Friday, May 27, 2005

Saints

I've been trying to put together a book about saints. One of the books I read in research was Dom Basil Watkins's The Book of Saints. Here's a couple that stuck out:

Adolf of Osnabruck (1185-1224) - Bishop of Osnabruck in 1216. Nothing extraordinary in his lifetime (for a saint) but he became famous centuries after his death when little Hitler was named after him in 1889. I'm trying to write a commentary from A. of O.'s point of view. "Way to fucking ruin my namesake, asshole!"

Here's a piece of trivia that you'll probably never use--If a saint on horseback slaying a dragon is on a white horse, it's George. If the horse is red, it's Demetrius (the Peter Best of saintdom).

Two of the most inspirational saints:

Maximilian-Mary Kolbe (1894-1941) - Sheltered over 2,000 Jews after the German occupation of Poland before being sent to Auschwitz. There, he volunteered to take the place of a Jewish man with a family who was sentenced to be starved to death. Canonized in 1982 (that's 41 years after his death, as opposed to JPII who they want to canonize right now).

Damian-Joseph de Veuster (1840-1889) - Born in Tremelo, Belgium; went to Hawaii in 1864 (when it was an independent nation) and worked with the lepers who were deported to the island of Molokai. Working with them, he caught the disease and died of it 16 years later. Beautified in 1995. Inspirational man but never, ever change your name after his if you happen to live in West Memphis, Arkansas.

I was looking for "Jewish guilt" saints, ones who were canonized after being killed by Jews for secret rituals. The Church painted itself in a corner with these guys. Do they boot these saints and admit that the process is less than infallible or do they continue with a hoax so flimsy that the Nation of Islam occasionally sees through it?

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