[My March 2009 column in The Meta Arts online magazine]
An Episcopalian woman once told me in some disdain that Protestants don’t have saints. It took a while, but eventually I thought to ask her why so many Episcopalian and Anglican churches were named St. John’s, or St. Paul’s, or St. Mark’s, etc. I never got a straight answer to that question, but I gathered that she considered the apostles to be in a class by themselves. They were called saints, but the title was an honorific, something like calling someone a Kentucky colonel. In this I may not be doing her justice, but in any case, it is clear that she was acting from the not uncommon Protestant assumption that Catholics, as Catholics, are superstitious idiots.