TooBad

A waste to anyone who might otherwise have benefited.

I followed both of your links with interest. The first took me to a page containing hundreds of prayers and exhortations to St Therese to intervene in their lives and help them with various problems and difficulties. These problems range from the profound:

to the trivial:

to the just plain facetious:

The vast majority of them are clearly heartfelt and sincere pleas for help. There certainly are a lot of people out there who believe in the efficacy of intercessory prayer, despite the lack of any reliable evidence that it works. This, too, depresses me.

Your second link took me to a page of "Thank You" letters, along the following lines:

I haven't read all of them closely, but none of the examples I've looked at give me any reason to think that any real event in anyone's life can be attributed to saintly intervention. I do see plenty of evidence that imagination and wishful thinking play a large part in the lives of the truly devout. And I'm still depressed.

Incidentally, by my rough estimate, the "Prayers" page contains at least 500 separate requests, all submitted within the last week. The "Thank You" page has a total of 41 entries, for the same period. If this ratio is anything to go by, does it mean that about 90% of prayers go unanswered? Or are devout Catholics just an ungrateful bunch?

Gemma Therese

You see, TooBad, St. Therese was not a waste to a lot of people. She intervened once in my own life. I know it for sure.



By the way, you didn't answer the other questions.

Gemma Therese

[ July 07, 2002: Message edited by: Gemma Therese ]</p>

Panta Pei

Merlin once cast a spell on a school bully for pushing me down at recess in the fourth grade.

Of course, now that I consider it, I had just watched 'The Sword in the Stone' that weekend.

Hmmmm...bit of a re-think on that little life event seems to be required.

However, this other time...

TooBad

My phrasing was unfortunate, and didn't really express the point I was trying to make. What depresses me is the notion that it is better to accept suffering and bear it with dignity and fortitude as a preparation for the next world, than to seek to alleviate it in this one. It seems to me that the promotion of St Therese by the Catholic Church as an object of devotion is predicated on this assumption and that you seem to be quite happy to accept it yourself. Correct me if I'm wrong about that last point.

What specifically would you like me to address?

According to the brief account of her life that I've just looked at, she entered the cloister at the age of 42 and took her vows at 44. No mention of any contribution to philosophy or any other academic disciplines after that. And it was for her devoutness, rather than for her intellect, that she was canonized.

BTW, we are in serious danger of hijacking this thread if we continue in this vein for too long.

TooBad

Ah, you've defeated me with your cunningly crafted syllogisms. The Socratic method wins again.
<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

[ July 07, 2002: Message edited by: TooBad ]</p>

Bree

IMHO, Christianity causes depression.

Just think about what Christianity preaches - you are not worthy of anything unless God blesses you, you are nothing but dirty sinners who will burn in Hell forever just for being born. Small children will rot with the Devil because their parents had sex to conceive them. Who wouldn't be depressed?!?!

Depression was for me, among other things, the feeling that I was never good enough for anything. This was instilled in me from the beginning of my life - that I was dirty and nasty (especially being a non-white female) and must be cleansed by the blood of Christ, who would be the only person who could possibly love someone as filthy as me. I honestly believe this permeated everything in my life until I became an atheist and realised I could be a fantastic person without the Jesus endorsement.

If you do not have God, then you cannot do great things, either for yourself or for other people. You must always feel guilty that Jesus died for someone as putrid as yourself - that is Christianity in a nutshell.

Bree

Just found this - which substantiates my post above:

[italics mine]

[ July 07, 2002: Message edited by: Bree ]</p>

Gemma Therese

TooBad, you missed the point about Edith Stein. Here was a brilliant woman who entered Carmel. Ignorant of what?

Gemma Therese

Gemma Therese

Bree,

Without God, we are nothing. If everyone on Earth was an atheist, His existence would not change. We do not deserve the gift of the Eucharist, but God gives us this wonderful gift because He loves us -- don't see much depression in that.

Gemma Therese

Bree

Is it not true that we can NEVER be good enough for God, unless we accept his conditions?

A) This is conditional love.

B) It still is depressing.

We'll never be good enough for anything because God says we won't. This is the root of Christianity (you can't argue that) - and in my opinion, knowing that God made me to be inheirantly evil and then, on PURPOSE made it so I can never be anything BUT evil without Him - well, that's manipulative at best.

Have you ever seen South Park? They recently had a great episode on how civilisations are created and how gods evolve from those civilisations. Great stuff - check it out.