Snakes on a Plane? NO! Saints on a Cell Phone!

Our world obviously doesn't have enough serious problems in it these days. People just have too much time on their hands. A particular group of people that have too much time on their hands are the members of the world's organized revealed religions. These are the people who have a direct line to God right? I would think given the state of things here on good old Earth that these folks would be on their knees lighting up the night sky with a celestial phone bank on a heavenly telethon asking God to fix things toot sweet. Even if they aren't fully occupied doing that you'd think with all the time they spend telling the rest of us what we'll be damned for and trying to get laws passed to force us to be moral that there just wouldn't be enough time left in the day. But alas and alack.


First we have a nation arresting an elementary school teacher for letting her class name a teddy bear after their prophet (never mind the fact that half the kids in her class either have the name themselves or have relatives who do) because, you know, that is a much more serious affront to God than say, the little problem in DARFUR!!!. And don't worry, I won't print the teddy bear's name here. I live in fear of a suicide blogger (of course it would be okay if HE had that name).

Now I read this:

Saints on cellphones spark controversy in Italy


Catholics there are up in arms over a company that sells electronic pictures of your favorite patron saint that you can download to your cell phone. I grew up in an Italian household and the little saint pictures (called santino - little saint) were all over the place. They're like...Catholic baseball cards. All the relatives carried them. I even had some. My mother gave me one when I went to college to keep on my desk - St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases. I don't know what the hell she was trying to tell me but it wasn't very inspirational. This cell phone thing strikes me as a normal step into the electronic age and certainly isn't any less reverent than folding up the picture, putting it in your wallet and sitting on it. And yet the critics find it disrespectful.


"This is in really bad taste," Bishop Lucio Soravito De Franceschi, a member of the Italian bishops conference committee for doctrinal matters, told the Turin newspaper La Stampa.
"It is a distortion of sacred things ... selling 'santini' for cell phones is horrifying," he said.

Horrifying! Oh my. Thank goodness the church is on top of stopping things that are horrifying. My word, I can't think of a single thing more horrifying than having an electronic picture of some dead guy that the church declared holier than the rest of us on your cell phone! Truly horrifying...and in bad taste. Clearly we should be more tasteful and honor these holy servants of God as the church does.

Throughout it's history the church SO revered these Saints that they opened their tombs in order to conduct a "translation of relics". That's a tasteful way of saying removing their remains and placing them in reliquaries to be "venerated" and later divided up and distributed as Holy Relics of the Church. In many cases the head or entire limbs of the saint were displayed. Of course it was declared illegal to sell such relics but only after a roaring cottage industry sprung up selling fakes thus cutting into their action. At one point Europe had a dozen or more holy foreskins of Jesus vying for the title of the one and true foreskin of the savior. In fact one town in, yes, Italy had the last of those foreskins on record in a jewel-encrusted reliquary that was paraded through the streets on the (and I can't type this without laughing) Feast of the Circumcision (seriously, look it up) as late as 1983. Unfortunately it was stolen by thieves presumably for the jewels but you never know.

I would like to propose that those filthy infidels...wait, wrong group...I mean heretics that would dare engage in the HORRIFYING practice of having a picture of a saint on their cell phone be stoned like it says in the bible. No, no, not harsh enough. They should be tortured into admitting their sin like they were during the Inquisition. Nope, not nearly horrible enough. They should be slaughtered out of existence by invading armies of explorers, ah no, that won't do! They should be BURNED ALIVE!!! Dammit! CRAP! I just can't think of a punishment HORRIBLE enough for this blatant demonstration of bad taste. I pray that someone from the Holy See is inspired to come up with something suitable. After all they have plenty of time on their hands what with nothing more important going on in the world.

While I wait for word from the church I'm gonna try to get my hands on that Teddy Bear. I'm cuttin' that sonofabitch up and sellin' his ass on Ebay! Praise the Lord!