10/01: Saints Were Psycho?
Category: Religion and History
Posted by: an okie gardener
The things people say when they are confident no one will behead them or blow up their building.
Gateway Pundit has the story, and video links, of comments made on The View by Joy Behar to the effect that the Saints of the Church all were psychotics who heard voices. Today we have no saints, she said, because of medications. From the transcript:
JOY BEHAR: I’m going to get in trouble for this, but you know what? I have a theory that you can’t find any saints any more because of psycho-tropic medication. I think that the old days the saints were hearing voices and they didn’t have any thorazine to calm them down. [laughter] Now that we have all of this medication available to us, you can’t find a saint any more.
In the same post Gateway Pundit has information on another anti-Christian attack, this time against evangelicals and Huckabee that aired on an NPR station.
But, did Joy Behar have a point? I think she did, though not in the way she thought. I do not believe that all the Saints were psychotic, but, I do believe that their lifestyles and beliefs would today get them diagnosed as pyschotic or neurotic, and perhaps even committed or medicated.
Take Saint Francis, since he is familiar to most people. At a fairly young age he renounced the considerable wealth of his family, turned to a celibate lifestyle, and left home with no clear plan. St. Francis lived an essentially homeless life, begged for food, repaired chapels and churches, and taught. All free of charge. It is not hard to imagine that a wealthy family today could get a son committed for behaving this way. Or, to imagine the family calling their pastor to "talk to the boy."
Other saints had visions, most lived without regard for their own safety or comfort, many voluntarily withdrew into the desert or forest as hermits--no saint conformed to accepted social norms.
Perhaps we do have fewer saints today because we confine or medicate them. But that does not mean it is they who are insane.
Gateway Pundit has the story, and video links, of comments made on The View by Joy Behar to the effect that the Saints of the Church all were psychotics who heard voices. Today we have no saints, she said, because of medications. From the transcript:
JOY BEHAR: I’m going to get in trouble for this, but you know what? I have a theory that you can’t find any saints any more because of psycho-tropic medication. I think that the old days the saints were hearing voices and they didn’t have any thorazine to calm them down. [laughter] Now that we have all of this medication available to us, you can’t find a saint any more.
In the same post Gateway Pundit has information on another anti-Christian attack, this time against evangelicals and Huckabee that aired on an NPR station.
But, did Joy Behar have a point? I think she did, though not in the way she thought. I do not believe that all the Saints were psychotic, but, I do believe that their lifestyles and beliefs would today get them diagnosed as pyschotic or neurotic, and perhaps even committed or medicated.
Take Saint Francis, since he is familiar to most people. At a fairly young age he renounced the considerable wealth of his family, turned to a celibate lifestyle, and left home with no clear plan. St. Francis lived an essentially homeless life, begged for food, repaired chapels and churches, and taught. All free of charge. It is not hard to imagine that a wealthy family today could get a son committed for behaving this way. Or, to imagine the family calling their pastor to "talk to the boy."
Other saints had visions, most lived without regard for their own safety or comfort, many voluntarily withdrew into the desert or forest as hermits--no saint conformed to accepted social norms.
Perhaps we do have fewer saints today because we confine or medicate them. But that does not mean it is they who are insane.
