Category: religion
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Today’s crumy saint picture: Saint Boniface
Yesterday, I accidentally did a saint for June 5th instead of June 4th (thanks, Wikipedia for updating on GMT instead of local time). I suppose I should do a June 4th saint today, but I decided to just google Saint of the Day which turned up Saint Boniface, a Benedictine monk who was martyred trying…
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Today’s crummy saint picture, Saint Luke Loan Ba Vu
I wasn’t able to find any real information about this Vietnamese martyr online, beyond the link to a general wikipedia article about Vietnamese martyrs which only said that he was a Vietnamese priest. My old parish in California had a sizable Vietnamese community which seemed almost like a separate church within the parish. Unlike the…
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Today’s (less) crummy saint picture, Saint Charles Lwanga
At least in part because Christianity has been centered on Europe for the largest part of its history, the canonized saints tend to be white Europeans, so it was a bit of a delight as I looked through my resources for today to discover a saint who isn’t white, Charles Lwanga. A convert to Catholicism…
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Today’s crummy saint picture, Saint Eugene
St Eugene is an interesting figure in that he was a pope elected while the previous pope still lived (his predecessor having been deposed by the emperor over one of those abstruse matters of doctrine—does Christ have one will or two?—that most contemporary Christians likely never think about and if they do, are as likely…
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Today’s saint picture, slightly less crummy, Saint Justin
Surprisingly, there is no Saint Justin church in the archdiocese of Chicago, so today doesn’t have an obligatory church visit (and yesterday’s visit covered my Sunday obligation so I’m good for the weekend). St Justin, commonly known as St Justin Martyr, is so called because, not surprisingly, he was martyred for refusing to sacrifice to…
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Visitation
Today is the feast of the visitation, commemorating when the newly pregnant Virgin Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth who was pregnant with John the Baptist at that time. As a result I visited St Basil/Visitation church on the south side of Chicago. The church is located in a poor neighborhood as evidenced by the fact…
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Catholic nerd pilgrimage: St Ferdinand
Today’s saint is Saint Ferdinand, who, reading his biography, is kind of politically incorrect as saints go, being notable for “christianizing” Spain which largely consisted of military conquests on the Iberian peninsula. This is the guy who pissed off Osama Bin Laden so much, he felt obliged to mention him in his justification of the…
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The Catholic nerd pilgrimage continues: Ascension
Today is Ascension Thursday, which has been moved to next Sunday by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, but since the Sunday I showed up at a church and said I wanted to be Catholic was the Sunday before Ascension Thursday when it was still on Thursday, I have a bit of an emotional connection…
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Today’s saint picture, slightly crummier today—Saint Bernard of Montjoux
Today is the feast of St Bernard of Montjoux who, it turns out is exactly the St Bernard that the dogs are named after thanks to his establishing a pair of permanent rest houses in passes through that Alpines. That said, even though one of the two pictures I found online shows him with a…