Newman’s Miracles
When I heard that cardinal John Newman, a victorian Brummie who converted to Catholicism, was to be Beatified, or made into a sort-of Local saint, I was curious as to the Miracle he was supposed to have performed. This got me to thinking of the rather lame ones which allowed St. Thomas Aquinas to be Canonised. In the case of Newman, a man whom he had never met, who lived in the late 20th and early 21st centuries (ie now) had a back operated on, and it got better.
This is dealt with by the Heresiarch.
The question I would direct to my intelligent left-footed friends is this: Do you actually, honestly believe this shit? If so, how and why? Surely it’s clear even the his holiness the Pope is just going through the motions? In any case, I understand, this desire to confim absolutely ANYONE of note in the Catholic faith as a saint is really quite modern. If I am correct, and I really cannot be bothered to do much research on this gibberish, John Paul II Canonised many more people than had been made saints in the previous 500 years.
Surely you don’t want to make it TOO easy for we atheists to ridicule your “faith”?
http://www.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=11780&start=0&sid=29fa3097c39d4462559a354a89cbf76e
The problem for those wanting to beatify Thomas Aquinas was that he had [no miracles]. So they made one up. (Pope John XXII; ~1324AD)
By October 2004 Pope John Paul II had beatified 1,340 people, more than the sum of all of his predecessors since Pope Sixtus V (d. 1590).
I think "cannonising" was something practised on prisoners by the moghul armies in India in the 19th century, as described in Flashman.
The catholic version, practised on people who are already dead, is called canonisation, and is altogether less spectacular, and requires less cleaning up afterwards.
Cannonising, indeed not just the Moghuls – the British Army had a go, too. From Blackwood's Magazine;
"The prisoners, under a strong European guard, were then marched into the square, their crimes and sentences read aloud to them, and at the head of each regiment; they were then marched round the square, and up to the guns; the first ten were picked out, their eyes were bandaged, and they were bound to the guns–their backs leaning against the muzzles, and their arms fastened to the wheels. The port-fires were lighted, and at a signal from the artillery-major, the guns were fired.
It was a horrid sight that then met the eye; a regular shower of human fragments of the heads, of arms and legs, appeared in the air through the smoke; and when that cleared away, these fragments lying on the ground–fragments of Hindoos and fragments of Mussulmans, all mixed together–were all that remained of those ten mutineers."
The Moghuls also favoured death by Elephant – a little like the Amerindian punishment of being pulled apart by wild horses, only slower.
Isn't this just the religious version of title inflation? Now just as everyone in academia – well any "academic" spouting views approved by the BBC – is a "professor", the Catholic hierarchy has apparently decreed that everyone with the slightest pretence to distinction (and who happens to profess this particular belief) qualifies as a "saint". Similarly, in the secular world, PhD's are two a penny and you can't give away degrees from all those Metropolitan Universities of Crapola and similar "educational" establishments.
This record rate of beatification stinks.
Tony Blair leaves office and converts from right to left foot; beatifictions soar; sounds like a 'cash for beatification' scandal is about to break.
I can hear it now, the Pope bleating that he's 'a pretty straight sort of Pontiff' after St Bernard of Ecclesiastic makes it to the dark side.
To answer the direct question "do you honestly believe" etc, the answer is for most of us, "no, not all of it". As a wise Pope once said, "we must guard against enthusiasts".
But I was born into it, it is my tribe, it is where I come from, and there is a lot of good in it, and fundamentally it offers hope. And if it hadn't been for the index librorum prohibitorum I wouldn't have been provoked into acquiring a decent education into alternative points of view.
The great thing about us Catholics is we won't blow you up for criticising us, unlike the 'religion of peace' down the road.
Seb. Weetabix.
The RCC has stopped killing people for disagreeing with it because it can't get away with it any longer. A combination of Protestants, secularists and unbelievers were prepared to stand up and fight to force the church to accept that it could no longer hold the power of life and death over believer and non believer alike. If the liberal, secular, democratic world that made this possible were to disappear ( by no means an impossibility ) then I don't doubt the thumbscrews and bonfires would be back in use very quickly.
It's 'gibberish'. If you're going to insult Catholics at least spell it properly. Twat.
Thornavis – killing "unbelievers" was a popular activity among all peoples in the middle ages, unfortunately, Catholic & protestant alike. Let's say we all grew out of it, which allowed a tolerant free society to develop.
It seems tolerance is not something widely practised by atheists like Dawkins which is a supreme irony, imho. I daresay you will continue with your Dan Brown delusions, nevertheless.
Seb Weetabix.
What a weird idea of history you have, there were protestants in the middle ages were there ? Do you really believe that we just 'grew out of' killing people for adhering to the wrong religion ?
The usual tired nonsense about Dawkins' intolerance, care to quote some actual examples or do you just have the usual religious delusion that arguing forcibly and rationally for a view you disagree with is intolerant ?
You're right, I get all my ideas about the RCC from Dan Brown. Reading history, observing the politics of the world around me and having first hand experience of the harm that religious belief and practice does couldn't possibly work, of course.
Cheers for the spelling tips cuffleyburgers & anonymong.
Look, we take the piss out of religion, including the 'Religion of Peace' (TM) because they are palpably absurd. God as prime mover, or seeing God as the personification of the Mathematics of the universe I can sort of cope with, but then think 'why bother?'. As soon as you mention jesus or Mo then you're a loon worthy of ridicule.
Explain transubstantiation, and tell me ANYONE really believes it?
Explain transubstantiation
See: Cannibalism.
and tell me ANYONE really believes it?
See: Jeffrey Dahmer, Armin Meiwes, Peter Bryan et al.
RCs are just different in wanting to eat the same body over and over again.
@Thornavis – yes there were protestants throughout the middle ages. Manichaeists, Bogumils, Albigensians and so forth all the way up to chum Luther and beyond.
You are missing the essential point here. Religion isn't inherently wicked; it is fanaticism in pursuit of any belief system which is the problem. Yes, many thousands unjustifiably were killed over centuries of conflict. But the atheistic secular 20th century takes the biscuit. Nazis (pagans) and communists (atheists) between them wiped out more than a hundred million people.
Hence the wise Pope saying "we must guard against enthusiasts". That was a plea for tolerance and personal conscience.
Utilitarian atheist materialism offers nothing but misery.
Seb. Weetabix.
I know about the various proto protestant sects in the middle ages but they weren't doing the heresy hunting and had little power and then only for short periods in small areas, the RCC eliminated them whenever it got the chance. If you are including Luther " and beyond" in the middle ages you are stretching it's definition beyond any historical usage.
I'm not getting into the stale old argument about the Nazis and communists but your reference to the "atheistic 20th century" is pretty ridiculous, the Nazis had plenty of support from the religious
( Slovakia and Croatia in particular come to mind ) and it is superficial to blame atheism for the murderous tyranny of Stalin and co. as though their totalitarian ideology had nothing to do with it.
Jackart is quite right anyway, all this is beside the point, the whole catholic belief system is risible nonsense.
As for shallow urban materialism, perhaps you should go off and play with the Greens in their lovely little rural fantasy world, they're quite friendly towards superstitious woo these days, I'm sure they'd welcome you.
mit brennende sorge. Look it up.