Well, it seems that Mary MacKillop will get the official tick of approval as a saint.
I personally can’t help but shake my head at the whole process. As Chris Kenny argues, the considerable earthly achievements of Mackillop have gotten completely lost in hocus-pocus, which Bernard Keane argues was made easier by that canny politician John Paul II who stripped out any actual rigor from the canonization process. But the internal machinations of the Catholic church aren’t any of my business.
Nor are they Kevin Rudd’s. Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne are dead right, for once – Rudd is indeed exploiting MacKlllop for political purposes.
I wonder what Mackillop would make of it.
“any actual rigour”
In what sense, pray tell, can or should this procedure have “rigour”?
****
I mean this as a sincere question. My friend Edmond Halley may have been reduced grievously to lack of a Chair, by his want of a reputation for piety. He was thought an heretic. In fact the Bishop who wrote “The Analyst” attacking my most excellent calculus, addressed it to the “infidel mathematician”; many supposed this to refer to Mr Halley. Thank the heavens this Bishop did not know of my own doubts concerning the Trinity, while I had my modest lodgings in Trinity College.
But in these modern times you need not be concerned with the theological and doctrinal disputes which vexed my age. Puzzle over morality instead.
So true. Not unusual to have more than 20 get the nod in any one day. The guides now don’t even try to keep up.
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/index_saints_en.html
The earlier missive from “S” was penned by my good self, Sir Isaac.
Not by a saint.
Not by a symbol of integration (that long “S” introduced by the thief and plagiarist Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz).
I believe the issue at hand is the question of relative rigour.
This issue of relativity has always been your weak point, sir Isaac.
In any case, if we didn’t want politics to be mixed up with religion we’d stop funding schools and other institutions that promote particular religious outlooks.
When Rudd turns up at McKillop’s chapel, he is simply a landlord’s collecting some of the voters’ rent.
What weird, superstitious voodoo. By all means, laud and praise the woman for her considerable achievements. But miracles! Saints! Crikey – I’ll beleive in miracles when the Saints win a premiership.
Yes, I too got interested.
What rigo/ur??
Well then, why the frack did you do a post on it then?????
And where is Silkworm for God’s sake????
Why must I speak to the Pickled Brain when I may Converse with my Good Friend Albert here in the afterlife?
But Pickled Brain, who bears a striking resemblance to Professor Katz (I do like these Little Pictures you draw with your Missives; this Magick Lantern Show is very fine, I think) – you Pickled Brain, yes I was absolutely sure of Absolute Time. It was the Firm Rock on which I built my little pile of pebbles.
But Dr Einstein showed me up for a Fool. Only, in my days the evidence he used was near 200 year hencewards in Future Times; and though many have praised my Sagacity, none I think expected me to see so much of your modern days in my lifetime.
Besides, the mercury Vapours from my Alchemickal Tests somewhat addled my very small Brain. Mine was never worth Pickling.
“But miracles! Saints! Crikey – I’ll beleive in miracles when the Saints win a premiership.”
Wish granted, my dear.
http://www.footy.biz/images/66StKilda.jpg
It’s a miracle!!!11!1!111!
Quick, someone alert the Pope.
Here I am!
Ahem.
This is not a story that interests me particularly. I think it will die in the arse. There are much more important things going on at the moment — real things, things that affect us materially, like the Copenhagen Conference on climate change.
Bless you David. Yes. It’s a miracle.
(Bitte fragen Sie Casey sie lästern nicht mehr, obwohl.)
Robert if you are indeed bemused by the whole process, i.e can’t understand it or think it any way credible why would it worry you that Kevin Rudd is exploiting Mary McKillopp for political purposes. After all the Pope is the powerful head of a major international organisation and our Kev has done a bit of the necessary diplomatic slog in lobbying for our own Australian saint. Everyone else has them. Why not us? And why not a woman who worked so hard for education and opportunity for the poor?
And I’m sure that Mary would appreciate it that Kevin Rudd is one of her champions. She had her own powerful political enemies within the church who didn’t like her egalitarian views. Had Abbott and Pyne been of her time no doubt they would have been among them. If she were alive today she would be very outspoken and critical of the Coalition attitude to Labor’s expenditure on schools, particularly Catholic ones in low soci-economic areas!
This is just another opportunity for the raving right to get stuck into our own secular and socialist Saint Kev!
Casey, two reasons: first, because as an observer I find it mystifying how anyone – particularly those who are sincere in their religious belief – could not be disgusted with the saint-making business.
Second, Kevin Rudd has chosen to publicly associate associated himself with it, which makes it of interest to those who follow politics.
As for Copenhagen, the signal-to-noise ratio coming out of the conference is extremely low so far.
Don’t mind if they make Mary Mckillip a saint. Just so they don’t do it to Tony Abbott. Don’t laught. After all, they canonised the founder of Opus Dei.
“After all, they canonised the founder of Opus Dei.”
Maybe it will be Barnaby. He’s the loose canon.
Sir Isaac,
I don’t know how you and the entity that is passing itself off as Einstein could possibly converse.
It is a well known fact that when the rest of me went off to my Eternal Reward, I, the grey matter, remained here on earth, in a tupperware container.
The fact that you conversed at all with “Einstein” should itself be regarded as a miracle.
Your Holiness! Your Holiness!
loose canon?
You jest sir?
Mrs Bishop, Ms Bishop, Mr Abbott; that confederacy is over-plenished with ecclesiastical office-holders; and has Banished its Catholick Viscount Turnbull.
Is Barnaby Catholic? Can’t be a saint unless you’re Catholic.
Yes Paul, they all are. Kev has wedged them.
Jesus, I started getting very uncomfortable without Silkworm. 1. Thank God he came. Robert, I shall stop with the smart arsery and read the links forthwith!
I’m starting to feel a swell of pride. FIFA are so keen to get our support they are considering giving us their world cup. Now the Catholics are trying to recruit us to their code by giving us our own saint. Or am I being a bit ‘easy’. Why not hold out for an Aussie pope, eh?
Sir Isaac,
Had you paid a little more attention to my objections to your notion of absolute time, you might have avoided the embarrassment of being shown wrong by Dr Einstein.
Let me explain, folks. Back in 313CE I had some tough judgment calls to make, and it was obvious that the punters weren’t simply going to “burn what you cherished and cherish what you burned” as some of my more unworldly contemporaries would have had it. It made much better political sense to co-opt the numerous pagan fertility deities and the like by reinventing them as Saints and letting their followers maintain harmless cults and feast days, albeit under the rubric of the church. At that time I really wasn’t able to give a lot of attention to what might be going on in the Antipodes 1,696 years later.
Yo Gottfried, why you dissing my homie Ikey N? Never mind all that calculus and monads jive, it comes to the benjamins, he the shizzle, pimping righteous royal bling not babysitting some punk ass kraut.
And so to my crib.
Yeah. Wot Jenny sez. Dick Smiff as an Aussie Pope. Dunno if he’s a tike but he’s good enough for ‘em. World Cup first but.
“And so to my crib.”
Logos, as Brett might once have said.
Mr Pickled Brain
Here in the afterlife, the location of the physical corpus or the damned corpse!! as my rollicking friend Edmond might exclaim, is of no account. My soul Converses with the Soul of Dr Einstein.
Dr Einstein remonstrates with the Deity. Gottfried Leibniz interrupts us both. Gottfried is still Angry that I accused him of Theft and Proved it so. I am serene. I ask Gottfried why he Fried God; he feigns not to comprehend.
You have my Acolytes amongst you, such as “Mr Peeps” who speaks that dialect stranger than the Cockney tongue. Pepys was ne’er so uncouth. Tho’ it’s true that Pepys Loved to Peep.
Soul, is it?
Some of us stand on the shoulders of giants. You, on the other hand have one foot wallowing in the sloughs of Plato.
Little wonder you couldn’t understand the significance of Rømer’s discoveries. If you had then we may have been speaking of Newton’s law of relativity.
Mais c’est l’apres vie.
There I was thinking all this canonisation was a catholic marketing exercise to re-engage the drifters?
Well, I heard a Catholic priest on ABC rsdio this morning saying that the process of canonising Mary Mackillop started in 1929, so JPII’s fast-track didn’t really shorten the process much. He also felt that the Vatican would take no notice of secular officials, as the canonisation process was there to make sure that the person was truly a suitable role model and that the miracles had occurred. He was a bit unhappy about the requirement for two miracles, but it sounded to me that without the miracles, you only rate a Venerable at best in the celestial hierarchy. At any rate, he certainly didn’t want to cover up the practical person that MM was with a lot of woo-woo stuff. One wonders if MM has been busily conducting less-obvious miracles than the medical ones — cutting through bureaucracy and calming stroppy children, perhaps?
Sir Newt: Puzzle over morality instead.
Or indeed, alchemy – in imitation of your good self? That crack about Giants is not forgotten.
As to Mr Rudd, he is a wily and sly handed man, like others I could mention, and has simply, to use the local parlance, cruelled the Abbott’s pitch.
Robertson Davies’ ‘Fifth Business’ is well worth rereading for its take on hagiology. I can’t say it made me a believer but it’s a great look at how and why believers believe in such things.
Also, given the inevitable confluence of torture porn a la “Saw” and “Hostel” and CGI aided and abetted history a la “Kingdom of Heaven” and Besson’s “Joan of Arc”, perhaps the St Catherine story will finally make it to the big screen.
I can see the one sheet now. “Wheel Of Fire – She got to heaven because they gave her hell.”
Still it’s nice to see one of the biggest and oldest business operations on the planet now canonising people for doing good rather that just suffering bad.
Mr Hooke, Prof Pickled Brain,
Looke, Hooke: you had a Law named in Your Honour Sir. Be grateful, it should put a Spring in your Step.
Mr Roemer might have led me to think on the speed of Light, but really that must have been hugely insufficient a Spur to have Apprehended Dr Einstein’s advancement of Mechanicks. My very good friend Albert after all needed that Scottish fellow Maxwell to describe Electrickally Mechanickall something – I get a bit lost there – and the American fellows measuring ye Speed of Light Corpuscles, Michelson & Morley, before he pounced upon the Truth.
In my Defence I can say I wrote of light Corpuscles, so was half right about that Subject.
My speaking of the Soul is not from Plato but from my current circumstances: I exist as a soul only. That foolish Frenchman Descartes was entirely incorrect about Gravity. He said he thought, therefore he was. He was, but he didn’t think Correctly on Gravity.
Tis true Sir Issac, I once dismissed you with a Flea in your Ear. Could you pray return it so that I may complete my Leeuwenhoek-scoping studies. I feel confident it may be the Same Flea as I know well you are Unlikely to Patronise those Houses where Women Alone are found to be of Loose Morals and Less Hygiene.
Now I’m reading Kenny, Robert.
So this is about theology now? And meany weany saints? Well, by all means. But first, if we are delving into the hoodoos, and how silly it is, rather than the politics, if we are looking at the reasons why saints don’t always come though with their obi wan kinobes, well someone grab that book of Job and get back to me. Then we can, like, partay. If it is about the hoodoo gurus, that is.
Like. Yeah. And we know about this obscure women who did good because????
Because her picture was up on the wall??.
Sanctification proceedings??.
Holy Rolling??.
Cause no really, we celebrate obscure women from the last century who did good in this country all the time, when their picture isn’t on a frakking wall. No?
Oh. Ok.
Of course, you’d be wondering what my frakking problem is. Could be I’ve been in the badlands a while and I’m not coping. Then again, could be it’s the woman question. Again. Sanctified or no, no mention of the gender politics is there???. Now that would have been a story.
But no.
Let’s just leave her wafting about in the “true measure of saintliness”. Let’s binarise her straight back into that feminine straightjacket of ‘goodness’ and ‘widdle chillen’. Oh, oh, and let’s not clarify how she was excommunicated by the blokes in skirts. And reinstated. And now sainted. By all means, let’s NOT discuss what that trajectory may have revealed about how the idea of a female saint, nothing to do with the real woman, may be used to control women within the church.
Alternately, let us not explore how her story may be interpreted as a feminist strike against the patriarchy within the church.
I’m easy really.
Either way, let’s not do it. Not talk about feminism, the church, whether it’s good or bad from a feminist perspective.
Well, you might be thinking I didn’t much like that link. Never mind.
Let’s see about the desgustation menu in the saint making business.
Silkworm, please. You are making me nervous. Have you NOTHING to say???
May I pray bring to your Attention the Matter of “Hooke” @32 who is Without Doubt an Imposter who could well hail from the Continent and so be bent solely upon Mischief in the Academy.
The Evidence for my Statement is the Absence of Duns or Claims of Paternity professed during this dialogue. I ask you as well to note the frequent use of Random Capitalisation without Rhyme or Reason which I am sure you would not anticipate from any correspondence with Any Personage who can justly sign themselves As I Do, Robert Hooke, Esq.
Okay I’m back.
So Bernard, he opines:
Oh well frak me dead. We are on about the Hoodoos again and how the skirts can change the hoodoo rules when ever they like??? And that JP2 – he dishonestly conferred hoodoism instead of honestly doing it. Damn his Darth Vader propensities and his leanings towards the bleeding fascist! This is the rigo/ur that upset your degustation menu? That JP was a freaky dude who liked fascists? And how the world order fell when that bleeding fascist was hoodood! Did you, like, hear about the Indulgence stuff and how Luther got all weird about that?
Still, call me irritatin, but nothing about the woman question. And still nothing about who Mary MacKillop was. And nothing about what she means on the ground in the churches for women, one way or another.
Well good.
I think, instead, we should all be shocked at Rudd being a pollie. And we should congratulate Tony, he’s just a jealous guy, and not wanting to share and shit.
I’m so tempted to youtube the Hoodoos at this point.
I think it will take a while for me to calm down after inhabiting the Bora Bora caves of LP.
Certainly Silkworm could help me here.
Robert Hooke
You are certainly correct that I did not frequent Bawdy Houses, nor did I frequent the Kinde of Women you describe. Forsooth I did not Marry.
Now the Question of the Flea. One so Learned as Mr Hooke would fully appreciate the Diffickulty with a Flea. It may Flee. That Flea fled. I fed the Flea, then it fled. I would not stoop to Steal so much as a Flea from you Sir.
As to mischief amongst True Englishmen and learned men here, I had the Royal Society examine the Case of the Thief Leibniz; happily the Society found in My Favour. I venture that Continental Mathematicks will not Darken our Door for some long time; and a Good Thing this may be.
Mistress Casey: the last words from yon Tavern were that Silkworm had been feasting on Mulberry Leaves, but later made sup of Mulberry Wine which is a strong Liquor and Likely to cause Consequences. The others of the party have wended without.
Whatever you two are on, give it to me.
I see Sir Isaac that once again you display your ingenious Ability to turn a Word without turning an Ear.
So a man may be sanctified because he can show that the accumulation of wealth is the path to heaven so long as one is doing God’s will and imposing his dominion over the Earth, in God’s name (St Josemaría Escrivá). God’s work, everybody. As above, so below.
A woman will be sanctified for doing womanly things. As is also appropriate.
A camel no longer needs to thread the eye of a needle to aid the wealthy to enter the kingdom of heaven. The camels now unemployed, have laid siege to the town of Docker River. Now if someone could rid that town of its 6,000 heathenous camels without undue bloodshed, that would be a miracle.
And to show how modern the Church has become, applicants of either gender would be welcome.
An Australian Pope? Jeeezus! That would be George Pell?
Meanwhile, St. Anthony Abbott, patron saint of global warming.
Well I see people are avoiding me like the frakking plague. Well I understand, don’t worry about that.
Nevertheless, some feminist perspective on all this:
Nevertheless x 2, some further feminist perspective on Madame McKillop, including detail on her actual frakking life and her disruption of the patriarchal boundaries which she finally kinobed.
It’s theoretical, ok, but if you are interested you can read more here
You see, if you can get over the hoodooing for a sec, the scary bleeders, and the fascist Popsicle, the Kevinator and the Fruity Catholic jealous type, you can see how her story is a bit of a landmine. There are 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, I know you aren’t interested, I know. But consider: half of them are women. There is a whole history of feminists, led by nuns, within the catholic church that long agitated for her sainthood, and for good reason.
While she, all sanctified, may be used to reinforce traditional stereotypes of women by the skirts, the cracks will start to appear to anyone who looks into what she did, beyond the widdle chillen meme. I mean, she was excommunicated.
Really now, should that not at the very least be considered? And after all women, even Catlick hoodoos, need a hero
Oh man,
Sorry about that.
Absolutely agree, Casey. So if there has to be an Australian saint, which surely there will be, why not her? As I pointed out yesterday @ 13 she is the kind of woman that Abbott, Pyne and their ilk would have abhorred and she would have appreciated support from a man like our Kevin. If there can be no secular or socialist saints (and who closer to popular acclaim as such than Kevin himself?) why not a home grown Aussie, a feisty woman who has travelled our land and worked tirelessly for the battling poor? We feminists and socialists alike should be able to put aside agnostic, secular or other scruples and wholeheartedly rejoice when her elevation to sainthood is confirmed.
Casey, frankly the whole idea of Catholic Church designated saints today simply does not compute and is abhorrent.
So you need two miracles to be considered for sainthood. I’d like to know how may times Mary was petitioned by someone to intercede or do whatever potential saints do. I’ll bet it was plenty and just two miracles from all that seems mighty stingy.
Oh why do I bother?
I’m going back to Bora Bora.
Casey,
Don’t give up. wasn’t she excommunicated for disobeying a bishop?
Obviously George Pell hasn’t thought this through.
And um for all you non-Catholics out there, Our Lady Help of Christians (she’s got a halo of stars from what I remember) and St. Francis Xavier are the patron saints of Oz. Me being a lapsed Catholic and all.
Im back at Bora Bora Paul.
Im afraid there are ghost truthers to deal with.
Casey, don’t despair. Once all the prescribed hoops have been jumped through and the sanctification approved and confirmed by the male hierarchy of the church then Roman Catholic women will have their hero. You can be sure the legend they tell each other, their own daughters and the children taught in their schools will not be confined to a few miracles of healing by faithful prayer before her image. I’m sure that at least some the sisters of St. Joseph who initiated the application for sanctification were as aware as you are of the implications of her life and struggle for women both in the church and the world at large.
I’m sorry if my own poor efforts at humour with sly digs at Abbott and Pyne were at the expense of your own attempt at more serious commentary.
Ah, The truthers,
Mary MacKillop was at best an inspired and inspiring social worker. She was not in any sense a saint.
Consider the multi-various Hindu Tradition by comparison. Living saints are completely obvious to the traditional Hindu from all stratas of Indian society. That is why they are worshiped while alive and attract millions of followers who take what ever opportunity they can to see the saint and receive his or her blessings. Indira Gandhi used to visit the remarkable saint Sri Ananadamayi Ma for inspiration, guidance and blessing.
Plus the very idea of establishing an investigative body to determine whether any given saint was or was not authentic AFTER they died, and especially decades and centuries after, would be considered absurd to traditional Hindus
There, btw, so far as I know, moves afoot to canonise Caroline Chisholm. (I actually thought she’d beat Mary McKillop.)
That’s why the Vatican doesn’t consult Hindus when it’s deciding on beatification or canonisation, John. Funny that.
That’s a very characteristic duality for saints, male and female. Exhibit one: Francis of Assisi. Meek, loving, poverty-minded, but you just know he would have been a hard-politicking self-righteous arsehole in person.
Lord, make me an instrument of thy vengeance.
Where there is love, let me sow hatred.
And grant that I may not so much be fucked over as fuck over.
Get my meaning?
If someone will rat on you once, surely, he will rat on you twice.
I’ve read and reread your post @ 38, and I can’t say I understand much of it. Most of it seems to be silly snark, but your main point seems to be this:
Are you seriously suggesting that this is a feminist issue?
You know I’m an atheist, right? So why are you continually calling on me to make an input? Do you just look on me as an opportunity to unload your snark on?
I dunno. I just like you.
Patricia, well put.
Of course Casey is lying through her teeth. Her pleasantness is as faux as her feminism.
I take it you won’t be sharing your mulberry wine with me then?
Point of clarification:
1) Tora Bora, Afghanistan.
2) Bora Bora, French Polynesia.
I know where I’d rather be.
As you were.
How do you lie through your teeth in comments you’ve typed into a computer?
Who knows if Casey has any teeth at all? Maybe she is, as her gravatar suggests, an old crone.
Riddle me this. Why does a Catholic adopt a witch as her gravatar, when witches are pagan, and Catholics hate pagans?
Catholics don’t hate pagans. They adapt to them by pinching the good bits.
And Catholics think that sin is OK as long as it’s done under the supervision of qualified adults, and confessed to in sufficiently salacious detail every Sunday.
Isn’t this thread meant to be about “St. Mary”?
Riddle me this then: Why does a brought up as a Catholic but no longer practicing bitch like me, who makes Silkworm all asplodey, who adopts the witch as her gravatar, just cause she likes it and just cause it has it’s own feminist history, who comes along and critiques a post because of it’s lack of feminist commentary, its utter silence regarding the detail of McKillop’s life who as far as I know was a WOMAN, who is then accused of not being a feminist and then called a crone and has to deal with the pig ignorant sexism there, but somehow, still wants to drink Silkworm’s Mulberry Wine???
Riddle me that then.
I take it you won’t be sharing that wine for real then?
I much prefer the notion of Original Blessing than Original Sin.
Just sayin’.
Oh frakk it. If he doesn’t want to share, he doesn’t want to share. Let’s drink lilac wine instead
Casey, you suggest bizarrely that the canonization of McKillop will somehow be a great victory for women over the patriarchal Catholic church, forgetting at the same time that it is these same old patriarchs who would be doing the canonizing. If you really wanted to strike a blow against the Catholic church, you should take your children out of the Catholic schools and put them in secular public schools.
Silkworm, you suggest that I take the children I do not have out of the Catholic church schools I have not put them in, and put them instead into secular schools who will not take them because they do not exist.
Excellent suggestion.
Tell you what, you don’t need that wine anymore.
Why don’t you give me that wine.
Patricia WA @ 67,
S’pose it could be about hagiography?
In answer to to Casey’s question raised @68.
It’s because you witchy bitches have the gate to heaven between your legs yet frivolously demand the blokes spend some of their precious time learning how to intelligently pick locks. (Marmalade!)
If a Hexxan hack is beyond the reach of some blokes, then whose fault is that?
Incidentally, “Blood On Satan’s Claw” is, despite the standard lurid Timon Picture title, a surprisingly good and evocative bookend to Reeve’s “Witchfinder General”. A beautiful 17th century England pastoral interrupted by bloody outbursts of violence against women, teenagers and anyone else that won’t play the game.
Ok, Tigon British Pictures, not Timon Picti=ure. Or Trigan Empire.
And the “Blood on Satan’s Claw” soundtrack is up with the soundtrack to “Kes” as a great English pastoral opera.
Parsing this sentence will help me pass the time here in Limbo while I wait for God to reply to my most recent refutation of the arguments for His existence.
Vanessa @69
In that case you will be a fan of Genesis 1:28
Merry Christmas
The worm eats of the mulberry.
The mulberry leaves.
The worm pursues.
The mulberry is fruitful and rather than multiplying it extracts square roots.
Mulberry wine ensues.
The worm imbibes.
The worm turns.
No riddles, just sense.