According to the Britannica, the Catholic Church has over 10,000 Saints who apparently can be prayed to and asked for special consideration or some such. Each also has a feast day, which according to my calculations means an average of 27 feast days for every day of the year. No wonder there is an obesity epidemic. Anyway, that's a lot of minor Gods (by definition a God is "a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes) and that number puts the Romans to shame. One sometimes wonders who's in charge.
In the U.S. we have a similar venerative days except we call them "national day of..." or "national week of..." or "national month of..." Some of these days/weeks/months are truly bizarre. Aside from today being April Fools Day, it's also National Sourdough Bread Day, and National One-Cent Day. This week is National Pooper-Scooper Week (I kid you not!) as well as National Orchid Male Cancer Awareness Week, and National Window Safety Week plus many more. As far as mponths, it's National Parkinson's Awareness Month as well as celebrating the following (to name but a few - there are many more for April): Straw Hat Month, Soft Pretzel Month, Records and Information Management Month, Safe Digging Month and Distracted Driving Awareness MOnth. It goes on and on. The shear number trivializes them all.
Personally, I think we need a national Holy Underwear Month. It would fit right in with St. Jude's festival. He's the patron saint of lost causes. Although he has some competition from St. Rita, "a saint of impossible cases. She is also the patron saint of sterility, abuse victims, loneliness, marriage difficulties, parenthood, widows, the sick, bodily ills, and wounds." Of xcourse, that makes her busier than hell.
1 comment:
Hello,
Okay, I often can't sleep, so I've decided to check out what my best friend has been doing while I take a nap or lie on the bed, trying to get situated in a way that offers some comfort. I have Parkinson's and being comfortable is a goal I try to achieve (and sometimes do) for several hours each day.
I'm so impressed by the posts Eric writes. If you haven't read them, find time to do so. This one, about "Gods and Days" is lighter than most, and having been raised Catholic (although I always felt I didn't quite fit the requirements), I was vaguely aware of there being lots of saints available for whatever problem anyone could possibly need to solve. However, even as a seven-year-old, I was skeptical, and the only saint I thought had any merit was St. Francis because he supported my main interest -- animals.
I wonder how many other 70+-year-olds who were raised Catholic have "fallen away" from that faith. As a kid, I always liked that description and pictured myself, falling off the Earth along with a bunch of real Catholic kids who went to Catholic school and wore those uniforms that actually made sense to me -- the uniforms, I mean. And the falling, too. I mean who'd want to ever eat something that was the body and blood of anyone. I don't think that concept ever made sense to me, and, thinking back, I don't recall the nuns being too specific when explaining things to us kids who didn't attend Catholic school. We were sort of second string.
Anyhow, thanks for the writing you do, Eric. I think you should publish your musings and get some recognition for your thoughtful commentary.
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