Monday, January 24, 2022

WE DON’T CONFUSE THE CREATOR WITH THE CREATURE


"But we, Catholics, never confuse the Creator with the creature. Their irrevocable distinction is a dogma of our faith. We know and teach and make available to the humblest learner of the Catechism that the actual cult of adoration, which is called latria, is for God alone; that the cult of the saints and the Virgin Mary is of veneration, and therefore has a different meaning and name. It is an offensive nonsense -repeated with monotonous stubbornness in Protestant propaganda- that we Catholics adore Mary as if she were God. No less offensive is to call us idolaters for the reverence we give to images: because it is an elementary truth that in them we reverence the person they represent, not the stone or the wood or the canvas; as when saluting the flag we do it for our country and not for the piece of cloth; as when kissing the portrait of our mother, we kiss our mother and not the cardboard". 

 ALFONSO JUNCO, historian and poet.