Saints, Preserve Them

It's only grave robbing if you're not on a mission from god

I write about the funeral industry, so I have a Google alert for everything funeral-related. This story about Monsignor Joseph Buh’s potential canonization came my way because a funeral director played a bit part in what may become a saintly saga.

Potential Catholic saints are a lot like minor league baseball prospects. They’re scouted. Old priests with an eye for saint-level talent keep tabs on their holier-seeming colleagues. When those colleagues die, they swoop in. There are long odds on anyone becoming a saint, but these scouts lay the foundation in case some future beatification committee needs to harvest the corpse.

That’s what happened with Bishop McNicholas who headed the Diocese of Duluth at the time of Buh’s death. He so believed in the man known as “the patriarch of the Diocese of Duluth,” that he ordered extra preservation.

Upon Buh’s death in 1922, McNicholas approached the funeral director and asked him to provide the monsignor with a metal-lined casket. He wanted to protect the corpse and the bones in case they were saintly and needed to be removed and put on display somewhere.

Saints need relics and, according to this story from Chicago Catholic, relics are literal body parts (or sometimes clothes) from saints. The article also said that the relics may need to be distributed widely if the saint is popular enough. Shrines to saints work best when they have saint parts in them.

It’s important to say here that the Catholic Church, more than any other organization, lobbies government at every level to prevent people from having the “final disposition” of their choice. They’ve been fighting for years to prevent water cremation and human composting from being legal.

It was surprising, then, to discover how eager they are to dig up the most important Catholics and turn their bones into tourist attractions. I mean, more than 100 years ago McNicholas was like, “They’re gonna wanna dig this one up, so take special care.”

It used to be common practice to distribute bones of saints all over the planet, though with the pilgrimage market being what it is, the Catholic Church has cut back on distribution, but not on exhumation.

“We still do this because harvesting the relics or taking pieces of the relics from bodies of individuals who will be in the near future declared a saint is such a part of our heritage, such a part of our history,” Deacon (and Archeologist) David Keene, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Chicago, said in the Chicago Catholic article.

For me, the idea of making sure there was enough body to harvest from wasn’t even the most bonkers part of the story. The real oddity is that part of the sainthood application process means demonstrating the holy person had generations of acolytes.

From the Chicago Catholic:

“At this stage, the Diocese of Duluth needs to review Msgr. Buh’s life to determine whether he lived a life of ‘heroic virtue’ and if people have been devoted to him since his death.”

Devoted to him since his death? Cynically, that sounds like the key to becoming a saint is to have a cult grow up around you posthumously. What’s weird is that’s probably not far from the truth.

Back in the post-Charlemagne converting days, some conquered natives were just too thickheaded to accept the Christian god. The missionaries would canonize the local gods into sainthood, explaining that the native “god” actually was acting on orders from the Christian god, who granted the local god power and influence.

Essentially, they were told they could keep praying to their gods, but they should be asking them to pass a message on to the boss-god.

It made sense. Why replace the figurine when you can just stick a cross or a halo (or both) on an idol and call it a shrine?

American Gods

I was raised Catholic and studied religion, so it’s embarrassing that this little tidbit about needing a following for sainthood scuttled past me. Alternatively, maybe I “knew” it, but it didn’t register because I hadn’t read Niel Gaiman’s American Gods until last year.

If you’re not familiar, the book’s premise is that generational worshipers are all you need to be a god. As long as there are worshipers, there are gods. The book’s plot involves Old World gods (like Odin) at war with New World gods (like Media, Technology, and Wealth).

Those two pieces of information make me feel like “having enough followers for sainthood” is a hedge. Imagine a world where the Diocese of Duluth had a bubbling Buh cult, but the Catholic Church didn’t recognize the Buh movement. They could have another Padre Pio crisis on their hands.

Padre Pio had stigmata and was considered a healer. For years after his death, people were praying to him, so Pope John Paul II had to make him a saint at the turn of the century. And yes, they dragged out his bones and put them on display.

What freaks me out is the notion of an old grandma out in Duluth spinning tales about the miracles of Monsignor Buh. I’ll bet Christian microcults devoted to long-dead holy men are more prevalent than you think. (This is the part where I point out that I wrote a book about a Christian cult devoted to Orgone).

It makes sense for the Catholic Church to try and at least aim its fringe groups back toward the center. Putting Buh on the path toward consideration for possible sainthood will keep his cult busy (and more importantly, keep his cult Catholic).

If it turns out there aren’t enough followers, all the better. The bid for sainthood peters out. If he has generational devotees, though, people who learned from the time of their grandmother’s grandmother to pray to Monsignor Buh, it’s a tourism coup.

They can dig up ol’Joe and stick his bones in a chapel somewhere. If he gets “big” they can grab a finger or femur and ship it to a new shrine, possibly in St. Paul. If that happens, everyone will be thankful for the bishop who saw sainthood potential in Msgr. Joe Buh and took the necessary steps to make his eventual grave-robbing as easy as possible.

Keep the Faith,

Tony

PostScript

If you’re interested in my summer travels, I’ll link to them here when I write them up, but you can also subscribe to the “Return to Sender” feed (where I put my goofy postcard stories.

I feel good about this fall. I feel like I might get productive again.

Here’s hoping.

TR