last night was pretty amazing. i remember talking about high fives to different people all night, almost setting a backyard on fire, halfway watching heathers and wishing i had seen it all, and mostly trying to convince kelly hangauer to let me sing with fourth of july in adrianne's place, but only for "why did i drink so much last night?"-- i think i may have tried to convince several others it was a good idea as well. but seriously, i sound really good when i sing her part. just saying.
did you know that the devil's advocate is a real person? i brought the term up the other day because there's some dude at the ECM who always says "now, i'm just playing devil's advocate but [insert really stupid comment]" and i think that he more than likely believes what he's saying but uses the devil's advocate phrase because he doesn't have the balls to share his opinion outright. /rant
anyway, i was telling someone this and they proceeded to tell me that the devil's advocate is a real person hired by the catholic church anytime they go through the process of canonizing a saint. i had no idea-- i figured it was just some stupid cliche that someone pulled out of their ass one time and it caught on.
from wikipedia:
Formerly, during the canonization process of the Roman Catholic Church, the Promoter of the Faith (Latin Promotor Fidei), popularly known as the Devil's Advocate (Latin advocatus diaboli), was a canon lawyer appointed by the Church to argue against the canonization of the candidate.[1] It was his job to take a skeptical view of the candidate's character, to look for holes in the evidence, to argue that any miracles attributed to the candidate were fraudulent, etc. The Devil's advocate was opposed by God's advocate, whose job was to make the argument in favor of canonization. The office was established in 1587 during the reign of Pope Sixtus V and was abolished by Pope John Paul II in 1983. This abolition streamlined the canonization process considerably, helping John Paul II to usher in an unprecedented number of elevations: nearly 500 individuals were canonized and over 1,300 were beatified during his tenure as Pope as compared to only 98 canonizations by all his 20th-century predecessors.
Such a dramatic increase suggests that the office of the Devil's Advocate had served to reduce the number of canonizations by complicating the process. Some argue that it served a useful role in ensuring that canonizations did not proceed without due care and hence the status of sainthood was not easily achieved. In cases of controversy the Vatican may still seek to informally solicit the testimony of critics of a candidate for canonization. The British born American columnist Christopher Hitchens was famously asked to testify against the beatification of Mother Teresa in 2002, a role he would later humorously describe as being akin to "representing the Evil One, as it were, pro bono".[2]
anyway i just thought that was all very interesting. what say you, keanu reeves?
