Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic Tradition

Questions and Answers

All you Catholics do is worship saints and statues. I left the Catholic Church for that reason.

 
ike many persons in the Catholic Church you must have had parents who never taught you anything about theology, probably because they never understood it themselves. And the sad thing is that in their failure you end up not understanding worship.

In Latin, the language through which the Church defined (and still defines) her theology, the word for “worship” is latria. And in Catholic theology, latria is reserved for God alone. Worship of anything other than God is a sort of adultery to God and is called idolatry, the worship of idols.

But another Latin word, dulia, refers to something less than worship and something more than respect, something of great reverence and supplication. In Latin secular usage, the word refers to the sort of respect one would have given to a great government official. But in its theological sense it refers to the great honor we give to the saints, those who have gone before us to their everlasting reward. And Mary, the greatest of the saints, accordingly receives our hyperdulia. But it is never worship.

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