What is the basis of the non catholic denominations to hold catholics as Idolaters

Question

I was reading this article on an authoritative bible site . I was wondering what is the doctrinal bases to hold Catholics as Idolaters

Here is the excerpt:

Life Magazine, reporting the ceremonies in Ottawa, Canada, in June, 1947, at the Marian Congress, pointed out that a great procession of devout people knelt and kissed the foot of the giant statue of Mary "Until the paint wore off its toes." Pictures in L'Europeo, an Italian newspaper, of April 5, 1947, shows that devout Catholics in Naples continue to crawl at full length on their stomachs before the images of their Madonnas and lick the ground with their tongues on their way to the statues. Some years ago, the New York Department of Health was compelled to put a stop to this practice among the Italian people in the Bronx, because it resulted in so many cases of tetanus. Such idolatry!

Answer 1

The basis for claiming that Catholicism is idolatry, whether valid or not, is that various Catholic beliefs conflict with Protestant beliefs and doctrines. The list includes the following (and includes a Catholic answer to each claim in the interest of being fair and balanced, and not turning this into a Truth answer):

• Catholics pray to saints, and to Mary. Many Protestants equate this to worshiping them.
  • The Catholic view is that they are asking these saints and Mary to intercede with God for them.
• Catholics practice confession to a man (A Priest, etc.) when Scripture tells us we should confess our sins directly to God. They believe that the priest has the power, through the authority of the Church, to absolve sins. Non-Catholics believe this is attributing powers that only God has to the Church, or to a man.
  • The Catholic position is that this is a delegated authority - delegated to the Church by Christ, and to the Priest by the Church.
• Some non-Catholics equate the Eucharist with idolatry, claiming that Catholics worship the transmutated wafer and wine as idols.
  • This is clearly not how Catholics view the Eucharist. Catholics hold to a very literal interpretation of "Take, eat, this is my body" and "take, drink, this is my blood".
• Some Protestants claim that the God worshiped by Catholics is nothing like the God of the Bible. They go so far as to say that all of the additional sacraments, ritual, and mysticism in the Catholic Church borrow from Pagan religions, and that the Church has become polluted, and no longer worships the true God.
  • Of course, Catholics don't see it this way.

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^{* _{Note that in the above, it's not only Catholics that practice these things or hold these views. It's phrased that way because the question asks about Catholics only.}}

Answer 2

First of all the story described above is pure idolatry. It involves constructing a graven image and then bowing down before it. This is precisely what is condemned.

"Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the LORD your God." Leviticus 26:1

Secondly, the Protestant "protest" against the unbiblical authority attributed to the pope invoked problems of idolatry. Consider these paragraphs from this Letter of Martin Luther to Pope Leo X. Emphases added.

Therefore, Leo, my Father, beware of listening to those sirens who make you out to be not simply a man, but partly a god, so that you can command and require whatever you will. It will not happen so, nor will you prevail. You are the servant of servants, and more than any other man, in a most pitiable and perilous position. Let not those men deceive you who pretend that you are lord of the world; who will not allow any one to be a Christian without your authority; who babble of your having power over heaven, hell, and purgatory. These men are your enemies and are seeking your soul to destroy it, as Isaiah says, “My people, they that call thee blessed are themselves deceiving thee.” They are in error who raise you above councils and the universal Church; they are in error who attribute to you alone the right of interpreting Scripture. All these men are seeking to set up their own impieties in the Church under your name, and alas! Satan has gained much through them in the time of your predecessors.

In brief, trust not in any who exalt you, but in those who humiliate you. For this is the judgment of God: “He hath cast down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.” See how unlike Christ was to His successors, though all will have it that they are His vicars. I fear that in truth very many of them have been in too serious a sense His vicars, for a vicar represents a prince who is absent. Now if a pontiff rules while Christ is absent and does not dwell in his heart, what else is he but a vicar of Christ? And then what is that Church but a multitude without Christ? What indeed is such a vicar but antichrist and an idol?