Reply to a Protestant who criticizes Catholics “crawling on their hands and knees across stone”
I’m not certain at all that this person you mention “had zero knowledge of the Gospel.” Portions of the Gospels are read every week at Mass. In one reading that is cyclical every year, John 3:16 is featured. I always chuckle about that to myself because supposedly Catholics “never hear the gospel.” John 3:16 [“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”: RSV] certainly is that! Prayers to the saints aren’t superstitious, either. Jesus explicitly teaches it in Luke 16. You mention Mexicans “crawling on their hands and knees across stone.” This is, of course, penance (bodily mortification, in particular), and it has massive biblical support as well. Here are a few examples:
The well-known Protestant reference work, New Bible Dictionary (edited by J. D. Douglas, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1962, “Sackcloth,” p. 1112), describes biblical sackcloth:
A coarse cloth . . . usually made of goat’s hair . . . Sackcloth was worn as a sign of mourning for the dead . . . , or of mourning for personal or national disaster . . . or of penitence for sins (1 Ki. 21:27; Ne. 9:1; Jon. 3:5; Mt. 11:21), or of special prayer for deliverance . . . The form of the symbolic sackcloth was often a band or kilt tied around the waist . . . it was usually worn next to the skin (2 Ki. 6:30; Jb. 16:15; 2 Macc. 3:19), and was sometimes kept on all night (1 Ki. 21:27; Joel 1:13) . . . Sometimes the sackcloth was spread out to lie on (2 Sa. 21:10; Is. 58:5) . . . Prophets sometimes wore it as a symbol of the repentance which they preached (Is. 20:2; Rev. 11:3).
Isaiah the prophet, speaking on behalf of God (as prophets are wont to do), recommends (“prescribes”?) the wearing of sackcloth (Is 32:11). Jeremiah does the same (Jer 4:8; 6:26). Ahab’s use of sackcloth, fasting, etc., is seen by God Himself as evidence of his humility before God (1 Ki 21:27-29), as is the similar behavior of the Ninevites, when they repented (Jonah 3:5-10). Isaiah reports (Is 22:12; RSV, as throughout) that God Himself prescribed sackcloth and other similar customs: “In that day the Lord GOD of hosts called to . . . baldness and girding with sackcloth.”
Likewise, Jeremiah has God proclaiming, “Gird yourselves with sackcloth” (Jer 49:3). The prophet Joel brings the following “word of the LORD” (Joel 1:1): “Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth . . . Gird on sackcloth and lament, O priests” (Joel 1:8, 13). The prophet Amos quotes God in the same vein: “I will bring sackcloth upon all loins” (Amos 8:10). This all sounds awful prescriptive (not just permissive).
Moreover, it is God (not mere Babylonian or Assyrian or Persian custom) Who commands the prophet Ezekiel to lay on his left side for 390 days, so as to “bear” the “punishment” of Israel (Ezek 4:4-5), and then on his right side for another 40 days, to “bear the punishment” of Judah (Ezek 4:6). Then God tells him: “I will put cords upon you, so that you cannot turn from one side to the other” (Ezek 4:8).
Even much later, at the outset of the new covenant, our Lord casually refers to sackcloth in association with repentance, with no hint of condemnation (Matt 11:21; Lk 10:13). Jesus knew that the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Joel had all prescribed and thoroughly condoned the practice, as had God the Father, as reported by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos.
Finally, St. John reports in inspired Scripture that God proclaims in the period near the end of the age: “I will grant my two witnesses power to prophesy for one thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth” (Rev 11:3). God again prescribed or sanctioned the ancient custom, several thousand years after it began.
Fasting is also obviously an example of bodily deprivation for a spiritual purpose. See: Ex 34:28 and Deut 9:9 (Moses went forty days without even water); Deut 9:18 (Moses again fasts forty days without “bread” or “water” on behalf of the Israelites, after the sin of the idolatry of the golden calf); 1 Sam 30:12 (three days without water); 1 Sam 31:13 (seven days); 2 Sam 1:12; 1 Ki 19:8 (forty days); 1 Chron 10:12 (seven days); 2 Chron 20:3; Ezra 8:21-23; 10:6; Neh 1:4; 9:1; Esther 4:3; 4:16 (three days without food and water); 9:31; Ps 69:10 (“humbled my soul with fasting”); Ps 109:24 (“My knees are weak through fasting; my body has become gaunt”); Jer 36:9; Dan 6:18; Joel 1:14; 2:12, 15; Jon 3:5, 7; Zech 7:3, 5; 8:19; Matt 4:2 (Jesus’ forty days of fasting in the wilderness); Matt 6:16-18; 9:14-15 (cf. Mk 2:18-20; Lk 5:33-35; 18:12); Lk 7:33 (cf. Matt 11:18; Lk 1:15); Acts 13:2-3; 14:23.
So, granted, the people you refer to would likely not even know about all this biblical support (which is true of all Christians, especially those who never read apologetics or many theological books at all, including the Bible, didn’t go to Bible studies or Sunday School, etc.), but Protestants who know the Bible relatively much better ought to (and there is much more). Paul even ties willingness to suffer directly to salvation and glorification:
Romans 8:16-17 (RSV) it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, [17] and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
1 Corinthians 9:27 but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
2 Corinthians 1:5-7 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. [6] If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. [7] Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.
2 Corinthians 4:10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.
Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; . . .
Galatians 6:17 Henceforth let no man trouble me; for I bear on my body the marks [Gk., stigma] of Jesus.
Philippians 3:10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
Colossians 1:24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,
2 Timothy 2:11 . . . If we have died with him, we shall also live with him;
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I think this is a case where Protestants haven’t delved into the Bible deeply enough. That’s hard for informed Protestants to admit (it was for me; I was an apologist for nine years and thought I knew the Bible very well), but Catholicism truly incorporates all the themes in Scripture that God wishes for us to learn and live out in our discipleship. We don’t pick and choose what we like and don’t care for, and what we want to highlight, to the exclusion of other equally important verses (the “Catholic verses”: as I refer to them in one of my book titles).
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Once again, then, I’m all for understanding relative emphasis, and what Vatican II taught about Marian excesses. That’s all well and good and very important. But I am opposed with equal vigor to Protestant casual dismissal of things like penance, because it’s utterly biblical. Ironically, I think this is a case where Protestants are being quite unbiblical, in the very act of criticizing Catholics for supposedly being so, and I must defend my Catholic brothers and sisters — at least to a certain degree — from this charge of being so ignorant and unaware of the gospel and the Bible, etc. They are following Catholic teachings which themselves are grounded — indeed, “soaked” — in the Bible. Both sides of that debate are routinely unacquainted with the biblical rationale for penance (part of which I demonstrated above). That’s why apologetics are so necessary and one of 200 reasons why I have devoted my life to it.
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Lastly, you keep mentioning this church with an icon or stained glass window of Mary over the altar. This is very unusual. I don’t recall ever seeing such a thing in any Catholic church I have attended these past 32 years. So it can’t be used as an example of the experience of most Catholics at Mass. But there are certainly statues of Mary on side altars, and there is nothing wrong with them, once Catholic Mariology is correctly understood. In my own parish, there is a huge carving / sculpture of Jesus on the cross, front and center. I don’t know if there even is a statue of Mary. If there is, it’s so inconspicuous that I’m not even sure it is there, after 2 1/2 years.
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Two sides to every story, I always say! Once I heard the Catholic side myself, it was all over. I never would have predicted that in a hundred years, but it happened! I came to conclude that Catholicism is not only much more in line with Church history, but also with the Bible.
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Photo credit: Elia Castillo, On his knees on the way to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Father Jonathan crawling. [Pinterest]
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Summary: Are Catholics who crawl on their hands and knees across stone engaging in superstition or the biblical teaching on mortification & penance? I contend for the latter.
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