Saint by numbers...

Next week’s double pope canonization extravaganza is creating a lot of sainthood “buzz” in the air right now.  Therefore, I thought I’d offer some tips for sainthood. 

First, Catholic dogma says the Communion of Saints includes official canonized and beatified saints, anybody in heaven, and all believers on earth.  So, if you believe in Jesus, congratulations, you’re already a saint!  You can stop reading now and go do something more productive.

However, this common, garden-variety sainthood does not land people on religious trading cards and rarely results in statues being erected in your honor, or churches, schools, and ritzy vacation spots being named after you.  If you’re going for that high-profile, high-revenue type of sainthood, then keep reading.

I’ve been plowing through saint records and building a database to catalog demographic information for well over 10% of the canonized and beatified folks.  If my calculations are correct, the sampling I’ve done so far yields statistics with a 3.5% margin of error for projections across the full canonized / beatified population.  Good news, some of these statistics are so skewed, the 3.5% margin of error is kitten’s play.

My advice if you want to be an officially recognized saint: 

1.  Be male.  Based on my sample set, 84% of canonized and beatified people were male.  You might scratch your head in confusion since 80% of the church’s work is done by women, and women are over 50% of the world’s population.  This might seem backwards to you.  No, no…I beg of you; don’t let facts, equity and reality confuse you.  If you insist on logic and equity, you probably should stop reading now before you injure your brain or sense of righteousness.  That statistic simply reflects church hierarchical members’ value system and helps us quantify it.  They see men as being over five times more virtuous and holy than women…end of story.   

2. Be a priest, monk, or religious brother.  About 60% of all official saints were ordained or religious males.  If we look at only the male saints…that tiny 84% majority of all saints…the number jumps to around 70% who were ordained or religious.  So if you’re going to be male, be a priest too, to up your odds.

3.  Be a bishop. 37% of saints and 44% of male saints were bishops or abbots.  I know the cynics are probably starting to suspect that the beatification and canonization process is simply a ruse for apostles to pat themselves and their own kind on the back…sort of as a self-glorification thing.  Again, let’s not get all hung up on facts.    

4.  Be pope.  Despite many papacies being riddled with scandals including the criminal behaviors of soon-to-be-canonized John Paul II in aiding and abetting child rapists, about 1/3 of all popes throughout the entirety of history have become saints.  To put this in perspective, let’s look at the ratio of saints across the full sea of Catholics.  Since I can’t find a statistic for the number of Catholics throughout all time, we’ll use the number for today’s 1.2 billion Catholics, knowing this will yield disproportionately high ratios.   

Using the number of saints across all history and current number of Catholics, we see that less than one one-thousandth of a percent of Catholics are canonized or beatified and less than 1/3 of one one-thousandth of a percent of laypeople are canonized or beatified.  This is compared to over 1/3 of popes being canonized or beatified.  The decimal place simply shifts five positions to the right for popes…a small factor of 100,000.  If you thought the statistic for bishop-saints reflected a mutual-admiration society, then you now realize it is simply a gentle air-kiss compared to the emphatic bear-hug of self-admiration amongst the popes.  

5. Be Italian or French.  About 22% and 17% of saints were from the geographic regions now called Italy and France respectively.  Again, please don’t be confused by the fact that Italian and French Catholics each represent only about 5% of the Catholic population.  If God evenly distributed saints, Brazil with 16% of the Catholic population would have 16% of the saints instead of the 4 tenths of one percent of saints that it actually has. 

Canonization and beatification are expensive businesses and though Brazil is swimming in Catholics, the per capita income is about a third and a quarter of Italy’s and France’s per capita income levels respectively.  Brazilians seem to be spending their money on frivolities like food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare instead of canonization and beatification…and these skewed priorities really show in their saint numbers.   

The same is true in Mexico with almost 10% of all Catholics yet less than 1% of Catholic saints, as well as the Philippines with about 7.5% of Catholics yet less than one tenth of one percent of saints.  You guessed it: Mexico’s and the Philippines’ per capita incomes are lower than even Brazil’s. 

Let's face it; the popes seem to believe it's more difficult to imitate Christ whilst walking and living amongst poor people. No wonder we have so many bishop mansions...two in my diocese...one for the active and emeritus bishops each.  They are simply trying to increase their chances for sainthood by fleeing the impoverished.  

I know you might be thinking, "...but didn't Jesus walk amongst the poor...matter of fact...wasn't Jesus one of the poor?"  Yeah, yeah, yeah...but that guy could walk on water, too.  Let's give the bishops a fighting chance and let them live where people can better afford virtuous behavior or at least better afford to pay for creating images of virtuous behavior.

6. Be a Benedictine.  Saints from Benedictine religious orders are outpacing the next most prevalent order at a six to one ratio.

7.  If you insist on being female…which really craters your chances of sainthood…then for heaven’s sake, do not have sex, or if you do, be of royal birth. 70% of female saints were nuns or virgins and only a paltry 5% of saints were females who were neither nuns, virgins, or royalty.  This compares to 25% of saints that were males who were neither ordained, religious or royalty.  Again, we have laymen outpacing laywomen at a 5 to 1 ratio in the virtuous category. 

But you see, many of those virtuous, holy non-ordained men were soldiers who killed in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.  Perhaps this is why we have St. Adrian as the patron saint of arms dealers…who knew we needed a patron saint of arms dealers….  But, I digress.  If you’re going to insist on being a sexually active female, your best chances for canonization might be to carry a weapon.  It worked for Joan of Arc but then she was burned at the stake as a heretic…and I think maybe she was a virgin too.  Oh, never mind…  Let's face it; sexually active women, are pretty much screwed when it comes to vying for sainthood.

Let me paint an even clearer picture as to the value the church hierarchy ascribes to women and their work via the canonization process.  The stats show us the popes believe:

• Men are 5 times more virtuous and holy than any woman
• Men are about 17 times more virtuous than sexually active women
• Popes are over 270,000 times more virtuous and holy than any woman
• Popes are over 860,000 times more virtuous and holy than sexually active women

Hence, we see John Paul II, a man whose criminal neglect enabled the rape of thousands of children, being canonized next week while Mother Teresa, who merely imitated Christ by caring for the poorest of the poor, still awaits canonization.  At least Mother Teresa was an avowed religious woman so her chances of making full sainthood are exponentially better than those of any mother who actually bore and raised children.

8.  If you can time your death, try to die on May 1^st.  There seem to be over 1.5 times more saints who died on May 1^st than who died on the next most common date for saints’ deaths.

So, I think the optimal saint profile is this: Italian male Benedictine pope (or bishop) who dies on May 1^st.  It also helps to either have a lot of wealth or hang-out with wealthy people who can fund your canonization process.  Oddly enough, aside from the date of death dimension, that bears striking resemblance to the people who canonize and beatify people…hmmm.  Interesting. 

Do you think the list of canonized saints accurately reflects the most holy and virtuous people in history?  Do you care?  Does the heavy skew towards canonizing hierarchy members expose a deep brokenness in them that they feel the need to memorialize their herd in this way?  Do we help fuel the canonization industry?  Should we?

Bonus question for the hierarchy: If you are concerned about the societal devaluation of motherhood, should you perhaps be first examining your behaviors towards women and mothers?  Do you treat them even as good as secular society does?

A little Easter levity for you.  Easter joy this day and always!

Some "theology of women" from a woman

Today is my mom’s birthday and were she alive we’d be having some sort of combined St. Patrick’s Day / birthday celebration.  Since she has started the eternal chapter of her life, I’ll instead honor the day by offering some “theology of women” thoughts based upon witnessing her faith for over 40 years.

The Roman Catholic hierarchy seems to assert that Jesus’ sexual organs are his most important body parts.  Why do I say this?  The hierarchy asserts that a priest must “naturally” remind people of Jesus’ physical body and only other men can do this.   The most differentiating physical attributes between a male and a female are sexual organs.  So, it’s easy to surmise that the hierarchy believes Jesus’ most important physical attributes are his sexual organs if they are required to evoke recollection of the man. 

This is curious in its own right because the hierarchy further asserts that Jesus never used his sexual organs for their natural intended purpose so why are they so all-fired important…but I digress.  Regardless of the hierarchy’s generous willingness to tell me what my thoughts and feelings should be, I know what they are.   The person who most reminds me of Jesus’ physical person is my mom. 

No, I wasn’t raised by a “mom” who was really just a man dressing in drag.  I wasn’t raised by a woman who later had a sex change operation either.  I was raised by my natural mother who was female all her life.  Yet, she reminded me physically of Jesus more than any other person I’ve encountered.  You might ask, “Why?”

Even if you don’t ask, “why”, I will elaborate because that …and maybe a little jetlag following my return from Southeast Asia find me awake in the wee hours of her birthday.

Jesus fed his flock, not by knocking out 80 hour weeks and turning over his paycheck to his wife so she could buy groceries that she would later cook and serve as meals to the flock.  Rather, he fed the world by offering himself, his own body.  No man I know does this but mothers do it all the time. 

My mother fed me and my numerous siblings from her very body. She fed us when we were in utero, where a mother’s body sacrifices nutrients to her child even to the detriment of her own body.  After we were born, she continued to feed us from her body, nursing us each for several months post-partum.

Jesus also welcomes us to enter into his Body.  Thus, we become part of the Body of Christ.  I think maybe this is Jesus’ way of saying, “I love you so much that I will make myself vulnerable so you can enter my body…”  This is a profoundly deep expression of love.  Women as wives and mothers welcome others to enter their bodies also, through sexual intercourse or through pregnancy.  My mother welcomed me into her body via her pregnancy carrying me.  She made herself vulnerable to allow me to enter her body and be a part of her body, even when I was no longer a physical resident of her body.

Thus, I readily see Jesus, not only in my mother but in many mothers whose greatest joy comes from making themselves vulnerable to allow others to share their body so that they may have life.

People say Jesus is our “brother” but my brothers never permitted me nor did I ever want to enter their bodies.  There’s nothing that poured forth from my brothers’ bodies that I found suitable for consumption or nourishment.  There is no part of their flesh that fed me.  Yet, there was from my mom as there is from Jesus.

Since the hierarchy asserts that physical recollection of Jesus is required of the person leading a Eucharistic celebration of the Mass lest we sacrifice sacramental validity, then it would seem that hierarchy would need to also assert that this person must be a mother.  No other type of person has sacrificed their body to give life to others.  No one else intimately knows what is involved in feeding others from their own flesh.  How curious that only one man did what many women do, and how comical to say only ordained men understand and portray it.  Donning effeminate garb does not fool me into thinking a male priest has the slightest clue about sacrificing his body to feed me like my mother did or Jesus does.  It was not the superficiality of my mother’s clothes that fed me.  It was the fiber of her physical being.  When I became a mother myself, I better understood the profound life-giving, sacrificial, deep love my mother expressed.  It became my inspiration to try to imitate her and Christ as best I could.

The experience of feeding another from one’s own body is beyond the experience of every man in history except Jesus.  At best, other men can observe others literally feeding others from their own body, but they cannot do it themselves.  Maybe because men are incapable of this primary life-giving experience, they suppress or discredit the expressions of those who do.  Maybe this is why women’s voices are so often ignored in the church unless they echo the experiences of men. 

The bottom line is that I didn’t live in the time of Jesus so didn’t see his physical body and thus, I have never seen his sexual organs.  Believe it or not, even if I had met Jesus face-to-face in his time, I sincerely doubt his sexual organs would have been my focal point because it’s not my focal point when meeting men today.  I just don’t say, “There’s a guy; he sure reminds me of Jesus because they have the same standard sexual equipment package.” 

I can imagine that this fixation on a priest having the same sexual organs as Jesus might be especially offensive to survivors of clergy sexual abuse; it is to me and I was never sexually assaulted by a priest.  If Jesus’ sexual organs are so important to remind us of Jesus, how dare they be used for sexual violence?  How dare anyone tolerate that, enable that or minimize that?  Quite frankly, this is a no-brainer: people who use their flesh to violate others or who minimize another’s use of flesh to violate others do not remind me of Jesus.

Conversely, it’s just a no-brainer that my mom’s or any mom’s holy, joyous sacrifice feeding her flock from her own flesh physically reminds me of Jesus.  Active use of her body parts to feed others reminds me of Jesus far more than the male clergy's passive non-use of body parts.