Posted on 07/17/2005 7:22:03 AM PDT by sionnsar
Ditto.
"Like you, I have no desire to continue this discussion at length about whether Augustine of Hippoe is or is not a saint of the Orthodox Church"
Good. So let's not start now.
"I have never examined the individual calendars of each of the local Orthodox Churches to see if St. Augustine is or is not found listed there."
Well, he's not on the one blessed by my bishop. Until he is, he's no saint. And I detect no big push, no fan club for his glorification in my diocese. Most Orthodox that I know find him a real embarassment.
To call St. Francis, St. Catherine, St. Teresa of Avila and others deluded psychics -- "plani" or "prelest" -- is the sort of vomitous garbage that rots from the center of Hell.
Welcome, misguided newbie.
Was that deluded psychics, or was it deluded psychotics?
Psychotic would be a very different sort of obscenity, but it would be equally as diabolical.
Secondly, there are those who were killed for their political views and their meddling in the secular affairs of the State or those who intolerantly murdered or tortured others and were then killed in revenge. These include Stanislas of Poland (+ 1079), Thomas Becket (+ 1170)
They cannot be considered to be Saints because they were not actually martyrs i.e. witnesses...Such cases include the mainly native Roman Catholics so cruelly slain in Japan, especially at Nagasaki, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with children among them, monastics in revolutionary France in the eighteenth century, those in Korea, Vietnam, China and Uganda in the nineteenth century, those in revolutionary Spain in the twentieth century, as well as murder-victims such as the innocent Italian child Maria Goretti in 1902.
The above aren't saints!? Absurd!
Those words were strong, and that section was not the reason that I posted the article. My main point in posting the article was to point out that there is not one single Orthodox calendar. In the Orthodox Church, in order for public services (Vespers, Matins, Liturgy) to be served for a saint's feast and in order to dedicate a temple in honor of a particular saint, that saint must be acknowledged by one's bishop to be a saint, but there is no Orthodoxy-wide calendar that sets the standard.
The absence of a saint on a diocesan or national local Church calendar list does not mean that someone is not a saint -- in general, once a saint is recognized by one local Church, he tends to gradually be accepted as such by other local Churches, even if he is not on the official calendar. There are, of course exceptions and controversies. And private veneration of saints not officially recognized by anyone is of course common -- it is how local veneration of a saint starts. One is not an Orthodox saint until one is first privately and locally venerated spontaneously.
This means that calendars and lists both extensively overlap and differ from location to location. That was the main point of posting the link.
It is true, however, that the "mystic" turn that the Roman church took after the Schism is one that appears to us Orthodox to be a sharp and distintive one that we cannot relate to. This was discussed at length on a thread some months ago between Orthodox and Catholics. It is a definite problem with regard to any idea of future union between Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
The author is correct that the individuals listed would never have been declared saints had they been in the Orthodox church.
The "mystics" aren't limited to the Roman/Latin Catholic Church. Saint Charbel and Saint Rafqa of the Maronite church could be considered "mystics" as well.
"The above aren't saints!? Absurd!"
They may be saints for the RCs, not for the Orthodox. I see little to be gained by attacking them. I just don't venerate them. I suppose if one wants to debate their sanctity, one might start a new string on the subject of Western saints whom the Orthodox refuse to venerate.
Instead of getting all in a lather about these "saints", how about the Western saints who seem to have been left by the wayside but yet remain very popular with the Orthodox? One might, for example, check out the saints portrayed in the border of the Russian Orthodox icon of the Glastonbury Mother of God and many other saints of the Orthodox West.
The Glastonbury example is understandable, since the English tried to wipe Marian veneration from the face of their country.
Check out Saints of England's Golden Age, by Vladimir Moss,
That is certainly true; all one would need to do is compare a calendar from a Russian Church against a Greek Church to note the differences in the local saints.
I hope that no one takes that up, actually. There are undoubtedly an equal number of Orthodox saints that the Roman Catholics would refuse to venerate but that's a direct result of our rather obvious separation.
Besides, I think we've hijacked this Episcopalian thread enough! ;-)
"I think we've hijacked this Episcopalian thread enough!"
The "Piskys" do seem strangely silent, don't they?
A crossfire is a good thing to avoid, generally.
The link you posted was diabolical anti-Catholic swill.
Nonsense. There are Catholic churches named for the ancient British saints throughout the Isles and elsewhere in the English-speaking Catholic world. My parish in LOndon long ago was St. Ethelreda's (Aetheldreda), and my father was baptised in County Donegal in a church named after an ancient Celtic saint.
"My parish in LOndon long ago was St. Ethelreda's (Aetheldreda)"
Well bully for you
So what stripe are you? Milan Synod? ROCOR? Monophysite British Orthodox Church? Antiochian Archdiocese under Metropolitan PHILIP? Greek Orthodox? OCA?
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