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Prayer: the virus killer?

23:39 / 11.12.04

I love the Internet, despite the dangers of viruses, hackers, &c, &c. Although I don't believe in saints the way they do, I think it's pretty cool that the Orthodox Catholic church is looking for a patron saint for the Internet.

Hopefully someone out there understands Catholicism better than I do and could explain the following quote for me. I got it from this BBC article.

"If we get a patron saint for the Internet," said Father Andrey, "the next logical step will be to formulate a prayer to deal with viruses."

Does Father Andrey mean that they want to make a prayer for cleaning up viruses? a prayer that prevents computer-viral infection? Or maybe he means they want to formulate a prayer to mitigate the effects of Post Computer-Viral Syndrome (PCVS), thus reducing PCVS related suicides and lessening the incidences of PCVS caused child-abuse. It is my understanding that if we pray to get a virus fixed, God is more likely to answer us by having us discover anti-virus software or find someone who knows how to help us with it. Perhaps they'll formulate a prayer that will lead people to discover an affiliated anti-virus software company? If so, then what was the point of coming up with a patron saint?

14:16 / 12.12.04

Don’t mean to sound like Death’s Head, but: Joking, yes? It strikes me as highly likely that he’s taking the piss out of the concept of a Patron Saint of the Internet.

I’ve done some shamanic journeying and dreamwork travel within the Internet, which seems to be a better method of working than prayer. It’s a question of the ease of the user interface, prayer seems to be very bound up with kinaesthetic/auditory senses which makes it hard to really see what’s going on, whereas a visual representation would allow greater ease to interact with what one might come across. Although I always use prayer, particularly speaking in tongues, as preparation for any journey.

Better placed in the Temple forum?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:25 / 13.12.04

Don't we already have one?

I like the idea of patron saints, specific definately-definately-definately-in-Heaven-and-chatting- to-God people who watch over specific aspects of our temporal lives. There are patron saints for just about every concievable profession, patron saints for particular diseases, patron saints of various body parts, patron saints of geographical locations... you name it, there's a patron saint of it. Here's a list.

The idea is that you pray to the specific saint you need on your side. For example, were I a soap boiler and I wanted to make sure that my latest batch of lavender/bergamot/liposuction byproduct came out okay, I might pray to St. Florian. (He's a bit of a busy lad, though, since his portfolio also includes firefighters.)

My personal favourite was always St. Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:29 / 13.12.04

Ah, finally got the article to load--I see that this chap is Russian Orthodox, not Catholic, hence the distain for Isidore of Seville.

20:28 / 15.12.04

That is helpful. The whole saints thing is kind of a cool concept. I still don't really understand what the purpose of a prayer to deal with viruses would be though.

20:31 / 15.12.04

Sometimes, the mundane solutions don't work -- or you need a little spiritual guidance to point you toward the right answers.