I don’t think anybody gives it that much thought. They probably think, “Hey, it is holy water. It’s been blessed, after all.”
If you think that is unsanitary, watch Orthodox Christians standing in line to kiss some holy icon :smack:. I’ve personally watched it in a monastery of Meteora and I was close to vomiting. Blech!
Probably as much threat as the communal Communion cup.
It’s a germy, germy world, just amazing that human beings survive.
~VOW
Think of how much easier it would be to have a priest bless and sterilize surgical instruments. Put the autoclave manufacturers out of business.
I usually stay out of threads on religious topics because they’re so often vents or rants against religion–which is fine, just not something I find particularly illuminating… Within the evident disdain of the OP lies a legitimate question, however; hence my reply.
The significance of holy water has its roots in ancient Judaism, when people ritually purified (washed) themselves before entering the temple. Water was also sprinkled on houses and other buildings to purify them. In Catholicism, those dipping their fingertips in holy water are symbolically linking themselves with this ancient tradition.
Hinduism, Islam, and other religions also use water for ritual purification.
The holy water Catholics dip their fingertips into when entering a church is not there for magical purposes. It’s there to confer sacramental grace and to remind them of their union with Jesus through baptism. There’s nothing “magical” about either.
I am letting my ignorance show, I know, but I am genuinely curious how we get from the concept you have described to injecting the water into shoes or spraying it onto crowds of people in a crop duster?
My disdain isn’t intended to be aimed at religious practice. I understand the emotional attachment. It’s the idea of selling shoes for $2000 - or maybe the idea of buying shoes for $2000 - that seems to just explode the whole idea of what it means for something to be sacred.
In my mind, it’s a little like sex. Bear with me.
Sex is meant to be special / intimate / personal. Like religious practices. Prostitutes and/or pornography discard the entire concept of intimacy. Like injecting holy water into shoes.
I’m the alien looking at the pornography scratching my head, wondering how we ever got to this point.
Ignorant atheists yukking it up with same.
It doesn’t work like that and never has.
Not having been raised Catholic, I don’t know the answer to this question.
Do Catholics believe, or does the priest tell them, that the water in the entry font is holy or treated in any way (spiritual or otherwise)? Or do they assume it is tap (or drinking) water, with no special properties and merely placed there for appearance and convenience, and a plumbed sink or bottle of Dasani could perform the same social/religious function?
I’ve been ordained a few times so I’m authorized to bless anything and everything. With nothing better to do today, I’ll bless Earth’s hydrosphere, every single fucking drop of water anywhere. Inhale to be purified. Inhale again. Yah!
RioRico, I think you not only Ninja’d every priest in the world (who can now all retire), but the Supreme Holiness as well, Mr. God!
Holy water is holy because it’s been blessed by a priest. The water is, AFAIK, tap water in most cases. I guess technically it could be Dasani, though that would get expensive. Catholics do trust that a priest has actually blessed the water. “Holy” means something that has been made sacred; that is, something that is not used for secular purposes. You wouldn’t brush your teeth with holy water, for instance.
When I said in my earlier post that holy water has its roots in ancient Judaism, I didn’t mean to imply the holy water fonts are there strictly to commemorate the Jewish roots of Catholicism, merely to explain the history of the practice of having fonts. One uses holy water when entering church for that reason.
Catholics do not merely dip their fingers in the water. They use those fingers to make the sign of the cross, thereby blessing themselves. In addition to reaffirming baptism, the use of holy water in this way is believed to cleanse one of venial sin (Venial sins are thought to be those sins which injure the person’s relationship with God but are not a complete turning away from God.) and, it’s thought, helps protect one from evil This last is, again, not magical thinking; it’s more the faith that in reaffirming one’s relationship with God, one is less vulnerable to evil.
Please note I’m not a theologist. I merely believe in studying religious beliefs instead of scoffing at them.
I’d request donations but must warn you that my post office box is #666.
Priests used to drop the host directly into a communicant’s mouth with their fingers. Now communicants are allowed cup their hands and have the priest place the host in them.
I remember that from when I was a Catholic. Always wondered if the impetus for that change came from parishioners who didn’t want a priest putting his dirty fingers in their mouth, or priests who didn’t want to put their fingers in a communicant’s stinky mouth.
I merely believe in studying religious beliefs instead of scoffing at them.
I study religious beliefs too, which is why I scoff at them.
The church where I was an altar boy for a while used gallon jugs of IIRC distilled water. I assume the benefit was not building up a bunch of mineral scale in the holy water fonts. Otherwise they could have just filled up the jug from the tap.
The full jugs of holy water were stored in a cabinet in back. IIRC next to, but not in, the same cabinet where the sacramental wine was locked up. After a priest blessed them the jugs were marked with the not so holy marker. Disposal once the water was blessed was not to be done in regular plumbing. There was a special disposal with a drain straight into the ground. I don’t recall if I knew it was referred to as the sacrarium but that seems to be the Catholic frame of reference for it.
The blessing and handling after blessing bits were the special part. Before that it was just a gallon jug of water from the grocery store.
I never gave it much thought because you’d dip your fingers, make a sign of the cross and it was pretty much dried off by then. If you were drinking the water, you had a whole different set of problems than just bacterial counts.
Was that load of jet fuel that got dropped on the school yard full of kids all properly blessed Holy Jet Fuel?
Did the infidel children among them get divinely incinerated?
(The Lamestream Media won’t tell you details like that.)
Scoff at them, but don’t berate those who believe. The small outward symbols of belief are a great comfort to many.
Absolute science is not something you can touch and hold and draw comfort from when your life is in turmoil. An outside threat to a family, the crumbling of the world you know, and the critical health of a much-beloved family member shakes you to your very foundation. Normal reasoning skills become fractured, and it is oh so difficult to drag yourself through each day.
Religious belief can be a great source of comfort, of stability then. To have those beliefs slammed by a nonbeliever is cruel, especially when the nonbeliever is doing so simply for the entertainment factor.
~VOW
You didn’t use the word “foxhole”, I’ll give you that.