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Latria or Adoration is sacrificial in character, and may be offered only to God. Catholic and Orthodox Christians offer other degrees of reverence to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, John the Baptist, and to the other saints; these non-sacrificial types of reverence are called hyperdulia, protodulia and dulia, respectively.
Christian theologians have long adopted the terms latria for the type of worship due to God alone, and dulia and proskynesis for the veneration given to angels, saints, relics and icons. [ b ] Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologies also include the terms hyperdulia and protodulia for the types of veneration, the former specifically paid ...
Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox Church make a major distinction between latria, the worship that is offered to God alone, and dulia, which is veneration offered to the saints, including the veneration of Mary, whose veneration is often referred to as hyperdulia.
The term hyperdulia indicates the special veneration due to Mary, greater than the ordinary dulia for other saints, but utterly unlike the latria due only to God. Belief in the incarnation of God the Son through Mary is the basis for calling her the Mother of God, which was declared a dogma at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
The Eastern Orthodox Church has differentiated between latria and dulia. A latria is the worship due God, and latria to anyone or anything other than God is doctrinally forbidden by the Orthodox Church; however dulia has been defined as veneration of religious images, statues or icons which is not only allowed but obligatory. [82]
In the case of an image of a saint, the worship would not be latria but rather dulia, while the Blessed Virgin Mary receives hyperdulia. The worship of whatever type, latria, hyperdulia, or dulia, can be considered to go through the icon, image, or statue: "The honor given to an image reaches to the prototype" (St. John Damascene in Summa ³).
Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, Oriental Orthodoxy, and Eastern Orthodoxy make a technical distinction between two different concepts: adoration or latria (Latin adoratio, Greek latreia, [λατρεία]), which is due to God alone; veneration or dulia (Latin veneratio, Greek douleia [δουλεία]), which may be lawfully offered to the saints
Both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions view Mary as subordinate to Christ, but uniquely so, in that she is seen as above all other creatures. In 787 the Second Council of Nicaea affirmed a three-level hierarchy of latria, hyperdulia, and dulia that applies to God, the Virgin Mary, and then to the other saints. [6] [7]