Reader William B. sends word that Joy Behar, sage of "The View" and the Upper West Side, has discerned the reason for the lack of holy figures among us in these latter days:
Saints were psychotic and advances in modern medicine have essentially wiped them off the planet. That's "the view" of comedian Joy Behar, as expressed on national television Wednesday."I have a theory that you can’t find any saints anymore because of psychotropic medication. I think that [in] the old days, the saints were hearing voices and they didn’t have any Thorazine to calm them down," Behar said on ABC's daily chatfest. "Now that we have all of this medication available to us, you can’t find a saint anymore."
The View says Joy is a Catholic who lurvs joking about her faith, as she was here. So they say.
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I hope everyone who reads this blog has someone in their life who is a potential candidate for canonization (in whatever form that would take for him or her). Here's a link to a eulogy for mine:
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=20837
Ruth did not have visions -- she was the most practically minded idealist I have met. And that was a good thing, because her family was as poor as the proverbial churchmice for most of her lifetime. Her ability to be thrifty and practical served them well.
What is offensive about Joy Behar's comment is its two assumptions: that sainthood requires otherworldly visions, and that such visions are of their nature false. If she was joking, it was a bad joke and reflects poorly on her education.
Sort of related, here's a provoctive thesis in the NYT magazine:
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?
Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?ex=1357880400&en=37ff00b8cd55be91&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
rombald:
Your peculiar logic reminds me of how, with my own disease, bipolar disorder, there is a correlation with (not causation, correlation) higher intelligence. Indeed, as Kay Redfield Jamison has noted in her books, some of the world's most accomplished leaders and artists have had bipolar disorder. And my own IQ would indicate, despite what some CCers would think, I'm not a dummy ;-P
Anyway, the Nazis kept this in mind too when Joseph Mengele, et al. were trying to decide who to preserve and who to exterminate (Jews, Gypsies, political opponents, etc.). It was determined that, as a principle -- although thousands of the mentally ill were killed in the death camps anyway, of course -- those with bipolar disorder were to be kept alive, as their genes were considered necessary for the evolution/breeding of the Ubermensch.
Be careful where you go with these arguments ... and, yes, be VERY glad you didn't go down that road.
The Protestant version (told as a joke) is that it's interesting that the Lillys made a fortune on Prozac and now the Lilly foundation funds Protestant projects. And if Martin Luther had had Prozac, there might not be any Protestants.
No one who reads the hagiographies of various saints would ever accuse them of sanity. We're better off without them.
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