The Cult of Little Audrey Santo: Victim Soul or Fraud?

[Mercer]

8 hours ago, samira_catlover said:

At the risk of being all contrarian and revolutionary: may I politely suggest that there are a whole LOT of unrecognized saints/holy people (all denominations)? You know, folks who worked for peace and justice, people who wanted to share the love of the Deity, who actually READ Micah 6:8 and believed it?

Slightly off-topic, but my church includes some of those people in our All Saints Day prayers. Off the top of my head, some people I recall having been included were Martin Luther King Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and William Wilberforce.

[Georgiana]

3 hours ago, anjulibai said:

Guilt made her irrational, is my guess. She let her 3 year old be outside without supervision, near an uncovered pool. She probably felt like the whole thing was her fault.

She had to find a way to justify the whole thing, so she turned to religion and things snowballed. 

I imagine the father leaving for a time didn't help, either. 

I agree.  Her child was unsupervised around a pool and fell in.  She couldn't confront the fact that she had allowed that to happen.  Rather than let her daughter go and confront the situation, she buried her head in the sand of religion, looking for a was to absolve herself of guilt for the negligence that killed her child.  It's not an easy thing to live with, knowing that you had a part in the death of your child.

As a Catholic, I don't think the heart attack was due to the abortion clinic.  I think the heart attack was God trying to be merciful and free this child from the freak show prison her mother was creating. 

[smittykins]

24 minutes ago, Mercer said:

Slightly off-topic, but my church includes some of those people in our All Saints Day prayers. Off the top of my head, some people I recall having been included were Martin Luther King Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and William Wilberforce.

Continuing the slight OT:  whenever a celebrity had passed during the previous week, my former pastor would mention him/her during the Prayers of the People.

[Cleopatra7]

21 minutes ago, Georgiana said:

I agree.  Her child was unsupervised around a pool and fell in.  She couldn't confront the fact that she had allowed that to happen.  Rather than let her daughter go and confront the situation, she buried her head in the sand of religion, looking for a was to absolve herself of guilt for the negligence that killed her child.  It's not an easy thing to live with, knowing that you had a part in the death of your child.

As a Catholic, I don't think the heart attack was due to the abortion clinic.  I think the heart attack was God trying to be merciful and free this child from the freak show prison her mother was creating. 

The trip to Medjugorje was discouraged by even by a sympathetic priest precisely because it would put too much stress on Audrey's body. People who are that disabled have no business doing an international flight to a country that is still dealing with the aftereffects of a genocidal war. Or rather, their guardians have no business putting them through that in the slim hopes of a miracle. Audrey's grandmother mortgaged her house to pay for the air ambulance bill. Was nobody able to talk some sense in Audrey's mother or did she just rope the entire family into this "victim soul" scheme?

[Jingerbread]

http://www.medjugorjeusa.org/audrey.htm

Quote

She passed very quietly and peacefully from cardiac arrest.

Give me a goddamned break.  Heart attacks aren't peaceful.  That poor girl suffered so her mom could feel less guilty.  That whole page there sounds like it was written by someone writing one of those fake Facebook "miracle" posts.

[2manyKidzzz]

It was never a question for us, but I would never, ever have a pool. And anyway, we belonged to community pools which were a lot of fun and much more social. 

[smittykins]

12 hours ago, Jingerbread said:

http://www.medjugorjeusa.org/audrey.htm

Give me a goddamned break.  Heart attacks aren't peaceful.  That poor girl suffered so her mom could feel less guilty.  That whole page there sounds like it was written by someone writing one of those fake Facebook "miracle" posts.

Honest question: Is cardiac arrest the same as a heart attack?  I always thought it meant that it just stopped beating.

[jozina]

You're right smittykins.  A heart attack is usually used to mean a myocardial infarct or a blockage in the blood vessels of the heart.  Cardiac arrest is where the heart stops beating because the electrical stimulation that makes is beat has stopped/isn't working right no matter what the cause. A heart attack can cause cardiac arrest.

I'm a cradle Catholic and this is properly bonkers. I've never heard of this victim soul rubbish. It would be so hard as a mother to deal with the guilt over that but holy fridgeballs what a way to deal. 

[Terrie]

After poking around online and reading various pages about her, I'm bothered by the so-called proponents of the Catholic "Culture of Life." I keep seeing comments about how, despite being unable to move or talk or anything, she touched so many people and this shows how all lives matter, no matter how "useless" they may seem to others. If all life really matters, it shouldn't make a difference if she never had any impact on anyone outside her immediate family and lived and died unknown by the world.

The underlying dissonance of talking about how it doesn't matter if someone can't do anything by talking about what she did just bugs me.

[mango_fandango]

The Virgin Mary sounds like a right asshole for making a critically disabled four-year-old a "victim soul". As if she hasn't got enough suffering of her own, now ya gotta take on OTHER PEOPLE'S suffering! 

[samira_catlover]

OK, all kinds of contrarian again here.

If an ADULT says to their Particular Version of the Eternal "please make me as a sacrificial victim: let me hurt and suffer, to reduce pain for others, I choose this and in your kindness, let it happen"---I may not agree with that (and honestly wondering what the HECK kind of Deity likes seeing suffering), but I can accept it (grudgingly) as coming under Free Choice.

But a kid? Uhhhh, no.

[NachosFlandersStyle]

1 hour ago, samira_catlover said:

OK, all kinds of contrarian again here.

If an ADULT says to their Particular Version of the Eternal "please make me as a sacrificial victim: let me hurt and suffer, to reduce pain for others, I choose this and in your kindness, let it happen"---I may not agree with that (and honestly wondering what the HECK kind of Deity likes seeing suffering), but I can accept it (grudgingly) as coming under Free Choice.

But a kid? Uhhhh, no.

Yeah, I have a high tolerance for weird-and-creepy but this one is a whole other level. I keep commenting here because I'm actually reading a book right now that deals with this general strain of Catholic thought (Holy Blood, Holy Tears by Richard E. Burton) and while there's generally a fucked-up gender element to the preceding cases of this stuff, which makes it difficult to say that any particular Tragic Female Saint is acting with perfect freedom, there is always the sense that mystical suffering is a person's chosen way of expressing their own experiences.

There was a french woman in the early-to-mid 1900s named Marthe Robin who is kind of the ideal example of the "victim soul." She came down with some sort of paralytic disease in her teens, and spent the next 5-10 years of her life confined to bed in her family's farmhouse in chronic pain. How does a person reclaim their agency as a human being when they can't even leave their darkened room in a little isolated village? Well sometime in her 20s, Marthe claims that Jesus appeared to her and told her that her suffering was like his own, and that she could become even more like him if she wanted, by helping him to carry the burden of the world's sins. She agreed to this, and from this point out (according to the local priest who spent decades publicizing her case) she experienced the stigmata and began to act out a weekly cycle of of torment and resurrection, mimicking the stations of the cross. She also supposedly ate nothing for the rest of her life except for daily communion, although that introduces a whole other can of worms vis-a-vis women's relationship with food.

She became a fairly popular folk figure and thousands of people would come to visit and speak with her over the years. She was apparently a very thoughtful and charming woman, and her public image as a holy victim was a least mostly of her own creation. Whatever you think of the supernatural claims, it was a very successful strategy for participating in society and making something out of her life, which probably would have been very lonely and powerless under ordinary circumstances.

Audrey didn't get to have visions or claim that she was living out the stations of the cross or participate in any ruses involving fake blood. She didn't get to chat with the people who came to see her or bask in the media attention surrounding her. She just had to lie there unaware while her mother enjoyed whatever kind of gratification people get out of this stuff. And she got dragged around the world without regard to her health or comfort, which are maybe the only things that her mother could have meaningfully provided to a child in her situation.

[Cleopatra7]

If you want to learn more about the history of food in relationship to Catholic women's spirituality, I would recommend Caroline Walker Byrnum's "Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women" which you can get cheaply used on Amazon. It makes me wonder if the reason why anorexia is seldom found outside of Western cultures is not because of our Eurocentric standards of beauty so much as it is rooted in long-standing beliefs that link lack of eating in women to perceived states of holiness and self-discipline.

[Granwych]

On ‎4‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 10:58 AM, nausicaa said:

On the little Audrey site they have a gift shop and all proceeds go towards funding her canonization process. There's also a full size brick and mortar gift shop. 

Sheesh, when you say "Little Audrey" all I can think about is the little red-outfitted witch who was besties with Casper the Friendly Ghost.  I do agree that the mother seems majorly delusional, and the assisting priests and church people are leeches.

On ‎4‎/‎13‎/‎2016 at 8:23 AM, Johanna25 said:

I think a lot of young adolescents go through a super-religious phase, especially if you were brought up Catholic and have heard all the tales of holy saints and martyrs. I know I did. I remember reading Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and recognizing young Stephan Dedalus's fervent Catholicism as something I'd gone through. 

Young men and women in earlier times no doubt went through similar things and some of them got caught up in it permanently. Some of the young women were our earliest anorectics.

 

Oy.  I am so glad that my kiddo got SEVERELY disgusted with the Church at the age of 6. 

[NachosFlandersStyle]

2 hours ago, Cleopatra7 said:

If you want to learn more about the history of food in relationship to Catholic women's spirituality, I would recommend Caroline Walker Byrnum's "Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women" which you can get cheaply used on Amazon. It makes me wonder if the reason why anorexia is seldom found outside of Western cultures is not because of our Eurocentric standards of beauty so much as it is rooted in long-standing beliefs that link lack of eating in women to perceived states of holiness and self-discipline.

Funnily enough, the reason I bought the book I mentioned above is that it was "frequently purchased with" Bynum's book on Amazon.

[Alicja]

I'm a pretty involved Catholic, but I've never heard the term "victim soul". Never in grade school catechism and never in my one year at Catholic high school have I heard that. Interesting.

[nausicaa]

20 hours ago, Cleopatra7 said:

If you want to learn more about the history of food in relationship to Catholic women's spirituality, I would recommend Caroline Walker Byrnum's "Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women" which you can get cheaply used on Amazon. It makes me wonder if the reason why anorexia is seldom found outside of Western cultures is not because of our Eurocentric standards of beauty so much as it is rooted in long-standing beliefs that link lack of eating in women to perceived states of holiness and self-discipline.

I'd also recommend, Hunger: An Unnatural History. Its scope is broader, but there is a chapter devoted to the whole "female mystic who refuses to eat" phenomenon. And the other chapters are fascinating as well. 

I did think that the rates of eating disorders were about the same in East Asia (especially Japan) as in the West? Though I wonder how common they had a lot of western exposure. 

[NachosFlandersStyle]

1 hour ago, Alicja said:

I'm a pretty involved Catholic, but I've never heard the term "victim soul". Never in grade school catechism and never in my one year at Catholic high school have I heard that. Interesting.

It's definitely a fringe concept. People talk like all Catholics must be in lockstep with one another but there's plenty of weird/ splinter thought going on.

[Mercer]

2 hours ago, Alicja said:

I'm a pretty involved Catholic, but I've never heard the term "victim soul". Never in grade school catechism and never in my one year at Catholic high school have I heard that. Interesting.

That's because it's not an official teaching of the Catholic Church or part of any widely accepted doctrine. It's more of a folk belief that's loosely based on Catholicism.

[louisa05]

On 4/13/2016 at 8:49 AM, samira_catlover said:

OK, in a pinch, I can accept that folks (any faith) might support the cause of someone who they thought had Saintly Qualities. (You know: majored in charity and compassion, did a lot about forgiveness in the face of evil, who stood up for their particular beliefs, etc.) We can definitely USE great role models, IMNSHO.

At the risk of being all contrarian and revolutionary: may I politely suggest that there are a whole LOT of unrecognized saints/holy people (all denominations)? You know, folks who worked for peace and justice, people who wanted to share the love of the Deity, who actually READ Micah 6:8 and believed it?

The Catholic Church does not believe that recognized (canonized) saints are the only saints. It believes that all in heaven are saints. Those canonized are just the ones held up as an example for us to emulate. The Feast of All Saints is meant to recognize those uncanonized as well as those who have been. 

And canonization is indeed a slow process. Omaha groups have been working for the canonization of Father Flanagan for decades and finally got to the point of sending the information to Rome for consideration last June. He died in 1948. The step of sending info to Rome does not mean canonization is coming any time soon. It will take a long time for the review of documents sent then he MAY get declared "venerable" when that ends. If the declaration as "venerable" does not come, the case is essentially closed. 

 

[Granwych]

2 hours ago, NachosFlandersStyle said:

It's definitely a fringe concept. People talk like all Catholics must be in lockstep with one another but there's plenty of weird/ splinter thought going on.

True -I've been reading up on Opus Dei.

[usedbicycle]

On 4/14/2016 at 11:57 AM, NachosFlandersStyle said:

There was a french woman in the early-to-mid 1900s named Marthe Robin who is kind of the ideal example of the "victim soul." She came down with some sort of paralytic disease in her teens, and spent the next 5-10 years of her life confined to bed in her family's farmhouse in chronic pain

Oh my gosh! My grandmother met Marthe Robin at her bedside and it prompted her to become a mystical catholic fundie after that. My mother followed in her footsteps and we went on all kinds of weird pilgrimages when I was a kid in the 80's and early 90's, including Medjugorje during the Bosnian war. I remember being in the chapel while the the virgin Mary was supposedly appearing to the 3 or 4 "visionaries" still living off the whole scam at that point. I remember being told that their bodies turned hard as stone when Mary was appearing to them. I was a few rows behind but I wanted to touch them so bad

[bea]

My Dad's cousin was named Jane, from a not-even-a-stop-sign town in central IL called Trowbridge, and they called her "The Little Herald of the Enthronement."

There was a pamphlet about her, which I do not have, and her story was included in a comic book (of all things) called "A Treasurehouse of Fun and Fact." The Catholic University of America has all the material in their rare book collection. At one point, the comic book was online as a PDF and I'm trying to find it to post it.

Jane's older sister Mary lived in her seventies, and maintained that Jane was a nice enough little kid who died of leukemia. Neither of their parents were religiously nuts - their younger daughter died young, it was a tragedy, but it wasn't the parents who attempted to make Jane posthumously famous. It was her father's sister who became fixated on the idea that Jane had been a particularly holy child who had died for some greater purpose. Remember, in 1929, you might have ten children, and only four of them would live to adulthood. Childhood death was very common. However, in my father's family, people married late, and had fewer children. Jane's death was a huge blow to the family, and Landa (my great-aunt) was already a religious fanatic. If you live anywhere around where their homestead used to be, you can find shrines at many crossroads that she put up.

The saddest part is that Jane was gone, she was past any suffering, but it was the living who suffered as a result of this fanaticism. Her mother Loretta broke under the strain and lived in a sanitarium for the rest of her life, leaving Mary to be raised by her farmer father. All because Landa- who never married, and devoted herself entirely to the church, but who wasn't considered "stable" enough for the convent - wanted Jane to be a saint. My dad said it tore that family apart, with Landa even getting the Bishop involved despite Jane's mother, father and the rest of the family begging her to just let the child be at peace. She was absolutely determined that her niece would be a saint, regardless of the effect of Jane's immediate family. It still amazes me that they disinterred the child's body over the objections of the parents, because that's how powerful the church was in a tiny farming community in the thirties.

With regards to insisting children take on the suffering of the world, I think some families cannot manage to make sense of the fact that bad things happen, and sometimes they happen to children. They are always looking for a greater purpose. They think there must be a greater purpose, the bad things and illness and death don't just happen to people. Or at least, not to them or their family.

Both of my children have type 1 diabetes, and you cannot imagine the number of parents who have had family and friends tell them that that God has given the child this illness to test them, to have them prove their devotion, etc. Luckily, no one on either side of our family thinks that, or at least has had the balls to say that. I don't know why my children have a life-threatening autoimmune disorder. They just do. It doesn't make them better people, it doesn't make me a better parent, and I wish they didn't have it. It's a medical issue. There's nothing spiritual about it. People take great comfort in their beliefs, and I respect that, but I will not allow anyone to force either of my children into a position of someone who is more holy or special simply because their immune system decided to kill off their pancreas. The idea that it wouldn't matter what I thought, or what I said, that someone in my family would decide to use a child's death as a way to somehow make themselves a more holy person in the eyes of the church is unspeakably vile. I'm sure the people who do that do not consider themselves to be doing anything wrong. For all I know, they may be totally sincere in their belief this child was selected by God, that their suffering is religiously important. It all just seems a little too convenient, though.

[hoipolloi]

2 hours ago, bea said:

It still amazes me that they disinterred the child's body over the objections of the parents, because that's how powerful the church was in a tiny farming community in the thirties.

This is astounding to me, even considering it was the 1930s. I thought this only happened after someone was recognized by a pope as having potential or selected for beatification or whatever. Yikes.