Monday 18 October 2010

Saints, and scholars—and maybe a pagan or seven

So Australian Mary MacKillop has been declared a “saint” by the Pope in Rome for her “submission to the will of God.”  [VIDEO]

A farce built on a fatuity. A submission of a self to a shaggy dog story.  A veneration of nonsense over fact, and of sacrifice over self-interest.

Every time I hear of someone being declared a “saint” I think “how stupid”—since every saint must be recorded has having committed two “miracles,” a fatuous fiction that the “saint”  has the ability (somehow) to suspend or to alter the laws of reality.

I think “how wrong”—how wrong that the only life one human being will ever have has been devoted to denying their chance at happiness on this earth in the vague hope of buying themselves some happiness in another.

And I wonder “by what authority?”—since neither Jesus nor any of his disciples ever mentioned “sainthood” at all.

Which is why, at the same time, I smile quietly to myself. I smile quietly to myself because the whole institution of “sainthood” is just a throwback to the very pagan religions that Christianity claims to have usurped, and to the very idols the pagans worshipped.

Every new saint is a victory for the pagans.

You see, rather than force the good pagan folk of two-thousand years ago to abandon their golden calves, statues of Horus and keepsakes of Venus (as the rules of new religion actually demanded), the second and third century Christians instead began designating “saints” to supplant them all, which in some cases meant building new churches over the very sites the pagans venerated (S. Maria Maggiore, on the site of a temple to the goddess Cybele, is one celebrated example), inventing Christian holidays to supplant the time-honoured pagan ones (an abstemious Christmas most-famously taking over from the far more salacious Saturnalia), and in virtually every case it meant slicing body parts off the new saints to perform the same tasks a superstitious pagan’s rabbit’s foot was called to do.

As barbarous as it was nonsensical.

A “saint” makes about as much sense now as a rabbit’s foot or a horoscope ever did. Which is why the celebrations for this new “saint”—like the celebrations of every “saint”—are as farcical as celebrating the purchase of a new good luck charm.

10 comments:

Blair said...

I don't think you'd find many protestants disagreeing with most of what you have just written :-)

Anonymous said...

more pure fiction

keep it up PC, there's a harry potter in you yet...

chrisp1968

Lucia Maria said...

PC,

Sainthood is merely the public declaration that a person achieved perfection on earth, while they were still alive. This perfection guarantees that they are in Heaven. Their intercession (thus the miracles) proves they are in Heaven.

Jesus did mention sainthood when He said that we are to perfect, just like His Father in Heaven is perfect. Sainthood is perfection. There are many saints who will never be recognised as such, but those that are give hope that such perfection is possible.

Simon said...

It's idolatry. Another rotten Roman Catholic, unbiblical practice, like a celibate priesthood.

God gave us free will, and we shall be saved through faith alone.

If I were perfect, I would be God, too - omnipotent and omnicomptetent. That is a blasphemy.

Anonymous said...

T'is all relative...if I remember correctly you were slavishly salivating over meeting Yaron Brook recently, to the extent of publishing a photograph of yourself with your subject of adulation.
Let these Catholics have their fun also............
Bez

Libertyscott said...

It is as ludicrous as modern day personality cults.

Take Saint Isidore of Seville, one of his contributions was to lead the Fourth Council of Toledo which decided on the forced removal of Jewish children from their parents.

Perfection.

Miracles = manufactured propaganda.
Like the fictional miracle of Agnes Bojaxhiu who "cured" a "tumour", when it was neither a tumour nor cured by her (says a doctor who treated the woman concerned).

A miracle will be when god can inflict a heart attack or intervene every time a priest or nun is about to sexually or violent abuse a child.

However, given said god couldn't even strike down the popes of some years ago who excelled in torture, rape and sadism, it's a wonder how catholics can maintain sanity given the chronic contradictions.

Anonymous said...

That's why its called a "faith" Liberty. It transcends and overrides what one can objectively know. That's also why prove positive of its contradictions will never convince the true faithful, although I do believe there are gradients in levels of skepticism with the church itself, whereby some simply accept an amount of obvious BS as a "trade-off" for the perceived positives.
Bez

Canterbury Atheists said...

Good summary PC on this primitive self-delusional ceremony. Why don’t they just get naked and dance around baying to the moon chanting? Open-up an animal and splay its intestines to read the future? Or say drink blood? Oh that’s right, sorry guys, Christians already drink the blood and eat the body of their zombie god, don’t they? Why the media gives this saint-crap any more coverage and credibility than an East African Witch-Doctor throwing bones on the ground is beyond me.

Cheers.

Paul

Canterbury Atheists said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Simon said...

Mark McKillop was excommunicated because she discovered children were being abused by a priest and went public, according to an ABC programme.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/25/3021772.htm

Some groups are now calling for McKillop to be made the patron Saint for the sexually abused.