Marathon (RAT) race for sainthood
The CCV article on the rising number of Syro-Malabar (SM) saints already cobbled up and in the assembly line, made me to look for the number of saints in Roman Catholic Church. I was virtually knocked out of my senses by their sheer number. I give up, with both my hands raised in complete and unconditional surrender. My head is reeling.
The number of saints continue to increase in geometrical proportions. A time may come when the Christian Heaven will collapse under the sheer weight of the saints and the debris will hit the heads of “goat/cattle” believers annihilating them all.
Some of the so-called saints are unsavoury characters like Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, the Nazi sympathiser Pope Pious XII the founder of Opus Dei, the “actor turned zealot” John Paul II. The most important criterion to become a saint: the intended character should be a paranoid hater of human life and the human body. If it is a female saint, she should not have been sullied by any male semen/sperm. For the male saint everything is passé. How else the the debauchee fornicator Augustine of Hippo was elevated to sainthood? Any hatchet man for the Church is sure to become a saint provided the connections with the hierarchy are strong.
An aura should be built around the intended saint, often by exaggerated stories of superhuman deeds. The determining factor is concocted miracle stories attributed to the Saint-in-the-making. After all the Catholic Church is built on Mystery, Miracle and Mary.
The Catholic laity have been milked dry, their pockets made empty after paying tithes and meeting the never ending demands for more and money for the whimsical purposeless projects of the clergy. Yet the befuddled faithful are more than willing to deposit money as offerings to saints, who are supposed to keep them safe from various perils, even at the cost of depriving food and medicines and other basic necessities to their family members including children and old parents.
The Catholic world is a topsy-turvy one, an Alice in Wonderland scenario. The White-man’s saints, who are placed high in the pecking order and the most favoured ones and get away with most goodies. Imaginary characters such as Gabriel, Michael also get their share. The crazier the stories whirling around a saint, the merrier the scenario.
The dioceses with one or more saints under their custody hit the jackpot: they are the envoy of those without any saint. Hence, ideally each diocese should have a pair of saints, one female and the other male. The Catholic Females are likely to prefer male saints, the male obviously would go for a female ones. This preference is in consonance human nature.
The following plan of action is suggested:
Make the life of an elderly sick mentally retarded crone of a nun hailing from a poor family miserable by all means, starving, physical torture, denial of medical attention and other things. It should be ensured that she is confined to the four walls of the concrete prison of the nunnery. After her painful death out of deprivation she may be hailed as “sahanadasi” for God. Some small children should be brainwashed to say that some miracles have cured some imagined illness of theirs by praying to the saint in question. Foolish women can also be cajoled to corroborate the story.
For manufacturing a male saint, a priest suffering from incurable illness like acute dementia, Parkinson’s decease etc may be made to suffer till his death and claim that he suffered everything for the glory of God a “Greatest Sahanadasan” Some miraculous cures can be foisted on him and steps for his canonisation initiated.
A better choice is to search out an unclaimed terminally ill vagabond with notorious histories of womanising, pimping, illicit liquor brewing and all sorts of criminal proclivities and place him under the care of some charismatic outfits. Some some characters are already with certain popular charismatic circuses who are deployed as witness as reformed renegades. They are provided with wives and houses and make money as expert interpreters of the Bible and by “sakhshyam parachil”. Once such characters conk off, there will be plentiful supply of potential saints as reformed sinners in the category of Augustine of Hippo. Such miserable persons can be declared to have gone to heaven in blaze of glory. The more the wretched the person he were, the better; if he hails from another faith or religion, nothing better.The “cattle” believer will swallow the bunkum without batting an eye lid. Then the hierarchy can dance all the way to the bank laughing with sacks full of money.
If there is some restrictions for building shrines for the saints in the middle of busy roads or on government land, illuminated and decorated alcoves can be embedded at prominent spots along with spacious collection boxes on the walls of liquor bars and dens, good numbers of which are owned by SM Church Catholics. The tipsy Catholics will be generous in putting money in these boxes, the sufferers would be bar attendants. Then who the hell are mere waiters vis-a-vis the local Saint? A Saint is a Saint all said and done.
Varghese Pamplanil
