SC - Abso-Floggin'-Lutely OT - Re: Funeral Feasts

[Philip & Susan Troy]

ChannonM at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Now I'm not so sure where that originates in
> my family as my back ground is Irish (good old "morrigan" stories),
> French-Metis Canadian (the crow is symbolic to our ideas of death and
> delivery of messages), Catholic (oh now, be gentle on the poor little
> religion. Not being of the Catholic Church anylonger, I was still raised in
> it's mindset).

So, uh, what is its mindset? There's a fair bit in the writings of Saint
Patrick, some 1500 years ago, about avoiding superstition. Of course,
one person's superstition is another person's faith, but I suspect you
may be confusing the beliefs of a group of
possibly-less-than-ideally-educated people as having something to do
with the Catholic Church simply because they were Catholic. And
technically, when many of the beliefs we're discussing originated, they
weren't Catholic, but Christians. 

The Catholic Church, interestingly enough, hasn't officially
acknowledged a miracle in a long time, has no official policy on demonic
possession, in spite of there being a ritual for excorcism, and will go
to extreme lengths to disprove the existence of virtually any supposedly
supernatural phenomenon you'd care to mention to them. They make Penn
and Teller and The Amazing Randi look like pikers. They don't approve of
physical proof for all this stuff precisely because what they deal with
is faith, not proof.

Do you really think the Church, as an institution, would support such
beliefs? I don't. Of course, there may be beliefs held by members _of_
the Catholic Church, but that's not the same thing. There are also quite
a few interesting folkways in various places where the Eastern Orthodox
faith is practiced, but I wouldn't say the religious mindset of the
people is really the issue, because the beliefs generally existed before
conversion to their current religious system of beliefs.

Maybe there's an underlying spiritual identity that doesn't change when
you adopt one religion or another, like the plethora of Buddhist customs
that are practiced by the many Chinese Presbyterians I know.
     
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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