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RE: Image of Guadalupe
September 2, 2020 at 5:41 am
All this talk of pious frauds reminds me of the joke about a Christian who visits the Holy Land, where a huckster sells him the skull of John the Baptist.
On a second pilgrimage years later, (as usually happens in jokes like this) he is approached by the same conman who again offers to sell him the skull of John the Baptist.
‘You scoundrel!’, says the aggrieved tourist. ‘You sold me John’s skull ten years ago!’
‘Ah, yes. But THIS skull is from when he was a much younger man.’
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
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RE: Image of Guadalupe
September 2, 2020 at 7:45 am
(September 2, 2020 at 5:41 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: All this talk of pious frauds reminds me of the joke about a Christian who visits the Holy Land, where a huckster sells him the skull of John the Baptist.
On a second pilgrimage years later, (as usually happens in jokes like this) he is approached by the same conman who again offers to sell him the skull of John the Baptist.
‘You scoundrel!’, says the aggrieved tourist. ‘You sold me John’s skull ten years ago!’
‘Ah, yes. But THIS skull is from when he was a much younger man.’
Boru
Reminds me of an event that took place when I was a 5th grade student at St. Jerome's School in which a small monstrance was passed around the class so all the students could have the privilege of kissing it. It contained a tiny bone fragment, allegedly taken from the corpse of St. Dominic Savio. As I recall, I was not impressed when it was my turn to handle the reliquary and I quickly passed it on to the kid next to me. The nun in charge of the class seemed to be in ecstasy the whole time, but I always considered her to be somewhat of a nut case.
"The world is my country; all of humanity are my brethren; and to do good deeds is my religion." (Thomas Paine)
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RE: Image of Guadalupe
September 2, 2020 at 12:43 pm
(This post was last modified: September 2, 2020 at 12:44 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
There's a different idea about how an item can be infused with meaningful occult properties - their power comes from belief in the items, not the provenance of the object.
While it seems strange to us, today, that hundreds of thousands of nails from the cross jesus died on have been sold, it wouldn't have seemed strange to people who believed that an item could be infused with occult properties in a manner that we would call a scam today - we think that all occult properties are a scam from the getgo. We, in this case, includes contemporary christians and atheists, amusingly.
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RE: Image of Guadalupe
September 2, 2020 at 7:07 pm
(September 2, 2020 at 6:15 pm)Smaug Wrote: (September 2, 2020 at 5:41 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: All this talk of pious frauds reminds me of the joke about a Christian who visits the Holy Land, where a huckster sells him the skull of John the Baptist.
On a second pilgrimage years later, (as usually happens in jokes like this) he is approached by the same conman who again offers to sell him the skull of John the Baptist.
‘You scoundrel!’, says the aggrieved tourist. ‘You sold me John’s skull ten years ago!’
‘Ah, yes. But THIS skull is from when he was a much younger man.’
Boru
I've read awhile ago that back in the Middle Ages the Church countered the arguements against the 'multiplication of relics' by saying that God made copies of the relics so more believers were able to see them. Not sure that it was from a legit historical source though.
I would not be surprised.
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