a813: Re: Uncle Tom saint (Pierre Toussaint) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Karioka9@cs.com

Pierre Toussaint was an Uncle Tom, and that's precisely why he's being
considered for sainthood.  Would the Catholic Church (or the whole of
Christendom for that matter) ever canonize the very Catholic General Morpas
who died a martyr for freedom, or Toussaint Louverture, the equivalent of St.
Louis "Roi de France" and Joan of Arc combined?  Heavens no!  Still, let the
Catholic Church canonize Pierre Toussaint.  Then watch every Haitian
barbershop, cab driver and shopkeeper, Catholic and Vodouisant, light a
candle to him for protection!

Un saint patron des petites gens, why not?  Pierre Toussaint epitomizes the
work ethic of every immigrant who comes to this country with "nothing but the
blues."  If he could make it, my father would say, then everybody can make it
in America.  With a miracle and a prayer, I usually add, amen.  When I took
my 12-year old heir to visit the Pierre Toussaint landmark at St. Patrick
Cathedral last year, he was as scornful as St. Vil.  My miniature Black Power
friend was reading Malcolm X and George Jackson (Soledad Brother) that
summer, and understandably saw everything in black and white.  (I need not
explain here, o Lili, that one thing always divides into two, that there is a
positive and a negative side to everything, and that the pleasure of the
dialectic is to figure out which side is principal depending on which set of
circumstances.)

Daniel Simidor