CHAPTER III
ON WORSHIP
I. Worship here signifies any external action by which we show deference and respect to another. Such an act is grounded on the persuasion that the person honoured is worthy of our esteem, and that it is proper to mark our esteem by such an external act of deference.
If the qualities which command our respect belong to the sphere of civil life, our worship is civil; if they belong to the sphere of religion, it is religious worship. Religious worship which is paid exclusively to God on account of his infinite and uncreated excellence is called by divines latria. That paid to the saints is called dulia, while the special worship with which we honour the blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, on account of her created but pre-eminent excellence is called hyperdulia.
Worship is absolute when the excellence which grounds our esteem is in the object honoured; it is relative when paid to some object on account of its connection with a person worthy of our esteem and honour.
2. In this chapter we will briefly consider the regulations of the Church with regard to the worship of the saints, their relics and images, and the principles which underlie that worship. We suppose the truth of the Catholic doctrine on this subject—that the worship which the Church authorizes to be paid to the saints, to their relics and images—is lawful, praiseworthy, and meritorious. In the first place, then, we are allowed privately to show that inferior worship, which is called dulia, to anyone whom we know with moral certainty to have died in the grace and friendship of God. We may also show marks of relative worship to anything connected with him during life. It is evident that there is nothing reprehensible in such worship; the world is accustomed to show similar marks of its esteem to its great statesmen, generals, poets, and inventors. The Church does not interfere with private worship provided there is nothing in it that is objectionable.
3. Public worship, however, is subject to the authority of the Church, and she regulates it both as to its manner and
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