Santa Muerte, and EuroCatholicism vs Cultural Catholicism

"They call her Santa Muerte (‘Holy Death’ or ‘Saint Death’), but she’s no saint.

Literally.

The skeletal female figure has a growing devotion in Mexico, Central America, and some places in the United States, but don’t be fooled by the Mary-like veil or the holy-sounding name.

She’s not a recognized saint by the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, in 2013, a Vatican official condemned devotion to her, equating it to “the celebration of devastation and of hell.”

“It’s not every day that a folk saint is actually condemned at the highest levels of the Vatican,” Andrew Chesnut, a Santa Muerte expert who has been studying the devotion for more than eight years, told CNA.

Chesnut is the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of "Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint," the only English academic book to date on the subject.

Despite her condemnation from on high, Santa Muerte remains increasingly popular among criminals, drug lords and those on the fringe of society, as well as cultural Catholics who maybe don’t know (or care) that she is condemned by the Church. - catholic news agency"

A saint must be clearly capable of only providing good aid and not being dualistic in terms of providing bad ones as well.

If a saint is presented as available for help in both bad and good, it blurs our own appreciation of good in itself, and makes the ultimate good anything that delivers our own agenda whether right or wrong.

If a saint is presented as available for help in both bad and good, it blurs our own appreciation of good in itself, and makes the ultimate good anything that delivers our own agenda whether right or wrong.

So in this sense, I do agree with the views of the Vatican and those who dispute with the popular ascent of Santa Muerte in Mexico and South America as a saint on par with other Catholic saints.

We either keep God and the saints as role models of ultimate good or great efforts at being good, or we'll end up modelling Gods and saints according to our ideas of the ultimate good - which is what happens when the apetites of the people, the state, the queen, or Santa Muerte, are held up as the ultimate good or 'saints'.

However, on another note, casting this practice of the veneration of Santa Muerte as 'cultural catholicism' demonises other cultural interpretations of the Bible and the life and word of The Christ.

Let's not forget that the Roman catholic church is also a 'cultural' entity whom have interpreted the Bible and Christianity according to their unique experience of history.  And every 'unique' or relatively unique experience of history is paired with both relatively unique knowledge and insights, and ignorance of other relatively unique knowledge and insights that come from others' unique experience of history.  This is something self-absorbed races of people (i.e. the whites, the chinese) tend to forget.

So casting the Roman catholic church as being against 'cultural catholicism' is akin to saying, 'it's either the white way or the highway (to hell) mate'.  That is eurocentric arrogance i'm afraid.

Secondly, let's not also forget how Jesus and God have been invoked by the west in their wars from the Crusades and to some degree in the present. Even blessings are afforded every new US capitalist pro-elitist mass-exploitative president from different faiths. That just demonises Jesus and God. That in itself is 'cultural catholicism' of the western variety.

So in this case, the difference between the Eurocatholics and the Mexican Santa Muerte catholics is that in the former, they are demonising an otherwise good God by association with an expolitative system and government, whilst in the latter, they are deifying a demon.

The latter is easy to spot and address.  But what's worse is the former as people won't realise how something bad is being validated by an established religion.  Much more evil is passed off as virtue in the latter as people won't question an established religion as they would an obviously non-partisan deity like Santa Muerte.

Whilst the Mexicans have Santa Muerte, the west, and the rest of the nationalised world, have their Santa State.  Both delivering pressies to all, whether they've been noty or nice.

Then again, how different is Santa Muerte from the idea of the 'state' itself?  The state delivers both good and bad according to the agenda of the elite to the will of the people through a referendum.  Was it not that way that they've passed murderous embargoes on peoples, to legalising same-sex marriage?  Whilst the Mexicans have Santa Muerte, the west, and the rest of the nationalised world, have their Santa State.  Both delivering pressies to all, whether they've been noty or nice.

People in the west, the whites, and all the white popes, need to be still for a moment and think....about how their on perspective on things is not invulnerable to their own white supremacist trajectory of history, and how this would have tainted their own vision.

If not, you are guilty of not seeing the bigger picture for the whites of your eyes.


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