Patron Saint of the Internet

Quite a number of people have been writing with the news that the Catholic Church is considering naming a patron saint of the Internet. The strongest current contender is St. Isisdore, an 8th century Spanish saint, with is created with making one of the first databases - a 20 volume encyclopedia.

Comments

Internet Saints Up a Couple Levels

[GenlyAi]

This list got buried in the thread hierarchy, so I was jonesing for my 15 seconds of fame:

St. Marconi of Unlimited Bandwidth

St. Turing the Mystic

St. Hopper of Transubstantiation of Bugs

St. Ada the Inscrutable

St. Stallman of Hoofed Mammals

St. Torvalds the Flightless

and from Jimhotep:

St. Tesla the Enabler

Big deal. There's lots of patron saints.

[Norman Lorrain]

See for yourself.

St. Isidore's already listed.

Top X Lines Uttered by the Internet Saint

[RimRod]

1) "May all your segmentation faults be benign"

2) "That'll be 20 Hail Marys and 5 lines of assembly code"

3) "Thou shall not covet thy cubicle neighbor's video card"

4) "And God shall smite thee by sending a power surge through your CPU"

5) "God is compassionate, my child...everyone is tempted by the Fruit of the Tree of Microsoft once or twice"

6) "And Apple begat Macintosh, Macintosh begat the PowerMac, and PowerMac begat iMac..."

7) "And on the Seventh Day, Torvald created Linux. And Torvald saw that it was good.

The internet and religion

[Ray Dassen]

The internet is an equalising communication medium. As such, it's a place where catholics, atheists, muslims, hindus, gnostics, buddhists, pagans, agnosts etc. can all openly and frankly discuss their beliefs and convictions among themselves and each other.

If the catholic church were to declare a patron saint for the internet, that means the church either does not understand the internet, or that there may be hope yet for it to become less of a conservative patriarchal hierarchical institution.

God no...

[z1lch]

Spokesman for the Catholic Media Office Tom Hallwood said: "There are patron saints of many things, so why not let the Internet have one?

Oh dear god no. I'm happy being a heathen without further indoctrination from a fucking organised religion as Catholicism which has traditionally been responsible for the alientation, persecution of many people advocating doctrines which did not fall with in the Vatican's political agenda.

There is no room for God here. We're a product in spite of the Catholic heritage certainly not as a result of it. If I want to pray it sure as hell will not to be what I am told is permissable by a body which murdered and desicrated scientists, philosophers, astronomers, witches...

I recant!

Ia! Ia! Shub-Internet!

[Sloppy]

The church has no idea what peril they are entering; they live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that they should voyage far. Sending your prayer packets to this so-called "St. Isisdore" only helps to draw attention to both the source and destination addresses.

"But whose attention?" you ask. Well, perhaps it would be better to ask "What's attention?" There are impossibly ancient hungers that lurk out there, furtively waiting in the dark until the comm satellites are right. And when the time comes, it will be both swift and agonizingly slow at the same time. A swift tentacle probing here, a ping packet there, and then you will be beset by the true horror: Shub-Internet, the black beast of the 'Net with a thousand bastard processes!

We already have a patron ... thing. (I guess calling it a "saint" wouldn't quite be right, huh?) Better to leave well enough alone, and pray (quietly to yourself, where nothing can snoop your prayer) that the dawn of Its era comes long after you are safely in the grave.