Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

Pointing and laughing at religious lunacy for more than half-a-century

Planned exhumation of Sir Thomas More’s head highlights Catholics’ obsession with grisly relics

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MORE lost his head in 1535 when, as King Henry VIII’s Catholic Lord Chancellor, he defied the king and refused to accept Henry as head of the newly- formed Church of England.

Now it’s widely reported that the saint’s noggin, which was par-boiled then put on spike, could be exhumed from the place where it has languished for almost 500 years and paced on exhibition at St Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury.

More’s daughter, Margaret Roper, secretly made off with the head, reportedly preserving it in spices and keeping it with her for the rest of her life.

When she died in 1544, the head was buried alongside her and in 1578, her remains, along with her father’s head, were transferred to the Roper family vault at St Dunstan’s Church, where it’s been ever since.

Sane people find the actions and beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church pretty abhorrent, especially it’s obsession with grisly bits and pieces of dead saints.

What’s behind this nauseating behaviour?

In 2018 Dr Simone Brosig, the Liturgy Consultant/Director for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Calgary, offered an explanation of sorts beneath a picture of the “incorruptible” right arm of St Francis Xavier, which was on tour in Canada in that year.

The saint’s arm that looks like a cannibal’s pot roast. Image via YouTube.

Brosig wrote:

God works through the instruments of the saints on earth and so the relic of a saint does not have magical power but is a sign of God’s work. By venerating the relic, we show that God’s work in the saint’s life of holiness is to continue in the world through us … The veneration of a bodily relic may seem gruesome considering that we rightly concentrate on loving life, saving lives, and protecting life. However, if we pause to consider with the eyes of faith, we realize that the crucifixion was gruesome and the mortal body does die. But the gruesome aspect is only half the picture. The eyes of faith also see the glory of the resurrection.

She added:

Devotional practices, such as the veneration of relics, must be properly understood and be experienced as an extension of the liturgical life of the Church so that they advance the knowledge of the mystery of Christ and do not become permeated by superstition …

You at the back, stop laughing!

And, please, no jokes about giving head to the faithful.

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3 responses to “Planned exhumation of Sir Thomas More’s head highlights Catholics’ obsession with grisly relics”

  1. malcolmjdodd Avatar
    malcolmjdodd

    ‘Tis the same in nearly all religishit. When I was in Kandy, I went to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic a World Heritage site, no prizes for guessing what part of Buddha is kept there; It is believed to be his tooth and supposed to be the left upper canine (the reason for ‘believed and supposed’ is that the relics cannot be removed from the sealed reliquaries): Of the four teeth that were rescued from Buddha’s cremated body 2,500 years ago, 32 are preserved as holy relics in many countries, all in their unopened, sealed reliquaries!

    If a child made up these stories at school, they would be ridiculed.

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  2. Vanity Unfair Avatar
    Vanity Unfair

    https://www.owleyes.org/text/canterbury-tales/read/the-Pardoner#root-218795-1
    How Chaucer got away with it remains a mystery but he was well-connected and the lower classes were mostly illiterate.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. malcolmjdodd Avatar
      malcolmjdodd

      … and for the following 600 years to date, the Roman Catholic Sleaze Corporation continued treating their sheep as illiterate idiotic cash-cows (to mix the metaphors).

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