Filum Romanum - A Thread for the Catholic Church

I know this is probably said but Happy All Saints Day people.

My favorite Saints have always been St Michael, St Francis and St Patrick.

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And when the person isn't named after any saint?

(I'm thinking of two catholic characters born after WWI. Iirc Wikipedia specifically said italians don't use confirmation names (idk about americans), but i could insert some saint's name as a middle name for the italian)

Edited by Nukeli on Nov 1st 2023 at 12:25:53 PM

I guess most Italians would be named after a saint from birth and wouldn't have to do this confirmation thing which I know nothing about. Then again I am not Catholic (or Italian).

Edited by gropcbf on Nov 1st 2023 at 12:29:03 PM

Consideirng how many common names are also names of saints it’s probably harder to avoid sharing a name with a saint than to do it on purpose. At least if you’re using traditional names from Christian countries.

My birth name doesn't belong to any saint ... but if God lends me enough grace, maybe I can become the first St. [my name] ever, and inspire people to name their kids that. It always starts out that way!

The chances that a catholic person born after WWI, like your characters, isn't named after a saint are very little. However, in this case the priest, at the baptism, invokes the protections of 'all saints', generically (this is what happened with my sister and my nephew).

Moreover, the whole 'patron saint' thing does not forbid a catholic to pray to whichever saint they like, and even directly to God. It does not work like paganism, with specific deities for specific domains (even if many uneducated catholics tend to think this way, but for the Church this would amount to superstition). All saints are collectively an intermediary between God and the creatures, so it doesn't really matter which saint you're praying to. The idea of a patron saint is more a concession to the popular mentality than anything else.

I was going to say that i couldn't find any Romano since googling didn't produce results, but then i considered their names might be rendered differently in english vs. italian^note  (i hate that practice, it makes everything harder), and tried the first name "Romano" in italian wikipedia.

• Romano di Condat (Romanus of Condat)
• Romano il Melode (Romanos the Melodist)
• Romano di Rouen (Romanus of Rouen)
• Romano di Antiochia (Romanus of Caesarea)
• Romano di Roma (Romanus Ostiarius)
• Romano (Romanus of Subiaco)
• Romano (Romanos of Auxerre? No wikipedia source)

Romanus of Samosata and Romanus of Blaye could also be rendered as "Romano" in italian, but they weren't in that list.

Saints are often patrons of crucial Catholic virtues and thus people pray to specific saints in order to seek out these virtues or gifts. It’s a way of saying “Thank you for what you have done for the church and your community. Let me be an example of a faithful Catholic.”

Edited by Patar136 on Nov 2nd 2023 at 11:31:03 AM

X3 Would a priest ever invoke the regional Patron Saint even if they’re not the saint for the person’s name?

Not during baptism, as far as I know.

Yes. You can invoke the name of a Saint for any reason, and a regional Saint can be seen as having particular authority to intercede in regional matters. There are Saints associated with specific miracles too, so if you were praying for a specific medical miracle back in the Middle Ages the name of a certain Saint would very much be called on for help. A pilgrimage to their region was also encouraged.

My parish's priest would frequently invoke the Saint our parish was named after during certain parts of mass and if there was a well-known Saint's feast day that day, sometimes invoke them too.

Edited by PhiSat on Nov 2nd 2023 at 1:33:21 PM

St Francis is the patron saint of animals and many parishes with schools will invite families to bring pets with them to school so that they can be blessed.

How likely it is for an american catholic born after WWI to not be named after a saint, if it's unlikely for an italian? I'm not sure how devout the character's family is, but they're from New York.

Also does anybody know if american catholics practice/practiced confirmation names?

You know, I have something that has been on my mind for years. Something that has always nagged me and never given me rest.

Why do all religious movies tend to suck nowadays?

Movies about religion tend to be bad, especially ones about catholicism. This seems to be an issue that applies to Catholicism as it is represented in film. Everything released feels like an awful propaganda movie.

Because religious movies, are, in a very real way, overt propaganda and thus cannot show anything that isn't either iconography of the religion or talking about or showing just how much better it is than all competing religions?

There are also VERY few Religious comedy films (mainly because its hard to convey the message you want to spread while also throwing in wall-to-wall jokes).

Because the film makers are trying to make religious movies first and foremost, the primary goal is make something ideological and quality becomes an afterthought. Subtly is a flaw since the message needs to be loud and clear and the message is salvation so you can't afford for someone to come away with the wrong idea. Doctrine creates narrow constraints, can't show a character succeeding because of their good deeds if your audience believes salvation is through faith alone.

A big one is the isolated audience that refuse to interact with mainstream media so the quality only matters relative to other religious movies.

I still feel like there is a way to have movies that have catholic themes without being propaganda. There has to be more to it than what something like Pure Flix makes it out to be.

I think Silence by Scorcese is proof, along with the Jesus of Nazareth mini series, that this can be done.

C. S. Lewis was able to write religious fiction without it getting preachy - and I think that that's partly because, while his religion was present in his writing, he wasn't writing for any particular religious sect (aside from a bit of Islamophobia). He could stick to the fundamentals, was a good enough writer to weave it through his work rather than go into too many Author Filibusters, and had the advantage of having a fantasy world - so even while he was writing Christianity, it was entirely legit (in his view) for Jesus to come as a Talking Animal.

Basically, it really takes skill to preach without getting preachy!

Another issue is that, by & large, the entertainment industry doesn't exactly self-select for personal piety (to put it mildly). If you're a movies/TV person, religion isn't usually the first subject it occurs to you to tackle ... especially not in a non-hostile or highly informed way.

So between explicitly religious and irreligious filmmakers, it's hard to avoid the factors that lead to one sort of tendentiousness or another.

Also I'd say good religious movies, as in the ones that adapted famous stories from scripture, tend to focus on the characters more and let the message be subtler and delivered through them? Bad religious movies tend to make caricatures and slap you in the face with the message.

Pope Francis has just relieved the Bishop in charge of Tyler, Texas of his duties after the bishop had been critical of Francis's leadership, including discussion of more progressive reforms like trying to welcome in more LGBT folks, and after an investigation into the bishop's leadership.

I really gotta say, I kind of dislike how Catholics in America have decided that they are going to ally themselves with the politics of the South. No offense to people who live in the South themselves. I have met plenty of people who are nice, kind and friendly. But there are politicians down there that are manipulating people into believing some sort "conservative friendly Christianity" and many Catholics are just getting suckered into it and losing the bigger picture.

Once upon a time, Catholics used to get along well (or at least better) with various minority groups. But nowadays it feels like there is this stringent of Catholics who would rather side with racist white supremacists than those.... dangerous minorities.

Hopefully Pope Francis can help people break out of this mindset. And those who don't can just abandon Catholicism entirely so that we can be free of them. So that their hypocrisy can be put to rest.

As the Republicans started to lose ground in American politics, they combined religion and bigotry, mainly in order to get as many disillusioned with the Democrats Southerners as they could to stay in power. And it worked.

US Religion has also always had a tinge of racism, especially when helped by whites and in the South, mainly due to how our country was built on racism. It just didn't start to become mainstream until the 70s.

Edited by tclittle on Nov 11th 2023 at 1:27:54 PM

Pope Francis approves blessing same-sex marriages as long as the rituals aren't confused with maariage.