features@ihuxf.UUCP (M.A. Zeszutko) (02/01/84)
(St. Christopher)..."didn't he get court-martialled and convicted in absentia by some recent pope for having been ilegitimate?" Not really. At least not if you consider "illegitimate" as being born out of wedlock. The Vatican officials had some reason to believe that belief in St. Christopher (and in a raft of other, lesser-known saints) was merely a pious myth. (Somewhat akin to belief in Superman, on the secular side.) Thus, they weren't sure whether or not these folks ever existed, or whether they were merely made up. Incidentally, the canonization process (the route one has to travel to be declared a saint) has gotten MUCH more stringent in the past 200 or so years. In the early Church (<600), saints were named by popular acclaim. (If things were done now the way they were then, Mother Theresa of Calcutta would already be sainted.) M. A. Zeszutko AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (02/04/84)
I hate to say it ("No he doesn't."--ED.) but if religions are going
to "desanctify" saints and other holy figures on the grounds that they
don't have sufficient proof of their existence, how long will it be
before they get rid of god? Playing "devil's advocate" here ("OOH, that
hurts."--ED.) if St. Christopher has significant symbolic meaning to large
numbers of people, how can he be "abolished" while keeping the rest of the
religion around? Does it boil down to "my unprovable beliefs are more
correct than yours"?
(It's just a question)
--
Pardon me for breathing...
Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlrrrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (02/09/84)
I understand your point, Rich, & probably agree with you. But if it's not being boorish to make the further point....: saints as defined by the RCC are supposed to be historical human beings (why not merely mor- tals, including animals? I don't see why not having souls makes them incapable of performing miracles; the Vatican is human-chauvinist!), i.e. individuals who really existed. Unlike deities or angels (or devils). The RCC certainly favors symbols (the goddess Virgin Mary, a veritable one-spirit pantheon of every female deity of antiquity, including Hecate). It simply has this thing about saints: like theologians and most heretics, they ought to be real folks. Perhaps the reason why is that canonization is a procedure exclusively owned by one of the Vatican bureaucracies. It's not bureaucratically nice to deal in complete (as opposed to partial) fictions. Cheers, Ron Rizzo