Make Mr. Rogers a saint.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Mr. Rogers was a brilliant man, and I have a deep respect for him. He educated and entertained children for decades without the use of people in big rubber suits or cheesy animated sequences. I know that I learned a lot from his show back when I was four years old.

[Utsanomiko]

He educated and entertained children for decades without the use of people in big rubber suits...

Wait, then what were the Purple People?

But yeah, he was a great guy. You don't get good shows like that any more these days.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

The Purple People were just flat things IIRC.

Only the Purple Panda was a suit.

[Kurgan]

I don't think Fred Rogers would be accepted by the Catholic Church considering how he has in fact never molested any children.

Wonderful, so all saints are child molestors? What an incredible bigot and idiot you are, if you don't mind my saying. ; p

As to saints, in fact, other faiths besides Roman Catholicism acknowledges Saints.. for example the Orthodox Church (which recently called for the canonisation of Nicholas II, the tsar, though IIRC it was as a martyr, not a saint per se).

The miracles either are done by them during their lifetime or attributed to them after their death (like somebody prayed for their help and got healed or something like that). They're supposed to be "friends of god" who are in heaven right now, and they understand the problems of ordinary people.

This type of middle-man thing is abhorrent to many Protestants and they like to beat this over the heads of Catholics, but its common to many other relgions as well. The idea behind it in other religions is that God is too big and important to be bothered with all of our petty quibbles and belly-aches, and its disprespectful to burden him with our little problems.. so you go through his lieutenants and friends.

Sufism (a mystical sect of Islam), and I believe Shiite Muslims have their own saints, as do Hindus. Forms of Buddhism have Bodhisatvas that are essentially the equivalent of saints in their religion. Of course even in Catholicism, its acknowledge that there may be saints other than the ones acknowledged by the Church (saintly family members who have passed on for example, or the people who do missionary or social relief work), its just that these were singled out as role models for Christians. None of them were perfect, but even the ones who were bad were considered to have made great contributions to the faith, or else repented in a marvelous fashion (or died for the faith, in the case of martyrs).

As to the value of having saints, the idea behind them is a guide or a help.. you don't have to use them if you don't want to. Nobody in those traditions who knew anything would say they were more powerful than God or something. In the indigenous traditions that honor saints (or minor deities, or "ancestor spirits") they may in fact be the ONLY help people can get, because the major deity doesn't concern him/her/itself with creation after the creation event (much like the Deist conception of God). But that's another story...

From all accounts, Mr. Rogers was a good man, and loved by generations of children. He will be missed...