If you find the people flocking to a particular image or picture and bringing to it their votive offerings, it certainly is not, as the preacher takes notice, on account of its merit as a work of art; for the Italian people, with all their love and exquisite taste for art, do not, like so many non-Catholics, confound artistic culture with religious culture; nor is it because they hold that there is any hidden virtue in that particular image or picture itself, but because the saint whose it is, has or is believed to have specially favored those who have invoked him before it. They may or may not be mistaken as to the fact, but the principle, on which the special devotion to our Lady or a saint before a particular shrine is a correct one; and there is in the practice no special honor to the image or picture for its own sake, and consequently nothing necessarily superstitious or idolatrous.
Even if, as there is no reason to believe, the statue of St. Peter in St. Peter's at Rome, and which the preacher calls a "grimy bronze idol," was originally, as he tells us some say it was, a statue of Jupiter, the honor paid to it by the faithful would not be paid to Jupiter, while intended to be paid to St. Peter. But the toes of the image have been worn away by the kisses of the worshippers; and do not these kisses prove that Catholics adore the image? The heathen adore their gods by kissing the feet of their statues; and when Catholics kiss the feet of the images of their saints, how can it be said that they do not worship or adore images as the heathen do? The heathen use incense in the worship of idols; Moses prescribes incense, and the Jews use it in their worship of the true God; therefore the Jews are idolaters! The preacher forgets that what the tract declares to be dishonest is the accusation that Catholics pay divine worship, that is, the worship due to God alone, to images and pictures, as the heathen do. To kiss the feet of the statue of St. Peter, from love and devotion to the saint himself, the prince of the apostles, on whom our Lord founded his church, is not to pay divine worship to the image, nor even to Peter himself. Were we so happy as to find ourselves at St. Peter's in Rome, we are quite sure that we should kneel before the statue of St. Peter, and kiss its feet, running the risk of its having been once a statue of Jupiter, and we should do it as a proper method of expressing our love and veneration for the great apostle, and as simply and innocently as the mother kisses the carefully preserved portrait of her beloved son slain in battle for his faith or his country. As to using the forms used by the heathen to express affection or devotion, if proper in themselves, we have as little scruple as we have in using the language which our ancestors used in the worship of Woden or Thor, in our prayers and praises to the One Ever-living and True God.
3. The sermon next takes up the false accusation that Catholics pay divine worship to the Blessed Virgin and the saints. The tract asks:
"Is IT HONEST to accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin or the Saints in the place of God or the Lord Jesus Christ—when the Council of Trent declares that it is simply useful to ask their intercession in order to obtain favor from God, through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who alone is our Saviour and Redeemer—
"When 'asking their prayers and influence with God,' is exactly of the same nature as when Christians ask the pious prayers of one another?"
The preacher says, "At the outset let me remark, that the question what Roman Catholics do is not conclusively answered by quoting what the Council of Trent declares." This supposes that the same rule must be applied to Catholics, who have an authoritative church, that is applicable to non-Catholics, who have none, or to people among whom every one believes according to his own private judgment, and does what is right in his own eyes. But this is not permissible. Our faith is taught and defined by authority, and to know what we as Catholics believe or do, you must be certain what the church authoritatively teaches or prescribes. We cannot go contrary to that and be Catholics. No doubt Catholics may depart from the faith of the church, and disobey her precepts; but when they obstinately persist in doing so, they cease to be Catholics in faith and practice, and their belief or their practice is of no account in judging what is or is not Catholic doctrine or practice. They who believe or do anything contrary to what is declared by the Council of Trent, are pro tanto non-Catholics. To know what is Catholic faith and Catholic practice, you have only to consult the standards, of the Catholic Church—not every individual Catholic, as you must every individual Protestant when you wish to ascertain what is Protestant opinion and practice. Our standards speak for themselves; and in determining what Catholicity enjoins or allows, you must consult them, and them only.
Mr. Bacon and his brethren have as free access to our standards as we ourselves have, and they must remain under the charge of dishonestly misrepresenting us, or prove by our standards that the church offers or authorizes or does not forbid her children from offering divine worship to the Blessed Virgin. Their surmises, their conjectures, their inferences from what they see among Catholics, but do not understand, must be thrown out as inadmissible testimony. There are the standards: if they sustain you, well and good; if not, you are convicted, and judgment must go against you. This is the case presented by the tract, and which Mr. Bacon and his friends are to meet fairly and squarely.
Now, the tract shows from the standards, from the Council of Trent, which is plenary authority in the case, that the accusation against Catholics of "putting the Blessed Virgin or the saints in the place of God or the Lord Jesus Christ," is an accusation so manifestly untrue that no one can honestly make it. Here also is the catechism, which the church teaches all her children. "Q. Does this commandment [the first] forbid all honor and veneration of saints and angels? No; we are to honor them as God's special friends and servants, but not with the honor which belongs to God." The Council of Trent declares that "it is good and useful to ask the saints who reign together with Christ in heaven, to pray for us," "or to ask favors for us from our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is our Redeemer and Saviour." We ask the saints in heaven, as we ask our friends on earth, to pray for us. Here is the whole principle of the case. The Council of Trent, Sess. 22, c. 3, defines that, "though the church is accustomed to celebrate masses in honor of the saints, yet she teaches they are never to be offered to them, but to God alone." Non tamen illis sacrificium offerri docet, sed Deo soli, qui illos coronavit. Now, with Catholics the distinctively divine worship, the supreme worship due to God alone, and which it would be idolatry to offer to any other, is sacrifice, the highest possible sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Mass, which our priests offer every day on the altar; the one unbloody sacrifice which was offered in a bloody manner on Calvary. This is offered to God alone; all else that is offered to God in worship, prayer, praise, love, veneration, may, in kind at least, be offered to men. We honor the chief magistrate, whether called king or emperor, president or governor; we honor the prelates whom the Holy Ghost has placed over us in the church; we pray to or petition rulers and men in authority; we chant the praises of the great and the heroic; we love our country, our family, and friends; we venerate the wise and the good, who, in services to the cause of truth, morals, and religion, prove themselves godlike. That Protestants, who have no sacrifice, no priest, no altar, no victim, should mistake the nature of our cultus sanctorum, is not surprising, for they have nothing in kind to offer God that we do not offer to the saints, especially to the queen of saints, the Blessed Mother of God. But this is their fault, not ours; for it is easy for them to know—for our standards tell them so—that we as Catholics place the supreme act of worship in the sacrifice of the Mass—holding that only God is an adequate offering to God, and that the sacrifice of the Mass is never offered to the saints or to any but God alone. There is a marked difference between our cultus sanctorum and that with which men like Mr. Bacon, of Brooklyn, seek to identify it. The heathen offered sacrifices, the highest form of worship they had, to their idols, their demigods and heroes; we offer the highest worship which we have—and we have it only through God's goodness—to the one, living, true God only. This proves that the accusation against Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin and the saints, as objects of worship, in the place of God, is a false accusation, so well known or so easily known to be false, that no one of ordinary intelligence can honestly make it.
But the preacher supposes that Catholics, in other respects, put them in the place of God. This is impossible. Catholics hold that the saints, with the Blessed Virgin at their head, are men and women—creatures whom God has made, has redeemed with his own blood, and has elevated, sanctified, and glorified by his grace, and therefore they cannot identify them with him or substitute them for him. We hold that Mary is the Mother of Christ, and that he is her Lord as well as ours, and that it is through his merits alone, applied beforehand, that she was conceived without original stain; and can anybody, so believing, mistake her for her Son, in any respect put her in his place, or assign to her his mediatorial work? The very fears expressed by our Protestant friends that we do or are liable to do so, prove that even they are able to discriminate between her and her Son; why not then we?
The reverend gentleman continues:
"We are invited to several inquiries. First: Is it true that the prayers that are offered by Roman Catholics to departed saints, and especially to that holy woman whom we with them in all generations unite to call the blessed, are only of such a nature as we might offer to a fellow-Christian here upon the earth in soliciting his prayers in our behalf? Secondly: Are these supplications only for favor and influence, or are they for the direct gift of blessing and salvation? Do they put Mary into the place of Christ, the one Mediator between God and man; making of the All-Merciful Saviour who inviteth all to come unto him, an inaccessible object of dread and terror, whom we dare not approach except through the mediation of Mary? Do they ascribe to her the glory due to Christ, the only name given under heaven among men whereby we may be saved? Do they profess faith in her alone for salvation? Do they put the saints in the place of the Holy Ghost, by supplicating from them directly the divine gift of holiness and the renewal of the sinful heart?"