This will be long, but funny.Yes. Protestants take issue with using it as a title or classification because we consider all believers to be saints.
Yeah, I know that, I was raised Protestant. I was asking about Catholics. They seem to worry about beautifying a person quite a lot. I think they wait so long to name someone a saint to make sure any scandal the person might have been involved in would be long forgotten.
Funny SCG !
As it pertains to the responses on the board/ thread - yes Catholics venerate, revere, and pray to saints. Someone sent this to me, whose name I shall not reveal. >>Saints are like God's customer service representatives. If you lose your wallet or your shoe, you can just pray to Saint Antony. Finding lost things is all he does ... for eternity.
Now I saw that ^^ and laughed, but it's kinda true - as it relates to Catholics take on it. Of course, they don't see it that way, but consider one of my earlier posts where I mention the patron saint of skating. (explained more below)
St Lydwina, (the patron saint of skaters) supposedly was a skater who broke a rib and gangrene set in, and she was paralyzed. For the next 19 years she lived on the Eucharist alone (a wafer-like unleavened bread Catholics serve at their "Mass"). She prayed, meditated, and offered her pain to God. Offered her pain, huh? So is that why she became a saint? Or was it because she lived on the Eucharist alone, which supposedly caused miracles to happen at her bedside and visions? AH YEAH - you might experience visions if you eat only the Eucharist for 19 years, like one who has visions when they eat the worm at the bottom of a bottle of tequila. I guess if you polished off an entire bottle of Tequila, one might see visions, ......... with or without the worm. See link to another website about St Lydwina. >>
http://saints.sqpn.com/saint-lydwina-of-schiedam/That's like the
patron saint of pawnbrokers. Ok I'm confused here. Does one pray to this saint if they are taken advantage of by the pawnbroker, or do the pawnbrokers pray to this saint when they have things they can't re-sell and pay the rent? Retorical question.
Additionally,
Catholics can't even agree on who is the saint of so and so, for different websites name different people for the same cause.
Example 1a: the 1st website I previously listed in another post (a few posts back), usually only lists one saint per profession, but in the case of patron saint of lawyers it lists 2 (St Genesius and St Thomas More). Now why does that profession have 2, when no other profession does? Hhmm? Are there that many people praying about lawyers and law issues, that we need 2? Oh I see, so if one of them is busy, just pray to the other; or perhaps it's about choices so that if one doesn't answer my prayer the way I want, I can try on the other one for size. Well now that makes perfect sense.
Example 1b: Now take this same website I'm talking about now, which shows the 2 patron saints of lawyers, and look over to the pawnbrokers heading which lists St John Vianney. Now I will re-post the site here, because I'm going to have you do some comparisons if you will. Oh just plaayyy along, Ok. Here is that site again >>
http://www.catholic-saints.info/patron-saints/patron-saints-professions.htmNOW another website ...
lists someone else as the patron saint of pawnbrokers. Ok I just can't get over that - that's hysterical. Ok Ok back to topic.
Example 2a (Goes with 1b): I went to the site, typed into their search field for patron saint of pawnbrokers which netted a different result than St John Vianney from the site I quoted above, but instead listed 2, and neither of which are Vianney. Feltre and Myra are listed instead here. >> See this link
http://saints.sqpn.com/patrons-of-pawnbrokers/ SO ....
while I was on that website, and since I netted a different result, I decided to try looking up the Vianney from the first website where I found him listed, and tried looking him up on this latter website, but this time not by professions (pawnbrokers), but by name.
Example 2b (goes with 2a and 1b): This time Vianney came up, but the site said he was the patron saint of Confessors, which is not a profession, but a cause. - see here >>
http://saints.sqpn.com/saint-john-mary-vianney/The Catholic church has done a terrible injustice to weathermen or meteorologists; those guys don't even have a patron saint named for them. Life has surely dealt them an unkind blow, which they will feel if they are caught up in a tornado. I think I'm gonna write to the Pope, and demand that his eminence institute a patron saint for them immediately. But in all seriousness, Catholics can't even agree on who is the patron saint of a profession, (or cause) or how many to assign to each category, not to mention the stories of these saints are absurd. In the
Apostles Creed, it states they believe in the "communion of saints". Taken way out of context. B-T-W, Catholics aren't the only ones that believe this.