Part 4: The Iconoclast Movement
By Ed Tarkowski

At various times through the centuries, the Church has come against excesses in popular devotion to images. In his history of the eighth century Council of Nicea, Philip Hughes details some of the abuses which preceded the Iconoclast movement. This was a movement in the seventh and eighth centuries in the Eastern of Greek Church which opposed the use and veneration of images. The Iconoclasts physically destroyed religious images:

"We read of icons alleged to have worked miracles, and held especially sacred or valuable because of this reputation, and of others not made by human hands, miraculously conveyed to this earth. And all this with little or no supervision from the authorities in the church. In a word, grave abuses, long tolerated."(1)

And in an article defending the making and veneration of images, Martin Borbeck writes about the same period of history:

"There were certainly grave abuses in the Church, not only with regard to the excessive use of sacred images, but also in the matter of doctrinal errors connected with their veneration. There were far to many icons. . . . Some worshipers seemed to have attributed to them false powers insofar as to give them almost a sacramental efficacy in arousing faith, hope, and charity. They credited the icons with the power to do certain things, and THEY BELIEVED THAT GOD WORKED MIRACLES BY THEM. WORSHIPERS IN THEIR PRAYERS SEEMED TO HAVE ENDOWED THE IMAGES WITH PERSONALITIES OF THEIR OWN. Priests enhanced these UNSOUND BELIEFS by false devotional practices which they themselves fostered. They scraped paint from the icons and mixed the paint with the Body and Blood of Christ with which they communicated the faithful. Priests placed the Blessed Sacrament in the hands of images whence the people communicated themselves. They allowed parents to select icons as godparents for their children in baptism. So resolute and orthodox a defender of the Church's cult of sacred images as St. Theodore of Studium praised a friend for having chosen an icon as his child's godparent. In this the saint certainly erred. Leo [Isaurian, Byzantine emperor who inaugurated the iconoclast movement] had no lack of grave abuses to complain about"(2; caps mine).

The Council of Nicea, of course, affirmed the veneration of images as traditional Catholic practice. The decree, which "solemnly confirm[ed] the true doctrine on the proper use of sacred images"(3), attempted to cut down the widespread excesses in devotion. However, the success of this attempt is debatable, as the Church, along with the Western world, was shortly plunged into the Dark Ages. The next five hundred years saw scandal, attempts at reform, political chaos, anti-popes, schisms, heresy, more scandal, the Crusades, the rise of the Friars, a twice-vacant papacy, and wars, wars, wars. In all of this, according to Hughes,

"[reforms] depended ultimately on the interest and goodwill of the bishops throughout the world, and on the papacy's being free enough from other cares to supervise the bishops."(4)

But the popes were busy elsewhere, engaging in wars with emperors and kings and princes, and the bishops weren't interested in reform. As a result, the intended reforms never became as widespread as the excessive devotion. As the spiritual life of the Church continued to decline along with the world's kingdoms, the abuse intensified by the century. With little knowledge of the Scriptures, the people continued to practice their faith in the ways they'd always known, and the ill-trained clergy were in no position to recognize abuses, much less put a stop to them. In his book, "The Catholic Church Through The Ages," Martin Harney describes these common people of the fifteenth century:

"They were hopelessly superstitious; they exaggerated the cult of the saints almost to idolatry; and they were completely swept into the witchcraft delusion."(5)

Popular devotions which arose through these years were centered on the saints or on the emotional aspect of Jesus' Passion. It was also during this time that the devotion to the Mother of Sorrows was begun. In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door, and what was to become known as the Reformation began. Because of political difficulties, 28 years passed before a Church Council would be possible and when finally begun, the Council of Trent was suspended twice, once for a period of four years and once for ten years. At its conclusion, real reform began in the life of the Church. The Council published decrees dealing with doctrine, the hierarchy, the lower clergy, finances, education, and the Sacraments. Concerning images of the saints, their use and veneration was again affirmed and sanctioned. But the Council said,

"If any abuses have crept in among these holy and salutary observances, the Holy Synod desires that they be utterly abolished."(6).


A statue of Mary weeping blood
shows that abuses have not stopped and
that there is demonic activity through these images.

The abuses of the sixteenth century may have been abolished, but in the present twentieth century we can see that they have crept back in. Some members of the Church, clergy and laity alike, once again believe God works miracles by images although the same belief was named as an excess 1200 years ago. How has this come to be? Obviously, "utter abolishment" of abuses, even axing their growth to the ground, didn't deter new growth. The true problem lies, not in excessive veneration of images, but in the root: the making of images and the use of images. The solution then must be removal of the root.

It's tragic to think that some have already become defiled through the fruit of this particular root. Following after ungodly images which manifest pseudo signs of life, their own lives are set on a course which leads away from the grace of God. The long tradition of making statues in order to venerate Mary, and the equally long history of abuses, are the results of a man-centered structure of human knowledge and reason which is based on disobedience to God's Second Commandment. The twelfth chapter of Hebrews ends with this warning:

Heb 12:25 See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: 26 Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. 27 And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. 28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: 29 For our God is a consuming fire.

Because God has warned us to guard against images which "represent . . . a man or a woman" (Deuteronomy 4:16), we are defying Him who speaks from heaven when we offer devotion to images "for the sake of the saint represented by them"(7), and placing ourselves under the power of the demon behind the image.
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Footnotes:

(1) Hughes, The Church In Crisis, p. 163.

(2) Martin Borbeck, S.J., S.T.L., "Old Heresies Never Seem To Die," Immaculata [magazine], April 1978, pp. 15-18.

(3) Ibid., p. 16.

(4) Philip Hughes, A Popular History of the Catholic Church, Image Books edition (Garden City, NY: Macmillan Co., 1954), p. 123.

(5) Martin P. Harney, S.J., The Catholic Church Through the Ages, St. Paul edition (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1974, 1980), p. 224.

(6) The Council of Trent, Session 25, The Council began in 1545 and ended in 1563.

(7) Hughes, The Church in Crisis, p. 162.

-End of Part 4.