It has been at least a month since we visited the United Deities, the gods’ own talking shop and chat room, so let’s have a look at the minutes of the last meeting to see what the divine ones have been discussing recently. . . .

     1. The chairgod said that the next item on the agenda concerned sainthood.
         2. The Jewish God groaned and said that this sounded like another commercial for Catholicism to him.
         3. The Catholic God said that perhaps he should wait and see what the wording of the item was before he leapt to judgement.
         4. The Jewish God said that he wouldn’t be where he was today if he hadn’t leapt to judgement so often. He had kept the Jews on their toes throughout history by sending them plagues, afflictions, war, captivity and even slavery, sometimes on the spur of the moment. No wonder the Jews were now so lean and mean.
         5. The Greek god Zeus said that he could not help wondering why the Jews put up with it. They were meant to be the “chosen people”. Did they never wonder what they were chosen for? For a really bad time, it sounded to him.
         6. The chairgod said that if some other god would like to chair this meeting, he or she would be welcome. There were fierce exchanges raging already, and he had not even announced the subject of the debate. Would they listen to the item on the agenda or would they not?
         7. The Catholic God said he was all ears.
         8. Zeus said he was all ears.
         9. The Jewish God said he had recently met an Indian goddess who was all arms. He expected there was also one who was all ears.
         10. The chairgod said that might well be true but in any case the question on the agenda read as follows: ‘In the light of the indecent haste to get the late Pope John Paul II made into a saint, what did the gods think of the whole concept of Sanctification?’
         11. The chairgod wondered if the Catholic God had any comment to make.
         12. Allah said he personally would be interested to hear his comments. The Catholic branch of Christianity was the only major religion which went in for this posthumous honours system. What was it about the Catholics?
         13. The Catholic God said he was sorry but he could not believe his ears. Did someone say that Islam was not concerned with saints?
         14. Excuse him, but it was well-known the world over that popular Islam, as opposed to the learned academic kind approved of by Allah, was totally obsessed with saints and their tombs, and that many Muslim scholars deplored the vulgar Muslim addiction to “pirs”, as saints were called in Muslim India, and their “mazaars”, as their tombs were called. Even in remote outposts of Islam such as South Africa it was quite common to find Islamic saints buried, God knows how they had got there.
         15. Allah said that he was very impressed by the research of the Catholic God. He would now like to rephrase his question. What was it about the Catholics, not to mention the Muslims, with this saint business?
         16. The Catholic God said he accepted Allah’s apology.
         17. He also said that he wanted to reiterate that sainthood was nothing to do with him. It was an invention of the Catholic Church.
         18. The Jewish God wanted to know if the Catholic God did not feel responsible for the Catholic Church.
         19. Not at all, said the Catholic God. The Catholic Church had nothing to do with him. It was the brilliant business wing of Catholicism, invented by man and run by man. The CEO of the organisation, the so-called Pope, was a purely corporate figure. One of their corporate schemes was the invention of sainthoods, which was a load of hooey, but an inspired business wheeze.
         20. The Jewish God said that he would be interested to hear what was inspired about it. He would also like to hear how Catholic miracles were done, while he was at it.
 It seems a shame to leave that there – let’s do some more eavesdropping on them tomorrow.

The Independent Wed Apr 4 2007

Yesterday I brought you some of the minutes of the latest meeting of the United Deities, the all-god select committee which watches over our goings-on with some bemusement.
         Their discussion of the drive to make Pope John Paul II a saint seemed worth pursuing, so I thought we would have some more of it today . . .

     1. The Jewish God asked the Catholic God to explain what the point of sainthood was, and why so many ordinary people in the past had been turned into posthumous heroes simply by the addition of a halo and a title.
         2. The Catholic God said that it was a help for Christian parents who were looking for names for their children. Take a saint’s name, was the obvious answer.
         3. Also, humans were always looking for names for places, and here again the saints set a good example. Without the saints, there would be nowhere called St Louis, or San Francisco, or St Tropez.
         4. As a matter of interest, the Anglican God wanted to know, did anyone have any idea who Saint Tropez was when he was at home.
         5. The Catholic God said he must have known once, but had now forgotten. The gods never met the saints on a social footing, so it was of little interest to him to know who Tropez was.
         6. The Jewish God said that all this palaver about baby’s names and town names was so much piffle before the wind. The fact was that it cheapened the whole business of religion to give dead humans quasi-religious status.
         7. Why, even now the Catholic Church was trying to fast-track the late Pope John-Paul II into sainthood, and they had even found some poor French nun called Sister Marie Simon-Pierre who said that she had been cured of Parkinson’s Disease by intercession with the late Pope, which would be the miracle needed to kick-start the beatification process. Well, please....
         8. They were being asked to believe that John-Paul II had effected this miracle after his own death.
         9. Why hadn’t the Pope done a miracle in his own lifetime and cured his own Parkinson’s?
         10. The Anglican God said that there was a very simple explanation for this fascination with saints. Religions with lots of gods, like Hinduism, had a plethora of holy figures and stories. Religions with very few gods, or only one, like Christianity, needed extra heroic figures and good yarns – hence the saints.
         11. The Hindu god Hanuman, the monkey deity, said he did not want to put too much of a firework under the dear old Anglican God’s ideas, but he had to point out that, far from Hinduism being a saint-free religion, there were thousands of Hindu saints, all with their own tombs etc and all worshipped locally.
         12. He also pointed out that there were plenty of Jewish saints.
         13. The Jewish God demanded to know where.
         14. In Morocco, for a start, said Hanuman. Moroccan Jewry had a fierce tradition of creating local saints, and even today their tombs were much worshipped.
         15. Oh, right, said the Jewish God. Yes, in Morocco. Yes, he did seem to remember . . .
         16. The chairgod said he had been listening to this debate with great interest, and had come to the following conclusions.
         17. One, that an attack on Catholicism for creating so many saints was broadly accurate.
         18. Two, that it turned out that Islam also had far too many saints. And so did Judaism. And so did Hinduism.
         19. Three, that it seemed to be a universal human impulse to create saints by turning holy men into legends after their deaths.
         20. Four, that, if everyone was at it, therefore this debate was a bit of a non-starter.
         21. Five, that they might as well pass on to the next item on the agenda, which was a proposal that the gods should arrange for unexpected widespread blizzards and snowstorms in Europe at Easter time, in order to enliven the foolish human debate on global warming.
More of this some other time

The Independent Thursday Apr 5 07