I would not consider the independent universalist perspective a specific culture. It is an independent perspective of different cultures and religions.
Your question of what is true Catholicism (Universalism) and what is idolatry requires judgements form different cultural perspectives.
The Roman Church (RCC) claims to be Catholic from the perspective of their beliefs as the One and only One true Church. From their perspective they do not consider their use of images and statuary as symbolic and not idolatry.
Other religious perspectives define the Roman Church use of imagery and struary as idolatry, because of the way they define idolatry, and they define Catholicism from their perspective. It is common for some Churches to define Catholicism as defining Christianity but limited to Christianity. Different religions and their variations like Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and the various Vedic beliefs called Hinduism. I observe in this form believers in the different religions stoically defend their beliefs as universal at the expense and rejection of other claims of the universal.
I define the universal independent perspective is the universal is beyond any religious or cultural perspective. I look at the different cultures and religions simply from the independent perspective of the matter of fact at what the believe, which would not be a universal perspective in the whole diverse nature of humanity in the over 300,000 years of our existence.
So your cultural perspective is a neutral default culture, in fact, not even a culture, unlike those other cultures, which in fact are cultures?
In Catholicism, there is a similar notion.
Here in America, there is a magical place, a mythological and geographic place, located at the center of the world, the Axis Mundi, where heaven meets earth and hell.
You can see an artist’s representation of that magical place in the mural that I posted above.
Would this not also provide just as reasonable a place for an independent perspective on these issues?
Aren’t we just talking about two different perspectives who both view themselves as being at the center of the world, and who look out at the rest of the world from a privileged position?
