I wanted to first place it in the rant section, but as it is a wider phenomenon...and as there are among the contributors some who are knowledgeable about religion...
From time to time when we eat I see an episode of a German series (some eternal soap as Bonanza), which is broadcasted in Europe as I see the Wikipedia but not in Britain and in Spain.
I felt already annoyed by some supernatural phenomena in the series, but now they started with a real saint (in fact a lady). The series plays in Bavaria where they are predominantly Catholic...
And that in our 21th century...
It remembered me of a film we were obliged to see in the Roman-Catholic college of Ostend...we as sixteen years old and more had to go from our college to a Catholic oriented cinema some mile or two from there...in group...all the boys from if I remember it well from 12 on...
about the apparition at Fatima...as the rememberance is vague I thought it was a black and white film, but with my recent research I saw that there was only one black and white and it was in 1938 and from British India? Thus it has to have been the 1952 Hollywood production in colour...And now I see that even the Anglo-Saxon world was interested...at sixteen I started already to get annoyed by all this stuff...and we had also to go in group an 8 km (about 5 and miles) far to a little grotto or was it a little chapel, to say the rosary...yes not that  long after the world exhibition of Brussels in 1958, where I saw the first Russian Sputnik...
I searched for the 1952 film and found it but it appeared as the Paramount warning said that when one distributed it without consent of Paramount the FBI could be at your doorstep...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_F%C3%A1tima
https://carm.org/what-are-the-approved-mary-apparitions-of-the-roman-catholic-church
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Miracle_of_Our_Lady_of_Fatima
But what I learned from my quick research on internet, was that I only found Christian organisations speaking about this subject, nowhere some lay sources about the apparitions, but perhaps I didn't seek far enough on the net?

But to return to the subject of apparitions.
I searched for the saint that appeared in the German series and found that she existed:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankt_Aldegund
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldegundis

But of course in the German series they made a whole other story of it...

But I, who thought that all that Saint stuff was passed in the last decennia apart from the money maker of Lourdes et all, am now by my research come to the observation that it is not gone at all...to my exoneration I have to say that except of my grandmother I didn't meet in my personal life or professional work not such attitudes anymore until now..of course one had always the ironical say if you were something lost, pray once to St Antonius and that all...
But now looking to the internet I see that it is still alive and kicking...


Although we live only some 40 km from Calvinists in The Netherlands, I have never been interested in all those religions. Of course the average of the children overhere were educated (indoctrinated?) in the Roman-Catholic belief...
But what I remember of my trips to Netherland is that in the Protestant (Calvinist?) churches they have no saints in it or statues of saints...
My question: how are saints perceived in the Anglosaxon world and I know there are that many (fractions?) in England and Scotland. I think Vizzer has tried to explain the difficult stuff once to me...as it is so complicated I am already forgotten it...something about old church christians...?...

Kind regards from Paul.

PS: I saw this afternoon a documentary about Ufology and the mecca of the Ufologists in the US, where the first apparition   took place. The German reporter from Arte TV made a comparison with Lourdes...

PaulRyckier wrote:

I only found Christian organisations speaking about this subject, nowhere some lay sources about the apparitions

Interesting observation there Paul. For my part the fact that (for instance) the apparition at Knock in Ireland appeared only 4 months after the death of Bernadette Soubirous would raise an eyebrow. One wonders how much publicity her death and legacy received from the pulpit during the summer of 1879 and if this played any part in the subsequent vision.

P.S. I can't claim to be any expert on the Anglican approach to sainthood although I am aware of the existence of the Society of King Charles the Martyr. They even have a handful of parish churches named after him including one at Tunbridge Wells in Kent which includes a decidedly Marian stained glass window:

Thank you very much for pointing to the martyr, Vizzer.

In fact, as I am now so long embedded with Britain, and his "subjects" on the messageboards, it is perhaps time to learn something about for instance the "high church" and the "low church"
Sparked by your Charles I (I remember Minette's enthusiasm with the Charles II (his son) BBC series, that I found a bit too "Hollywoodian", the start of the decline of the BBC series?) (BTW not worser than the German historical series in Arte)
I learned about that "high Church"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Church_of_England#Augustine_and_the_Anglo-Saxon_period
A bit complex if you ask me...Perhaps not more complex than the dozens of Protestant religions that one find nowadays in the world?

And now while I am with "religions" I will first of all learn a bit about the Calvinist religion of some of my Dutch brethren (and sisters )from the Benelux, only some 40km (25 miles) from the place where I now sit...

Kind regards Vizzer from Paul.

Addendum to the previous message.


And about religions and its history in The Netherlands (our neighbour in the Benelux)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religion_in_the_Netherlands
From this wiki:
During the Twelve Years' Truce (between 1609 and 1621) in the Eighty Years' War, the Netherlands saw a civil war along religious lines. The Synod of Dort tried to bring an end to an internal theological conflict within the Calvinist church between two tendencies of Calvinism the orthodox Gomarists or Contra-Remonstrants and the liberal Arminians or Remonstrants. Civil war broke out in the 1610s between orthodox and liberal Calvinists. The liberal sovereign estates of Holland left the Republic. The orthodox Calvinist side won (prince Maurice of Orange and the other provinces) and the official head of state of the County of Holland, Johan van Oldebarnevelt, was executed. Calvinism became the de facto state religion and political offices could only be occupied by Calvinists (and in some cases, Jews). Other Christian religions were mostly tolerated, although discriminated, but were not permitted to practice their religion in public. Judaism was allowed in public, Lutheranism only in larger cities on the condition of maintaining Calvinist church interior styles, without crucifixes as known in Scandinavian cathedrals.

And in the statistics of this site I learned for the first time in my life about "iets-ism" (something-ism)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ietsism


And about the churches without saints (even not in the windows) that I mentioned to Vizzer.
About "gereformeerde" (reformed) (Calvinist?) churches in Zeeland (near the Belgian province of West-Flanders)
https://goo.gl/PeYqes
https://goo.gl/1nsJgt
https://goo.gl/xxmy8i


Kind regards, Paul.