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BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint

11 Oct 18 - 04:34 AM (#3955992)
Subject: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Jack Campin

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/11/salvadoran-priest-oscar-romero-saint-pope-francis-canonisation

JP2 and his buddy Reagan must be rolling in their graves.


11 Oct 18 - 05:40 AM (#3956000)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Thompson

Look over here! Not at the rapists and the thousands of bishops who moved them from parish to parish and sheltered them from the law! Over here, I say! Look at this saintly man! Over here!


11 Oct 18 - 05:55 AM (#3956003)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Senoufou

Apparently he worked a miracle for a pregnant woman, and her baby was born safely.
Hmmm - not too sure about this 'miracle' business. I bet hundreds of other mothers-to-be prayed for help, but none came.
How does God select the lucky few to help, but decides to ignore all the others?
Jesus Bingo?


11 Oct 18 - 06:01 AM (#3956005)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: peteglasgow

yes, i've often wondered about the saint thing (or 'virgin' mothers) - it suggests these people were so good they could do magic. couldn't they just be really good people? if jesus had fed and nourished hundreds of his followers with the power and beauty of his ideas that is great. if he just did magic with loaves and fishes - it's just a trick and not so impressive


11 Oct 18 - 06:06 AM (#3956007)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: peteglasgow

while tommy cooper could do astounding (or daft) magic tricks it was the warmth of his personality and his wacky humour that made millions of people happy.


11 Oct 18 - 06:17 AM (#3956008)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Senoufou

I can see why certain people are singled out as very good examples of living a selfless and admirable life. We can then try to emulate their good qualities.
But I can't accept this 'intercession' business. I pray direct to the Top Man. I can't imagine Him saying, "Nah, not interested!" then some saint or other piping up, "Ah go on God. She's asked me to talk to you, couldn't you make an exception?" and God sighing, "Oh alright then, I'll see what I can do." That's bonkers in my view. (shades of Monty Python in fact!)


11 Oct 18 - 06:20 AM (#3956010)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Steve Shaw

"Hmmm - not too sure about this 'miracle' business."

I am. It's complete and utter codswallop and it's an insult to the intelligence.


11 Oct 18 - 06:27 AM (#3956011)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Jack Campin

I don't think it is a distraction. JP2's career involved deadly violence in support of imperialism (which is where Romero comes in), mass child rape and lethal misogyny. Francis does seem to be trying to reverse the damage, and sainting somebody murdered by American capitalism is a useful step on the way. The misogyny that has virtually turned the church into the incense-wielding wing of an anti-abortion campaign is the bit he's made least progress with, and maybe it'll be up to the next pope to deal with that.


11 Oct 18 - 08:26 AM (#3956033)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Steve Shaw

I doubt whether it's enough to make up for the disgraceful canonisation of John Paul II.


11 Oct 18 - 08:32 AM (#3956037)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Donuel

This only sounds similar to Night of the Living Dead


11 Oct 18 - 08:55 AM (#3956041)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Mossback

Francis does seem to be trying to reverse the damage,

Oh yes? Like this you mean?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/10/pope-francis-compares-abortion-hiring-hitman


11 Oct 18 - 08:59 AM (#3956042)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Jack Campin

I was well aware of that, and what I posted took account of it.


11 Oct 18 - 11:42 AM (#3956075)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Steve Shaw

Well the trouble with this pope, as with all previous ones, is that he does everything in his power, save personally making unprotected love to thousands of fertile young women, to prevent any measures at all that would help to eliminate unwanted pregnancies. The Church is the champion of abortion and always has been, and nothing changes.


11 Oct 18 - 08:12 PM (#3956171)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Joe Offer

I've always found this "miracle" requirement for sainthood to be embarrassing. It appears to me that Francis bent this requirement to qualify Romero for sainthood, over the objections of a good number of wealthy, powerful Catholics who usually think they have the right to control such things.

I'm very happy that Oscar Romero was canonized. For once, we have a saint who is worthy of the name. I despised John Paul II because he did his best to negate the effects of Vatican II. I thought there were enough questions about Junipero Serra to make it unwise to canonize him. I like the missions, and Serra seemed to have been a good man (despite some questions); but he's too powerful a symbol of European imperialism to be considered exemplary. I didn't particularly like Mother Teresa because of her conservatism, but neither do I believe the Hitchens "exposé" of what a horrid person Hitchens and his born-again atheists believed her to be. So, I opposed the canonization of JPII, and was lukewarm about Serra and Mother Teresa.

So, attaboy, Oscar! Now I'm hoping for the canonization of Chicago Archbishop Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, who dared to try to find common ground between liberals and conservatives in the Catholic Church. He didn't succeed, but he died trying.

-Joe-


11 Oct 18 - 08:43 PM (#3956176)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Steve Shaw

Agreed on the whole, Joe, though you know I think you're in denial about Mother Teresa. If only you'd look into it...

Shit, I can't shake this stuff off, can I...?


12 Oct 18 - 12:41 AM (#3956198)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Thompson

I don't think it is a distraction. JP2's career involved deadly violence in support of imperialism (which is where Romero comes in), mass child rape and lethal misogyny. Francis does seem to be trying to reverse the damage

Mm. Well, consider it as pork barrel, or as we say in Ireland, minding your own constituency. The current pope is a South American boy…


12 Oct 18 - 02:48 AM (#3956201)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Joe Offer

Well, Steve -
I have preferences and dislikes, but I generally think most people aren't as good or as bad as other people describe them. So, I take descriptions of Mother Teresa as "horrid" and the like, as exaggerations. But I'm not a Mother Teresa fan, either.
-Joe-


12 Oct 18 - 09:49 AM (#3956273)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Donuel

He has now made Cardinal Whurle a doubley dismissed priest.


12 Oct 18 - 08:29 PM (#3956363)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Steve Shaw

It's pretty difficult to exaggerate Mother Teresa's wrongdoings. She usurped tens of millions of dollars, possibly as much as a hundred million, that donors thought were going to be used for helping the sick and the poor. Instead, she used the money to expand her network of convents, and the sick and dying she was supposed to be helping, and who the world thought she was helping, were left to rot and slowly die on filthy mattresses without qualified medical staff in dreadful, insanitary conditions. She told the poor to celebrate their poverty and not to fight it. She told an audience of young women that abortion was the greatest threat to world peace, and she was a friend of Papa Doc and shed tears at the grave of Ceausescu. Enjoy her sainthood, Joe. If I get to the pearly gates and I see her in there, I'm not going in.


12 Oct 18 - 08:55 PM (#3956366)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Joe Offer

I dunno, Steve. The whole Hitchens thing on Mother Teresa sounded like a conspiracy theory to me. Well, yes, she expanded her network of convents. I observed with my own eyes the work of nuns from two of her convents here in Northern California - the nuns devoted themselves to caring for the sick and the dying. They did good work, athough they were too conservative to be my cup of tea - and overly subservient to their leadership. But they worked hard to serve people in need, and those nuns have to be housed and supported somehow.
Here's a Guardian article by somebody who first disdained and later supported Mother Teresa:
But she's still not my cup of tea.


12 Oct 18 - 09:09 PM (#3956368)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Steve Shaw

So a couple of her nuns rescued one man from the streets. Wow. From your quoted piece:

Mother Teresa didn’t deserve Christopher Hitchen’s unadulterated, poisonous vitriol. But her vintage, “There’s something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion,” left me fuming too. How dare she trivialise poverty? But she could. She did. And the world lapped it up. She once comforted a sufferer, with the line: “You are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you.” The infuriated man screamed, “Then tell your Jesus to stop kissing me.” As a Christian in a Hindu majority country, such Teresa-isms often left me squirming with embarrassment.

At 19, filled with youthful arrogance and self-righteous indignation, I questioned how she could ethically take money from the world’s most obnoxious dictators. Why was she silent about unjust wars and oppression?


The rescue of the man hardly compensates, does it, Joe? And I don't know how you can call investigation supported by frank video evidence "conspiracy." Yiu haven't looked at it, have you, Joe?


12 Oct 18 - 09:16 PM (#3956369)
Subject: RE: BS: Pope Francis makes Oscar Romero a saint
From: Steve Shaw

The silliness of the miracles requirement aside, I can understand the sentiment behind the Church honouring its finest people with sainthood. And, though I don't have the same iron in the fire that I used to have, I think that making saints out of scoundrels - nothing new there, of course - such as John Paul II and Mother Teresa, is thoroughly disreputable and it sends completely the wrong message about what constitutes morality out to Catholics, and not just to Catholics.