Reviewing this book, Toby Johnson notes that atlhough it might appar to of interest only to Catholics, in fact it should be recommended also to others.
"The stories of the saints are teaching mechanisms by which particular virtues, talents, life-situations, and manifestations of zeal are personalized. The various traits and powers of God as healer, miracle-worker, and wish-granter are personified in the stories of flesh and blood human beings. Especially for children learning Christian doctrine, the saints are symbols and demonstrations of theological propositions and religious concepts much easier to understand and identify with than the abstractions they represent. They are role models of the good Christian life."
Full review bu Toby Johnson at White Crane
From Google Books:
"Human desire is a path to spiritual wholeness," says author Donald Boisvert, in this unusual look at how saints--and one's devotion to them--can be sites for the confirmation and celebration of homoerotic desire. The author comes to the topic as a gay scholar of religion and draws upon his own experience of saints including his years in seminary beginning at age 13. Saints can inspire desire and, through eclectic readings of their lives and imagery, the author suggests meanings and strategies attached to the emergence of same-sex attraction. The book contains 12 chapters that focus on saints, including: Michael the Archangel; Sebastian and Tarcisius; John the Baptist; Joseph; Paul and Augustine; the Ugandan and North American martyrs; Francis of Assisi; Dominic Savio and other boy saints; Damien and the missionary saints; Peter Julian Eymard and the Eucharist; and gay saints.
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