Saint Lee - by Yawning Bread

Yawning Bread has an article titled Saint Lee where he dealt with the issue of beatification and how the topic of a lese majeste law is in the brewing in Singapore. Actually there was no such thing. The idea came from two articles that talked about lese majeste in the Asian Correspondent and TOC.

In Catholicism, there is this process called beatification where a great dead man may be called a saint and be able to grant wishes to people who pray to him.  In a way this is like Tua Pek Kong or Guan Kong or Sun Mo Kong.  These are Chinese deities that can grant wishes to the masses that turned up to pray in the temples. But there was no formal process to raise them to the level of deities. They became deities by a spontaneous recognition by the masses of their goodness. The Catholic Church has a long list of saints that were beatified, St Joan of Arc, Saint Mary, Saint Nicholas, Saint Mother Teresa and many others by an established system of beatification.

In his article Yawning Bread suggested that the process of beatification was in full swing. The Catholic Church would require a miracle to happen and be accredited to the great dead man for sainthood. And this is no easy task and the Church would appoint a committee of inquiry to go through the life of the great dead man to see if there was a miracle in his life time. A miracle is not something that can be easily faked or created, like the founding of a nation or taking a country from 3^rd World to 1^st World. It has to be something out of this world. The ‘out of this world’ minister salary not counted, it must be really out of this world.

Come to think of it, the miracles in the Gardens by the Bay may come in handy. There are so many miracles happening there. You want snow, you can have snow. You want to have strawberry, raspberry, goose berry, goose pimples, no problem. If they can grow miracle olive inside the domes, what is so difficult about a few berries? The problem is whether these could be considered as miracles. And if acceptable, can these be credited to the good work of the great dead man.

I believe the Catholic Church has a long list of items to be ticked before any great dead man can be beatified and become a saint. The last and most recent saint was St Paul, the last Pope. Correct me if I did not get this right. Would there be another saint in the making? Or would there be a new deity for the masses to pray for protection from evil, for well being and maybe the favourite 4D number?