When comparing icons to statues one should always remember that while we may have personal preferences, one is not holier or more sacred than the other.

When comparing icons to statues one should always remember that while we may have personal preferences, one is not holier or more sacred than the other.

As an Eastern Christian I respectfully disagree. Icons are filled with divine energy because they are written as an act of prayer by the iconographer. Icons are a theological reality, while there is no theological tradition connected to the production of statues.

So are you saying that Western sacramental art, and the veneration thereof, does not impart grace? Or that they lack the holiness of the Eastern tradition?

Moreover, that the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints, are to be had and retained particularly in temples, and that due honour and veneration are to be given them; not that any divinity, or virtue, is believed to be in them, on account of which they are to be worshipped; or that anything is to be asked of them; or, that trust is to be reposed in images, as was of old done by the Gentiles who placed their hope in idols; but because the honour which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which those images represent; in such wise that by the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head, and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ; and we venerate the saints, whose similitude they bear: as, by the decrees of Councils, and especially of the second Synod of Nicaea, has been defined against the opponents of images.

I think you are using the word divinity in a different context that what the council is saying. The Council is saying not to worship Icons and Statues like gods, not that Statues and Icons aren't a source of Grace (Divine energy) for those who pray before them.

Either divinity is or it is not present in icons.

The more frequently they are seen in representational art, the more are those who see them drawn to remember and long for those who serve as models, and to pay these images the tribute of salutation and respectful veneration. Certainly this is not the full adoration in accordance with our faith, which is properly paid only to the divine nature, but it resembles that given to the figure of the honoured and life-giving cross, and also to the holy books of the gospels and to other sacred cult objects.