Your vast ignorance of Catholic teaching is once again on display, again bringing into question your repeated claim to have been "educated" as a Catholic.
"Sacred" is a synonym for the word "holy." To be "holy" is to be "set apart for God's use." Hence, for example, the liturgical utensils used in Temple worship are termed "holy" ("sacred") in the Old Testament. This is precisely the sense in which sacramentals (including statues) are considered "sacred." Your pedantic Red Herring, however, is noted.
Gaudium de veritate,
Cruciform
+T+
I was raised Catholic which is why I am not Catholic today. Catholic tradition and certain doctrines just don't square with what Jesus and God said. For instance, God said to Moses:
Exodus 20:4-5 ESV “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or 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. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,
There are no allowances made for what is in your heart when you bow, God says
do not bow before a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven or on Earth.
What does
Catholic Answers say? They equivocate.
The Catholic Church does not believe any statue or image has any power in and of itself. Note that God says do not bow.
The Lord did not prohibit statues; he prohibited the adoration of them. No, God did not ban statues and even told Moses to make a few. But God never said to bow down before them, in fact, God said do not bow to them.
In Numbers 21:8–9, not only did our Lord order Moses to make another statue in the form of a bronze serpent, he commanded the children of Israel to look to it in order to be healed. First God commanded it. Second, God said look at it, not bow before it.
King Solomon ordered the construction of multiple images of things both “in heaven above” (angels) and “in the earth beneath” (palm trees and open flowers). And then, after the completion of the temple, God declared he was pleased with its construction (1 Kgs. 9:3). Didn't God know what King Solomon had done? Solomon adorned the temple with these things and they looked good and God was pleased. Catholics makes statues of Mary and others, bring them into God's home and then bow before them.
As I said, there are things within Catholic doctrines and traditions that do not square with scripture.