Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: cathy@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (Cathy Johnston) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: 'Veneration of the 'Saints'' Message-ID: Date: 2 Jul 90 05:31:10 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Complete Dis- Lines: 46 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article OFM writes: >>... However in my conversations with friends who grew up >>in the Catholic Church, I find that most of them believe that the >>invocation of saints had reached the point of being superstitious. >>The saints were not used as fellow Christians, appreciation of which >>deepened their prayer lives. Rather they were used as charms to help >>find lost things, protect against winter colds, etc. > ... >it is legitimate to try to set things up to minimize the likelihood of >abuse. If a practice is not esential to the Gospel, and if it tends >to be misunderstood and lead to superstition, it is reasonable for a >church to choose to give it up. This is an area in which I believe >people need to act in mutual respect. I do not condemn you for >continuing to follow your practices and attempting to do so in a pure >form. I'm simply asking you to understand that it might seem to >others that it was wiser to give up the practices completely... --clh] One more fact which ought to be pointed out is that elaborate veneration of saints is a practice of a portion of the Catholic church which is, by and large, poor, female, ethnic and not well educated. Within the Catholic church, criticism of veneration of saints is often couched in racist, sexist and elitist terms, and even defense of these practices comes from those who do not practice them and who couch their defense in terms of patronizing superiority. Neither side of the argument has actually ever sent a letter to the National Shrine of St. Jude, or walked ten miles in procession to a saint's shrine on that saint's feast day. Few people actually seem to ask these folks what *they* think they are doing, and it's not clear that there is enough shared vocabulary to communicate even if they were to ask. So what we have here is a practice (criticizing other people's pieties) which inside the Catholic church is closely associated with the sins of racism and sexism and general lack of Christian charity. The first time this was pointed out to me, I must say that it certainly pricked *my* conscience! Which really does explain pretty well why the whole topic makes me very uncomfortable... Just one more perspective... -- Cathy Johnston cathy@gargoyle.uchicago.edu cathy@gargoyle.uchicago.bitnet "If this is the way you treat your friends, Lord, no *wonder* you have so few of them!" -- St. Theresa of Avila (after her mule had just dumped her uncermoniously in a river they were crossing)