Making Saints

Mental illness and sainthood are both fictions, that is, fabricated products. One is manufactured by authoritative rhetorical acts of malediction, the other by authoritative rhetorical acts of benediction. In his hoo i Making Saints, Kenneth Woodward describes the process by which the Vatican transforms persons from mortal humans into quasi-divine beings. The process rests on a belief in saints They [Catholics] pray to them, they honor them, they treasure their relics, they name their children and their churches after them. Christianity is... unlivable without saints. Similarly, the process of transforming human conflicts into mental diseases rests on a belief in mental illness psychiatrists give certain behaviors medical names, write books about them, teach them in schools, treat them with drugs and electricity, and build hospitals to house their victims. Modernity is unlivable without mental illnesses. 

Woodward, K. L. Making Saints How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn t, and Why. New York Simon Schuster, 1990. 

So you re writing about the Wars of the Roses, Lionel s saying, as we cross Chequer Street, shouldering our way through delivery-men, traffic wardens, and tourists making for the abbey. York and Lancaster and so on. Does the battle of Saint Albans come into it ... 

Since these beings were illuminated, and abundantly blessed and Divinely gifted, it is evident that we too are already, here and now, likewise illuminated. We also are similarly Divinely blessed and Divinely guided, if only we would realize it. We can realize it. They realized it. They were but men even as we are now. They achieved and accomplished the supreme transmutation. We also can achieve. That transmutation already exists in us now—at this very moment of space and time. All we must do is somehow to realize it. Then the transmutation is made manifest and clear. As we come to understand that Jesus and Buddha, Hermes and all the other adepts and saints of all time already exist deep within us, then by reflection upon their lives and their words we make manifest what hitherto had been concealed. We evoke them from within, and become consequently that which we have invoked.. . . The Philosopher s Stone of Divine understanding and knowledge will then have been concocted.3... 

Countess Seraphina provided Potemkin with novelty of a different kind. The frequency of the princes visits to her house in the quai du palais soon became a public scandal—so much so that Catherine was moved to make an acid comment on the subject. Then came the sensational rumor that an anonymous noblewoman had offered Seraphina 30,000 rubles to give up Potemkin and leave Saint Petersburg. Apparently Potemkin laughed uproariously at the news he was flattered by the size of the bribe, but he urged Seraphina to pocket the money and stay. 

The Piazza itself I told him. The two columns on the Piazzetta The saints on top are San Teodoro and San Marco, right And the church of San Geminiano at the far end of the Piazza, facing the Basilica That makes three. ... 

I became a librarian at the Sainte-Genevieve Library in Paris. 1 made this gesture to rid myself of a certain milieu, a certain attitude, to have a clear conscience, but also to make a living. 1 was twenty-five... 

The next scene of the aluminum drama is laid in the United States. Henri Sainte-Claire Deville s process had made the metal a commercial product, but it was still expensive. Charles Martin Hall, a student at Oberlin College, inspired by the accounts which Professor F. F. Jewett had given of his studies under Wohler, decided that his supreme aim in life would be to devise a cheap method for making aluminum. In an improvised laboratory in the woodshed, and with homemade batteries, he struggled with this problem. On February 23,1886, this boy of twenty-one years rushed into his professors office and held out to him a handful of aluminum buttons. Since these buttons led to a highly successful electrolytic process for manufacturing aluminum, it is small wonder that the Aluminum Company of America now treasures them and refers to them affectionately as the crown jewels A beautiful statue of the youthful Charles M. Hall, cast in aluminum, may now he seen at Oberlin College (11, 55). 

These saints work a lot harder and deserve to get paid a lot more for the miracles they perform on a daily basis. The average salary for professional athletes is 650,000. That s more than ten times what the average public high school principal makes. Basketball players can earn millions in just one season, and football players can earn hundreds of thousands for just a 30-second commercial. Even benchwarmers make more in a month than teachers make. 

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