http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020315.html
Augustine? Augustine? Because he lived a life of debauchery before his conversion?
There’s this doctrine called Atonement which you might want to investigate. See, in Christianity, when you sincerely ask for forgiveness of your sins, you’re forgiven! It’s a neat concept.
…Cyril, who led a street mob in the 2nd century A.D. to flay (as in, “skin alive”) the female scholar Hypatia, for the “crime” of being too smart for a woman (at least, “in the eyes of God.”) :mad: Mind you, he did this before he was canonized, but I doubt a statute of limitations due to “seeing the light” would be applicable.
masonite, I think the Master was simply setting forth illustrations as to the possible interpretations of the question, NOT proposing specific contest winners (with the probable exception P12). It’s something like this:
Q: Who was the worst saint?
A: What do you mean…?
…whose recognition as saint was most mistaken? Here’s some examples, would that make them “worst”?
…whose behavior was aberrant even if otherwise pious? Here’s an example, does that make her “worst”?
…who was the worst person before becoming converted?
…who would cause the most embarassed explanations?
The examples, however, are somewhat confusing if we expected Cecil to be realistically proposing candidates. In the first set, while Ursula and Josaphat are straight fictional tales, Christopher is the guilding of a legend around a real person, and Philomena seems like a case of an overeager (and naive) mistake, but anyway the only ‘evil’ there is shoddy research. On the single example of St. Christina the Astonishing(!), OK, we have a latter-day diagnosis of mental illness, but Cecil doesn’t tell us what alleged pious deeds got her canonized in spite of being a lunatic. Augustine is illustrative that you may go on to greatness in spite of your past (*but more on this below). The two Piuses are symptomatic of something that dates back centuries, political canonizations – surely there are scores of “sainted” kings, princes, bishops and popes from the Dark and Middle Ages who spilled more blood of their fellow man than they tasted of the Blood of Christ, and got their canonization as a way for the church to curry favor with their successors.
*Here’s the “more on Augustine”: The truth is that there ARE people, outside the pale of Christianity, who WILL hold it against Catholics (or Christians in general) if the mantle of greatness is given to anyone that showed previous, er, “character issues” . Who WILL say Augustine was indeed a bad man even upon his conversion because he abandoned a longtime lover and child to go serve God. Who will argue that the “make me chaste, but not yet” attribution means he was just using piety to get away with something. Thus, in spite of the Atonement for Sins, there are those who would hold a saint’s past against him. Like I said, it’s often people outside Christianity – but still, it’s a fair example for Cecil to use to address those people’s definition of a “bad saint”
St. Olaf gets the gold. Alot of forcible conversions and torture in order to legitimize his kingship in the eyes of europe.
Ok, maybe there’s something magical about saints, but does this strike anybody else as strange:
So good ole’ Saint Chris (of medallion fame?) carried Jesus across a river (around 0 CE, I would assume) and then was persecuted by Decius? The Decius who ruled from 249-251 CE? Now, Decius may not have been the nicest guy, but persecuting centuries old proto-saints seems a bit much. What’s the deal here?
Tenebras
They were making noises about canonizing Queen Isabella (The catholic queen). Now, while she did bankroll Columbus, she also kicked out all the Jews and Moslems from Spain, so I think she’d raise some objections.
Another “character” who is in the running is Escriva de Balaguer, who has already been beatified - He founded the religious organization “Opus Dei” which is considered by many to be rather shady.
A bunch of drunks in a Chicago bar debating who is the best boxer of all time can only come up with Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali? How about Sugar Ray Robinson? Robinson is widely considered by boxing experts to be the all time best. :rolleyes:
The worst Catholicm Saint BY FAR was St. Moses the Ethiopian, formally, St. Moses the Black.
He was a violent highwayman and murderer until he found God and became a champion for the poor. When he was martyred he offered no resistence.
And just for reference’s sake on Catholic Saints:
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Thats all of em, and the Angels too! 
Cecil needs to give us the straight dope on Pope Pius XII, whom he accuses of being silence in the face of the Holocaust. It seems odd, if Pius XII was so unjust toward the Jews, that Albert Einstein would praise him for his efforts, that the New York Times would laud him in a 1942 editorial as “a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent”, and that the chief rabbi of Rome would be so moved by his actions that he would convert to Catholicism and take the good pope’s given name as his own Christian name. Nor does anyone mention his authorship of the only Papal Encyclical written in German, Mit Brennednder Sorge, which denounced Nazi racism.
The alleged silence of Pius XII is a myth constantly perpetuated by the media ever since German playwright Rolf Hochhuth’s 1962 play THE DEPUTY, which is a total fabrication. The following are a series of quotes from various media articles giving the side of the story that you rarely hear in the media:
*n his lifetime, Pius XII received more praise and expressions of gratitude from the Jewish people than any other Bishop of Rome in history. According to several Jewish historians living in Italy, Pius XII and the Church saved between 740,000 and 860,000 Jews from extermination. In Rome alone, during the Nazi occupation 4,447 Jews were hidden in over 155 Catholic houses, ecclesiastical institutions, parishes and schools. In several churches in Rome there are Jewish plaques thanking the Church for saving Jewish lives. This rescue work was done at the express wish of the Pope.
In December of 1940, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to “Time” magazine stating, “Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the case of truth; but no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom. But they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess, that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly.”
After the War, Moshe Sharrett, former Foreign Affairs Minister and Prime Minister of Israel, went to see Pius XII “to thank the Catholic Church for what it did to save the Jews in all parts of the world.” Like Sharrett, Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem, as well as the Rabbis of the Italian, U.S., Rumanian, and Hungarian Jewish communities came to Rome or sent messages thanking Pope Pacelli for the way in which he mobilized the Church in their behalf.
At least three of the volumes of the "Acts and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War, are full of documents written by the Jewish communities worldwide thanking Pius XII and the Catholic Church for the assistance offered to persecuted Jews.
When Pius XII died, Golda Meir wrote: “During the Nazi terror, when our people were subjected to a terrible martyrdom, the Pope’s voice was raised to condemn the persecutors and to offer mercy to their victims. We mourn over the death of a great server of peace.”
On that same occasion, London’s “Jewish Chronicle” recalled that “before, during and after the Second World War, he tried to carry a message of peace. Confronting the monstrous cruelties of Nazism, fascism and communism, he continually proclaimed the virtues of humanity and compassion.”
These quotes are from an article from ZENIT news service (www.zenit.org). But you can also read much more about the question in the book “Pius XII and The Jews” (by Sr Margherita Marchione) and “Pius XII: Greatness Dishonored” by Michael O’Carroll.
The Nazis didn’t like Pius XII either:
When Pacelli was elected Pope, the “Berliner Morgenpost,” a pro-Nazi newspaper, stated that “the election of Cardinal Pacelli is not of Germany’s liking, as he has always been opposed to Nazism.”
The international communist newspaper, “La Correspondance Internationale,” dedicated an article to Pope Pacelli’s election, saying it was a good election, because he was a man cleared opposed to Nazism.
Following Pius XII’s 1942 Christmas radio message, the Gestapo wrote the following in a report: “the Pope has rejected the new National Socialist European Order. He has not attacked National Socialism directly, but he has severely criticized everything we believe… He has spoken clearly in favor of the Jews.”
The suggestion of “silence” has an air of plausibility about it, but the implication when the media refer to it is that Pius XII was anti-Semitic. But consider the following words from a Jewish leader himself, in “A Question of Judgement: Pius XII and the Jews” (1963), by the late Dr. Joseph Lichten, then head of the Intercultural Affairs Department of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith:
"An indictment has been brought down on Pope Pius XII, and by extension on the Catholic Church, of criminal implication in the extermination of some six million Jews during World War II.....What is the case against Pius XII? In brief, that as head of one of the most powerful moral forces on earth he committed an unspeakable sin of omission by not issuing a formal statement condemning the Nazis' genocidal slaughter of the Jews, and that his silence was motivated by reasons considered in modern times as base: political exigency, economic interests and personal ambition.
What is the case for him? That in relation to the insane behavior of the Nazis, from overlords to self styled cogs like Eichmann, he did everything humanly possible to save lives and alleviate suffering among the Jews: that a formal statement would have provoked the Nazis to brutal retaliation, and would substantially have thwarted further Catholic action on behalf of Jews. To the Sacred College of Cardinals Pius XII wrote on June 2, 1943: "Every word that We addressed to the responsible authorities and every one of Our public declarations had to be seriously weighed and considered in the interest of the persecuted themselves in order not to make their situation unwittingly even more difficult and more unbearable."
There are other facts as well:
–Before he became Pope Pius XII, Cardinal Pacelli drafted the papal encyclical, MIT BRENNEDNDER SORGE, in which Pius XI denounced Nazi paganism and racism; the document was smuggled into Germany in March, 1937 and read from all Catholic pulpits, which infuriated the Nazis;
–It is well documented by Jewish scholars like Joseph Lichten of B’nai B’rith that Pius used the assets of the Vatican to ransom Jews from the Nazis and that the Vatican under Pius ran an extensive network of hide-outs. Even the Pope’s summer residence, Castel Gondolfo, was used to hide fugitive Jews. The Pope, moreover, took personal repsonsibility for the children of deported Jews;
–Largely as a result of the Church’s efforts, the Jews in Italy had a far higher survival rate under Nazi occupation than was the case in other countries; estimates of the number of Jews saved by the Vatican’s efforts range up to several hundred thousand; this was one reason why the chief Rabbi of Rome converted to Catholicism at the end of the war;
–In appreciation of what Pius did for the Jews, the World Jewish Congress made a large cash gift to the Vatican in 1945; in the same year, Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem sent a “special blessing” to the Pope “for his lifesaving efforts on behalf of the Jews during the Nazi occupation of Italy”; and when Pius died in 1958, Israel’s Foreign Minister Golda Meir gave him a moving eulogy at the United Nations for the same reason: “We share the grief of the world over the death of His Holiness Pope Pius XII. During a generation of wars and dissensions he affirmed the high ideals of peace and compassion. During the ten years of Nazi terror, when our people went through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and comiserate with their victims. The life of our time has been enriched by a voice which expressed the great moral truths above the tumults of daily conflicts. We grieve over the loss of a great defender of peace…What was to be gained by Pius’s getting up on a soap box and lashing out at the Nazis?” (Both the International Red Cross and the World Council of Churches came to the same conclusion as the Vatican: relief efforts for the Jews would be more effective if the agencies remained relatively quiet; yet, you never hear anybody attacking the Red Cross for its “silence” about the Holocaust);
–In 1942, the Catholic hierarchy of Amsterdam spoke out vigorously against the Nazi treatment of the Jews; the Nazi response was a redoubling of round-ups and deportations; by the end of the war, 90 percent of the Jews in Amsterdam were liquidated. Jewish relief officials were in complete agreement that a public attack by the Vatican against the Nazis would a) not have the slightest effect on Hitler and b) would seriously jeopardize the lives of Jews who were being hidden in convents, monasteries, etc.;
–Nevertheless, Pius’s Christmas message in 1942 decried the fact that hundreds of thousands were being persecuted “solely because of their race or ancestory.” The German ambassador to the Vatican complained that Pius was “clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews.” A NEW YORK TIMES editorial on Christmas day, 1942 praised Pius as “a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent”.
I hope that Cecil vindicates Pius XII in his column. His readers deserve to hear the whole story.
Eric Ewanco
Shrewsbury, MA
eje(at)ewanco.com
Yep, the one in the medallion, patron of travelers and bad drivers.
The real Christopher would have been born c. 200 CE. And who he would’ve borne across the river would’ve been an apparition of Christ, in a “child” form. If he had.
Christophorus, “the bearer of Christ” was apparently the (real) saint’s post-conversion rather than birth name, in the absence of reliable records of his real deeds a postmortem legend arose as to how he came to that name.
The full legend involves this tough guy from the Near East who decided he’d only serve the toughest, arse-kicking-est Master on Earth, so he kept job-hopping between princes’ , generals’ and barbarian warlords’ entourages until one day he runs across the Devil himself (I guess they both hung out at charioteer bars), and is making a career of serving him when he finds out the Devil fears Christ. Seeking Christ, he is taught he needs to serve the humblest, rather than the mighty, and is assigned to help folks across a river ford. For years he does, getting humility drummed into him. One day a child shows up and the tough guy nearly drowns as the child keeps getting heavier. Arriving at the other shore he says something like “Jesus Christ you are heavy as the world!” and the child says something like “Bingo, big dude!” and reveals Himself.
Folk tradition tended to dumb down that part of the legend, placing him helping a “real-time” child-Jesus across the Jordan. * But the legends also have him being eventually martyred by “the king” of an unidentified country, divorcing the folk-legend saint from the real guy killed under Decius. * BTW this often happened with the old folk-legend saints, they keep meeting people who could not possibly be in the same place at the same time, and being killed by generic “pagan kings.” That sort of nonsense is one of the reasons Chris got “demoted” (lost his official feast day in the Church Calendar) in 1969 – but contrary to common belief there IS still a St. Christopher: the guy martyred during Decius’ reign. Only we know about jack squat about him ‘cause the only thing anyone bothered writing down for 1700 years was the friggin’ fairytale.
The lost real story probably involves some tough guy who converted to Christianity and served the poor in an exemplary fashion.
The RCC has many people who would qualify as the worst Catholic saints. We could start with Augustine, who threw his common law wife and his son out into the street (where were they supposed to go in 4th Century Africa) when he finally got religion. Boniface and Jerome qualify because of their insanity about sex and the Jews. Poor dear old Polycarp–the patron saint of many goldfish(?). Escriba is far too evil to be anything other than an embarassment to anyone who knows what he was like.
I was pretty steamed about the inclusion of Philomena as the worst saint ever. Philomena is my confirmation name and she was the patron saint of trivial causes until the public raping of the Catholic Church during Vatican II. A whole bunch of saints have murky events about their lives and dubious miracles attributed to them. I don’t really see why Philomena was targetted.
The saints weren’t “raped” during Vatican II. They were actually examined to see if they existed. For example, St. Denis in France was actually, when it was examined, Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.
My kids who thought that Polycarp was the patron saint of goldfish because of his name. The Vatican certainly doesn’t examine the backgrounds of the saints now. Escriba has a reputation in Spain that is every bit as bad as Jack Geoghans’s in Boston, but he’s a saint, because this Pope thinks that Opus Dei is a good thing…
Happy Saint Paddy’s day to all of us who are Irish, and to all the engineers…
Pius IX: Does anyone know why there’s a big street named after him in Montreal? Did he do something specifically for the city, or was he just in the right place at the right time when the city leaders decided what they were missing was a pope’s name on one of their streets?
Not sure why Montreal is so fond of Pius IX, but he was Pope longer than anyone else, so he likely did something to endear himself to the city fathers of Montreal.
Aside from the papal infallibility thing, his other big accomplishment was creating the diocese of Leavenworth, Kansas.
Is there a list of Saints that were decanonized? Or does the Church simply send out revised lists from time to time? I was just wondering if (and when) they decided not to make saints of the Blood Libel saints, eg St. Hugh (the other one).
I just wrote a small essay on the Steeleye Span song “Little Sir Hugh” which is a much older anti-semitic English ballad found in Child’s, and wondered if their removal of the real rabble rousing hatemongering was valid.
Let me put in my US$.02 for St. Rose of Lima, canonized because she allegedly mortified her flesh for the sake of religious purity. Reportedly a beautiful young girl, the story goes that she used to rub hot peppers into her face until it blistered; once when her mother gave her an Easter garland and a pin to attach it to her hair she drove the pin so hard into her skull that it had to be removed with tools. These days stories such as this are usually associated with child abuse. Maybe St. Rose should be the patron saint of all children molested by Catholic priests.
The saint that is the patron of incest survivors, and probably now of those molested by priests and bishops, is Saint Dymphna, who is also the patron on the mentally ill. She was supposedly an incest survivor. I will check to see about the unsainted saints.
I think if you do a Google search on the Child song, you might get straighter answers than from the RCC sites, :rolleyes: unfortunately. I just told a good friend of mine that I can think of only 3 bishops that I believe, and I know all three of them on a personal level, and the only priests that I trust are those that are my friends. That seems to be the norm in the US now… Even the far right, folks who are in the Knights of Malta, are calling for Law’s resignation, so you can imagine what the rest of us think.
Just for the record, Escriva de Balaguer (The opus dei founder) has not been sanctified, or canonized (Whatever the term is) he’s been beatified, which is a sort of “lower order” of sainthood. He can still be upgraded if they manage to find enough miracles to justify it (If they include miraculous currency transfers accross borders he’s in like Flynn )
While I don’t consider him the worst Catholic saint, I’m a fan of St. Expedite.
The saints that steam me aren’t the fictitious ones, but the ones who actually had a pernicious effect on Christian doctrine. There was Jerome, mainly just a self-righteous jackass, but unfortunately, as a saint he influences Church thought. Augustine is worrying, etc.
I don’t see why making Isabella, Queen of Spain, a saint is any more inappropriate than sainting Louis IX of France.
foolsguinea: the worst Swiddles saint.