From my book, The One-Minute Apologist: (this is my original draft, which may have some differences). The structure of this book is to present the objection first, and then give Catholic responses, and also counter-responses to further objections (somewhat like the format of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica) :
The Mass is Idolatry No less so than so than the golden calf, or Jeroboam's idolatry. The ancient pagans worshiped stone figures, and Catholics worship bread.
Catholics worship the Lord Jesus Christ, whom they believe is truly present in the Holy Eucharist.
Some non-Catholic Christians claim that Catholics are guilty of worshipping false gods – that is, of idolatry -- in the Mass, but this is an utterly groundless charge. It comes about because some forms of Protestantism (especially the Calvinist tradition) are unbiblically iconoclastic (i.e., opposed to use of any images in worship). Yet Jesus Himself held up bread in His hands and said “this is My body” and told His disciples to do the same in memory of Him (which would make Him an idolater, too, since He suggested an image). Granted, the Eucharist is interpreted differently by various Christians, but how does belief in the real, substantial presence of Jesus in the Eucharist somehow move Catholics into the realm of outright idolatry and “Baal-worship”? The Bible describes Jeroboam’s idolatry (emphases added):1 Kings 12:28,32: “So the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, ‘You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt’ . . .”
“. . . and he offered sacrifices upon the altar; so he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made.”
1 Kings 14:9: “. . . you have done evil above all that were before you and have gone and made for yourself other gods, and molten images, provoking me to anger, and have cast me behind your back.”
Jeroboam did not intend to worship Yahweh (the true God) through such graven images, as you claim, but rather, “other gods”: a rank polytheism and idolatry indeed. We know that he sacrificed to these stupid molten images, so this is truly idolatry according to the Commandments, since another God is involved, which is not the case at all in the Catholic Mass. Other instances of idolatry also involved images representing other gods, not the one true God (e.g., Ex. 32:1-5,23; Ps. 106:19-21).
A Protestant Might Further Object: But Exodus 32 (Aaron and the Golden Calf) disproves the Catholic position, because the Jews were attempting to worship Yahweh through images, just like Catholics do, and God condemned this through Moses.
The Catholic Replies:
We know this is untrue from the text itself, for Aaron recounted that the people had told him “Make us gods” (Ex. 32:23). Obviously, they could not have Yahweh in mind at that point, since they knew that He is not ”made by hands” and is eternal. Then they said that these gods would “go before us.” The most straightforward interpretation of that is the golden calf being carried before them. Certainly they could not have thought (even in their debased state of mind) that that Yahweh Himself could be compelled to do such a thing. Therefore, they must have regarded the calf as a pure idol of their own making, not as a mere representation of the true God. The people exclaimed: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” Nowhere were the Jews permitted to build a calf as an “image” of God. This was an outright violation of the injunctions against “molten images” (Ex. 34:17; Lev. 19:4; Num. 33:52; Deut. 27:15).
Multiple “gods” fall under the absolute prohibition of polytheism which was known to any observant Hebrew (see, e.g., Ps. 106:19-23; cf. Hab. 2:18). Lastly, Ps. 106:19,21 states that they “exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox” and “forgot God”. How, then, can it be said that they were consciously worshiping the true God and not an idol? Thus, the attempted comparison to the Real Presence in the Eucharist completely fails. Idolatry involves states of mind. The devout, orthodox Catholic is certainly not angry, distrustful, or “forgetting” God during the consecration, but rather, worshiping Him and giving him all the glory, and “remembering” Him, too, just as Jesus explicitly commanded. This is a separate issue from whether or not a supernatural change occurs or not. And a Protestant may, in fairness, acknowledge that.
F.F. Bruce (Protestant Bible scholar)
It may be asked whether there was any difference in principle between the use of bull-calf images to support Yahweh's invisible presence and the use of cherubs for the same purpose in the holy of holies at Jerusalem. The answer probably is that the cherubs were symbolical beings (representing originally the storm-winds) and their images were therefore not “any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” [note: Ex. 20:4; Deut. 5:8], whereas the bull-calf images were all too closely associated with Canaanite fertility ritual.
(Israel and the Nations, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1963; reprinted 1981, 41)
Book info-page:
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/07/books-by-dave-armstrong-one-minute.html
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