Iconoclasm

[FlaviusAetius]

What is the view of destroying icons whether Christian or pagan? Is it a sinful act to be an iconoclast or does Catholicism leave room for Catholics who reject icons?

Related to it, do Catholics have any moral standing to condemn ISIS destroying temples and icons when early Christians did the same actions upon becoming the Roman state religion? If asked about it do Christians just have to look ashamed and say "Yes early Christians were as abominable as ISIS."

And what of Saints who actively destroyed pagan sacred sites. Should they be condemned for their actions, should they be judged as behaving in a unchristian manner?

 

[tz620q]

What is the view of destroying icons whether Christian or pagan? Is it a sinful act to be an iconoclast or does Catholicism leave room for Catholics who reject icons?

Related to it, do Catholics have any moral standing to condemn ISIS destroying temples and icons when early Christians did the same actions upon becoming the Roman state religion? If asked about it do Christians just have to look ashamed and say "Yes early Christians were as abominable as ISIS."

And what of Saints who actively destroyed pagan sacred sites. Should they be condemned for their actions, should they be judged as behaving in a unchristian manner?

I guess I see several shades to this painting (bad pun intended). First there are the hardcore iconoclasts that believe any image is forbidden by God. They would destroy an icon out of hatred for the very act of being an icon and would hate it whether it were from a pagan site or a Christian one.
As Catholics we see icons as images that point to or refer us to the original that they portray. So an icon of Jesus is holy insofar as Jesus is holy. Likewise an icon of a saint is holy only as a referent to the holy life of the person portrayed. Our love for the holiness of the original gets represented in and through the icon. For us this is part of the Christian love that we are called to have for each other. Hating the icon and loving the original seems like a paradox to us.
Often when an icon is used within a place of worship there is a service that calls down God's blessings on the icon. So the icon becomes a sacramental in that it becomes a means for God to convey his grace to us. If the church gets torn down later and the icon destroyed there is actually another ceremony to remove this blessing to allow the destruction to take place with the proper amount of love for what the icon means.
As far as destroying pagan icons, for us this would show a lack of love for the people who venerate these objects; but it would not show a lack of love for an object, no matter how holy the people think it is. This is because the original that it refers to is not holy in Christianity.

 

[Alonso_Castillo]

What is the view of destroying icons whether Christian or pagan? Is it a sinful act to be an iconoclast or does Catholicism leave room for Catholics who reject icons?

Related to it, do Catholics have any moral standing to condemn ISIS destroying temples and icons when early Christians did the same actions upon becoming the Roman state religion? If asked about it do Christians just have to look ashamed and say "Yes early Christians were as abominable as ISIS."

And what of Saints who actively destroyed pagan sacred sites. Should they be condemned for their actions, should they be judged as behaving in a unchristian manner?

In the Vatican Museum there are the old Pagan idols of the Old Grecoromanic gods. Somehow that destruction of which you speak is something that happened more in the Territories of Mission and the Territories of Conquest of the times of the Renascence like Mexico or Peru. and yet the Old Idol sculptures of Mexico are there in the Mexican Museum of Antropology. They were not destroyed but mostly desacralized and forgotten.

Roman gods:

Aztec gods:

Huitzilopochtli

Coatlicue

Tlaloc