Yesterday was the Catholic Church’s All Saint’s Day celebrated by the Vatican since the Fourth Century post-Jesus’ birth. This liturgical holiday commemorates thousands of known only to the Bearded All-Knowing Deity. Later in that millennium according to Wikipedia on 13 May 609 or 610, Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs and created the feast of dedicatio Sanctae Mariae ad Martyres. The date had been chosen to supplant the Roman pagan festival of Lemuria, during which malevolent and restless spirits of the dead were honored by the living.
Pope Gregory III switched this day of prayer to November 1 to coincide with the Celtic Day of the Dead, hoping for pagans to convert to the One True Faith. The Church was very adept at adopting pagan ways to attract followers.
As a devout Atheist I never viewed the Catholic saints as a connection to a non-existent Supreme Being. They and we are all just people. For better or worse, although I am drawn to Brigid of Kildare mythically based on an ancient pagan goddess with the same nam, a druid priestess whose temple was seized by the early Church to be a monastery and is associated with wisdom, poetry, healing, protection, blacksmithing, and domesticated animals. Her feast day coincides with Imbolc, a druid day of cleansing.
Over the years on her feast day February 1 I had gone to St. Patricks Cathedral on 5th Avenue to light a candle before her statue at the first apse to the left. I never pay for the candles. Sometime in the last century diocesan church officials took to covering on the statue on her holy day to prevent pagans from worshipping her. They never stopped me. I carried my own candles to acclaim her holy Soul. After all she had discovered how to make beer and if that’s not a miracle then what is.
Restem en Pacem.
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