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Source: (consider it) Thread: Relics: Superstition or Piety
Anglican_Brat
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The relic of St Francis Xavier is on tour here in Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/st-francis-xavier-forearm-canada-tour-1.4469974

What is the spiritual value of venerating relics? Is it superstition, piety, or a bit of both?

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Gamaliel
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I suspect a lot of what we do in all traditions combines elements of all those ...

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Bishops Finger
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Yes.

With the caveat that that remark is IMHO.

The veneration of relics has a long history, but so too does the abuse thereof.

IJ

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anteater

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There's a lot about (particularly) Roman Catholic piety which I find valuable, but veneration of relics has totally passed me by.

I just don't get it.

Is it harmful? Honestly my gut feeling is that it is, but that's an outsider's view.

I feel the same about paying humungous sums for a guitar played by, say, John Lennon. And at least in that case we can be fairly sure that the provenance is genuine.

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
The relic of St Francis Xavier is on tour here in Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/st-francis-xavier-forearm-canada-tour-1.4469974

What is the spiritual value of venerating relics? Is it superstition, piety, or a bit of both?

It is 100% superstition with varying degrees of piety.

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Firenze

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I do find relics frankly creepy. You don’t want to look too closely into that dusty glass panel under the altar.

I did hear Sr Wendy, while presenting a programme on reliquaries, come up with the idea that the various fragments of wood or cloth or bone that they enclosed ‘reminded’ us of the originals (so it didn’t need to be true True Cross to serve the purpose). But mummified bits and bobs really don’t appeal on any level.

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Ian Climacus

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I may be weird (chorus of, "Really?"), but in Gerogia and Lebanon I found mummified saints or monks, or objects that claimed to be relics, comforting.

For the deceased these were my sisters and brothers in Christ. Those who had, we pray, fought the Good Fight and gone to their reward. It was a visible reminder that Christianity did not start and end with the 21st century, but stretched back 2,000 odd years, and these Saints (or saints) had struggled as I do to live a life according to the teachings of Christ.

I don't, I think, turn my mind off; had the foreskin of Christ popped up I confess doubts would be in my mind. But visiting a holy place, or seeing a Saint from ages past, was wonderful to me. And rather emotional. So emotional in fact I broke down while travelling through Georgia.

Better people than me probably don't need these. I probably don't "need" them. But I can only write to the comfort and peace they brought me. Reading about their lives on the way there or on the way back only heightened the thought we are one Church in heaven and earth.

[ 09. January 2018, 20:18: Message edited by: Ian Climacus ]

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Oh yes, the holy foreskin always pops up. The dead people under glass, organs and body parts in all their shrivelled glory are bad enough. How much did our dear saviour have hanging anyway? ::shudder:: ::sacrilege::

Worse yet, the ancient practice of "Brit milah" (Covenent of Circumcision) involved Metzitzah_B'Peh which is oral suction by the circumciser of the infant's newly circumcised penis. Apparently someone did this too to Jesus?

There's an offence under Canadian law which something about indignity to someone's remains. Seems like a good idea.

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Baptist Trainfan
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You may remember the conversation in Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" in which the monk William says: "In the cathedral at Cologne, I saw the skull of John the Baptist at the age of twelve".

"Really?' Adso exclaims, amazed. Then, seized by doubt, he adds, "But the Baptist was executed at a more advanced age!".

"The other skull must be in another treasury," William says, with a grave face.

(I think that's just about short enough to be OK for copyright ...).

[ 09. January 2018, 21:08: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]

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Gamaliel
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Icons I like. I do struggle with relics. I can understand the thinking behind it but do find ossuaries and mummified Saints rather unsettling.

That said, the whishty-whishty Celtic twilight part of my psyche does have a strong sense of place - genius locii - and I do find certain locations associated with holy people in times past very evocative.

I do think there's a cultural thing here, insofar as some cultures wouldn't find it quite so icky.

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Rossweisse

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There's a monastery here with an enormous collection of relics, most of them tiny slivers of bone mounted in rows on boards.

I confess that I have never seen the appeal of saints under glass. When in Assisi, I found it comforting that St. Francis was buried intact, and not chopped up for distribution.

(Others' mileage may, of course, vary.)

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Kaplan Corday
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quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I feel the same about paying humungous sums for a guitar played by, say, John Lennon. And at least in that case we can be fairly sure that the provenance is genuine.

When I was about sixteen I bought a second-hand drum kit which the seller assured me had once been owned by Charlie Watts.

But I didn't become a famous drummer, which proves that relics don't work.

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Kaplan Corday
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I suspect a lot of what we do in all traditions combines elements of all those ...

There used to be (still might be) ads in the back of a Protestant magazine to which I once subscribed. for framed individual pages from historically significant Bibles from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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Kaplan Corday
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quote:
Originally posted by Rossweisse:
I found it comforting that St. Francis was buried intact, and not chopped up for distribution.

So far, an arm, a toe and a finger nail have been detached from Francis Xavier's corpse.

At one level, I suppose it is little different from my appreciation of seeing P45 and P46 at the Chester Beatty.

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Rossweisse

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I was writing about the original St. Francis.

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Kaplan Corday
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quote:
Originally posted by Rossweisse:
I was writing about the original St. Francis.

I realised that, which is why I included the "Xavier's" to distinguish him from the Francis of Assisi with whom I was contrasting him - or, at least, the fate of his post-mortem body.
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mousethief

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There is really no discussing or understanding the veneration of relics without understanding localized holiness. If you don't have a theology of localized holiness, then relics will not make sense.

By localized holiness I mean the idea that a place, or an object, can be holy in a way that other things are not, and remain so.

This understanding, too, is required to understand the perpetual virginity of Mary, and the Real Presence of our Lord in the eucharistic elements. Someone who says "Why is this bread (or chalice, or other object, or saint's bones) any more or less holy than any other? Is God more present in some places than in others?" is not going to "get" relics.

Not saying everybody is an idiot who doesn't "get" localized holiness. Just that if you don't understand (or accept) the one, you are not likely to understand (or accept) the other.

quote:
Originally posted by Bishops Finger:
The veneration of relics has a long history, but so too does the abuse thereof.

Bi-lal kaifa.

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Baptist Trainfan
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If you watch the "Antiques Roadshow", you will realise that there are secular relics too. For instance a pen from 1800 may command a price of a few tens or perhaps hundreds of pounds, but if it can be proved that it was once owned by Horatio Nelson its price rises to stratospheric heights. Clearly some kind of "holy value" - quantifiable in monetary terms - attaches itself to such objects. Of course, provenance is everything!
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SusanDoris

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quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
I do find relics frankly creepy. You don’t want to look too closely into that dusty glass panel under the altar.

I do so agree. My first reaction to OP article was 'yuk'!

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andras
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These are words that I've put into the mouth of one of the priests in my current book-in-progress, set in seventh century Carlisle; he's describing the contents of a reliquary on the altar:

You see, when Aidan was in his last illness, he wouldn't leave one of the churches he'd founded, so they put up a sort of tent against the wall of it for him. He died with his head resting on one of the beams in the wall; and that's where that wood in the reliquary comes from. A reminder of one of the holiest, kindest and most generous people who've ever lived, that is; and mark what I say, it has a power of its own.

I think I'm happy with that as an expression of how I feel, too.

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chris stiles
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

This understanding, too, is required to understand the perpetual virginity of Mary, and the Real Presence of our Lord in the eucharistic elements.

Some understandings of Real Presence rest on a sense of localized holiness and some do not. Equally there are spectrums of understandings of localized holiness.

That said, a large number of groups without any official doctrine of localized holiness will end up creating their own cargo cult versions of the same (see also in this context the thread on rebaptism).

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Sipech
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quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
You may remember the conversation in Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" in which the monk William says: "In the cathedral at Cologne, I saw the skull of John the Baptist at the age of twelve".

"Really?' Adso exclaims, amazed. Then, seized by doubt, he adds, "But the Baptist was executed at a more advanced age!".

"The other skull must be in another treasury," William says, with a grave face.

(I think that's just about short enough to be OK for copyright ...).

I thought the scriptwriters of The Black Adder did it better. When Percy reveals what he believes to be the finger of Our Lord and says that Baldrick looks amazed, Baldrick replies, "I thought they only came in boxes of ten."

If there was no harm brought about by them, like the other superstitions Mousethief mentions (perpetual virginity and real presence) then I probably wouldn't have any objection to them. Yet to see the violence and bloodshed that has come about the True Cross puts me firmly in the 'against' camp.

Plus, it strikes me as a rather flimsy faith if it is in any way dependent upon relics. c.f. John 20 which I might paraphrase: "Have you believed because you have seen me [or some relic vaguely associated with me]? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

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mousethief

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quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
Plus, it strikes me as a rather flimsy faith if it is in any way dependent upon relics.

Before you were just being insulting; now you are bearing false witness. Whose faith is dependent upon relics? Do you know any?

Besides, you have the cart before the horse. Who says "I believe this is a relic of John the Baptist's toenail; therefore I believe Christ is the Son of God!"? It goes the other way.

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Gamaliel
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Sure, but in what way is a belief in the Real Presence, say or the Perpetual Virginity of Mary a 'superstition' in the way that 'speaking in tongues', say, is not?

Not that I'm having a go at 'speaking in tongues', simply asking the question.

Are those who responded to the ads Kaplan Corday mentioned upthread about significant portions of Protestant Bibles (or copies/facsimiles thereof?) weak in faith because they wanted something that acted as some kind of physical momento or reminder?

Am I particularly weak in my faith because I've visited Wesley's Chapel and his house in London and found it a very uplifting experience?

Of course, there are lots of fake relics and abuses around. An earnest Orthodox convert once gave me a piece of ribbon he claimed had been cut from the cloak of an 11th century Greek Saint. He'd bought some while he was on holiday there.

It was so obviously of 20th/21st century manufacture. When I mentioned it to the priest he laughed, 'Oh, one of THOSE relics then?'

I 'get' Mousethief's idea of 'localised holiness' but not in the sense that particular locations become spiritually radioactive as it were.

It's a lot to do with the associations we bring to these things.

There are all sorts of factors and influences at play, but as humans I'd suggest that we are 'wired' that way to some extent.

These these operate on the 'soul' level - same as Welsh hymn tunes in the minor key, Gospel Music, a Bach chorale, impressive cathedral, stunning landscape or whatever else floats our boat.

I know people who are immensely moved by Rothko paintings, for instance - and who find them 'spiritually' moving.

Others think they are just fuzzy purple squares.

Of course, there's a continuum between having a photo of a long-dead loved one (or keeping locks of hair as the Victorians did) on the one hand or displaying the shrivelled left-elbow of St Bilious the Wise, but it's a similar motivation.

I can understand the objections to relics but there's an equal strand of po-faced Puritanical over-reaction.

A friend grew up in a snake-belly low evangelical Anglican parish (I won't name names, it is well-known) where one of the regulars objected to having floral displays, 'In case people think we are worshipping the flowers ...'

[Roll Eyes]

My wife's got all sorts of old photos and memorabilia connected with her ancestors. What is she supposed to do? Burn them all as vanities and fripperies?

How far do we take these things?

I once heard a charismatic evangelical preacher denounce the practice of chasing one's ancestry because we are 'born again of imperishable seed' and that's the only thing that matters, our connection into Christ.

Sure, it all sounds very pietistic and proper, but what a pain in the arse ...

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chris stiles
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I once heard a charismatic evangelical preacher denounce the practice of chasing one's ancestry because we are 'born again of imperishable seed' and that's the only thing that matters, our connection into Christ.

.. and meanwhile other charismatics will chase their ancestry to uncover ancestral curses, or family members that were Freemasons and so on.
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Enoch
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quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
When I was about sixteen I bought a second-hand drum kit which the seller assured me had once been owned by Charlie Watts.

But I didn't become a famous drummer, which proves that relics don't work.

Non sequitur. How do you know that that doesn't demonstrate that it wasn't genuine?

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
If you watch the "Antiques Roadshow", you will realise that there are secular relics too.

This demonstrates that the phenomenon spills beyond the borders of religion, not that it is valid.
RE. this and mousethief’s localised holiness. It is understandable that people feel a connection to an object or place associated with someone/something significant.
The problem I have with holy places or saint’s bits and bobs is that it runs counter to the general premise of the Christian God.

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
When I was about sixteen I bought a second-hand drum kit which the seller assured me had once been owned by Charlie Watts.

But I didn't become a famous drummer, which proves that relics don't work.

It is possible, though, that you became his equal in skill and that is why you are not a famous drummer.

[ 10. January 2018, 13:56: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]

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Anglican_Brat
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Practically, most people I know, whether religious or not, treat remains of past relatives with respect.

This includes people who profess in immortality of the soul, and that the body is essentially worthless (this includes Christians I know, who strangely, recite the Creed every Sunday without thinking thoughtfully that their faith does profess bodily resurrection). If the soul is the only thing that matters, than bodily remains after death are philosophically worthless.

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Practically, most people I know, whether religious or not, treat remains of past relatives with respect.

This includes people who profess in immortality of the soul, and that the body is essentially worthless (this includes Christians I know, who strangely, recite the Creed every Sunday without thinking thoughtfully that their faith does profess bodily resurrection). If the soul is the only thing that matters, than bodily remains after death are philosophically worthless.

We aren’t as rational a creature as we like to think.

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Gamaliel
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
If you watch the "Antiques Roadshow", you will realise that there are secular relics too.

This demonstrates that the phenomenon spills beyond the borders of religion, not that it is valid.
RE. this and mousethief’s localised holiness. It is understandable that people feel a connection to an object or place associated with someone/something significant.
The problem I have with holy places or saint’s bits and bobs is that it runs counter to the general premise of the Christian God.

In what way? The Christian God is Incarnational last time I looked ...

As with Judaism, there is something very 'physical' about Christianity.

It's not a 'disembodied' religion.

Sure, a belief in the Word made Flesh doesn't in and of itself justify or necessitate the use of spiritual knick-knacks, be they relics, rosary-beads, Mennonite buggies or copes and mitres and Holy Water ...

But there is a connection.

I'd suggest it may run counter to Buddhist 'non-attachment' and that Christianity can - on some level - be about 'attachment' - but it's about attachment and transcendence ...

One of these annoying both/and things ...

Besides, Buddhism (and any other religious expression/movement) has it's own shrines and 'branded' elements - although I'm not sure it goes in for relics. Are there some artefacts connected not with the Buddha necessarily but with noted teachers or noted places?

I'd be surprised if there wasn't.

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Anglican_Brat
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Catholicism weirdly blends in the rationality and irrationality.

You have Jesuits who don't talk much about relics and the ilk, probably because some of them privately think it is all bunk, but they are wise to not destroy the faith of those who piously believe in the efficacy of relics and you have pious Roman Catholics in which Thomistic philosophy is more alien than Latin.

Protestantism in contrast, splinters into denominations. You want rational and liberal, join the mainliners, you want piety and spiritual experience, join the charismatics, you want by the book fundamentalism, join the fundamentalists.

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Gamaliel
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And the Orthodox?

It's not just Protestants and Catholics you know ...

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mr cheesy
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quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
There is really no discussing or understanding the veneration of relics without understanding localized holiness. If you don't have a theology of localized holiness, then relics will not make sense.

By localized holiness I mean the idea that a place, or an object, can be holy in a way that other things are not, and remain so.

This seems wide open to problems - especially when there are overlapping claims of holiness, when other people don't agree with the designation and so on.

On a macro-scale, this seems to me to be the kind of thinking which generates many and varied Theologies of the Land - which venerates particular spaces with the inevitable exclusion of others (in Israel, in Saudi Arabia to name a couple off the top of my head).

On a micro-scale it seems to be the root of many centuries of aggression in some parts. Thinking of the Church of the Nativity, that horrible, cursed place in Bethlehem.

It seems to me that a better belief is one that straddles two thoughts: that there is nowhere too humble to be holy and that the deity actually likes the quiet and small places rather than the big showy ones; and that things are what one/we make of them. If we say somewhere is holy and yet sow hatred, then it isn't. If we say that somewhere is holy because we can exclude others we don't like, it isn't.

I don't know anything about relics, I'm not quite sure how they fit into this thinking about "holy spaces".

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mr cheesy
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:


Protestantism in contrast, splinters into denominations. You want rational and liberal, join the mainliners, you want piety and spiritual experience, join the charismatics, you want by the book fundamentalism, join the fundamentalists.

I don't know what that has to do with relics, though. I don't think Protestantism has a particular thing with relics anywhere - or at least if it does I can't think where.

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arse

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
In what way? The Christian God is Incarnational last time I looked ...

Well, no. He incarnated at one point. There is a difference. One not without its own problems.
quote:

As with Judaism, there is something very 'physical' about Christianity.

It's not a 'disembodied' religion.

Not relevant. To say God is more in one place than another automatically gives a preference to some and a deficit to those who cannot be there or touch that.

quote:


But there is a connection.

Adn I am saying the connection is more human that divine.
quote:

Besides, Buddhism (and any other religious expression/movement) has it's own shrines and 'branded' elements - although I'm not sure it goes in for relics. Are there some artefacts connected not with the Buddha necessarily but with noted teachers or noted places?

Of course there are and they are wrong as well. It is human to make these connections, but it is counter to the teachings and purpose. At least in Christianity and Buddhism.

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Lamb Chopped
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minor point of correction--the Christian God is still incarnate (Christ hasn't laid aside his body).

Seeing myself out now.

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
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Nicolemr
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I can see where the whole body of a saint, preserved, might be worthy of veneration. Or an item particularly connected in some way with one. But the practice of dismembering bodies in order to have bits to go around just seems... ewwww. Disrespectful at best.

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Leaf
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quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
I do find relics frankly creepy.

When Jean de Brebeuf was tortured and killed, another Jesuit - who found the body five days later - decided that the proper response was to dismember his former colleague, render the pieces by boiling, remove and dry the bones, and bury What Remained in the Pot at the mission site.

I get that from the Jesuit's point of view, the correct thing to do was to preserve the bones of a martyr. He definitely put that faith into action, in a Maccabees-meets-Fargo kind of way. I cannot imagine how traumatizing that must have been.

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I liked it that when St Theresa of Liseux's grave was opened to get her relics, it was found that there was practically nothing left. I think she'd have liked that.

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
minor point of correction--the Christian God is still incarnate (Christ hasn't laid aside his body).

Seeing myself out now.

This doesn't make sense to me.

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Gamaliel
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Surprise! Christians of a more conservative theological persuasion belief Christ took his body with him into heaven.

He's still got it. Only it's a glorified body.

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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.

http://philthebard.blogspot.com

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Lamb Chopped
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AFAIK it's all Christians (well, barring the we-don't-do-miracles-types) who believe that Christ retains his body. It's sort of the point of the Ascension. WhatImeantersay is, it's the mainstream Christian belief, not just for conservatives.

ETA, curiously: Why doesn't it make sense?

[ 10. January 2018, 17:41: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Gamaliel
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I meant 'conservative' in the sense of not being liberal in the sense of no-miracles and it all being a metaphor and so on ...

But yes, I would regard it as mainstream Christian belief too.

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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.

http://philthebard.blogspot.com

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
AFAIK it's all Christians (well, barring the we-don't-do-miracles-types) who believe that Christ retains his body. It's sort of the point of the Ascension. WhatImeantersay is, it's the mainstream Christian belief, not just for conservatives.

ETA, curiously: Why doesn't it make sense?

A body is a limit on the unlimited. An unnecessary thing.

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Kaplan Corday
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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
When I was about sixteen I bought a second-hand drum kit which the seller assured me had once been owned by Charlie Watts.

But I didn't become a famous drummer, which proves that relics don't work.

Non sequitur. How do you know that that doesn't demonstrate that it wasn't genuine?
You can't possibly be implying that an adult would have lied to an impressionable adolescent to whom he was trying to flog a cheap and crappy set of drums?
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Lamb Chopped
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
AFAIK it's all Christians (well, barring the we-don't-do-miracles-types) who believe that Christ retains his body. It's sort of the point of the Ascension. WhatImeantersay is, it's the mainstream Christian belief, not just for conservatives.

ETA, curiously: Why doesn't it make sense?

A body is a limit on the unlimited. An unnecessary thing.
Ceramic is a limit on the artist. So is marble, paint, brick and mortar...

A gifted artist uses the limits of the medium and transforms them, rather than insisting on unlimited ease.

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Ceramic is a limit on the artist. So is marble, paint, brick and mortar...

A gifted artist uses the limits of the medium and transforms them, rather than insisting on unlimited ease.

An artist does not transcend their medium. Some will push into territories previously unknown, but always within the limits of the materials.

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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou

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Lamb Chopped
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Right. So you're agreeing with me?

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Right. So you're agreeing with me?

lol, no. Exactly the opposite. The concept that Jesus rose bodily into heaven is a limitation of how our minds operate. None of heaven being a place or bodies residing in it makes any real sense, even in the context of religion. Not Christianity, anyway.

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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou

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