Word: heroic
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...fault is not entirely his. An entire generation of actors have been so thoroughly trained to play antiheroes that the heroic style is unnatural to them...
...have always intertwined, of course, but they differ radically in purpose and content. The myth has always been the engine of the future, a bright and energetic contraption that owed its efficiency to both American know-how and the hand of God. Except in its occasional celebrations of heroic legends, myth does not gaze backward; it is prospective, not retrospective. Being a creation of the Enlightenment, it is even inclined to be contemptuous of history. As Descartes said, historians are people who spend a lifetime attempting to discover facts about Roman life that any illiterate serving girl in Cicero...
...present about 1,000 men and women are being considered for eventual canonization, including nine Americans who are awaiting beatification. There are now more than 2,500 saints, venerated because it is believed that their heroic Christianity and the example of their lives and deaths are worthy of emulation, and because they are believed to be able to intercede with God to work miracles in response to prayer. Many saints were created during the centuries when Christians were persecuted by Rome, a time when all martyrs were considered saints-along with the Apostles and early church fathers like St. Augustine...
...York, where for 200 years after her death local Catholics prayed to her for intercession. But only in 1884 did an Albany priest propose her "cause" to the Vatican, with the hope of canonization. Decades passed in the gathering of evidence of Kateri's "fame of sanctity" and heroic virtues...
...20th century, any world church still needs heroic examples of saintliness and the power of prayer, especially in countries outside Europe. It also needs saints chosen from the laity, to serve as role models in a time of doubt and secularism. Typically, though his cause has not yet been introduced in Rome, beatification proceedings are under way for Dr. Tom Dooley, the physician who operated a medical mission in Laos from 1956 until his death from cancer...