A cult image or idol is a material object, representing a deity, to which religious worship is directed. It is also controversially and pejoratively used by some Protestants to describe the Eastern Orthodox (and, to a lesser extent, Catholic) practice of worshipping the Christian God through the use of icons, a charge which these Christians reject. In a similarly controversial sense, it is also used by some Protestants to pejoratively describe various Catholic devotional practices such as scapulars and the veneration of statues and flat images of the Virgin Mary and other saints, which Catholics do not consider idolatry.