restricted it (veneration of relics). All of them, even the Cappadocians,
countenanced it” (IV, 313).
Even in more modern times the Church still proclaims to the world in her
beatification and canonization ceremonies accounts of unquestionable
miracles that have occurred through the deceased’s intercession. Often, the
certified miracle is one that occurred when a relic of the deceased was
physically applied to an afflicted portion of the favored person’s body.
Such miracles are on public record and have been thoroughly investigated
and analyzed by doctors and scientists.
The official Catholic teaching on the veneration of relics was articulated by
the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century:
“Also that the holy bodies of holy martyrs, and of others now living
with Christ, which bodies were the living members of Christ and the
temple of the Holy Spirit, and which are by Him to be raised unto
eternal life and to be glorified, are to be venerated by the faithful,
through which (bodies) many benefits are bestowed by God on men;
so that they who affirm that veneration and honor are not due to the
relics of saints; or that these and other sacred monuments are
uselessly honored by the faithful; and that the places dedicated to the
memory of the saints are in vain visited with the view of obtaining
their aid, are wholly to be condemned.”¹
There is nothing in the above paragraph that smacks of idolatry. The first
commandment not only obliges us to honor and love God, but also to honor
and revere everything belonging to Him (dulia). This is the reason why the
Church venerates the bodies and relics of saints, for their bodies were the
living members of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Church has
always remembered the relatively inferior nature of the honor due to relics.
As St. Jerome says, “We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we
should bow down to the creature rather than to the Creator, but we venerate
the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore Him whose martyrs
they are.”² Neither does the Church promote the belief that there exists any
magical or curative power dwelling in the relic itself. Relics are merely
1
On the Invocation, Veneration, and Relics of Saints, and on Sacred Images,
December 4, 1563.
2
Epistle 109, To Riparius 1 (404 AD).
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