Friday, July 03, 2009
Cardinal Newman
The Pope has placed Cardinal John Henry Newman on the path to possible sainthood by approving a miracle attributed to his intercession. Newman, an influential 19th-century Anglican convert, can now be beatified. A second miracle is necessary for him to be declared a saint – making him the first English-born saint since the Reformation. The miracle approved yesterday by Pope Benedict XVI concerns the medically inexplicable (??) cure of an American, John Sullivan, who suffered from debilitating back pain for years, but was cured after praying to Cardinal Newman.
IMO: Hm, I can see that the RC church would clearly approve of Newman. I wonder to what extent this "miracle" idea is becoming a kind of formality, more shadow than substance. The Anglican Church went through a phase of this sort of thing before its current decline, with its 'God of the Gaps'. Sainthood seems rather like knighthoods or peerages in the UK for those who have bribed MPs. This sounds quite different to the old ideas of wealthy Catholics 'buying' their way to heaven and so on, times having changed so much, and even your average Iranian is nowadays on Facebook, Google, and possibly Twitter... In Newman's case he seems to have been of genuine merit to society in some vague sense, unlike modern peers. As for me, I'll stick with Ganpathy.
IMO: Hm, I can see that the RC church would clearly approve of Newman. I wonder to what extent this "miracle" idea is becoming a kind of formality, more shadow than substance. The Anglican Church went through a phase of this sort of thing before its current decline, with its 'God of the Gaps'. Sainthood seems rather like knighthoods or peerages in the UK for those who have bribed MPs. This sounds quite different to the old ideas of wealthy Catholics 'buying' their way to heaven and so on, times having changed so much, and even your average Iranian is nowadays on Facebook, Google, and possibly Twitter... In Newman's case he seems to have been of genuine merit to society in some vague sense, unlike modern peers. As for me, I'll stick with Ganpathy.
# posted by uv : 6:01 PM
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