Relationship With The Catholic Church
In areas where the Catholic Church has greater power, it maintains more control over the devotional lives of its members. Thus, in Europe, folk devotions that are encouraged by the Church are quickly institutionalized, while those that are discouraged usually die out or continue only at reduced levels. For similar reasons, folk saints are more often venerated in poor and marginalized communities than in affluent ones. Nor are folk saints found in shrines to the canonical saints, though the reverse is often true: it is not uncommon for a folk saint's shrine to be decorated with images of other folk saints as well as members of the official Catholic communion. Shrines in the home, too, frequently include official and unofficial saints together. Graziano explains:
Catholicism is not so much abandoned as expanded ; it is stretched to encompass exceptional resources. Whereas Catholicism ... defends a distinction between canonical and noncanonical or orthodox and heterodox, folk devotion intermingles these quite naturally and without reserve.
Read more about this topic: Folk Saints
Famous quotes containing the words catholic church, relationship, catholic and/or church:
“The Catholic Church has never really come to terms with women. What I object to is being treated either as Madonnas or Mary Magdalenes.”
—Shirley Williams (b. 1930)
“From infancy, a growing girl creates a tapestry of ever-deepening and ever- enlarging relationships, with her self at the center. . . . The feminine personality comes to define itself within relationship and connection, where growth includes greater and greater complexities of interaction.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)
“A vegetarian is not a person who lives on vegetables, any more than a Catholic is a person who lives on cats.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.”
—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)