Don't worry - I've already been to the bottom - nothing could be worse than that.....

Way to go, ISN.

Just canonized on 11 October

Saint Damien of Molokai

The man was a Saint

Now, there'd have been a hard one to find a "devil's advocate" to argue against.

The big hurdle in this century has been authenticating the miracles. It seems the standard of proof has tightened a bit since the 12th century.

So you'd think, for a variety of reasons - no Protestant mockery back then, no hard-bitten atheist scientists testing everything - but the last two popes have still managed to canonize a raftload of saints, where I think the 13th century church was split over papal infallibiity, one mark being dissent against papal beatitudes. It's a wild world, that Vatican City.

Did anyone ever get around to canonizing Origen, who took Matthew 5, 29-30 rather too literally?

That's the text exhorting, "If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out... etc."

Origen cut off his penis.

He still has to work two miracles first.

Drew Brees and Reggie Bush......................oh

When we're talking Saints, we're talking the one and only Holy Roman-Catholic Church.
There ain't no other Saints.

Speaking of St. Pauli Girl beer, those of you who drink it owe a debt of gratitude to my dad.

In 1946, he came very close to shutting down the brewery in Bremen for health reasons (there were pidgeons roosting in the rafters over the vats).

Fortunately, hotter heads prevailed. At the urging of the troops (they were very vocal, and there were a lot of them), pa decided that the temperature in the vats was close enough to pasturization temperature, so he let the place keep operating.

The troops had to have beer--they were sick of Champaign. The Germans had been hauling a load of champaign that they had raided from a monastery in France or Italy, and they had left it all in Bremen to lighten their load as they accelerated their retreat.

I think the old man still drinks St. Pauli Girl.