Steven,
At least you admitted it was a "lazy answer"
" This is what happened to the early Chistians; it led to a conception of personal holiness as something quite independent of beneficient action, since holiness had to be something that could be achieved by people who were impotent in action. Social virtue came therefore to be
excluded from Christian ethics.. . .I do not believe that there is a single saint in the whole calendar whose saintship is due to work of public utility."
- Bertrand Russell
I ask you to judge the veracity of Russel's contention based on only two examples:
St. Jerome Emiliani: " . . .after the war, all the loved ones who would have protected them [the orphans] and comforted them had been taken by sickness or starvation. He would become their parent, their family. Using his own money, he rented a house for the orphans, fed them, clothed them, and educated them..."
St. Sebastian: " . . .among many other deeds of service and healing, he healed Nicostratus, and his wife, Zoe, a deaf mute whom he cured; the jailer Claudius; Chromatius, Prefect of Rome, whom he cured of gout; and Chromatius' son, Tiburtius. Soon thereafter, affected by his experience with St. Sebastian, Chromatius set the prisoners free, freed his slaves, and resigned as prefect..."
Russel was intellectually brilliant, yet woefully uninformed regarding matters of spirituality, and on this specific point, was simply wrong. Even in our own time, most of us have heard of the works of Mother Theresa (a future saint): comforting, clothing, and feeding the poorest of the poor. Russel's bias is so extreme, it obviates most, if not all, of his conclusions in these matters.
Russel appears to spout conclusions on spirituality and religiosity which are based on experiments he himself hasn't even performed. This strikes me as the definition of a "dilettante".
Rick
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