Is It Honest? [pp. 239-255]

Is it Honest
not, as all worship with Protestants
must, simply as more or less, but in
kind, and not even a Protestant
community can be found so ignorant
as not to be able to distinguish between an image or a picture and the
saint or person intended to be represented by it. For the many years
we lived as a Protestant we never
met any one of our brethren who
mistook his mother's portrait for his
mother herself, or the statue of a distinguished statesman for the statesman himself. Who ever mistakes
the equestrian statue of George
Washington in Union Square for
George Washingtonl on horseback,
or confounds Andrew Jackson himself with Mill's ugly equestrian statue of him in one of the squares of
Washington? Who could mistake
the bronze horse on which the image
of the old General is placed, and
which you fear every moment is going to tilt over backward, for a real
horse? Well, my dear doctor, however ignorant these Italian people
may be whom you see kneeling before an image or a picture of the
Madonna, they know more of the
doctrines of the Gospel, more of God,
and of man's duties and relations to
him, more of his proper worship, than
the most enlightened non-Catholic
community that exists or ever existed on the earth. They may not
know as much of error against faith
and piety, of false theories and crude
speculations as non-Catholics; but
they know more of Christianity, more
of what Christianity really is, what
it teaches, and what it exacts of the
faithful, than the wisest and most
learned of your sectarian ministers,
not even excepting yourself.
With regard to bleeding, sweating,
or winking pictures, if you find people believing in them, you will never
find among Catholics any who believe that they bleed, sweat, or wink
by any virtue that is in the picture
itself; but that the phenomenon is
a miracle, which God works by the
saint pictured. You may doubt the
miracle, but not reasonably, unless
on the ground that the evidence in
the case is insufficient. Whoever
believes in God believes in the possibility of miracles, and there is nothing more miraculous in a picture of
the Madonna winking, sweating, or
bleeding, than there was in Balaam's
ass speaking and rebuking his master. It is simply a question of fact.
If the proofs are conclusive, the fact
is to be believed; if insufficient, no
one is bound to believe it.
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
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