From the Opus Dei site last month,
Blessed Josemaría Escrivá to be canonized October 6, 2002
Quoth marykate103143:
I think this bears repeating: The woman whom Augustine left was not his mistress, as is typically recorded in Catholic biographies. They were married, according to Roman law (which was in force at the time). Admittedly, they never had a formal wedding ceremony (the law said that any unrelated man and woman were considered wed after living together for six months), but then, formal wedding ceremonies weren’t all that common at the time. It was customary for Christians to have their marriage blessed by a priest, but it was not required, and a couple who had had a common-law marriage were not considered to be “living in sin”.
Cecil omitted one category of saints: “Be made up to be
an excuse for boozing two days in a row”.
The Minnesota Finns have one - St.Urho. Admittedly totally bogus, his day has been officially noted by the state legislature. And there is a statue or two of him around. Local hero apparently.
The sources tell that the Finns got bored with the Irish always having an excuse for partying, so they came up tongue-in-cheek around 1956 with St.Urho, who had rid Finland of grasshoppers (or poisonous frogs) and saved the wine harvest(!), and if I am not mistaken some 3000 years ago so he was one of those prechristian saints as well. As a sidenote, in 1956 Urho Kaleva Kekkonen was elected as president of Finland, and he stuck there until 1984, so the saint and the feast for some odd reason sounds slightly blasphemous to taxburdened homecountry Finns who hear about it. Americans get bewildered when they get a blank stare asking about this “Finnish Saint” who is so bogus very few have heard of him in Finland. However, some have, and the sarcastic nature winning, there is a ‘St.Urho’s Pub’ in Helsinki, the tradition of the saint well followed. The picture they used to have was a caricature of the former president, but still…
As a sidenote, Finland is 95% Evangelic-Lutheran “Church of Finland” state church with a 2% Greek Orthodox minority. The pre-reformation Patron Saint is St. Henrik of Upsala, who visited a farmhouse around 1100 and the farmer who had missed the visit heard things from his wife, took after the bishop’s sleigh on skis and catching up with Henrik on lake ice whacked his head off with an axe.
So, any compatriots of St.Urho the Party Saint?
It’s probably worth pointing out that, so far as the Catholic Church is concerned, declaring somebody to be a saint is a declaration that they “practiced heroic virtue and lived in fidelity to God’s grace” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, para 128). They don’t have to have been perfect in every respect, and a conspicuous display of virtue in one regard – e.g. accepting martyrdom – can lead to canonisation even if other aspects of the candidate’s life are distinctly imperfect. Or the veneration of a saint may continue even if, in the light of modern thinking, certain aspects of their life would now undoubtedly preclude them from being canonised. Pointing to quite serious character flaws on the part of a saint does not, therefore, suggest that they should not be a saint unless it can be shown that their life was not heroically virtuous in any respect, or that their offences are so great that they cannot be said to have lived in fidelity to God’s grace.
I agree with Capt. Murdock- St. Cyril was probably one of the most abominal humans to walk the planet, let alone saints.
Putting aside the flaying of Hypatia aside for just a moment- the burning of the Library Of Alexandria plunged Western civilization into the Dark Ages, and set mankind back at least a millenium.
In addition, given all that the Catholic Church has done over the years (burning Alexandria, the Dark Ages, promoting religious wars, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the auto-de-fe, strengthening the concept of original sin so that the Church could tighten it’s grip on its constituents through confession, the corrosion of liberty, and in our century alone, partaking in the Holocaust and fostering/protecting child molesters)- it’s amazing to me that any human can say Catholic and saint in the same sentence.
IMHO-
Bix
Cite, please, on either count? And even if this were true, how does this preclude the possibility of virtuous individuals who happen to be Catholic?
Bix777,
Well, let’s not forget inventing the hospital and the university, bringing down the Eastern Bloc, and a host of other praiseworthy contributions to the good of the world and society as a whole. Oh, and saving hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust (see my previous post).
It would take too much effort to refute all your accusations, but I will say that it isn’t always fair to hold a group accountable for the crimes of some of its members, past or current. This is how racism gets started (witness the Middle East and the Balkans).
Quite so. And it seems this was something of an endemic thing among Alexandrian patriarchs of the period…
However…
**
Let’s be careful about vectoring *“everybody knows that it was the Christians who ruined civilization” * lore, OK? In these boards it has been discussed that primary blame for the loss of the Alexandrian collection can’t be conclusively laid at the feet of any person or institution and probably took centuries to happen by increments.
The university was NOT invented by the Catholic Church! There was one in Timbuktu long before the Romans knew what true education was all about. BTW, most of my Jesuit friends will tell you that going to grad school in Rome is still much less about education (the consensus is that it’s a second rate system), and much more about learning how to work the political system.
While the Church has done some wonderful things, it has and is guilty of many things and they cannot be forgotten. Forgiven, possibily, but never forgotten. If we forget, then we take the chance of doing the same thing over again. (Sorry, I know that this is a paraphrase of a quote)
Let’s remember what is going on now vis a vis pedophilia. While it isn’t a Catholic problem, is certainly is a problem of power, and if any church is based on the use of power it is the RCC. :mad:
Marykate
Not if what you’re referring to is the university of Sankore, the foundation of which is usually credited to Mansa Musa in the early fourteenth century. There had been universities in Europe since the twelfth century. The cultural achievements of medieval Timbuktu are remarkable enough without you needing to overstate them.
Uh-huh. Right. Inventing the hospital? The Chinese were much more advanced in their treatment of medicine than Western culture way before the alleged birth of the individual known as Jesus.
We only overtook them in the past 100 years or so, with the advent of antiseptic treatment.
University? Oh- you mean a method of indoctrination into “the Word”? Give me a break, please.
Bringing down the Eastern Bloc? Oh my. I seem to recall a little thing called “The Cold War”, fought by thousands of citizens from the U.S and other NATO countries (the Vatican was conspiciously absent at the Unter den Linden in Berlin, or Checkpoint Charlie, or U-2/SR-71 overflights, the Apollo program, aircraft carrier battle group forward deployments, sitting in tanks in the Fulda Gap, and a host of other measures that eventually won the Cold War).
Actually, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact collapsed of their own accord, pretty much. We just contained them until they had their own revolution again.
Saving hundreds of thousands of Jews? Excuse me? Hitler and his minions were firm believers in the Catholic/Lutheran/Christian God. Do you recall what the SS had inscribed on their daggers? “Gott Mit Uns” (God is with us). Read your history. Nothing relased by the Church, mind you- something relatively objective like William Shirer’s masterpiece “The Rise & Fall Of The Third Reich”, please. Perhaps individuals who were Catholic did save Jews- and for that, they shouldn’t be congratulated- they were only doing what any decent human being would do. Tyranny only rules when people allow it to do so.
Part of mankind’s problems that have lead to things like the Holocaust has been religious doctrinal warfare, based mostly on the belief that the Jews betrayed Jesus. All of this ridiculous suffering over two thousand years, all over a silly book written by people looking for a way to enslave their fellow man by making them feel guilty about their own existence.
Come on, people- time to wake up. The Emperor has no clothes. Do you really believe that in a Universe that is 15 billion years old (therefore 15 billion light-years across), and is composed of
countless galaxies, each of them containing billions of stars- that a capricious God really cares what you think or what happens in your life? Are you really that arrogant, to think that your existence matters that much in the grand scale of things?
Better to spend your time reveling in your own short existence,and contemplate your extremely short duration on this ball of mud that orbits a humdrum star in the middle of nowhere, in this lifetime- and let the next life, if there is one, take care of itself.
That, and leaving your fellow human alone to live their own lives as they see fit, instead of trying to convert them to your own belief system through institutions such as organized religions.
Think about it. Time is short. Live- and let live.
Bix
As a Finnish-American, I grew up hearing the tongue-in-cheek tall tales of St. Urho. For the record, St. Urho’s Day is March 16th, so I just got done celebrating his great works. The timing of the “day” is so that St. Patrick’s can be a hangover day.
Kippis!
God may be indifferent, but I am not! As moderator of this forum, I am going to ask that this thread be confined to discussions of saints, and not veer into debates about the nature of any god. Anyone wishing to respond to this post should do so in the Great Debates forum. bix777, if you wish to post any more on this theme, you should also do so in the Great Debates forum.
Actually, this is a very Finnish thing I noticed. The “Day” of whatever that is a free day, let it be May Day, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day is “reserved” for quiet and solemnity. No buses run, no shops are open. And as you can’t do anything and you don’t need to go to work, it is “hangover day” (not sure about the cause-effect cycle). However, the “Eve” of the day is for partying. People get off work early and booze up. So in Finland if you plan to celebrate a feast, remember the calendar is ‘off’ slightly.
Fine. You read yours. Hitler hated Christianity because he knew it was derived from Judaism. He was a neo-pagan. I can’t really permit that kind of misrepresenation to stand.
I have been forbidden by the moderator of this forum to discuss this issue any further in this forum- you must go to “Religion” to officially reply. Since I have stated my case conclusively with facts & data, and not opinion, there is no need to rehash this. It’s as dead as Hitler.
Therefore, I’ll ignore this …does no one read my original post, though? FACTS & DATA!!!
, you :wally
Bix
OK guys let’s keep it civil, OK?
I hate to keep on pointing you in different directions, but if you want to discuss the religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler, you should do that in Comments on Staff Reports, since there’s a Staff Report on the subject:
Was Hitler a Christian? (30-Oct-1999)
This thread should be for the discussion of Catholic saints and/or their misdeeds.