Are Catholics Idolators?

Raised a Catholic, I attended Catholic school through high school.  When I started high school, the Catholic Church was just emerging from the tumult of Vatican II.  We considered our Church modern and enlightened.  So the Mass was now in English.  Science was ok, as was liberal democracy.  The old superstitions that came to the US from Europe were supposedly left behind.  

When the council ended, there was a real hope that the Church was soon allow birth control.  This was before birth control and abortion galvanized conservatives so much so that many bishops support a pussy grabbing twice divorced thug for president.   

In my day, we Catholics were sensitive to criticisms from Jews and Protestants that we were idolaters, with our statues and holy pictures.  Fortunately the post Vatican II suburban Church had mostly left this behind, to be encountered only when we visited grandma in the old neighborhood.  

For me the older generation began to die off when my mother’s mother died in 1963.  My mother and my oldest aunt both died in 2003 (my aunt maintained a little shrine with statues and holy pictures).   So it has been 20 years since I interacted with anyone whose life was governed by the old rituals.  

As to my own beliefs, it is enough to say that I am a cultural Catholic.  Still a follower of Jesus’ moral lessons, but the mumbo jumbo, not so much.  

Nonetheless, I enjoy aspects of the Catholicism and so in 2002 I started singing in a Catholic church choir and have continued to do so for most of the last 21 years.  In 2003 my wife (raised Protestant) got me to try a choral group at a Unitarian Church, but the fit was all wrong. So I returned to singing at a Catholic Church and with time outs, remain to this day.  

So it was with amusement but also alarm that I learned that we were to receive the visit of a statue of Mary - one of the 12 or 13 Pilgrim Statues of Our Lady of Fatima, and would have 5 days of masses and prayers in the statue’s honor.   

Hmmm, idolatry?  As much as those in charge tell us that it is not idolatry, that the statue is only a focus for prayer…   well, really?    And among the hymns we learned was one that mentioned saying the Rosary as well as noting the “First Saturday” devotion.   Ugh!  

The statue is here now.  The church was nearly full on Wednesday night for the first Mass.  The choir sang for that one and will sing Saturday and Sunday too.   

I visited Thursday afternoon between a Mass and a Benediction and the church was fairly empty.  But near the statue were a group of devout ladies - mostly older - sitting/kneeling near the statue. No doubt meditating or saying a rosary.  To what end I can’t say.  

I won’t make fun of the church ladies, my aunt was very much one.  My mother was as well, but raising five kids gave her enough to do besides opening up a prayer book.   

But the Church that I had thought was left behind in the 1950s, the Church of statues, veils, women covering their heads, or rosary beads and holy pictures, I guess at bottom it never left.  

.... Are Catholics idolators.   Maybe no but its a close one.