400-Year-Old Heart of Catholic Saint Arrives in Shreveport

[trotsky]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/400-year-heart-catholic-saint-arrives-shreveport-44091696

A 400-year-old human heart that belongs to a Catholic saint is making a temporary home at a Louisiana church.

The Shreveport Times (http://bit.ly/2hbGbne ) reports that the heart of St. John Berchmans arrived Thursday at a Shreveport church that bares the saint's name.

It is the first time the relic has left the church in Belgium that it calls home.

It will be on display at the Shreveport cathedral until Dec. 18 and then it returns to Belgium.

[Angry Dragon]

1. that is just very sick religious shit

[AtheistCrusader]

2. But the Religious Right wants to make sure any material from an abortion gets a cremation and burial

..

But they're going to drag pieces of this guy around for, apparently, forever, as some kind of fetish.

[struggle4progress]

3. I do not much understand this practice, which seem to me to have largely fallen

from favor among Protestants, but in the interest of educating myself what the ancients may have said, I encountered the following in a letter by Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, known for his popular translation of Biblical texts, commonly called the Vulgate:

... We, it is true, refuse to worship or adore, I say not the relics of the martyrs, but even the sun and moon, the angels and archangels, the Cherubim and Seraphim ... Still we honour the relics of the martyrs, that we may adore Him whose martyrs they are. We honour the servants that their honour may be reflected upon their Lord ...

The view of Jerome seems to be that the honor of relics is a species of meditation, by which one may remember the foundation of the religion --- and if this is an accurate interpretation of his letter, then he was encouraging something very different than the claim (say) at Wittenberg more than a millennium later -- which may have been involved in Luther's objection to indulgences -- that the faithful could obtain a certain number of days early release from purgatory for each relic venerated in the Wittenberg collection

[Bretton Garcia]

4. Anthropology suggests an origin in magic for Catholic relics

Many ancient tribes believed this or that odd object had magical powers. Including old bodies. To this day, children and horror stories sometimes believe that dead bodies say, could come back to life.

Today the Church is rightly embarrassed by its "syncretistic" links to magic. And since about 1965 or so, it has been thoroughly backing off the idea that say, if you touch the bones of a saint, or sprinkle holy water on something, you can say, be miraculously healed. And such things.

However? Historically, and until very, very recently, such beliefs were even the very core of Catholicism. Which thereby was lead by, essentially, magic and ... magicians.

The name "Magi" by the way, was the roof of our word "magician."

[struggle4progress]

5. It is neither the core, nor even close to the core

Last edited Sat Dec 10, 2016, 06:55 PM - Edit history (1)

... Love the Lord with all your hear and soul and mind. This is the great commandment. And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. On these commandments hang all of the law and prophets ... ---Matthew 22

.. Do not believe in every spirit but test the spirits ... because many false prophets appear ... No one has ever seen G-d. But G-d lives in us if we love each other ... Whoever claims to love G-d, yet hates his own brother, is a liar: for how could someone love G-d whom he has never seen if he does not love his own brother whom he has seen? ... --- 1 John 4

[Bretton Garcia]

7. Among many, the host was said to be literally the body of Christ

And consuming it, and the "blood" or wine, was the only way to salvation

[struggle4progress]

9. You are free to understand it all as you may choose: I have said how I choose

to understand it all

[Bretton Garcia]

11. Problem is, many people make crazy violent things out of it

If we had no Bible, that temptation, that error, wouldn't be there

[Iggo]

6. Gross.

And dumb.

[Act_of_Reparation]

8. Fawning over a human heart in a silver reliquary?

Totes normal. Not weird at all.

[nil desperandum]

10. Who says

magical mystery tours aren't a lot of fun? Here's a chance to view a 4 century old dried up piece of tissue...I never cease to be amazed at what captures the human mind and holds it in thralldom...but we non-believers are the weirdos....okay then.