Wasn’t there a booming business in spurious relics in medieval times? After all, how does one go about authenticating a relic?
I would imagine that relics were the autographed Ted Williams baseballs of their day.
In regards to the idolotry thing: Saints and their relics are venerated, not worshipped. Veneration is a kind of deep respect and recognition that this was a great person. It is not worship. If you have a problem with this difference, then use a search function to find one of the dozens of threads where this has been discussed.
Finally, I can put my degree in medieval history to use! Who woulda thunk it… :rolleyes:
This is intimately tied in with the cult of the saints, which is just a fascinating subject (for me, at least) and I won’t be able to do it justice. So for some basic reading material, I recommend the articles on relics and the cult of the saints from the handy-dandy online Catholic Encyclopedia.
Interesting tidbit that may only interest me: relics were the subject of jealous rivalries between neighboring churches-- folks from Church A would sneak over to Church B and steal Saint Bob’s toebone. If they made it back with the relic, then it was NOT stealing, since Saint Bob clearly gave his blessing to the endeavour. If they were caught, then it was because Saint Bob wanted to stay at Church B.
Much like people trying to entice professional football franchises to another city, I guess . . .
On reading the cites to the Catholic Encyclopedia linked in this thread, it seems clear that, for a Catholic church to be consecrated, it must have a relic (even that isn’t explicit, but more assumed). However, the C.E. makes it clear that a church need not be consecrated, but may get along by being merely blessed. We have no information on whether a relic is needed for this, but my recollections of my time in prison, er, as a Catholic ;), is that a blessing is a more informal ceremony and, were I to take a gander, I would say a relic would not be necessary for that.
In addition, I have a strong suspicion that the Vatican II reforms likely eliminated the need for relics in consecrations.
Sua
I have a tourist guidebook to Rome according to which there is a Church of St. Valentine, where on Feb. 14 they display his skull surrounded by roses. Wow! Just like the iconography of the Grateful Dead.
Pardon my pun, but I just had to resurrect this thread when I found the the following:
From the Discovery.com site:
Perhaps the Holy Bowel would be just the thing for curing those nagging hemorroids.
Re. the idolatry issue:
(aside from the claim that after JC in the New Dispensation the OT laws didn’t apply to Christians, a notion that became mighty popular among some in the 16th C. . .) At the 2d Council of Nicea in 787 it was agreed that some images and relics can be venerated, as “the honour shown to the image is transferred to the prototype, and whoever honours an image honours the person represented by it.” (Henk van Os, 1994) Also, the saint is considered to actually be present in a relic/ image, so one is not worshipping a mute chunk of wood, but the present saint/divinity.
This is my opinion, not hard facts set out by the church. A saint is someone who was used by God for a task. Bone fragments are not idols. Therefore, ‘worshipping’ a non idol that is not to a false god, but to the one True God, isn’t bad.
I wish I could quote my sources on this, but it’s just a memory of a documentary from a usually reliable team of journalists.
Apparently there are enough venerated fragments of the cross around to build many crosses, enough fragments of the shroud to clothe a good many people, etc.
If this is true, as seems likely to me, it is no wonder the church doesn’t publish a central register of relics or they would be proving that at least some of them must be fakes. As you wouldn’t know which were the fakes it would cast some degree of doubt on all of them.
Does anyone know of any non-official-reasearch into this?
Oooops I meant good research not by the official church.
In 25 years exposure to catholic schooling, teaching and general (IMHO) brainwashing, I never encountered the notion that an RC church has to have a relic. I remember one occasion when a relic was temporarily loaned to the school church. They made a big fuss, which suggests to me that at other times there was no relic present.
While this thing was on loan we could go to special services which involved the chance to kiss the relic. Yep, that’s what I said. It was (we were told) a small sample taken from the inner ear of a saint (can’t recall which), and it was sealed inside a small hemispherical glass reliquary. And I did!
I remember another time when I attended mass and had a sort of mild flu bug. I was invited to have the Blessing of St. Blaise. This involved the priest forming two large candles into a sort of X formation and lowering them onto my shoulders while he recited whatever the magic words were. Felt like a kind of exorcism-lite.
Did it work?, you cry. Well, a sample of one proves nothing, but I’d say the flu cleared up in about the usual time.
Such are the delights of an RC “education”.
It’s okay, I’m over it. I’m a born again atheist now, and I have welcomed reason into my life.
A friend of mine informed me that for a place of Catholic worship to earn cathedral status, they must house a relic (which she claims to have learned when she studied in Rome). I don’t remember the details, but does anyone know anything about this? IIRC she mentioned this when we visited Boston, and I asked how the hell a very smallish church we walked past could call itself a “cathedral.” I’d always thought cathedrals needed only to house some diocese big-wigs; but I’m not RC and she is, so I just accepted her explanation.
Could it be that the person was confusing cathedral with basilica. The cathedral is the home church of the bishop, while a basilica is a special type of church (which are often cathedrals). I do know that basilicas are required to have a certain type of bell and a striped canopy of some type.
At least that’s what I remember from reading the display at the New Cathedral in St. Louis, which is a basilica. I believe the Old Cathedral is a basilica as well.
hell, what’s the big deal about relics? I really don’t get the people who see the practice as gruesome, or specific only to Catholicism. Even religion, for that matter. Look at Lenin, or that british dude in maybe Oxford who’s stuffed and in a glass display case?
Humans have a tendency to venerate the dead. Calling relicary matters disturbing is akin to calling Uncle Ernie’s ashes up on the mantelpiece disturbing.
Btw, In high school, I was never more than a fifteen minute walk to the preserved and on-display body of St. John Neumann, first American saint.
jb
I assume you’re referring to utilitarian extraordinaire Jeremy Bentham. Definitely an awesome way to go. Check out Britannica Online for details:
I obviously screwed up the Britannica Online link. This should work: http://www.britannica.com
Right. You can think of a cathedral as the headquarters of a diocese, the geographical “states” of the Church. The diocese is headed up by a bishop, or higher-ranking clergy, such as an arch-bishop or cardinal (the pope is sometimes called the Bishop of Rome, referring to his status as head of the Diocese of Rome). So, no matter how humble, every diocese has one and only one cathedral, with a bishop or higher celebrating mass there. Dioceses can have more than one bishop, though, although, of course, only one leads the diocese. Our church growing up had a bishop as our pastor for a while, but that didn’t make it a cathedral.
As for basilicas, ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA says:
What I want to know is: where are these relics coming from? My old church supposedly had a bone chip from the saint for whom it was named embedded in the altar. Our priest seemed very impressed with this fact, but thought it disrespectful when I asked where the relic came from. Anyone know where churches get these things? And, does a church dedicated to a particular saint have to have relics of that saint, or will any relic do? What about non-saint churches, like the Church of the Holy Spirit?