Hello everyone:
Oddly enough, my favorite part of the entire discussion in class was Professor Jackson explaining that "Devil's advocate" is a Jesuit expression, as part of their [close to] all-inclusive attack on their own beliefs during their training. That said, I wanted to comment on the issue of Emilio being a saint (at least according to his fellow Jesuits on the mission). One of the messages this story does a shockingly thorough job of conveying is that really, REALLY bad things happen to pretty good people. On one level, this sort of idea bothers me a lot, and I tried to convey that in class. Then again, I thought about other people in history who have been popularly labeled "saintly" or something similar: people like Ghandi or Mother Theresa. They did in fact do great things for many people; such are the criteria for being saintly. But then, consider how much hardship and suffering they actually went through while doing good, I might have to agree with DW's diagnosis of Emilio being a saint. He displayed an extraordinary amount of holiness and calling for his current situation, and then acted on it. I hate to say it, but the message of the book that terrible things happen to good people, is almost a criterion for being a saint as well; the person must exhibit holiness, especially in the face of extreme adversity.
Then, I remember what Professor Jackson was saying about how the next book turns all sorts of things upside down - this comment might not even be valid in about two weeks. I am quite curious and intrigued to see where the next book goes.
Have a saintly evening
-Mike
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Well, I'm not even going to touch how unsaintly the things Mother Theresa did were - In reality, she did next to nothing. When she could have built hospitals, she built convents. And so, for her beautification, what did Christopher Hitchens (douchebag that he is notwithstanding)play, a role that Pope John Paul II had abolished so he could beautify far more people than any previous pope had?
He played Devil's Advocate. He called it, "representing the Evil One... pro bono." (As I understand it, until John Paul II, the Devil's Advocate was a regular feature of all beautifications and canonizations. It was a mainstream Catholic idea that the Jesuits seem to have run with.)
I think the message is beyond "Good things happen to bad people." Sandoz betrayed his own Jesuit value of patience and rushed to get the mission going. This lack of patience led him to believe that divine intervention was occurring where it was not, and at the height of his hubris, he gets raped.
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