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The story
A statue of the Virgin Mary — one of the largest in Europe, seemingly built as a defiant stand against secularization — has become a hot topic in Poland. According to an article from Germany’s DW, the statue was unveiled to coincide with the Feast of the Assumption, an important Catholic holiday. On the Lemmy forum’s c/europe community, cynical reactions like “more statues won’t bring back faith” mixed with posts explaining the Catholic distinction between venerating images and idolatry, and one commenter even revealed that another religious monument had been built to disguise an unauthorized antenna tower.
Can a giant statue of the Virgin Mary help stop secularization in Poland?
Source: dw.com / Read the original article here
What people said
That's what's called 'Betteridge's Law of Headlines' (see Wikipedia).
Maybe that part was written on the other tablet… (image)
https://infosec.pub/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2Fff%2F59%2Fa1%2Fff59a1beca1081ed1a4902c7df31344f.png
It's not like this is the first time either, though.
Truly a case of being 'fixed in place for the very first time' (riffing on Madonna's lyric 'touched for the very first time').
But I feel like an idol has to be made of gold to count. Like how diehard supporters made that golden statue of Trump.
That's because the man himself basically IS the golden calf.
Catholicism (the overwhelmingly dominant Christian denomination in Poland) is actually pretty lax about what counts as idolatry. Displaying statues of important figures is totally normal — just look inside any Catholic church and you'll see them everywhere.
Exactly, the Vatican itself is proof of that.
Catholicism was never a 'scripture alone' (sola scriptura) faith to begin with.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Poland has one of the highest rates of self-identified Catholics in Europe, but in recent years — especially among younger generations — more people are said to be distancing themselves from the church, and the DW article discussed in the thread was written against this backdrop of concern over ‘secularization.’ Opinion in the thread split over whether building a giant statue is actually an effective countermeasure to declining faith, with many skeptical voices arguing that ‘more statues won’t bring people back to church.’ At the same time, some posts explained the theological history behind why Catholicism has traditionally treated statues of saints and holy figures as distinct from idolatry, highlighting that the artistic merit of religious art and its effectiveness as a secularization countermeasure are separate questions. It’s also worth noting that the anecdote raised in another post — about an unauthorized antenna tower being disguised as a religious structure — is unrelated to this particular statue and has not been confirmed as a general trend across Poland.
*This article is excerpted from the overseas discussion board Lemmy’s c/europe thread “Can a giant Madonna help slow secularization in Poland?” and freely translated into Japanese by our editorial team. Responsibility for the translated text lies with this site.
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