david

Although they aren't saints, I'm also reminded of my absolute Most Favorite Ever relic, and by far one of the weirdest, seen in Munich some years back. Three quite dead, mummified infants in an elaborate jeweled reliquary, reputedly three of the Innocents murdered on the command of King Herod in his pursuit of the infant Jesus.

It's kind of funny, in a morbid sort of way. Insofar as three dead babies in a box can actually *be* funny, I guess.

You can add lots of points for "Whose writings are still in print."

Pamela

-ed g.

James: also SS. Adrian of Canterbury, Agnes of Montepulciano, Andrew Bobola, Angela Merici, Anthony of Padua (tongue only), Antonio Maria Zaccaria, Athanasia of Aegina, Benedict the Black, Benezet, Catherine Laboure, Catherine of Bologna, Catherine of Siena, Cecilia, Clare of Montefalco, Colman of Stockerau, Crispin of Viterbo, Cuthbert, Edward the Confessor, Ethelburga, Eustochia Calafato, Ferdinand III of Castille, Frances Xavier Cabrini, Francis of Paola, Fursey, Gabriel Gowdel, Germaine Cousin, James Oldo, Jodocus, John Bosco, John Climacus, John Mary Vianney, John Neumann, John of Damascus, John of Shanghai & San Francisco, John of Tobolsk, John XXIII, Josaphat, Margaret Mary Alacoque, Maria Gabriella, Maria Mazzarello, Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, Miguel Febres Cordero Muf1oz, Mother Mary Magdalena Bentivoglio, Nazarien, Olga, Ollegarius, Paula Frassinetti, Peregrine Laziosi, Petca Parasceva, Peter Baptist, Petronilla, Philip of Moscow, Rita of Cascia, Romuald, Silvan, Sperandea, Spyridon, Stanislaus Kostka, Sunniva, Teresa Margaret Redi, Teresa of Avila, Ursula Ledochowska, Vincent de Paul, and Waltheof of Melrose.

(Not a complete list.)

I also found claims on two websites that Medgar Evers' remains are incorrupt.

MKK

I recall reading that the beautiful Hagia Sophia church is built on the site of an old temple of Athena.

More mods:

+1 if for each head-relic you have for the Saint.

+2 for burning a Mexican devotional candle.

+1 for having the Saint's bobblehead figure on hand.

Hard Pressed, St. Columba is as real as any early Irish saint could be. Also, it seems to me that kids growing up in an area dedicated to some deity are not unlikely to be given names related to it.

What I like about your theory is that it suggests that the Satmar Hasids were originally Marian Catholics.

And IRT fantastic acts attributed to the person, that presents an interesting conundrum when faced with the histories of St. Patrick. His life became wilder and wilder as time progressed. The snake story didn't even turn up in his hagiography for at least six centuries after the ascribed date of his Confessio. To be sure, the earliest versions of his life story include some interesting miracles, but they just got more ostentatious as the Irish Church grew larger and more connected with the rest of Europe.

Then again, what about female saints whose origin allegedly reflects confusion over the gender of images of Jesus? (Not golden legend, but virginal Uncumber grew a beard to repel unwanted suitors)

My handy Ordnance Survey Guide to Where to Get Killed in British History calls the battle "Maserfelth," but I suspect that is cognate with "field." On the other hand, reading the accounts of the period does leave one with a surfeit of curious endings and consonants in general.

Oops, there we go again. "And IRT fantastic acts attributed to the person . . ." Like, causing the air conditioning to be miraculously restored, or locusts scourging the guy who is holding the doors open? And where do the BMT and IND stand in this, not to mention the apocryphal K line?

Is that about right, Teresa Barbara?

She married twice, first to Fracan, a cousin of King Cado of Dumnonia, by whom she was mother of the triplet Saints Wethnoc, Iacob and Winwaloe. Hence the reason for her being born with three breasts was revealed. Together they crossed the Channel to escape a pestilence that was ravaging the Dumnonian countryside, and settled at PlouFracan in Domnone9e. Gwen later bore Fracan a daughter,Chreirbia.

After Fracan's death, Gwen married Eneas Ledewig (the Letavian) and becamethe mother of St.Cadfan. Gwen was twice kidnapped by Anglo- Saxon pirates and carried off toEngland. Each time, however, she escaped by walking back across the Channel to Brittany.

In the twilight of her life, she retired to Whitchurch Canonicorum (Dorset) in Eastern Dumnonia. Here she lived for many years in her small hermitage,before the Saxons had their revenge at last, ransacked her home and murdered her. St.Wite's shrine remains there still in the church built over her grave. It was one of only two in the whole of Britain to survive the Reformation.

St.Gwen Teirbron (Triple-Breasted) should not be confused with other St.Gwens: the Queen of Elmet, St.Gwen ferch Brychan Brycheiniog and the Queen of Cerniw, St.Gwen ferch Cynyr Ceinfarfog(Fair-Beard). (But I'm sure you wouldn't fall into that error....)

We need to quantify these.

Simpleminded: +1

Flew in ecstatic state: +1

Flew in ecstatic state when naked: +2

Uncomfortably ethnic: +1

When she died, her corpse immediately started exuding the famous Odor of Sanctity -- which, like incorruptibility, is a phenomenon observed in more than one saint. It's invariably described as a sweet indescribable smell. However, in Teresa's case the Odor of Sanctity was so strong that her nuns had to throw open the windows to air the place out.

If you were Joseph of Copertino's superiors, wouldn't you want to shuffle him into the back row? People will insist on giving credibility to someone who can fly, even if he's a real mouthbreather.

I expect the neighbors and relatives of St. Christina the Amazing felt the same way about having her fly up to perch on the rafters during services -- because, she said, they were all a bunch of stinky sinners and she didn't want to have to sit next to them.

Karin, I rated incorruptibility as neutral even before I learned that both Pius IX and John XXIII are reportedly incorrupt.

Tom Scudder, I love the page about dog saints. As for St. Guinefort, my only disagreement with their account is that they say the cult of St. Guinefort survived up to 1940. You can find it alive and well at Snopes.com. The same story can also be found in Aesop's Fables, and in folktales all round the world. This gives it a dubiousness of -10, since the entire story can be mapped directly onto the folklore motif index. St. Guinefort thus has the same credibility as a saint generated by a typo, e.g. St. Philomena.

Vicki, I have long suspected that forged Antiochene documents are behind a lot of odd hagiographies. In fact, there've been times when I've suspected that cooked-up relics were a cottage industry in Antioch.

Mr. Ripley, don't think I didn't see that.

Steve Cook, that would explain (and I have wondered) why the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales were canonized en masse. Do let me know about that straying head. I can't feel too indignant about it, though; bits of saints tend to get handed round. One of St. Teresa's fingers (I see it's my night to write about St. Teresa) reposed upon Franco's bedside table during the last years of his life. Thing is, if you have a saint's fingerbone, it's a relic. If you split it in half, both pieces are relics. You see the trend. It's rare to see a relic that isn't a little bitty fragment or sliver.

Mris, Catie: when Saint Barbara (patron saint of sailors, explosives, mining engineers, and gunnery officers) hit the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking New World, she picked up a second career as an orisha or orixa named Oya or Oya-Yansa or Iansa or Yansan, also known as Storm. One invocation of her goes, Here comes Oya with her luminous crown. Here comes Oya with the wind and the rain. She travels the forest, flying over hills. Here comes Oya, queen of the wind and rain. Oya is tornadoes, wind, and lightning, and fights injustice.

Saint Barbara gets around. She lurks behind Trump XVI of the Tarot's major arcana, the card also known as The Tower. That tower, with its three windows and its lightning bolt, cannot be other than hers. You can see her at the Cloisters, and painted on the ceiling of St. Augustine RC church in my own neighborhood (where she's tactfully identified as "an angel" in the documentation), standing with her tower tucked into the crook of her arm.

G. K. Chesterton was on good terms with her. Artillerists and engineers and other professionals who work with explosives have put up pages in her honor all over the web. They know she's theoretically been taken out of the calendar, but she's still their saint.

Barbara frequently turns up in the company of Saint Margaret of Antioch and Saint Catherine of Alexandria. A quick calculation of their dubiousness on my scale yields scores of -45, -41, and -34, respectively.

Oddly though, all three of them are associated with explosions. When Saint Margaret had her run-in with a dragon, she dealt with it by letting it swallow her, then made the sign of the cross and blew it up from the inside. (This is why she's the patron saint of women in childbirth.) Catherine of Alexandria is who Catherine Wheels are named for. She was smart, too. Before her martyrdom, she simultaneously debated with 50 pagan philosophers, and she converted the lot of 'em.

All three of them are unkillable. Margaret of Antioch was being denounced as ahistorical by the then-current Pope clear back in Fifth Century, and the story about her blowing up the dragon is the only instance I can think of where Jacobus de Voragine, author of the Legenda Aurea, coughs embarrassedly and says that that one's apocryphal and perhaps ought not be believed. All three of them have been taken out of the calendar. And yet, in my one-botanica-per-block neighborhood, you can find their images in the shop windows, and candles dedicated to them on sale in all the groceries.

Every time I'm on a Mythology in Fantasy convention panel, I point out that saints' lives are the missing mythology of European civilization, but so far I don't think anybody's believed me.

Best. Thing. All week.

Bones in reliquary are stained with red ochre.

(St Gervaise and St Protasus, who according to J. B. S. Haldane's essay 'God-Makers' 'enriched heaven with its only palaeolithic saints'.)

Bones in reliquary are of extinct homind species.

(That one I made up.)

http://www.bdb2.com/bdb2/Saint_frame.html

Interesting -- I didn't know they were. And I had no idea that the list of incorruptibles was actually that long.

I seem to recall reading that Pius XII ended up being more or less the opposite of incorruptible -- apparently while he was lying in state, his body began decomposing and making all sorts of unpleasant and embarrassing noises, not to mention smells.

What this means, if anything, ought to be left as an exercise to the reader, I think.

http://www.pilgrimsway.com/

Thanks for a good giggle this morning. I needed it.

Deborah

I don't have a problem with Pius IX (longest reigning Pope in history). I rather like the Syllabus of Errors.

I just lost a good five minutes of my life trying to come up with something adequate to say in response. Failing utterly, I must nevertheless highlight the image for the rest of you...

Brian, that's -4, "exuding a benign substance", with a possible -1 for being fun to draw. I've checked up on St. Arnulf of Metz, who appears to have a split personality. Religious websites never mention beer, and instead talk about his talent, piety, and well-documented life spent doing worthy deeds. Beer-oriented websites stress Arnulf's lifelong campaign to get people to stop drinking water and drink beer instead (this campaign is unknown to the religious sites), and enthusiastically describe the miraculous flood of beer at his funeral.

These things happen. Look at St. Oswald's extra head. Or look at St. George, who used to be a perfectly respectable Cappadocian soldier-saint. Then he got posted to the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and all heck broke loose.

Christopher, is that documented or hypothesized? It's not that I doubt you, but my impression was that nobody was paying that much attention to the spiritual lives of early Yoruban slaves.

I just lost a good five minutes of my life trying to come up with something adequate to say in response. Failing utterly, I must nevertheless highlight the image for the rest of you...

I'm sorry if I'm being thick, but I'm not getting the joke.

[*]

MKK

In outfitting the Chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the priests sent off to Spain for a large and beautiful statue of the Virgin. Many months later, by ship, they received TWO crates instead of one. They opened the first and it contained the statue of Mary, which they had commissioned, and then they turned to the unexpected second crate, which only bore the legend EXPEDITE on the outside.

This they opened, to find the statue of a Roman centurion. In their simple ignorance, they mistook the shipping instructions -- EXPEDITE, meaning, "expedite this shipment" -- to be the name of a saint.

Some people say this origin can't be true, because he is revered in other places, too. The curious thing, though, is that wherever he crops up, there's always a similar tale, locally based, as befits a true Urban Legend. What charms me is that this is no barrier at all to his popularity as a saint. I suppose he does address an important need.

If anyone cares, his feast day is April 19th, coming up soon.

"But, whatever else might divide them, the regular and secular clergy were united in martyrdom.... At one extreme stood the cultured and sophisticated Franciscan John Wall, former professor of philosphy of Douai...whose acute and academic intelligence was blacked out on the Red Hill at Worcester on August 22nd, 1679.... Cults were quick to form. John Wall''s severed head was snatched away by another Franciscan, and after many vicissitudes reached Douai. The Poor Clares at Aire took charge of it, and on the outbreak of the French Revolution it returned with them to England. In 1815 it wass brough back to the restored convent at Gravelines, but when the time came for them to return to England for good in 1836 the unfortunate sister responsible for this rather grisly relic felt she could not face the British Customs with it. She buried it in the cloister garden, but subsequently neigher she nor anyone else was able to find it." (John Kenyon, The Popish Plot, p. 218; his source is a 1962 biography of Wall by Frank Davey).

In answer to your question about why they were canonized en masse, there were over 300 martyred Catholics in the British Isles between the Act of Supremacy and the Glorious Revolution; according to Kenyon (and a few other sources I glanced at), the 40 Martyrs were chosen as a representative sample of regular clergy, secular clergy, and laity. Almost all of those executed after being accused in the Oates Plot were beatified, but not all were canonized.

Sort of the flipside to "Evacuation Day" in Boston, the secular excuse for St Patrick's Day absences -- nominally commemorating the evacuation of British soldiers from the city during the American Revolution, actually so-named after the amount of evacuation brought on by excesses of beer and "boiled dinner."

You might want to subtract credibilty points from any saint who has been reproduced in plastic. (see: St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers) Actually, I think he got demoted by the church some time ago anyway, so his credibility may already be in the toilet. I grew up in a small town in central Minnesota, and I bet there weren't two cars in the entire county that didn't have St. Chris standing there on the dashboard, with his magnetic feet keeping him upright and majestic. Oddly, the fatality rate from auto accidents was higher in our area than the national average, so maybe his mojo wasn't so hot. Or perhaps the idea was that his blessing didn't prevent accidents, but assured the deceased of a place in heaven after the tragedy? I don't know, I could never keep it all straight. I'm going to check Ebay and see if I can find a used one....

Dominus Vobiscum,

peter jung
hudson, ny

Some years ago, a prestigious auction house sold an old master painting of a lovely woman bearing a tray of beautiful flowers. It brought a considerable sum, and after the sale the new owner took it in for expert cleaning and restoration. Upon examination under ultraviolet light it became apparent that the flowers were recent overpaint, and they concealed the bloody severed head of St. John the Baptist being delivered to Salome....

Please say more.

Jane

Does this somehow mean The Donald is a saint? It smacks of such.

Jane

Jane

PS Sorry to do three posts in a row, but this stuff FACINATES me.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2410102551&category=35603

Barbara -- where did you find St. Gwen ferch Cynyr Fairbeard? I'm pretty well up on obscure Celtic saints, but she's new. I could really do with a good source on her for my endless project on identifying other sightings of all the people mentioned in "Culhwch and Olwen".

(Cynyr, under the more pronounceable name of Cynrig Fairbeard also got a walk-on part in The King's Name, so I have an additional interest in him.)

Imbued by faith, the early Christian fathers were determined to follow the example of Christ in every possible way. "If Christ, as the head of the Church, was oiled and embalmed," said Fulcheri, "they thought that important people and holy people should be oiled and embalmed, too." So early Christians began anointing the bodies of the holy with natural preservatives and wrapping them in linen, simple acts that greatly aided the mummification of many saints.

Christina, please come down, I love you

Ww, ths crwd mks KKK crss brnng sssn lk lk "Wlcm t th nghbrhd prt, ll y Blcks, Jws, cthlcs! Gttng lf prbbl nvr ntrd n f yr s-clld mnds. 'm sr tht mst f th grls hr, nrtrng fmls tht brds frm Nw, th "Ntnl rgnstn f Wtchs" clm tht fmls n gnrl, sppsdl r, wld hld th sctn tb t sck th lvng chldrn t f thr mthr's wmbs. Th bys r vrwhlmd b thr ntllcts! cn't fthm fr m lf wh tht d vn cld fnd ts w nt thr hds. f n f y blckhds wr ttckd fr yr clr, rc, sx r rlgn r, lck f n f sm, 'm sr y'd b mrchng nd cndmnng ths wh cmmntd n yr lck f hmnt bcs f yr blf sstm, r lck f n. Wht s t, cthlcsm s th lst grp tht cn b sd b y lsrs t xprss yr bgtr, gnrnc, nd h, chck yr hms, yr gnrnc s shwng. 'm nt Chrstn, Jwsh, Prtstnt, Bddhsts, Shnt, Hnd, Mslm, Cnfcnsts, Scntlgst, r blvr n n thr rgnsd rlgs grp, nr m sclr hmnst,pgn, wccn, shmn, r n thr s clld phlsphc r rlgs blf sstm. dn't vn blng t pltcl prt, bcs th ns w hv sck, s d th ldrs nd mmbrs f ths lng lwlf rgnstns. d vt thgh. H, lst y r nsltd b ths sttmnt, mst f th "mntl gnts" tht cmmntd n spprt f ths s clld lnk, nl rflcts n hw lw r
dctnl sstms, nd mrl stndrds f ths sct snk. cn wll ndrstnd wh w hr n th .S. r s wll lkd rnd th wrld. vr hr f th mv "Th gl mrcn"? Jst lk n th mrrr nd thn lk t yr fmls, frnds, nd nghbrs. Tk gd hrd lk rnd. Thnk gdnss fr ppcd nd th thr stmch mds t thr. h, lst frgt, n cs n f y hv sm nc cmmnts t mk t m r t m. knw y r, bt wht m ?

B wll, tk cr nd Gd blss,

Bb

Or would he care to comment on exactly when and by what means St. Simon Stock was canonized?

In fact, the "basics of canonization" of which he speaks are a comparatively modern process. As Sr. De La Garza studies more and learns more about the Church, as his faith deepens he will come to understand the purpose and intent of this article.

To address your concerns, however, that Church history is unknown to me. I admit that I am not a Church historian nor do I claim to be, however, I can speak to some of it which therefore invalidates your supposition. Instead, I rather fancy myself as an amateur Catholic apologist and may be able to address some of the misunderstandings individuals my have concerning what the Church teaches and why. But this is beyond the content of the topic, I suppose.

As far as I know, Simon Stock, or Simon Anglus (MGRHS), was never formally canonized so I fail to see the point in bringing up this particular 'saint' as a means to support whatever argument you are trying to make regarding the dubiousness of Catholic saints. That some (or many) may not realize that Simon Stock is not formally recognized as a saint may or may not be an issue as far as I am concerned. That is a tangential issue for me.

Further, although the norms of the canonization process is modern, although one can argue that the tenth century is a stretch when referred to as 'modern', that fact too may be inconsequential from my perspective. Before the 'modern' norms, canonization was quite a bit more democratic and the veneration of holy people had been an ancient practice having its roots in the veneration the ancient Jews gave to their prophets. Perhaps this is the era this post refers to as 'dubious?' If so, in that we may find common ground. But then again, that is why a more thorough process had to be adopted in later centuries.

Nevertheless, the fundamentals for which I regard are tied directly into the authority that produces the norms in whatever age the Church finds herself. To that I may be able to address.

Regardless, I still find this points system reprehensible and tasteless.

First: The process of beatification as we now know it, though it has ancient roots, took its current form in the seventeenth century. This, a mere three hundred years ago, is modern.

Second: St. Simon Stock was not canonized by the process of canonization as we now know it. I was attempting, gently, to lead you to this realization. Many other saints were not canonized by the modern formula; this is beyond dispute. St. Simon Stock was a man of positive historicity and undoubted Godliness. This too is beyond dispute, but it leads us to:

Third: Certain saints are of doubtful historicity. This too is beyond doubt; see for example the removals (beginning in 1961) of St. Christopher, St. Philomena, St Trypho et al. from the Universal Calendar of Saints. Since modern canonization depends on, among other things, "incontrovertible historical evidence," this is neither surprising nor unorthodox.

Fourth: The veneration of the saints includes, of necessity, the study of their lives and works. This is by definition.

Fifth: The veneration of false or non-existent saints has no support in orthodoxy. Such veneration is both foolish and a scandal; see above points three and four.

Sixth: Some saints, not canonized under the modern practice, may be false or non-existent. Or, some aspects of the lives of some saints may be legendary rather than a matter of sober history. (Do you, Sr. De La Garza, personally maintain that St. Dallon reattached his own head after his execution?) Points one, two, and three.

Seventh: The faithful, by whatever means, should discern the true from the false. Points five and six.

This brings us to, finally: The point system, presented above, can be a means for the faithful to deepen their faith, through the veneration of the true. Points three and seven.

---

Like Kate, I find myself wondering about this recent resurgence of interest in this topic. Is there a link somewhere, or a discussion on some other list, which calls the faithful to (without cause) come and defend the Faith against a supposed unbeliever?

Personally, the two things I'm thinking of right now are that I've read stories of miracles performed, apparently, via Father Mychal Judge (who, for my money, will form a genuine American saint's cult, canonized or not.) and a girl not far from where I live who, apparently, preforms miracles despite being in a coma and likely braindead. (If google would come up I'd find her name...)

Sylvia Li: St. Expedite is my favorite, too. You can't beat the "What the hell?" dead crow in his icon (it's a latin pun, apparently.) He's up there with St. Lazarus, St. Vitus and St. Sebastian in my favorites.

P.S. I have not been sent to defend anything.

Kate: I'm wondering too. Someone who thoroughly misunderstood my post must have linked to it from a venue I don't see.

Hmmmmm, Raul De La Garza, a.k.a. Raul De La Garza III ...

Hello, Raul. How do you do? You're married, you're a network engineer (but use a Hotmail account), and you're a fan of the heavy-metal group Dokken. You live or have lived in the Dallas area. You aren't fluent in Spanish, and your ear for tone in English could be better. In 1997 you converted to Catholicism along with your wife, having previously been an Episcopalian, and before that a Southern Baptist.

As of 04 December 2000 you neither knew who "the good thief" was -- that's Saint Dismas -- nor how much we know about him. From this I conclude that, unlike mine, your conversion was not preceded by twenty-odd years of continuing interest in, and intermittent study of, the lives of the saints. (They snuck up on me.)

You are mistaken in your belief that any insult was intended. My post proceeded from my long and deep appreciation of saints and saints' lives. The same could be said of many of the comments that followed it: a notably good thread.

Furthermore, you and your immediate predecessor, the now-disemvowelled Bb (bdbbns@ttb.com), are the only commenters thus far who've completely failed to notice this fact. I suspect you both arrived here primed for misunderstanding.

For your benefit, I'd like to make a distinction here between saints and saints' lives. The most wildly folkloric saint's life imaginable doesn't constitute proof that that saint never existed. Technically, what you have then is a saint for whom we have no reliable life.

That said, it would show a real lack of discernment to insist that all saints' lives are of equal value. Saints hang out with God, but saints' lives are written here on earth, by mortal and fallible writers. You'd have to be stubborn to the point of folly to give The acts of Paul and Thecla equal dignity with The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity.

Once you admit that, the door is open for rating systems. If you think this is somehow inherently sinful, go look up the Bollandists and see what they do.

Remember: God is not mocked, but our sense of humor is a part of creation just as surely as anything else.

And I venerate St. Christopher, despite my not even being a Christian, much less a Roman Catholic. And I deny that the Pope has the right to decide who is and is not a Saint -- for anyone but Roman Catholics, that is. They've agreed to take his word for it; I have not.

I venerate St. Christopher because, aside from the obvious, I believe him to be a popularization of Anubis, one of my favorite gods. This despite all the "evidence" to the contrary which has been cited here and elsewhere. I steadfastly cling to my belief, credo quia absurdum. So there.

Otherwise I'd have to ditch my St. Kit medal and belt clip, and what would I wear as a ritually protective object when travelling? Can't get an Anubis medal, not in nice silver. I suppose I could get a cadeucis (sp?) and switch to Hermes.

There is a popular Pagan meme which holds that monotheists are utterly humorless about their religion, and especially their gods (oops, sorry, saints...they sure look like minor gods to us). I know better, having known a lot of counterexamples...like the author of this post. Hello? Have you read anything else she's written?

K. Shelton, did you notice that Mychal Judge vanished from the canon of Journalistic 9/11 Saints PDQ after it was revealed that he was gay? One of the heros of the plane crash in PA was gay, too; the press focuses on the other one.

As stated above, I'm no Catholic, but I believe there's an entirely legitimate process by which Catholics may petition for someone's beatification and subsequent canonization. I saw a documentary about a case of childhood Tylenol poisoning where the family prayed to (and ONLY to) the Blessed Edith Stein; I believe the child's phenomenal recovery is counted as one of her miracles. But her father collected and submitted the medical reports &c, in a specific effort to achieve canonization for Edith Stein.

Finally an explanation for my apparent misunderstanding. Although, it could've been explained with far much less of my personal information being shared on this particular forum (what was the point of that?) and much less criticism of my handling of the English language. After all, I never claimed mastery in that area.

At any rate, we agree on far more than not even though my position on such a list remains 'slightly' unchanged. ;-)

Sorry to be a bother.

May God bless.

Arguably, this discussion could also have been conducted without putting forth the imputation that anyone's intention was to "antagonize" any variety of religious person.

Funnily enough, people get a bit sharp over accusations like that. Particularly when the accusations are 100% wrong and comprehensively unjust.

BTW, this should be in no way misconstrued as a threat of any kind. I am just attempting to draw likely comparisons in order to make a point. It is my intent that we might be able to continue amicable dialogue in future but recognizing that there may be unjustness on both sides.

May God bless,

Raul De La Garza III

Also, I like to listen to Van Halen, Indigo Girls, 80s pop, 70s rock, and Christian contemporary. I can speak a bit of French, like taking walks, snow skiing, pina coladas and getting caught in the rain. ;-)

As I'm sure "Raul De La Garza III" is quite aware.

One thing grief has taught me is that the internet is full of people who aren't for real.

As for your threats: If my domain name and IP addresses were a secret, the internet wouldn't work. It embarrasses me to have to explain this to a network engineer.

As for rudeness: You barged in here without paying much attention to what I actually wrote, nor to the conversation that followed it. You made some unwarranted assumptions, and accused me of nonsensical sins and malfeasances. In spite of having had this explained to you by several participants here, you've barely registered your errors, much less acknowledged them or apologized for them.

But what's far worse in my book is that you have not engaged with the conversation. You came here full of pride and puffed-up indignation, looking to correct my nonexistent error. Now, grown even puffier with indignation, you're protesting what you conceive to be an affront to your dignity. But of the interesting remarks that have been made here about saints and saints' lives (I except my own), you have taken little or no notice; and the single most useful piece of information you could have contributed -- that is, where this sudden influx of commenters is coming from -- has not been forthcoming.

Are you interested in saints, and in participating in this conversation? Or is this just a drive-by exercise in unearned self-righteousness?

I admit I have been rash and perhaps even disrespectful to some degree and for that I apologize. My manners have been less than savory. Again, I apologize.

However, I still fail to see how that could warrant such a response from you in the form of divulgence of my personal affairs on this forum. Granted, I've made that information available, however, I doubt that anyone including myself could one day imagine that such information might be deemed 'useful' in a counterattack on a public forum.

As for the 'threat', I included domain information and IP addresses as just a sampling of the information that could be gathered. Further, to make the point, this information is just as public as what I had 'published', however that information should not normally be made readily available on a public forum such as this, wouldn't you agree? That's a rather rude break of etiquette even during an argument. It was never the intent to lead you to believe that I am somehow incomptent with respect to how the Internet functions or in my abilities as a network engineer.

As for my lack of engagement in the discussion, I've barely been able to begin what with all of the negative reaction to my presence here, understandably. Otherwise, I would love to start.

God bless.

Throwing in a God bless after attempting to demand, by some passive agressive cousin of emotional blackmail, that one will only have something to say after everyone agrees to forget that your arrival involved harsh and unjustified criticism, or in any case to not hold you responsible for the conveyance of your own words, seems to be something of much the same character.

How did you find your way to this discussion?

You are entitled to your belief, of course.

Eleanor Rowe,

It was by search engine. Thanks for asking.

May God bless.

Let me repeat the pertinent point: everything I posted was information you put on the web. If you think these are your "personal affairs", unsuitable for the general public, the breach of responsibility was yours, not mine. It was the work of a few minutes for me to aggregate it, and required no special expertise. How is it that you don't already know this? You're the professional. I'm just a book editor who knows how to use Google.

In fact I've been quite a bit more discreet than you have. I could, right now, list your professional qualifications, your job title, your employer, your employer's street address, your company e-mail address, your work, mobile, fax, and pager numbers, and the city in which you reside. I won't, because anyone who wants to know that information can find it as easily as I did. But the person who made it easy for them was you.

And your representation of your threat to make public my domain info and IP addresses as "a sampling of the information that could be gathered" verges on the absurd. What you can find out about them, anyone can find out. Furthermore, there's far more personal information about me available all over the place, most notably on my own website.

I have no idea how competent you actually are at your job. For all I know, you're a perfect gem of a network engineer. I'm just glad that you're not responsible for network security on any system I have to use, because I'd worry.

Moving from the technical to the social: You came here to chide and correct me, and you broke in on an established conversation. Those are not impersonal acts. Your failure to introduce yourself, or to make your entrance in a more courteous fashion, were your lapses, not mine. Under the circumstances, it was hardly inappropriate for me to establish who I was addressing. Someone in the conversation had to do it. You certainly hadn't bothered.

And I'm truly not impressed by your blaming your lack of engagement on "the negative reaction to [your] presence here." It's not your presence that's prompting the reaction; i's your behavior. You showed up, grabbed hold of the wrong end of the stick, and started whacking me with it. And by golly, you weren't greeted with cries of glee!

So would you please stop saying "incredible" and "unbelievable"? Because if this is how you behave online, the reaction you got cannot have come as a surprise to you.

This was, by no means, the first nor only time Teresa has mentioned saints, both in general and in particular.

One of the things that is fascinating to me about this thread, which redounds to all threads on this list, is watching the people here deal with difficult posts.

If someone comes on and blindly attacks (as Raul de la Garza III seems to have done), the immediate response is a defensive attack back. If the poster, as RG3 did, replies in a way that indicates some interest in continuing the conversation, people here in general _actually continue the conversation_, trying to draw out thoughts, beliefs and so forth. It's very different from how the mass media portray communication -- and remarkably similar to what's happening here on (e.g) the _cri de couer_ thread. And this kind of discussion, where people start out disagreeing but actually seem to be willing to listen to opposing views is very much what I love in the world.

Not a Catholic at all, closer to a militant agnostic (I don't know, and you don't either!) but secretly loving the idea of becoming a Jesuit because I love intelligent discussion....

Tom

I should probably note as a disclaimer that I am not in fact opposed to gay marriage, myself.

This sounds like a fan feud between the Franciscans and the Capuchins. (Are the Capuchin's ticked off because capuchin monkeys got their name from the resemblence between their markings and the Capuchin habit?)

In any case, it's perfectly orthodox to state that animals have natural souls.

P.S. Karin, "pagan" isn't a pejorative around here - just one of the many religious categories that participants are known to subscribe to.