"Iconoclasm is still a heresy."

SEE THE ARTICLE ICONOCLASM IS STILL a HERESY, over at The Lion and the Cardinal.

...the holy images destroyed in the 16th century by Calvinists are but a pittance compared with those destroyed in the 20th century by Catholics. Do the modern liturgists and church renovators fall under the same condemnation as the iconoclasts of yore?

Some obvious differences do exist. For example, unlike the original iconoclasts and their Calvinist imitators, the modern liturgists and church renovators make no pretense of caring about the First Commandment. But whatever the motivation for their destructiveness, the old anathemas still tell the truth; a man who whitewashes the holy icons, smashes the holy statues and overturns the holy altars is a man who has a fundamentally different, a fundamentally wrong notion of what it means to say that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory.

The iconoclasm in the Church of the past four decades is a mere sign of the same violence seen broadly in our culture during the same time. Suicide and homicide are now the second and third leading causes of death among young adults, having grown dramatically since the 1960s; and much of the modern iconoclasm and misguided reform of the Church seems equally suicidal or homicidal, as attempts to kill the Body of Christ. We have lost the right relationship with ourselves, with others, and with God.