of the saints, “We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world” (Catechism, §2683).
Catholics distinguish carefully between kinds of honor. Latria, adoration, belongs to God alone. Dulia, veneration, is given to the saints, and hyperdulia, a higher veneration, to Mary (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 103). Images receive a “respectful veneration” for the sake of the person they portray (Catechism, §2132). We should state this fairly and never tell a Catholic friend that he thinks a statue is God. The question is whether Scripture permits religious honor to be paid to departed believers, to images, and to remains at all.
When we need help, where does Scripture send us: to departed believers, or to God through His Son?
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For Deeper Study
- Catechism of the Catholic ChurchAmazon Catholic ChurchThe primary source (1992; second edition 1997). See §§946–962 on the communion of saints, §§1159–1162 and 2129–2132 on images, and §§2683–2684 on prayer with the saints. Free to read at vatican.va.
- Canons and Decrees of the Council of TrentAmazon H. J. Schroeder, trans.A Catholic translation of Trent's decrees, including the 1563 decree on the invocation of saints, relics, and images.
- Making SaintsAmazon Kenneth L. WoodwardA Catholic journalist's account of how Rome investigates and declares saints.
- The Cult of the SaintsAmazon Peter BrownA historian's study of how veneration of the saints and their relics arose in the late Roman world.
- Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and DifferencesAmazon Norman L. Geisler and Ralph E. MacKenzieA careful evangelical comparison that treats Catholic teaching fairly, including the saints and images.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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Mary in Catholic Teaching
Mary was a blessed and believing woman who rejoiced in God her Saviour, but Rome's dogmas of her immaculate conception, perpetual virginity, and assumption, and its devotion to her as Mediatrix and Queen, rest on tradition rather than Scripture and give her a place that belongs to Christ alone.
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