Grody to the max

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!

Afterward, people were invited to venerate the relics, with many stroking or kissing the reliquary and touching Bibles to it.

Ew. I don't understand this at all, even less than other religious service-type stuff. Saints are just...a bizarre idea. Explain to me again how Catholics are monotheistic?

I love zombie cultists! They're always good for a laugh! Fortunately, nobody takes them seriously...

And Bill D. thinks we are the crazy ones....so if you're reading this Bill, please tell me again why you are the sane one?

Yeah, um, what about that whole "you shall make no false idols" bit?

After that title, I really must link to this (before WooTube gives it the axe):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHeIfCKqo4c

Yeah, that's fairly creepy. But, honestly, given that we're talking about the death cult here, is anybody really suprised?

It's not a false idol.
It's a saint!
Get it?

Me neither.

Afterward, people were invited to venerate the relics, with many stroking or kissing the reliquary and touching Bibles to it.

NOTE: if you stroke the 800-year-old magic foreskin just right, your wish may cum true gOd will answer your prayers.

As opposed to a 70 million year old rock?

And what do you have against egyptologists?

That's anti mummy!

Well, it's about as creepy as Jeremy Bentham's auto-icon.

Note the passage:

For the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, the Auto-icon was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where he was listed as "present but not voting".

Saint Jerky.

Now mind you, when they all kiss and rub the reliquary, they're actually just asking the saint to kiss and rub God and their behalf. Yeah.

Would this be like native Americans worshiping the scalp of Custer? Very weird. At least with the Flying Spaghetti Monster we do not have to worship left overs :)

Confession (pun intended):

I love Pharyngula and all it stands for, but what happens when we cease to find the humor in all this bullshit? I'm a science teacher whose students draw crosses and pretend they are burning my skin with their talismans...I'm just saying, my head is spinning with every report of silly religious ritual. Is it me or is it getting more dopey by with every passing day? Is the onslaught of daffy practices keeping us distracted?

Seriously f'in aggravated.

Paging Pete Rooke to the 800-yo Catholic skin-scrap thread...

I worship the 2.5 million years old, petrified, 40% complete skeleton of St. Lucy. Every night I pray that in the next 2.5 million years remenants of my selfish genes are still being spread around.

What a relief that this is going on in Long Island. If it were here on the West Coast my family would be all over it. Antonio is a family name and St. Anthony is therefore a patron saint of the relatives bearing that name. Certain cousins would be all puckered up and ready to go.

Ick.

I've had uber-Catholics whine at me when I use the verb "worship" when referring to their morbid weirdness. They insist they are "venerating". Catholic apologists love to indulge in ridiculous semantic games.
Whatever it is even most Catholics think it's kind of creepy.

Alright, say you have a philosophy of life and you wrote it down in the pages of a book. And to bind the book, you used the cured skin of a deceased love one.

what else would you expect from a cannibalistic cult?

Excuse me for being a bit off topic, but if you got links to some good atheist videos on youtube, drop a comment onto this blog post:

http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2009/04/atheists-on-youtube.html

damn, i was gonna make a comment about 800 year old foreskin, but i was beat to it.

oh well, i'm gonna post anyway.
in any case gross.

"Puts the lotions ons the skins. Yesssss!"

Interestingly, someone also saved Galileo's middle finger - you can view it, along with his telescopes and ramps, at the Museum of Science in Florence.

I find it quite appropriate that it was his middle finger they saved.

Ew. I don't understand this at all, even less than other religious service-type stuff. Saints are just...a bizarre idea. Explain to me again how Catholics are monotheistic?

It's pretty obvious why this came about.

The Catholic church is all about power. They do this by placing themselves between God and the commoners (God may be all loving and all powerful, but he just doesn't give a crap about the petty concerns of the peasants).

This works great for concentrating power, but creates a problem. People want a more "personal" religious experience, and the church doesn't have the man power to listen to every peasants prayers (besides that would eat into quality time with the alter boys). So they created the saints. This way the people can pray to the saints, the church remains the sole access to God, and everyone wins (except the alter boys).

Of course since the followers "converse" with the saints instead of God, there's a tendency for them to start worshiping the saint instead of God. Technically that may be a violation of the "no idol" rule, but it keeps the power in the church so they're willing to look the other way.

Like, gag me with a spoon.

"they're actually just asking the saint to kiss and rub God and their behalf."

Whoops, I meant ON their behalf. Man, one silly little typo and the whole of intercessionary prayer and fondling becomes a completely nonsensical enterprise.

In the interest of fairness, Galileo's middle finger is preserved in a jar in the Science History Museum in Florence.

Mmmm. Saint Jerky.

His tongue, jaw, and cartilage from his larynx are relics on display in the Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua in Padua. The Saint Anthony Shrine in Cincinnati, Ohio, claims to have a piece of the body too. It is SO voodoo.

And then there's Einstein's brain.

I guess the religious venerate their relics, while scientists dissect and examine theirs :)

Is it still April 1? I suspect an Onion parody. Wish I was serious.

I don't know, PZ; I'd feel an awkward, dumbstruck reverence if I was looking at a hadrosaur mummy up close.

@#26 No Name
What, do protestants have saints as well?

What about the whole "remember thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return" thing? Didn't the "soul" go to "heaven"? Or is there still a dried-up little fragment of "soul" stuck to the wee bit o' corpse?

Catholics worship horcruxes now?

I don't see what's so creepy about this.

But then, Ed Gein is from my home state. . .

Rosaria Incantalupo of Eltingville was there to thank the saint for his intercession seven years ago, when she was cured of cancer. She always vowed she would go to Padua to thank him at his tomb. "I never got to go but he came right to me."

Reported without even a hint of skepticism. Sigh...

At first... nauseated.
Then, after reading @30 Steve_C, lmao.
Now, a bit hungry actually.
Think we could fry it like bacon?

Awww, PZ, I thought I would be directed to a site with something interesting on a bogman. Gag me with a spoon instead.

Was it foreskin?

Hey guys, this is a big deal! They finally get to touch bona-fide dead guy instead of the usual wheat-based substitute.

Aw come one - where's the best part of the story? How was the relic obtained?

Was it cut off while the body was still fresh?
Was it an Indiana Jones-like situation with a catacomb crawl, traps and then reaching into a musty tomb to tear off a strip?
...or my favourite...
was Brendan Fraser chased by the moldy old corpse up an old church steeple and the strip was obtained as the swinging bell clapper immolated the spritely cadaver's head?

It reminded me of a Futurama episode where Fry ate an ancient mummy owned by Prof. Farnsworth because he thought it was jerky.

These are the people that dress up every week so that they can play pretend that they are eating the flesh of a two thousand year old corpse and drinking its blood. Saint leather is really just a mild deviation by contrast.

I love Pharyngula and all it stands for, but what happens when we cease to find the humor in all this bullshit? I'm a science teacher whose students draw crosses and pretend they are burning my skin with their talismans...

Hmmm, things must have changed since I was in school. We just got high out by the trees.

I suppose when they start sticking wooden stakes into hearts, stoning disobedient children and witches, burning scholars at the stake, and shooting people with silver bullets.

Wait until you find about the Greek Orthodox love of mummified relics.

I believe churches across the Aegean will trot out complete mummified bodies which people touch and (until recently at least) kiss their preserved feet in order to be blessed.

Alright, say you have a philosophy of life and you wrote it down in the pages of a book. And to bind the book, you used the cured skin of a deceased love one.

Well, if your deceased love was a saint, then you would be a catholic.

What did you do with all the other body parts? Stored all over the world, most likely. How many relicts can one part out of a given body anyway? And is there a hierarchy of which parts are the best? Is a tongue more powerful than a big toe? More examples of sophisticated theology.

Raven, I thought that you would know what I was referencing.

Raven, I thought that you would know what I was referencing.

Yeah, I got it, Rooke being very strange. Oddly enough when some of the weirder RCC superstitions show up, the catholics aren't around. I'm not expecting any coherent answers to my questions.

I too saw St Anthony's tongue in Padua. It is blackened and rather ugly, and displayed in a glass globe surrounded with gold.

Why his tongue, by the way? Because he's said to have been a great speaker. Hmm, good thing he remained celibate, isn't it?

He apparently had the power to raise the dead so why would a little thing like being killed bother him?

The RC god should be spelled Godd.

Well, this is kind of insane. Actually, more than kind of - people were KISSING the 800-year-old foreskin. Even I'm a bit surprised by it - I used to be catholic (actually, I live on Staten Island, I've been to that friary) but I seriously did not know they kept eight century old foreskins lying around.

I also work for the paper that did the reporting - down in the mailroom though, so I get no contact with any writers or editors. I just lift bundles of newspapers. Might write an editorial letter if I have the time...

Misguided flock! Everybody should know Jesus Holy Prepuce is the real thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Prepuce

I like visiting reliquaries. I once saw Jesus' Belt. I wonder what would happen if you wore that puppy to a job interview...

Damn! All the best Valley Girl lines have been used.
Barf out!

Necrophilia and cat'licking obviously leads to pedophilia.
If you just pray enough.

If you want to see some scary Easter parades take a look at
pages 29-37 of this:
http://www.entornode.com/spanorama/marzo/

None of these people would have been Francoists. Honest. Not even that guy on p36.

Honestly, if we hadn't already taken off I might have asked them to leave me behind. And this is supposed to _encourage_ _tourism_!

When did "grotty" become "grody"?

It takes a lot to gross me out. I'm fine with blood, spiders, body farm corpses, crime scenes... But worshiping skin scraps? Eeeeewwwwwwwwww!!!

@60
In the upper Midwest, it was already "grody" when I was in Junior High (1970-72).

Santa Mierda! That's just ghoulish.

Saint Anthony of Padua? The people of Lisbon are going to be pissed off with whoever is marketing this relic. He is often shown with either a big flower and a book (a combination that always makes me think of Morrissey) or hold babby Jesus (it's a priest holding a baby - I know if shouldn't be funny, but it is)

Well, if you want to see how profoundly misinformed and ugly people can be, just go to the comboxes on this blog.

A commenter at the article page correctly notes that kissing the reliquary is not kissing the relic.
It's not a difference in the superstition gradient, but a physical distinction. I think I recall that there are documented cases of contagious diseases being spread in this manner. I hope they disinfect the reliquary after each kisser. I once saw them do this when I was traveling and visited some such church.

Well, it's about as creepy as Jeremy Bentham's auto-icon.

I think there is a difference between "venerating" and "strange humour".

Maybe it's just me but worshipping bits of corpses is one of the less upsetting things Catholics do. Most of these relics have strange histories and were objects of power within the church for a long time. It's pretty fascinating really, but it really doesn't work well with the whole "no-superstition" schtick. There have been churches less than 100 miles from each other that both claim to have the head of one saint or another.

... sick, perverse, and warped.

You say that as if...

Uh oh.

ah, the saints. whenever my aunts start going on about how they pray to st anthony to help them find misplaced items I love to rib them for their idolatry.
"dear st. anthony, i know you should be out protecting children in darfur, but have you seen my socks. they were right here on the dresser, and I looked everywhere! on top of the dresser, the fridge, by the pool, the fridge... oh there they are, they fell under the dresser! thank you st anthony!"

Didn't the "soul" go to "heaven"? Or is there still a dried-up little fragment of "soul" stuck to the wee bit o' corpse?

Well, if a priest can magic God Himself into a damn cracker, he should have no trouble sticking a saint into actual flesh.

Hey Teucer -- are you by any chance an archer?

(Ignore the personal note, everyone but Teucer.)

My personal view of sainthood is that it is an essentially Roman practice--not Roman Catholic, Roman Empire--that replaced the tradition of godhood-by-popular-vote with sainthood-by-popular-vote when monotheism became the law in Rome (preceding the Orthodox split).
Romans were always good at making things Roman that they adopted from other cultures, and it certainly fits with their preference for hierarcy. Can't have everybody on the same level under God. Some people are obviously better, right?

Can't get made a god by the Senate any more to avoid eternal punishment? Now you can buy some cardinals and become a saint. Perfectly pragmatic Roman thinking.

(By 'popular vote' I mean of course, among the few people with a vote, all of whom get a vote by virtue of influence rather than any given inherent quality.)

No images nor idols make
  For Robert Ingersoll P.Z. to break.

"Rosaria Incantalupo of Eltingville was there to thank the saint for his intercession seven years ago, when she was cured of cancer."

Here's a question - which saint does she thank for her getting the cancer to start with?

Given that these people engage in religious cannibalism (remember all the outraged catholics screaming that the cracker reallyreallyreally was the body of christ), how is it that this relic, an actual piece of saint-meat, has lasted 800 years without somebody scarfing it up?

Let's see... foreskin, saint jerky, aw man, all the good ones have been taken already. How about GodScab -- pretty decent band name.

Anyway, what the hell is wrong with these people? How fucked up do you have to be to play along with such a grotesque ritual?

The one time I awake early enough to browse the internet rather than rushing through breakfast and a shower, and this is what I'm greeted with? People worshipping dead skin? I could have woken up early a week ago to cephalopod porn, but oh no, I've got to get the dead skin post.

I was raised Catholic (I'm much better now), and I never have understood the obsession with relics.

Oh yuck! That is sick. Really really sick.

If you think this is weird, consider that some Catholics also venerate alleged vials of the Virgin Mary's breast milk(they might have those for other female saints as well). There is also a "holy prepuce", the foreskin of Christ-- which has led to some theological controversy because some think it should have ascended to Heaven with the rest of Christ's body.

Not to mention that some of these saints have so many "relics" that if all those were authentic, some would have had twelve fingers, or two heads.

All relics are not this gruesome. I can still remember seeing the relic at Holy Cross Catholic Church in NE Minneapolis when I was a child. We were shown this church's precious relic which was a sliver of the cross on which they hung Jesus. (And I do mean sliver, this was about 1/20th the size of a wooden toothpick.)

Almost all Catholic churches have a relic. It is usually kept somewhere near the alter. Often, like this one, they are bits of a saint. Some, like the aforementioned sliver, may not even be what it is claimed to be, but then, with faith, the follower will believe anything.

Alright, say you have a philosophy of life and you wrote it down in the pages of a book. And to bind the book, you used the cured skin of a deceased love one.

While it wasn't bound in the skin of a loved one, the 15th century bible I held in my hands about two years ago in a used bookstore specialising in rare books, was bound in the skin of a convict.

Emily @ #81:

Not to mention that some of these saints have so many "relics" that if all those were authentic, some would have had twelve fingers, or two heads.

I've read there are so many relics alleged to be the Foreskin of Christ that if they were all authentic he would have to have had 18 penises. :P

Along with so many fragments of the True Cross that it would have to be somewhere around thirty feet tall, in any case much too heavy for any humn to lift.

There was a huge industry in phony holy relics, bilking the gullible has always been a reliable source of income. And just like with transubstantiated crackers, there's no way to tell the difference between a real relic and a fake. Because there IS no difference.

P.T. Barnum could've been a priest.

It's good to remember, when considering relics, that they acutally aren't as much a part of the church as a part of human superstition. It became really important to own something like this if you had money, it was the rumors about the object that were more important than the actual object. If you were a church it could save you from being destroyed, and could bring money in through the pilgrams who would make long trips to see it. They were the churches sideshow and a damned cool thing to have in your Wunderkammer. On top of that, if you got into some bad debt, the collectable status of them could be used to pay that off. They were a part of the art market, in a way. I think that's why even the RCC is a little embarrassed by them and keeps making those "intercession" claims when what's going on is clearly much more primal. But hey... they are morbidly fascinating.

The center part of the reliquary looks like a turd on a cotton ball; and those hanging red thingies look like the FSM's Meatballs suspended from a bloody noodle/appendage. Was that their sick way taking a swipe at the FSM?

Qwerty's comment about seeing a sliver of "the" cross reminded me of my encounter with "relics."

One Saturday morning at our local Planned Parenthood, the clinic was being besieged by the once-a-month crowd from the nearby Catholic church. (I was volunteering as an escort to shield patients from harassment.) A priest was with them and he was taking a small cross, about 6" x 10" and about an inch thick from one person to the next, and each dutifully kissed that cross. After the last person kissed it, he passed near me and we struck up a brief conversation. I asked him about the cross, what it was and what it symbolized. He showed it to me. It contained six objects, each in a little windowed chamber of its own. One was a "sliver" from THE cross, one was a little piece of lint from the garment Jesus wore in the cross. By that time I was both grossed out and incredulous so what the remaining four relics were just didn't register. I made no comment to the priest other than saying 'Thank you" but anyone who believes what he claimed is seriously demented. Oh, I don't remember there being any pieces of flesh but there could have been a piece of hair. Gross and mind numbingly stupid.

re the comment about what you'd do with all these saint parts scattered all over: Well, obviously you have to go on a quest to collect them and bring them all to his resting place, so that Tony will be revived so you can kill him again. It's the only way to un-curse yourself. And to top it all off, all you have to go on is badly-translated hints that were lies to begin with.

Anyway, why is it I'm also reminded of part of the game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem? I'd be on the lookout for creepy, sallow, dead-eyed priests and lots of unearthly screaming if I were headed to this place.

(Man, two video game references in one comment? I'm on a roll.)

phantomreader42

There was a huge industry in phony holy relics, bilking the gullible has always been a reliable source of income. And just like with transubstantiated crackers, there's no way to tell the difference between a real relic and a fake. Because there IS no difference.

Father Guido Sarducci claimed somebody tried to sell him the restaurant check from the Last Supper. It was too expensive, but fortunately the seller had a cheaper one, from the Last Brunch.

Almost all Catholic churches have a relic. It is usually kept somewhere near the alter. Often, like this one, they are bits of a saint...

ALL functioning Catholic churches have a relic. It's encased in the altar stone which is a roughly 12" square by 1" deep piece of granite set into the altar. Travelling priests who say mass at non-church locations, ie RC military chaplains, carry altar stones with them.

There are different classes of relics: First Class, part of a saint or a sliver of the True Cross(tm); Second Class, something which has touched a First Class relic, ie a bit of saint's clothing; Third Class, something which has touched a Second Class relic. Third Class relics are often included in prayer cards and other magic charms worn by the faithful.

The whole debate over the authenticity, etc, of what is claimed to be the True Cross(tm) is itself worthy of a Pharyngulization (hint).

"If Jesus had come today, Catholic schoolchildren would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks." (Lenny Bruce, quoted from memory)

Any other recovered Catholics remember this? I think every Catholic church has some Saint BitsTM encased in the altar. I'm not sure if this is still the practice, but it was a requirement for some time.

Thanks, Bureaucratus Minimis, for answering my question before I could even submit.

And just like with transubstantiated crackers, there's no way to tell the difference between a real relic and a fake. Because there IS no difference.

Beg to differ. There is no way to quantify the alleged quality of holiness, but it might be possible to falsify the authenticity of some relics.

Relics which are claimed to be actual human remains should have DNA, so it should be provable whether the claimed relic is indeed human in origin. I believe that some claimed relics have later turned out to be animal bones, but don't have references. Also, suspect that the RC's will have quietly retired the more egregious fakes.

Is DNA testing robust enough to determine if the DNA is that of the person of whom the relic is claimed to have been part of? I realize that would require testing to be done on collateral descendants of the saint (ie, multi-great nieces/nephews etc)?

Here's a question - which saint does she thank for her getting the cancer to start with?

Saint Bastardo.

Hmm, I've seen the Neanderthal flute in the museum in Ljubljana in Slovenia (or at least the flute found commingled in Neanderthal sediments) and felt just a bit of awe. After we found it that was, we walked around the whole place (it's not that big, Slovenia is a small country) and discovered we had walked straight past it, twice.

They have live blind cave salamanders too.

i think that presented with deep time that our minds are not really equipped to deal with awe is perhaps the only way we can approach it. And wouldn't you know it as I'm typing this the flute part of Stairway to Heaven was chosen by the randomizer in my iTunes. Freaky man (not).

The Amazing Randi (http://www.randi.org/jr/2006-09/092206bad.html) tells of seeing the heart of a monk in a jar that the faithful could touch and of his (Randi's) father being pressed into service cutting up a roll of fabric into small bits that could be sold at the shrine's souvenir shop as pieces of the monk's robe.

What does it take to get DNA from a relic?

I would like to see something like Jurassic Park - but with Saints instead of Dinosaurs. If there were a Jesus Fragment, he would make a great attraction, too.

>I've read there are so many relics alleged to be the Foreskin of Christ that if they were all authentic he would have to have had 18 penises<

Hey, if he could do the loaves and fishes thing, a few extra foreskins shouldn't be much of a stretch.

auralrothco @ #56 - LMAO!

I guess it would be kind of cool to take no responsibility for anything that happens, which I believe is the hook that sucks people into religious hocus-pocus. I wonder if any of them actually believe it though? Their 'saints' are people who were persecuted and usually tortured to death for being nonconformists who bucked the system. But now they're the good guys?

I don't get it.

re: testing the DNA of saint's descendants.

But these men are monks. Sworn to a vow of celibacy. Like their fathers, and their fathers before them...

re: testing the DNA of saint's descendants

A collateral descendant is not an actual direct descendant, but a cousin, nephew/niece. Realize this is an inaccurate and confusing term, but it's the term used in legal writing. Do biologists have a better or more accurate term?

FWIW, I believe that a few saints were actually married, then widowed, before becoming saints, so there might be actual descendants in some cases.

"There have been churches less than 100 miles from each other that both claim to have the head of one saint or another."

I remember traveling through Italy as a teenager, hitting various cathedrals and sightseeing spots...saw no fewer than 18 index fingers of John the Baptist.