The Buddha is a Catholic saint!

Thread Author Yeshua
Published onJun 25, 2011

Discussion Starter Jun 25, 2011

#1
Edited: Jun 25, 2011

Gautama Buddha is venerated as a deity or as a prophet in other religions. Some Hindu texts say that the Buddha was an avatar of the god Vishnu.

The Buddha is regarded as a prophet by the Ahmadiyyas and is of course a Manifestation of God in the Bahá'í faith. Some early Chinese Taoist-Buddhists thought the Buddha to be a reincarnation of Lao Tzu.

But did anyone know that Buddha Shakyamuni is actually a Catholic saint?

What is less known, particularly among Christians is that the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches integrated the Buddha into their faith through the legend St. Josaphat. The Buddha became a Christian saint, and even received a feast-day, 27 November. The name Josaphat has been derived from Bodhisattva, one whose being is illumination. So it turns out that the Sakyamuni Buddha is in fact an official Catholic saint.

Before Nostra Aetate told us that, "the Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy" in non-Christian religions, the Catholic Church was living this out by keeping the feast of St Josaphat on its calendar. The Church recognized the holiness of Siddhartha. The holiness contained by his life and teachings attracted attention and made the Church honor and respect him for centuries in the persona of Josaphat, and they allowed the Church to continue to honor and respect him with his own feast day on the calendar him after it was made known that Josaphat was in reality the Buddha.

The story is thought to have been composed by Saint John of Damascus in the 6th century AD. It also appears, in abridged form, in the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. St. John was born around 676 A.D. and died sometime between 754 A.D and 757 A.D. He wrote a series of works defending the then still-young Christian faith. The Arabs, who then ruled most of the world, were very secure about Islam (seeing it as extension of Christianity); the Caliph gave St. John a free hand. One of the good father's books was a religious romance — the first Western one — called Barlaam and Joasaph.

The story of Barlaam and Joasaph is that of a young Indian prince, Josaphat (or Joasaph), being converted to Christianity by the arguments of Barlaam. Josaphat's story (before his conversion) is almost exactly the story of the Sakyamuni Buddha. Indeed, "Josaphat" is nothing but a Greek-formulation of "Bodhisat." This is fairly well established.

For example, the online Catholic Encyclopedia says (about St. Josaphat) [3]:

The story is a Christianized version of one of the legends of Buddha, as even the name Josaphat would seem to show. This is said to be a corruption of the original Joasaph, which is again corrupted from the middle Persian Budasif (Budasif = Bodhisattva).

St John clearly heard the story of the Buddha, loved it and so "tweaked" it by writing his own freelance, Christianized version so as to integrate the generally non-theistic philosophy of Buddhism into the framework of stoutly theistic Christianity.

Some also attribute it to a Gregorian monk from the 11th century called Euthymius.

Barlaam and Joasaph was a huge hit. It was translated into all the European languages; there's even a version in the Spanish dialect used in the Philippines.

But who got to decide who was a saint and who wasn't? For a long time, the decision was left to local parishes. Things changed in 1170 A.D. Pope Alexander III decreed that the power to canonize saints rested exclusively with the Holy See. The names of the martyrs were no longer recited in the Canon but moved to a sub-service called the Prime. Over time, it became less and less permissible to include new names into the list of saints — the Martyrology — without getting explicit approval from the Pope. Trouble was, there were still several equally official Martyrologies floating around (remember, this was before the invention of the printing press).

Pope Sixtus the Fifth (1585-1590) made a move to eliminate these multiple versions by commissioning a single standard list of martyrs. Cardinal Cesare Baronius was assigned to draw up the Martryologium. For obvious reasons, it was decided to make the official Martyrologium as broad-minded as possible; the idea was to merge existing Martyrologies rather than pick a correct one (for obvious reasons). On November 27, 1610, Cardinal Baronius included:

The holy Saints Barlaam and Josaphat (Buddha), of India, on the borders of Persia, whose wonderful acts St. John of Damascus has described

So millions of Catholic and Orthodox Christians came to venerate and adore His Holiness the Buddha. The Catholic Encyclopedia is resolutely unembarrassed about the whole incident.

Isn't it strange how history works? St. Josaphat - aka Lord Buddha - remains to this day a recognised saint in the Catholic Church and he retains his place in the Roman Martyrology, a catalogue of martyrs and saints arranged as a calendar. The story of St. Josaphat — aka the Lord Buddha — is still commemorated on the 27th of November.

It's a wonderful story, but wait, that isn't all. Tolstoy came across the story and wrote that it was influential in his own conversion. Gandhi read Tolstoy, was converted to non-violence and rediscovered his spiritual traditions. Martin Luther King, Jr., read Gandhi and discovered the methods of nonviolence that he employed here in the civil rights struggle.

Robert Ellsberg concludes this way: "So by this curious route, the Buddha became a Christian saint who inspired later generations of Christians to pursue the path of enlightment. Rather than disavow Sts. Barlaam and
Josaphat as figures of legend, it might be better to celebrate them as patron saints for an age of interreligious dialogue."

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