A reader, Kurt, comments on the picture of the heart of St. John Vianney.
Would it be morally permissible to clone this heart and then transplant it into a good number of the USCCB members?
Thinking about this I think this would make an interesting book. What if some mad scientists rounded up a whole bunch of relics. The head of St. Catherine of Siena, the heart of St. Vianney, the blood of St. Januarius, the hand of St. Peter along with an assortment of the bones of various saints. Could you make a St. Frankenstein? Instead of pillaging the countryside would St. Frankenstein instead volunteer at the local children’s hospital. Surely St. Frankenstein would attend Mass so instead of the Monster Mash we would have the Monster Mass. Though kneeling may be a problem with all of the stitches and such. Would a St. Frankenstein still be afraid of fire. Possibly if they used a relic of St. Joan of Arc or St. Lawrence. I can also imagine a group of angry ACLU villagers with pitchforks and lawsuits chasing poor St. Frankenstein.
13 comments
I would think it would be perfectly permissible – perhaps even mandatory – to extract and culture stem cells from this saintly heart. A specialized experimental treatment program of some USCCB bishops might then be started. I mean, what could it hurt? If successful, think what this could mean for the episcopacy here in the US…
St. Catherine of Sienna does not exist.
wonderful idea. Is it the lips of St. Anthony that are also incorrupt? So St. Frankenstein would be a wonderful preacher and finder of lost souls.
I was uplifted when I saw that you posted information on the heart of Saint Vianney. (I still am). Then I saw this post of “what if” regarding cloning of the incorruptibles and now I think perhaps you folks are losing it as much as I am!. L.O.L!
“St. Catherine of Sienna does not exist.”
Does too! I saw her head in a glass box on an alter.
I hesitate to admit that is why she is my favorite female Saint… because she has cool/creepy relics. But there it is.
I’m all for this idea! But then, whenever I go to the grocery store, I hang around the meat department, looking at the pork chops, ribs, bacon, pig’s feet, pig bellys, etc, wondering if I can put the whole pig back together again…
Could there also be a “Father Dracula”, a vampirepriest who REALLY knows how to appreciate the Blood of Christ? This might be tricky, considering vampires don’t do well with crosses, but maybe if he’s baptized?
hee hee
Are your bishops really so bad, then? I mean, I hear you talk about them all the time. But a St. John heart transplant?
It sin’t the heart of St. JOhn Vianney the bishops need. It is his spine. Perhaps if we can’t do that someone out there can invent the Port-a-spine…you know slap on bishops’ backs when there about to wuss out on yet another important issues. It would make the USCCB meeting a damn lot more interesting if nothing else.
FBP,
I already invented the Less Press-On Spine.
http://www.splendoroftruth.com/curtjester/archives/004706.php
mary martha–St. Catherine of Sienna doesn’t exist; St. Catherine of Siena does 🙂
And St. Catherine is definately in my top 5 saints list.
My, my goodness, Mr. Miller, this is quite an idea. A few years ago I actually contemplated was…well, *something* along these lines, but not quite–a story idea about people being “Serpentor’d” (so to speak) from genetic materials stolen/obtained from saint relics.
But the idea was a much darker one–that these clones were created by some sort of worldwide Anti-Catholic Conspiracy (obliquely reminsicent of–well, think of an amalgam of The X-Files and…um, Malachi Martin stuff?), and were meant to be some sort of “living desecrations.”
But try as I did, I couldn’t plan the story right–I mean, I founc myself unable to demonstrate to this to be something “bad”–the only “bad” thing was that these creations were consciously meant to be “living desecrations” created by “stolen” materials by Mad Scientist-types who were purportedly “Anti-Catholic” for some reason or another. I mean, were the clones meant to be operatives of some sort? Well, that seems “obvious”–of course they’d be, but what exactly was the “big goal” that the Big Evil Conspiracy was aiming for?
I also entertain an idea of an element of Divine Intervention, with one clone character being visited by at least one of the saints from whose relics he/she was created from. A good subplot would be this figure trying to figure out whether this was for real or whether he/she was going schizo. Now there’s a chance for a pseudo- X-Files/Scully moment–is the character actually being visitied by the Saint, or is he/she going mad? Or possibly some combination of both? (Would the character seek an MRI or PET scan? and if so, what should he/she [and the doctor] see?)
For this one, also considered using a fictional saint–but if one was going to create a fictional saint, of course that character would be modelled on real ones, in order to make him/her *recognizable* as a saint. Um, right?
Well, would love to get your opinion(s) on this idea….
“Could there also be a “Father Dracula”, a vampirepriest who REALLY knows how to appreciate the Blood of Christ?”
See the short story “Following the Way” by Alan Ryan.
Need I mention the Jesuits are involved? 😉
Sienna=Siena. The former is the German spelling (I have been told–think Koln=Colongne), as per the parish down the road. Siena is the city in Tuscany where one can view the relics (awesome pilgrimage destination, BTW).