From what I can gather, the Catholic Church has built-up a collection of “long-since-departed-saints-who-have-not-decomposed” as evidence that the said saints were actually saintly.
So are there preserved parts of all the saints out there? Do the Catholics regularly dig up the bodies of important dead catholics in Order to find the few random bodies that did not decompose? Is this a normal occurrence that we just don’t know about since the catholics dig up more dead bodies than the rest of us combined? Are these wax replicas?
What’s the deal?
I remember, bering brought up as a Catholic, being brought up to Northern Ontario to the Myrter Shrine and saw the bones of a Saint. (I don’t remember who they were from now.)
I can’t remember how they got the bone…but IIRC they dug them up.
Did I believe that they were authentic? Yes…do I now…no…
When I was a kid then, we were tought not to question these things…so we believed. For all I know, these bone fragments could be from a local neighbour’s dog…
But I guess its what the people want to believe that counts…(As,IMHO, unfortunate as that may be.)
I was also raised Catholic. IIRC, incorruptibility of the corpse is a sign of sainthood, but not a requirement. And it doesn’t have to be complete incorruptibility.
St. Anthony’s tongue was the only part that supposedly didn’t decompose. This was significant of his eloquent apologetics for the Church.
One saint’s head is supposed to be uncorrupted, as well as another saint’s blood (St. Januarius, whose blood reliquifies at certain days of the year).
Souvenier hunting (looking for “holy relics”) seems to be a big deal with Catholics. In the process of (say) trying to get a fragment of the clothing, bone, hair, or whatever out of the tomb of some noted holy person, should they find that the body isn’t as badly off as expected they take it as a sign of special favor of God. Decay —physical corrpution— is seen as corrpution in a metaphorical sense, so if there is no corrpution, then the deceased must be relatively pure morally and spiritually.
To me, it seems to be intentionally overlooking the obvious. Put a body in the right conditions, and it won’t be so “corrupt”.
I’ve seen various pictures of the remains of Catholic saints and holy people who seemed quite a bit less than incorrupted. And of course there are innumerable reliquaries all over the world holding various bits and pieces of assorted saints of high and low rank. I believe each of the California missions (founded by Junipero Serra, a Franciscian) each have some “relic” of St. Francis of Assisi. I would therefore gather that “incorruptability” is not held as an absolute requirement for Sainthood.
IMHO, the Catholic practice of “parting out” church holy people and notables is a practice that must seem highly bizzare to people of other religions.
Does anyone know if there exists a count of all the various alleged heads of John the Baptist, Christ’s crowns of thorns, etc.?
True, but most of these bodies were not in the “right conditions.” There was one saint (it might be St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a 17th century nun who had visions and started the devotion to The Sacred Heart of Jesus, but I’m not sure) who, after she was canonized, they dug her up to move her body somewhere else. This was quite some time after her death. Her coffin and clothing were completely decayed and gone, but her body was completely undecayed. Her body was so well preserved that they put it on display in a glass case (Yeah, it’s pretty creepy, but from the picture I’ve seen she looks better than most people you see in funeral homes who’ve been dead less than a day.)
Sorry, I couldn’t get to the London Times article. Why did they dig up the dead pope? He’s only been planted since 1963, hasn’t he?
My reason for asking: What were they doing opening up a Pope’s grave? They weren’t actually checking for “incorruptability” or “incorrputness” (or whatever it’s properly called), were they? I had the impresion that the lack of decay was something that they found as only incidental (not mandatory) to a person’s saintliness.
What’s the official Catholic doctorine on this and on corpses and such in general? Don’t they hold to the idea that the body is only a shell for the spirit? “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust?”