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.”
Of course you are unworthy. But when do you hope to be worthy?...All the good works that we could ever do would never make us worthy, in this sense, of Holy Communion. God alone is worthy of Himself, He alone can make us worthy of Him, and He alone can make us worthy with His own worthiness.-- St. Catherine of Siena