My Plan for Sainthood

I’d like to be a saint someday. The only downside is that I’d have to be dead. My first choice is immortality, but it’s always good to have a backup plan.

As I understand the sainthood process, first you must be a role model for the Catholic Church. After you die, two miracles must be attributed to you. Jeez, how simple is that?

My plan is to wait until it looks as if I only have a few years to live. Then I’ll become Catholic and hire a PR agent to document my many acts of charity and kindness. For example, I’ll start a leper colony in my backyard. That way I can do my good deeds without traveling. If the neighbors complain, I’ll just say, “Hey, you don’t see me complaining about your dog. And my lepers don’t bark every time a car goes by.”

Career experts say you should dress for the job you want, not the job you have. I hope there’s no law about dressing like a Pope. I’d get myself a huge hat and a robe. My hat would be all tricked out with an MP3 player and storage space for my wallet and keys. (Robes don’t have pockets.)

The key to being a Catholic role model and future saint is to act both wise and moral. I can fake that. For example, whenever I saw a college-aged guy, I would act all-knowing and say, “You’ve been using the computer with your pants around your ankles. You’re going to Hell.” And he’d be all “How did you know that???” and I’d be all “I’m almost a saint.”

Next, I’ll rewrite my estate plan to create a trust to generate some post-death miracles in my name. It’s easier than you might think. I’ll just instruct the trust to hire people to pray in my name for people with incurable diseases. It’s a numbers game. Some small percentage of people with incurable diseases will go into remission on their own. I only need two miracle cures to qualify for sainthood. Apparently a saint’s overall track record in cures doesn’t matter. Even if everyone else who is prayed for in my name drops dead instantly, it wouldn’t hurt my chances of sainthood.

It’s good to have goals.

Comments

[Kindly Wise]

The whole saint thing is very subjective: there was a huge on-line argument about whether the teenage Christians murdered at Columbine would be saints or martyrs, and the Orthodox Church declared they could be neither..the definition by their standards requiring membership in the Orthodox Church.

You can become a saint of the Progressive Universal Life Church for the meagre sum of $20 US, which is an amazing bargain considering a PhD in Religious Ethics from the PULC is $300! And with the PULC your incorruptible corpse doesn't need to smell of violets and leak fluids the church can sell as medicine. http://www.pulc.com/products.php

[tercüme]

:)have a follow-up question:
Why does it take newspapers an additional 4 weeks to handle color comics? Why do they want 4 weeks work in advance any way? Most of the newspapers I've read manage to get reasonably current events on their front page within a day or 2 of the event

[Opium]

Very good site. You are doing a great job. Please keep it up!

[Opium]

Very good site. You are doing a great job. Please keep it up!

[iknowall]

Search for in all major search engines simultaneously on the site http://www.iknowall.com.
Simultaneous search on Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search.

Try http://www.iknowall.com

[Tramadol]

It seems, it is that site...

[Roby Bang]

There's more to it than that. For one thing, they check your body after you died to see how preserved it is, they check your life to see if you denounced the church, and they also have the coveted position of the "devil's advocate" (well, I want it...), who's job is to point out every affair and scandal you've been involved with. I bet that Zac A or Arifi or whoever that angry guy was (like Arifi said, you really need to update your software...) would love to have that job. It can take decades for you to become a saint, and even then, there's no guarentee you'd become a famous saint. There are tons of them out there no one remembers, like the patron saint of taxi drivers, television...(I'm NOT making this up). So, would it even make sense to do all that work with no guarentee of success until you're worm chow? You could gain more fame doing something easier, like porn star, or cartoonist...

[Eduardo]

First you think you are like Einstein and after this quote you will think you are on par with Plato...

"The whole problem of the world is
that fools and fanatics are so
certain of themselves,
but wiser people, so full of doubts"

my apologies to your readers if I, in any way contributed to the size of Scott's head!

[Eduardo]

Here's what Plato said...

"The whole problem of the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of doubt"

Eduardo

[lillith]

Who knows, Scott, you might be able to pull off the saint bit. Many of the most revered Catholic saints were real "bad boys (and girls)" before they found the Lord. St. Augustine, famous for the quote "give me chastity, Lord, but not now" didn't become a Christian until he was 40. That's pretty old in 300 CE. St. Francis of Assisi was the regular rich party boy as a teen/young adult before he changed his ways. Also,
St. Francis got is deep trouble with Rome about his embracing poverty (God's people were to look rich and powerful - sounds familiar, doesn't it?)

[Faith+1]

Scott, if you stop spam you will canonized and death won't be a requirement.

[Peace]

I hope you have another back-up plan. I don't think dressing like the Pope and having lepers in your house will work.

[Zac A]

Arifi - the difference is that - while mocking what others believe - most Americans will support your right to mock what they believe in.

It's part of free speech, and no, I'm not American.

[Arifi Waked]

The thing is, if you were still Scot the guy who tested obsolete products that no one had ever heard of, I wouldn't care what you mocked or how. But the fact is, you are someone who is extremely well known and respected by many. When posting about things you know about, like American foreign policy or the people and events in your immediate surroundings, you do a relatively good job of presenting your issue. While I almost never agree with your point of view, you still manage to portray your subject in a way that makes me and, I assume, others who disagree with you, at the very least understand where you are coming from.

However, your last two posts about religion have been based on a disgusting degree of ignorance. There is no way to describe them other than offensive. As someone who poses as an intellectual -and does a very good job of pulling off that image on quite a few matters- you have a responsibility to at the very least read up on what you are writing about instead of just typing the first idea that floats into your head. Again, Scot the tester of useless products can get away with that. He probably can't really effect the way anyone views the people he insults. Scot the Dilbert guy/author of God's Debris really can't. If you want to mock Islam, read up on what you're mocking first. If you want to mock Catholicism, know what it is your mocking. If you want to mock socialism or capitalism or anything else, again, know why you're doing it. Honestly, I would REALLY appreciate it if you would stop so blatantly confusing the faith/lifestyle with the supposedly faithful/practitioners. I'm getting really tired of people who think they're funny branding those who follow a religion based on the concept of peace as terrorists. I think most Christians would be pretty annoyed if we started generalizing the practices of the Wacco commune to mainstream Christianity, funny as it may be to the ignorant morons who don't know any better and can't be bothered to do a simple google search to try to learn. Again, it's not about the topics you choose, it's the way you approach them. Since you write without knowing what you're writing about, you end up crossing lines you don't seem to even know are there.

Obviously, this is your blog and you can write whatever you like, but the depths of your willful ignorance, especially in light of all your seemingly intellectual posts about the nature of free will and American foreign policy, is deeply disturbing and, quite frankly, displays your entire nation in an extremely unflattering light. But again, it's your life, your blog, and ultimately your nation that you are casting in such a disgusting and close minded light.

[Arifi Waked]

Yea, as cute as all the Americans here seem to think it is to mock other people's beliefs, I'm just not seeing it. It's attitudes like this that makes the rest of the world hate you even more than the support of Israel or the anarchy your government has instilled in Iraq. Mocking two major religions in as many days just reeks of a college freshman begging for acceptance among all the other "cool" morons on campus. It's not cute and it's not funny. It is offensive and disgusting and one of the major reasons no one else on earth can stand America.

I do apologize for my poor spelling; however, I would be more than willing to converse with any of you in Arabic if you think that would help at all.

[In your opinion, is there any worldview worthy of mocking, either religious or non? -- Scott]

[Ray]

"Not that I'm complaining too much, but the comment attributed to me isn't mine. You might want to upgrade your blog software."

I'd be willing to bet the OTHER comment adjacent to your name was yours, though. LOL...good times.

[Bob]

"What? you claim to plan to be a saint and no one seems to have told you you that the Biblical definition of a saint (as opposed to the Roman Catholic one) is someone who is "born again" (you can look up the reference to that one but Jesus said it's a "must")."

Actually, the Roman Catholic definition of saint is one who is in Heaven or will be. As Catholics believe that it is possible to screw up once you've repented once while you're still alive, they won't declare saints till after death. And there are many more saints than declared, the ones declared are just the ones the Church is pretty sure about. And the Church wouldn't deny sainthood to anyone; we have a thing about trying to do God's judgment for Him. So who knows, Scott might be a saint. Though I do have to admit that the Church probably won't add his name to the record.

[Merlisk]

Not that I'm complaining too much, but the comment attributed to me isn't mine. You might want to upgrade your blog software.

[Pablo]

There are other scientific explanations for those experiments rather than lack of free will.

[Shanguy]

@arifi - oh the poor "tenants". please tell these folks to get off of them. That is just inhuman.

Any why don't you get off of the comedians back. Just humour brother.

[Dargaud]

> [...] One minor problem with your plan: leprosy has been treatable since the early 1980s. [...]

Well, then why don't they make a saint out of the guy who invented the cure ? And for that matter the guy who invented the cure for polio, tritherapy for aids and so on ? It's a lot easier to prove that those guys saved a lot of lives. WHY DON'T THEY, instead of wasting everyone's time and money with their bullshit.

[Adrian]

What? you claim to plan to be a saint and no one seems to have told you you that the Biblical definition of a saint (as opposed to the Roman Catholic one) is someone who is "born again" (you can look up the reference to that one but Jesus said it's a "must"). I've been a Biblical saint for decades. It's a legal term, not an character attribute.

And what's eating Arifi Waked? Fancy getting upset 'cause you insulted a book. What he needs is a God like mine who says "Turn the other cheek, they have to answer to me when they die and I can kick butt harder than you can" (actually He says "vengance is mine I WILL repay" but "kick butt" sounds good too). Makes life a lot less stressful, and unlike Arifi gets me to heaven.

...adg

[sung]

I didn't realize that your post was offensive to so many people.

By the by,
a coworker of mine says your drawing is better than the Simpsons.
I of course argued vehemently,
but I guess that's one step closer to your goal, eh?

[heynoni]

RONI, any gangsta' - black or white - who goes around floppin' their arms about and rappin' to prove like they're "bad" when they still live with their mothers and can't keep a relationship together is far from "with it".

[Zac A]

Hey - Arifi - its 'tenets' not 'tenants'.

And lighten up, dude. Your inability to laugh about the things you believe in is what's immature here, not Scott's humour.