Mad Dawg it’s a lot like the people who want the St. Joseph statue to bury upside in order to sell their house.
I have realtors who are not Catholic come into my store to buy one for their clients.
Is is superstition? Yep, you bet it is.
I just ask them to treat this with respect and remember to unbury the statue when their house sells.
I also tell them not to even think about asking a priest to bless this.
The people who engage is that kind of superstitious conjuring would probably not benefit from reading the last few pages of this thread. I kind of wish their pastors and bishops would read it though.
Chogyam Trumka (sp?),a Vajrayana lama who knew Thomas Merton and who came to this country to preside over a very weird and sometimes scandalous organization in Boulder,CO, wrote a book with an excellent title,”Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism”.
Fr Jacek Buda (no kidding!) late of Charlottesville, now of Phoenix, speaks of “bottom line Christianity”, where the preoccupation is not an encounter with Christ in which everything we have is placed at hazard, but with “What will you do for me when I die and what will you do for me in the meantime and what have you done for me lately?”
And when this mindset, the miracles and consolations focus, dominates a Catholic, it SHOULD scandalize us, and, as recent posts show, it appropriately scandalizes our non-Catholic brethren.
Where’s the Inquisition when we really need it. [wry, sorrowful grin.]
Boatbums, your concept of the intercession of the saints is wrong, but your having it is partly my responsibility for not having the, ah, intestinal fortitude to rebuke boldly and clearly my brethren who reduce this (at least to us) fundamental doctrine of the working out of Pentecost into a series of contemptible and greedy parlor tricks. To paraphrase Cicero, “Nos, nos fratres sororesque, desumus.”