You must have missed my post: There is no scriptural justification for saints. And there doesn't have to be. Catholics don't believe in the Bible as the sole authoritative voice of Christianity. Saints serves as sources of inspiration for Catholics. Many Catholics pray to them (although this is becoming increasingly rare in the U.S.)
That's true! Personally, as a Catholic I'm probably going to rot in hell for this but, I wish the Pope would just die. Well not die, but step down. With all of his appointments he's left a legacy that will last a LONG time, and it's not necessarily beneficial for the survival of the Church.
Remember Moses and his message from God...? Don't pray to idols. Saints are like these specific role playing game peices. One helps you find lost things, St. Anthony. One helps you find the next bar, St. Patrick. Another helps you get a date, St. Pimp Daddy. It reminds me of a thing we used to follow back in the day...the Legion of Superheroes. Remember Ultra Boy? All the kids in the barrio would pick a teen super hero to be. I was Star Boy or something. One thing I do know is that to-be-saints have to have had performed two miracles. Anyone want to tell me what hers were? Ok, maybe one was acting as if she enjoyed Lady Di.
I don't have a dog in the fight...but I read a very scathing op-ed on JP II's term. One of the writer's key points was how estranged the church is from its members who live north of the equator. Further, the writer stated that the RC church is losing its hold on Latin America. The writer cited a study that said 1/4 of Latin America was now Protestant. Basically, the church is growing in Africa and losing numbers everywhere else. (In many of those places, the losses are in terms of people who go more often than weddings, christenings,and funerals.) While many praise the Pope for his defense of traditional practices, it ain't working. Whether that's an indictment of the Pope, or Catholics, is your call.
Anyone have a link to the list of Catholic Saints, and when they were beatified? I googled, but surprisingly couldn't come up with anything.
http://www.americancatholic.org/Features/Saints/bydate.asp "This calendar includes saints on the General Roman Calendar as well as other holy people for each day of the year. Some feast dates on the AmericanCatholic.org calendar fall on days other than the official feast day" Actually, in Latin America, we build chirches for the saints, and on their special day, we go to their chirch to pray. In fact, if you are born on a certain staint's day, many families still name their kids after the saint. For example, I was born on St Peter/St Paul day. I should have been named Peter Paul (Pedro Pablo or Pablo Pedro) Garcia, but my dad named me after himself and he ain't no saint.
St. Garcia d. 1073 Feastday: September 29 Benedictine abbot who was the companion of King Ferdinand I of Castile, Spain, in battles. A native of Qiuntanilla, Garcia was made abbot of Artanza Abbey in 1039. He became a counselor to the king and an advisor on military campaigns.
I pray to San Simón of Santiago Atitlán, the patron saint of whiskey and cigarettes. Alcoholics leave their bottles at his altar outside of Antigua, Guatemala and he polishes it off for them. Great service.
Hitchens aint no liberal. That chain-smoking, alcoholic, egomaniacal sychophant, along with Marc Cooper, are more properly described as "turds".
There's a big resurgence in the Eastern Orthodox countries of Eastern Europe now that communism is gone. There's been an explosion of of church/monastery building going on in Russia, Romania, etc.
nicodemus, if that was meant to disagree with me...the Orthodox churches split from the Catholics almost a thousand years ago. I meant the Catholic church, not the Christian church. I should have been more clear.
First of all, it depends on who you ask. From our perspective, they split from us. And protestants split from them. I take it you're a protestant that believes only protestants are Christians? Amazing how there was 1500+ years of people thinking they were Christians only to have Martin Luther prove them wrong.
The Bible wasn't codified until several centuries after the individual books were written. Some place like Alexandria may have had a few books, but not all of them, same for Antioch, Rome, etc. The Bible can't be the sole source of Christian authority because that would mean people like St. Paul, St. John the Baptist, etc weren't Christians, because they didn't even have the Bible.
The Right Rev. Gringo is correct. The key word in Gringo's proclaimation is "sole." Scripture is of course authoritative, but so too is tradition. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it... http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a2.htm#80 Of course, scripture is important: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a3.htm just not exclusively so, for the reasons niodemus mentioned.
The saints were important in converting people who had multiple dieties, and were used to praying to certain gods for certain favors. It's the same thing as taking over the pagan holidays and putting a Christian spin on them (like Christmas and Easter).
This is very true- which is why saints play a greater role in LAtin American Catholicism thatn Anglo AMerican or Euro Catholicism.
That's true to a large extent, with some qualifications, I think...it's my impression that Spain is absolutely lousy with saint's days, shrines, celebrations, and so on. And parts of Central Europe like the Baltics, which were still pagan/animist into the 12th or 13th century or so (Lithuania, for instance, was not officially converted until 1386 when Queen Jadwiga of Catholic Poland married Lithuanian Grand Duke Jagiello), reserve a special place for saints in their Catholic worship. The connection is pretty clear between situations like this and the animism that cultures from this region are rooted in. My father still says a little prayer to St. Jude every time he loses something (usually his car keys). Unfailingly, St. Jude comes through.
The Bible, that I've seen, makes only rare, limited references to "saints." The one that comes to mind is when Paul is writing about "the saints that have gone before" or something to that effect. It is, IMO truly meant to refer to any Christian. The Catholic church's version of "saints" is not in the Bible, that I've seen. It was just something they did. there are many doctrines of the Catholic church, such as purgatory, sainthood, and indulgences (although I don't know if they do that anymore) that Christians (specifically, Protestants, which is what caused Martin Luther to split in the first place) object to, which are not found in Scripture. Some of it is just ancient rituals, which is of course, fine, kinda like us Baptist passing the plate, giving an invitation, and having a potluck. ------------------------------ Spejic, you could make that comment fairly accurately about Christmas, but not about Easter. It's not like some culture had the Easter Bunny running around for no reason, and then those theiving church elders said, "Hey, here's a good time for Jesus to have risen." It is obviously straight out of a book that is 2,000 years old. The fact is, the resurrection of Christ is the Ultimate belief of the Christian/Catholic church. Obviously we would celebrate that at some time.