Expert: Marco - 8/18/2007

Question
What does the Catholic Church teach regarding the following practices?

1.   Treating a statue as a representative of Jesus Christ and praying & worshipping towards it.
2.   Praying to Mary.
3.   Worshipping Mary.
4.   Praying to saints.

Are these allowed? Or are these not allowed? Or are these mandatory to be a Catholic?

Thank you.
Lenin

Answer
Dear Lenin,

when the "the Word was made flesh" (see John's Gospel) the Lord became visible as every other man. So, Jesus Christ could be seen as any other man. They could have taken some photographs of Him if photographs had been already invented.
It is then logical that we can now make some representations (pictures, statues, etc.) of Jesus.
Of course we can represent only His human body, and NOT his divine nature.
Of course, the statue is only a piece of stone and it is NOT our Lord. When a person pray in front of a statue, his prayers are directed to Jesus, and NOT to the statue.
The image of Jesus simply can help to think of Jesus, exactly as a photograph of our children make us think of them.
I have many photographs of my children at home, and I like watching them; of course I perfectly know that such photos are not my children.

Mary and the Saints in  heaven can see us  and they can hear our prayers. We can then pray to them and ask them to pray for us exactly as we can do it with our eartly friends. Mary and the saints are simply our friends in heaven.
Anyway, catholics do not have to pray the saints. This is only a free personal choice.
The prayer directly to a saint is essentialy the request of a prayer directed to the Lord.

I hope this may help,

your brother in Christ,

Marco