The Vatican is champing at the bit to turn Pope John Paul II into a saint, and central to their case is the story of Jory Aebly. Aebly was a young man who was mugged, shot in the head, and expected to die…but he recovered, fortunately. What’s the connection to a dead pope? Well, there isn’t much of one. In the hospital, he was given a rosary that had supposedly been blessed by the pope, and his religious family now credits John Paul II for his recovery. Never mind that the pope had been dead for four years.
What also isn’t mentioned is that Aebly’s friend, Jeremy Pechanec, who was also mugged and shot, died of his injuries. Was he an atheist or something? Does the pope’s magic only extend to people who hold this one particular rosary?
Why isn’t this magic rosary being used regularly for all brain injury victims in the hospital right now? Sometimes people can recover from horrific injuries, so one case isn’t at all persuasive…now if the hospital were slapping the super-duper magic beads into every victim’s hands as they were being rushed through the emergency room door, and they were all getting better, then I’d say there is something worth investigating going on.
I also want to know how many other people the hospital chaplain used his ju-ju beads on, and how many of them died. You’d think he’d be bragging a lot more about his success rate if they worked, but all we hear about is this one incredibly lucky fellow.
This is the world of Catholicism, though. Reason has no role in it, sense doesn’t matter, and statistics? What’s that? Dead man’s beads are going to get the credit, but not the surgery and care that contributed more to the recovery than superstition.
Clearly the beads are magical.
I hate stories like this for this simple reason, it takes away from the skills, knowledge and care of the medical personal who works with the grievously injured.
Does the majick bead have FDA approval? Has it been subjected to clinical trials and double blind tests etc? If not then surely someone has broken the law by administering unlicenced medication to a patient?
Book ’em, Danno! :-)
And if next year they’re diagnosed with colon cancer, well, you know where you can stick those beads.
Don’t ya know some twit will come out in all seriousness and say the doctor’s were merely the “hands of God”. So maybe the magic bauble was a targeting device so God could figure out where to operate.
Duh, it’s a one shot rosary, saves one person and that’s it, everyone knows this :o)
And why do I keep capitalizing “god”? Is that proper English or a hangover from my bible thumping days?
So, you ought to wonder what the present pope is doing now. Why doesn’t the present pope do more of this going to hospitals and handing magic rosaries to people, rather than wasting his time railing against condom usage in Africa?
@#7 Jimmy
“And why do I keep capitalizing ‘god’? Is that proper English or a hangover from my bible thumping days?”
It is proper English if you are supposedly somebody who believes in this universal fairy, but not if you do not believe.
Every day is April Fools Day in Vatican City.
Well, anyways, perhaps the present pope is not doing this because he is supposedly not “holy” enough, and that god at random will decides when people are holy enough to save others. That’s right, completely random. This is what you call medieval medicine.
It’s just English. You’re using it as a proper noun in that context.
No, that would be if you were still capitalizing “he” and “him” when discussing the Christian deity.
According to The Rules, someone can only be canonized as a Saint if they can be successfully accused to committing two miracles (one miracle is required to become “beatified,” i.e., an apprentice saint, another miracle is needed to be certified as an honest to god saint). Nowadays miracles are almost always miraculous cures, as these are the easiest to establish based on the Catholic Church’s requirements for a “miracle.”
To be a genuine miraculous cure, the following has to happen: The patient was sick, there was no known cure for the ailment, prayers were directed to the person nominated for beatification or sainthood, the patient was cured, the cure was spontaneous, instantaneous, complete and lasting, and doctors cannot find any natural explanation.
I think the question to ask is, how many prized family cows he traded for his magic beads?
I once gave a friend who was going climbing in patagonia a “lucky” piton. He fell and broke his leg but survived a long evac and hypothermia.
I should be sainted. I mean if it wasn’t for me he would have died.
The surgeons were merely using their god given talents( and years of work, study and money)
The beads were the real thing straight from god to his viceroy to healing.
Wonder why a Host wouldn’t heal since that is the very flesh of Christ?
I assume you must have read the book ‘In God’s Name. an investigation into the murder of John Paul !. I’d love to see your comments on it.
The church is searching for relevance – healing people gives them this and keeps them in a positive spotlight. Better than having to deal with all those diddling lawsuits and Nazi propaganda!
The doctors who saved the patient should file a lawsuit for slander – the church is implying they did not do their job and the patient had to turn to alternative means. (I’m only half-joking)
Well you know that parts of an Israeli astronauts diary survived the shuttle disaster. That’s a miracle too.
HIS DIARY SURVIVED. IT’S A BONA FIDE MIRACLE1
1 never mind he and the others died
Chimpy, give me a minute to find my magic paddle and I’ll
spanksaint you… :D@Jimmy #7
definitely a hangover from the bible days, although the xtians would have you believe that “it’s a sign!” Yeah, it’s a sign alright…that you were brainwashed at some point.
Oh spankings!!
Standard operating procedure, PZ. When the Vatican opens a file for the “cause” of canonization of a deceased Catholic, the advocates of the purported saint begin to collect examples of “miracles” to attribute to the intervention of their dead candidate. These days it seems the “miracles” are always medical in nature, consisting of spontaneous remission of cancers or other cases of unlikely survival in the face of severe health issues. Unfortunately, we never seem to get anything really sexy, like the regrowth of a lost limb. That would be cool. No, it’s always “He/she got better although the doctors said he/she was going to die.” Miracle!
I’ll tell you what is unusual, though. The Vatican used to be pretty laid back about canonizations, allowing the causes of various candidates to linger for decades. If one forgets for the moment that it’s all a game of pretend, however sincere in most cases, such a leisurely approach makes sense. After all, it’s not as though someone in heaven is going to have his eternal reward revoked. You’ve got plenty of time to study the issue. John Paul II, however, discovered the usefulness of canonizing people by the boatload, timing the announcements to coincide with his many overseas trips. Wild celebrations would therefore attend his visits as the pope got to join in as people delighted in the honor bestowed on their new local saints. JP II also sped up the process and reduced the number of miracles necessary to clinch the sainthood, making it all much more efficient (and less likely to stall). Mother Teresa is one of the fast-track saints, as JP II himself now is. Soon street vendors in St. Peter’s Square may be hawking discount halos for the tourist trade, in cheerful emulation of the late pope.
Ha! Excellent response Zeno.
“It’s hard to say what will emerge as his most predominant virtue,” said Szoka. “What will emerge is how outstanding he has been in all these virtues to a very, very exceptional degree. All those things together convince me that he is a saint.”
He did so much for women’s equality. And gays. And Pinochet!
Yes, it is fitting that he is honored by his own for perpetuating the orthodox and bigoted attitudes they adore.
PZ–
“I also want to know how many other people the hospital chaplain used his ju-ju beads on, and how many of them died. You’d think he’d be bragging a lot more about his success rate if they worked, but all we hear about is this one incredibly lucky fellow.”
This is an example of the rational, logical mind at work, using a consistent method to determine truth. But religious faith often rests on what amounts to worshiping consequentialism. The outcome matters more than the process.
Believing what is true is good. Therefore, If you believe something is true when there is no good reason to believe it is true — and you are right — then you have done something very, very virtuous. You have performed a great feat of moral strength.
Ask children if Jack was right to trade his cow for magic beans just because someone told him they were magic, and the overwhelming response is yes. But ask them if he would have been right to make that same trade if it turned out that the man was lying after all, and they say no. Right and wrong decision-making all comes down to whether Jack gets the right answer. Not whether he has a reasonable warrant for making the decision he does, but whether he wins.
That’s one thing that always bugs me about this eagerness on the part of so many religious people to jump to conclusions that this person, on this matter, who was holding this magic charm, received a miracle. The proper answer we arrive at through reason is some combination of chance and unknown circumstances. We only have just warrant for saying “I don’t know.”
But God presumably doesn’t want that kind of caution. No, throw it all to the winds, because if you are right, then you did the right thing. It had to be a miracle! You saw God’s mysterious fingerprint on some random event. Children.
I nominate a banana peel as a saint.
There it was on the sidewalk, hunkered down, waiting.
I could have stepped on it and fallen and cracked my head.
I would have bled to death or my brain could have swelled and I could have died that way.
But none of that happened. I saw the banana peel and picked it up and tossed it in the trash. Therefore the banana peel must be a saint.
That makes as much sense and the pope story.
Father Guido Sarducci on Sainthood:
[ smoking cigarette ] Thank-a you, thank-a you. Most-a people are very aware that-a Saint Patrick is-a the patron Saint of-a Ireland. He lived around-a the year 400, 500, right in-a there. Most people-a know him because-a they think that he chased-a the snakes from-a Ireland. But actually, that’s not-a the truth. Really, he didn’t-a chase them, he kind of-a led them. He was-a kind like a pied piper for snakes. I don’t know, it was-a just something about him that snakes liked-a to follow him around, you know. And-a you may think-a that snakes go very fast and they do if they’re just going short distances. But, like-a, when they’re on a long journey, they go very, very slowly. And-a Saint Patrick, he had-a to walk-a very, very slow, and all of the snakes followed him, and then he tricked them. He went into the ocean, and they all followed him, and he went way, way out, and he waited till they all drowned, and then heswam back in. That’s-a what he did.
You see, he was a good-a saint. But he wasn’t a great-a saint. Like-a Saint Joseph, the patron saint of Italy. He’s a great-a saint and not just a good-a saint. You know, Saint Joseph’s named day is-a coming up-March 19th, only two days away. But-a, there won’t-a be no parades, no parties, not even a song for Saint-a Joseph. And-a the reason is-a because of-a Saint Patrick. You know, it’s just like having a birthday two days after Christmas-you just don’t get-a the same attention, you know. And it just-a breaks my heart that he was a great-a saint, and this good, mediocre saint gets all-a the glory.
You know, you don’t have-a a patron saint for the United States, but there are some American saints. Just the last couple of years they made-a some. The first was-a about-a two years ago. Her name was-a Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. Mother Seton-is-a what they call her. And she’s got-a these nuns of her own order who lobby-they’re real heavy-they came to Rome and everything. And it’s amazing, you see. To be made a saint in-a the catholic church, you have to have-a four miracles. That’s-a the rules, you know. It’s-a always been that-a. Four miracles, and-a to prove it. Well, this-a Mother Seton-now they could only prove-a three miracles. But the Pope-he just waved the fourth one. He just waved it! And do you know why? It’s-a because she was American. It’s all-a politics. We got-a some Italian-a people, they got-a forty, fifty, sixty miracles to their name. They can’t-a get in just cause they say there’s already too many Italian saints, and this woman comes along with-a three lousy miracles. I understand that-a two of them was-a card tricks. Next thing you know, they’re gonna be making Kreskin a saint. Saint Kreskin-they’ll probably call him. It’s a good one.
Well, I’m-a very happy to announce that-a next time you see me, I’m-a gonna be monsegnior. That’s right. I was-a promoted. (audience applauds) Thank-a you, yes, thank-a you. Actually it’s not until next week that-a they sign-a the papers, but nothing can-a stop me now, and I’m-a real excited getting the new costume, everything, you know. When you’re monsegnior, you get to have a nice-a red stripe, (points to his right sleeve) and they say that-a nothing brings out the good veal in Italian restaurants than that-a red stripe, you know. I’m-a really looking forward to it. I just wish I was-a feeling better. Last night I got-a this-a tattoo (scratches left sleeve) and it’s-a really been itching me. I have a little fever, and-a I hope I feel better by the ceremonies.
All that crap about miracles. It reminds me the idea of miracles El Perich had.
I wonder, what is the stance of the Vatican on miracles in the first place?
These magic beads sound wonderful. Did he have to lift up his shirt to get them?
Oh, PZ, you and your silly reason, and logic, and demands for evidence. You’ve got to have FAITH!
*shoots self in the head for saying that*
Find-a the popes in-a the pizza.
Classic.
Most people think, the catholic church is a religious institute. In reality, it’s a corporation and it’s product is called faith. Nothing sells as good as false hopes and it’s cheap to produce.
When it comes to saints, the catholic church realized very early, that there is big money to be made from them, you just need to create them in moderation and in order to do so, the rules state, that the saint to be must work at least two post hum miracles.
The process goes something like this: A diocese finds amidst itself a very charismatic person, which is already venerated and considered a saint while being alive. Once s/he dies, they can ask the pope, if he could confirm everybody’s feelings and of course he can, after a few criteria are met. These include the aforementioned two miracles as well as paying about 250k to cover the costs for the bureaucratic process involved. After the the diocese gets their certificate of authenticity, they chop up the corpse and reclaim their costs by peddling the parts to people who need relics to worship (well, at least thats what it used to be).
So it’s a win-win for everyone. Vatican gets money, Diocese gets money, worshipers get brains (well … sort off, more likely strands of hair, but you get the idea).
Cheap Saints = punk band.
I suspect that my own future canonization will be based principally on the vast numbers of lives I’ve saved by my continuing battle with killer pine cones. I presume that my holiness will be so evident that small inconveniences (like my nonbelief) will be overlooked. And assuming, too, that the Vatican investigation doesn’t determine that I was accidentally a mass murderer rather than a heroic rescuer (but I hate to think that the pine cones have been outsmarting me).
So how many amputees have those beads healed? Yeah, I thought so.
#25:
“It’s hard to say what will emerge as his most predominant virtue,” said Szoka. “What will emerge is how outstanding he has been in all these virtues to a very, very exceptional degree. All those things together convince me that he is a saint.”
He did so much for women’s equality. And gays. And Pinochet!
Yes, it is fitting that he is honored by his own for perpetuating the orthodox and bigoted attitudes they adore.
—
Yep, not to mention stamping out liberation theology in Latin America while pretending to care about the poor. Look at the way he treated Archbishop Romero of El Salvador (one of the few prominent members of the Catholic hierarchy that I have ever had any respect for at all), snubbing him in this life and attempting to sabotage his canonization: http://jp2m.blogspot.com/2006/11/john-paul-ii-and-oscar-arnulfo-romero.html .
Saints (Early in their career.)=Punk band
Throw Jack’s magic beads out the window…. beadstalk to heaven.
If only victim #2 had been wearing an amulet of +2 mage armor.
Zeno: JP II did more than that to speed up canonizations. In particular, they Undergot rid of the most skeptical job in the Catholic system, the advocatus diaboli. “His duty requires him to prepare in writing all possible arguments, even at times seemingly slight, against the raising of any one to the honours of the altar.” It’s kind of sad that they’d leave the job to us.
ER admitting nurse to patient on gurney: “Religion?”
Patient: “Catholic”
Nurse: “Well, that looks like a nasty compounded fracture you have there. Here – hold these and we’ll wheel you back out into the parking lot and you can pray. Next!”
Next Patient: “Atheist!”
America,
You’re wasting money on sending christians in hospitals. Let them heal themselves . Try to cure only the non bielievers. It should be cheaper .
Check this out: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-487764/Is-Pope-John-Paul-II-waving-grave–Vatican-TV-director-says-yes.html
:(
A few potential saints seem well aware of the hierarchy’s tendency to dig up and chop up. John Henry Newman was a prominent 19th century Anglican convert to the Roman church though he tended to annoy the hierarchy irregardless of which one he was in. For his burial he requested he buried in the same grave as his close friend, Ambrose St. John, who had predeceased him, and that they never be separated.
There has been a major movement to make him a saint and last year after much arguing permission was granted to dig up the grave and remove Newman’s body (but not Ambrose St. John’s). It appears Newman had the last word, he had been buried in a wooden coffin and it and him had completely decomposed and mingled with Ambrose St. John’s body.
Let’s all answer this in unison.
1…
2…
3…
Because God works in mysterious ways.
The reason for making JP2 a saint is the same one for making Maw Theresa one. They were both very popular with the Catholic hordes. So to satisfy the tithers it has become necessary to twist whatever “evidence” can be found to make these two overrated sexaphobes meet the criteria.
Basically the whole thing is so arbitrary I’ve decided to make myself a saint. My miracles? That I’ve made it through days of work without snapping and I’ve never walked up to a priest and told him what I thought of his cult. That’s good enough for me, and so I am now Saint Tabby Lavalamp.
There is one positive thing that could be seen here. After Karol died, there has been a movement to refer to him as “John Paul the Great”. At least “St. John Paul” or “St. Karol” is less stomach-churning.
#’s 12 and 9, according to the AP (associated press) stylebook you capitalize “God” in references to the deity of all monotheistic religions and lowercase deities of polytheistic religions.
You also capitalize noun references (Holy Spirit) but lowercase personal pronoun references (he, him).
Sorry for the double post. PZ, pleas remove one and this note.
Oh come on, people. You all keep scorning the idea of saints. But what about St. Ungo?
iforgot @ #44,
That’s not the pope in the fire. Obviously it’s Bozo the Clown, sideways, from just below the shoulders up. You can see his red rubber nose and fringy hair.
Oh wait…are Bozo and the Pope the same person? Did they ever appear in the same room together?
Centuries in several cases. I think there are people who were canonized after 1000 years or more.
:-D :-D :-D
Nope. Bone fragments.
What? I thought martyrs were automatically considered saints?
:-o
So they abolished that job a year after I was born? Why did neither I nor my religion teacher in school know about that? WTF? … Wikipedia sort of confirms, though it says “reformed” rather than “abolished”.
Here’s what they do: they manufacture piles and piles of cheap rosaries, like Mardi Gras beads, and the Pope comes by and “blesses” them all. This consists literally of hand-waving, making the sign of the cross in the air in their general vicinity.
Thus are Pope-blessed rosaries mass-produced. Anybody who gets within spitting distance of the Vatican gets one. They’re common as dirt.
If they had magical healing powers, there would be a gazillion miraculous catlicks leaping around wherever you looked.
AdamK (#54) – I haven’t been to Mardi Gras, but from people who have been (at least, my male friends), the beads do seem to be a blessing. I hear the healing power works on a body part normally heard about on late night infomercials. Maybe the Pope and that Enzyte Bob fella went to the same high school or something.
That said, I do love the not-so-hidden polytheism of the Catholics.
Hopefully this nonsense will be publicised more. It should help in the decline of the RC church, as people see what a pile of cr*p its theology is.
He can be the saint of random luck.
<>
Not to apologize for all the sainthood silliness, but I believe that making miracles after death (“by intercession”, that is) is a requirement for Catholic sainthood these days.
If anything, therefore, that would strengthen the case for beatification.
Cleveland’s only major newspaper, The Plain Dealer, actually published this crap on the FRONT PAGE under the head, “Was shooting victim’s recovery a miracle?” The first full paragraph begins “Jory Aebly’s MIRACULOUS (my emphasis) recovery from an execution-style gunshot to the head bolsters Pope John Paul II’s case for sainthood.” No “alleged,” no “claimed,” no “maintained.” No caveat of any kind. And according to the whack-job chaplain, John Paul had given him a dozen blessed rosaries and the one he gave Aebly was–are you ready?–THE LAST ONE!!!!!!! Obviously the one with the most mojo. No word in the article on the efficacy of the previous 11.
Oh joy. It’s gonna be mother Teresa all over again. Maybe the surgeon should sue the Catholic church for libel.
Maybe magic beads are like stinky cheese, getting stronger the longer they sit.
can no longer resist — bad joke bursts from typing fingers
Did you hear about JPII’s first miracle?
He made a blind man lame.
Even while the previous pope was alive I had been telling people “It’s not long now ’til they make Hitler a saint.” It seems that as the church becomes more desperate for attention, saints proliferate. It can’t take much to become a saint though; after all such abominiable beasts such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas had been made saints. I never could understand why Aquinas had been made a saint – perhaps his ineffable twaddle in his Summa Theologica and other works was a miraculous triumph of stupidity over reason?
A cheap sainthood would be most appropriate for JP2 (or as I preferred to call him, “George Ringo”), in that he sanctified more people than all the popes of the last five centuries put together, thus inflating that currency to near worthlessness.
bristol foster @ # 17: … the book ‘In God’s Name. an investigation into the murder of John Paul !
I read that well over a decade ago, and thought it was intriguing but weak, depending on circumstantial evidence and not following up on obvious questions it raised. (Short version: Bishop Paul Marcinkus & other traditionalists concerned that the new pope might intend to reverse Paul VI’s anti-contraception decrees & investigate Vatican bank scandals had motive and opportunity to poison him.)
While not persuasive in itself, Yallop’s book led me to read two other accounts of JP1’s death, whose titles I don’t recall at the moment. One backed up the Vatican’s account of death by natural causes, the other pushed the case that the former Patriarch of Venice, overwhelmed by his new position, mixed up his prescribed medications and in effect committed suicide.
Feeling a milder version of the same dizziness that strikes whenever trying to dig into the infinite madhouse of Kennedy assassination studies, I switched to reading on other subjects.
Heck, I’d like to know why Pope John Paul II is dead. Why couldn’t his magic powers have kept himself alive, if he was so saintly, you know, in order to bless thousands more rosaries and even underwear to help more people to stay alive?
There he is on the front, and then he runs away deserting all those needy people who really really really NEED to live longer.
And by the way, if he was so saintly and invested with such powers, why didn’t he bless the whole goddamned world before he took off?
Wouldn’t that have made a difference?
The ways of God are mysterious, however, but I still wonder why, if the frackin’ cracker is the embodiment of a real being, why they haven’t givin those chips saint status yet.
“Saint Cracker”…sounds just right.
So it’s an act of god when someone survives a shot to the head that should otherwise have killed them? I guess that means that the Brazilian diver who recently survived a spear to the head was saved by god and not the surgeons who removed the spear, and I guess the same goes for Phineas Gage.
“God” just happens the name of this particular god, so it’s capitalised – like all proper nouns. For example, that worm the other day was called “Barry” (not “barry”). Other gods have other names, which are also capitalised. For example, it’s “Dea Cloacina” (not “dea cloacina”). You couldn’t write “loki”, or “wotan”, or “aphrodite”, or “zeus”, or “baal”, or “moloch”, or “kali”, or “sol invictus”, or “pallas athena”, or “the great juju at the bottom of the sea”, or “he whose nail-parings grant an eternity of orgasms (but only one a week)”. Why discriminate against the Christian god, God? I’m Very Concerned about such a suggestion. It Gives Resonance to a False Narrative.
I’m kind of rooting for the old guy to get sainted, bogus miracles and all. He certainly deserves it more than say the creepy Opus Dei founder, or that hypocrite Mother Teresa.
Jimmy #7,
I think capitalizing “God” is “proper” English, and in Spanish it certainly is proper (there is actually a “Royal” Academy that dictates Spanish rules) to capitalize “Dios”. I don’t do it though, just because it’s so funny when you don’t do it and some religious numbnuts complains that you didn’t. Happened to me in other unrelated forums (photography and other stuff).
Has anyone even bothered to deny anything on Hitchens’ book? I mean, I’ve heard him being accused that he had no references, but I haven’t seen anyone even try to deny his very specific claims. I wonder…
The Surgeon’s lament comes to mind.
“When the patient lives, God did it, and when the patient dies I did it. ”
just a bit of trivia…
To be a saint.. you need a miracle while you are alive, and another after you are dead…
Traditionally it was required about 70 years to declare someone a saint, but John Paul II create a “fastrack” procedure, so the vatican became a factory of saints.
1380 beatified and 500 saints.
that included in Mexico Saint “Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin”, whom there is no evidence he existed…
and the creator of the “opus Dei”… Escriba de Balaguer
the new pope had promised to make harder to became a saint… but today saint have a political use.
Many mexicans were bought with the idea of the first native american saint..
I hope the Devil’s Advocate (a real job in these cases IIRC) calls in a decent statistician to school them. Of course the DA is priest so maybe not that much hope. Also if “This could easily just be a coincidence” was enough to rule out a miracle they wouldn’t canonize anyone. So I guess this will count as miracle.
Russell Blackford@67 nails the capitalisation thing. It’s like a man being called Mr. Man.
AdamK,
While that is true, the “Pope-blessed” rosaries fetch a higher price at the Vatican. I was there a few years ago and picked up some of the non-magical variety for my Catholic mother.
For anyone interested the Catholic Church’s rules on sainthood are pretty entertaining.
#70:
Posted by: SteveL | April 4, 2009 11:47 PM
[…] or that hypocrite Mother Teresa.
Has anyone even bothered to deny anything on Hitchens’ book? I mean, I’ve heard him being accused that he had no references, but I haven’t seen anyone even try to deny his very specific claims. I wonder…
—
I haven’t seen anything, at least anything convincing, to refute Hitchens, but saying something negative about Mother Teresa around most people–even those who are not particularly religious–is akin to saying that your profession is Nazi medical experimenter and your hobby is skinning puppies. They are so horrified at the mere through of it that any further conversation (let alone convincing them) s all but impossible.
Even better than Hitchens’ book, I think, is Mother Teresa, The Final Verdict, by Aroup Chatterjee. He is a Calcutta born physician, educated in England, who devoted a lot of time and attention to the subject. it contains many direct observations made by the author, plus well-documented material from other sources. You can read several chapters and order it at http://www.meteorbooks.com/introduction.html .
#67, true but it is the “god” of mischief, Loki and “God” of man, Jesus.
“God” in referring to a monotheistic religion is capitalized. “God” in referring to polytheistic gods is lowercase.
I don’t make the rules, the AP does.
Hmm…I saw a patient a few months ago with metastatic cancer of a type that is usually resistant to chemotherapy. I gave him some chemotherapy of the “best guess” variety and the metastatic disease disappeared, allowing the surgeons to go in for the primary in what may be a curative surgery (I’ll get back to you in 5 years about whether it was or not.) Anyone want to nominate me for sainthood? Never mind all those times that it didn’t work…
I would say capitalize “God” when it’s a name, but not when it’s a description. But then I’ve grown to be pretty casual about capitalization, so I’m not one to speak.
“God” isn’t the proper name of the judeochristian diety at all. His proper name is secret and holy (woooooo!) It’s Yahweh or something similar. The tetragrammaton is the closest thing you can get to it: IHVH. The vowels are secret. (“Jehovah” uses fake vowels, misplaced from “Elohim.”)
“God” is a descriptive noun. I see no reason to capitalize the descriptive term for this particular fictional character. That’s like calling Gandalf “Wizard.” It just seems stupid to me.
As if my dog were so special no one could know his name, so everyone was instructed to call him “Dog.”
A presbyterian minister I knew always called the pope J2P2. EWTN–the catholic satellite propaganda machine is already referring to the dead pope as John Paul the Great. EWTN’s founder Mother Angelica is probably next in line if only she would fucking die.
One thing you have to keep in mind is that the relation between most non-Catholic churches and the Holy Father is somewhat like that between Canada and the USA. Sure, they speak the same language and share a close history, those war things are a thing of the past, and most outsiders can’t tell their accents apart without help, but you just try confusing a Canadian with their bigger, richer, more populous neighbours.
The biggest problem Protestants have had with Catholicism from Martin Luther to present day American evangelicals is just this kind of “Idolatry.” For a deity who said “Thou shalt have no other god but me” and warned specifically against graven idols, the Catholics spend a lot of time directing their prayers to saints, the Virgin Mary, beads, relics and magic wafers.
The Catholics are running into a problem with Saints. Once upon a time it was pretty easy to claim that a few hundred people saw someone walk through a fire unscathed through the power of prayer. All it took was a century or so of hearsay and exaggeration and sufficient will to believe. Now we have a much higher standard of proof and the time-line for beatification has been shrunk too far to allow such rumours to gain a foothold.
As a result the saints of today, with their rosary-fueled healings, are so much less impressive than those of yesteryear. It’s like God is getting stingy in his old age, like that grandpa who clams up at the end of the meal in the hope someone else volunteers to foot the bill.
> As if my dog were so special no one could know his name, so everyone was instructed to call him “Dog.”
Sometimes that happens. We’ve had one cat called “Kitty. He had another name but nobody bothered with it so that’s what stuck.
I’m all for sainthood – Let’s make him the patron saint of pedophiles everywhere.
In the Catholic Church, you capitalize God or thwack!
(The nun has a ruler.)
At one time canonization was not a process done in Rome at the Vatican, but instead the people who had known and loved the holy persons pronounced them saints…. and that is how it should be … Archbishop Romero is considered a saint among the Salvadoreans and he was definitely a martyr who spoke out for the poor and oppressed .. In reforming the Church, I would not dream of taking the sainthood away from Romero …
I love the concept of saints .. I have a bunch of favorites whom I refer to as my friends in high places…. Saint Joseph, the man who taught Jesus to be a feminist. Mary, the mother of Jesus who called for God to pull down the rich and lift up the poor… and several others, some not recognized formally by the Church…like Dorothy Day, but holy people .. and when I pray to them for help and guidance, I learn wonderful things … like the fact that as a Christian I am to work for a just and peaceful world if I want to be like Jesus
And non believers should canonize Mother Angelica…she has driven so many Catholics crazy! We can’t stand her!