Female 'great saints' with sordid pasts..?

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There seems to be an astounding abundance of male great saints with pasts of having children out of wedlock, abandoning their children’s mothers, committing adultery, fornication and other sordid behavior. Are there many female great saints known for having such irresponsible pasts…? Thank you for your thoughts…!
 
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Saint Mary of Egypt comes to mind. She chose to be a prostitute for seventeen years before undergoing a conversion experience in front of an icon of the Blessed Virgin, and spending the remainder of her life as a hermit in the desert.
 
  • St. Mary of Egypt - former prostitute
  • St. Margaret of Cortona - longtime mistress of a rich married man who had his child out of wedlock
  • St. Pelagia - an actress who was described as having very bad morals by historians
  • St. Angela of Foligno - neglected her family for years while chasing after wealth and social position
  • St. Olga of Kiev - a queen who massacred and/or sold into slavery an entire tribe in revenge for her husband’s death
 
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Saint Olga of Kiev - she was a princess. When a foreign prince & his entourage came to court her, she told them to wash up from their long journey. They agreed and went to a bathhouse. Then she locked them all inside and set the building on fire.
(That was when she was a pagan, before she converted.)
 
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After hearing that story, I wonder how her husband (he whom she missed so much that she annihilated an entire tribe over his death) managed to win her heart. I probably don’t want to know
 
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Inbonum said:
So, what is she great saint for?
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She was one of Our Lord’s closest and most favoured followers while He lived, (being Mary of Martha and Mary fame). She was the first privileged to see Him after His resurrection and tasked to spread the good news to the Apostles. In fact she is sometimes called the Apostle to the Apostles for this reason.

I should think these things are enough to qualify her as a great saint!
 
My goodness, I’m sheltered. Mary is the only female born w/o original sin & was sinless as Jesus.
All other Saints, male or female, have stories w conversions. Overcoming temptation is a daily, hourly fight.

Galatians 5:22-23 New International Version (NIV)

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Help us Lord, to be You & have Your heart. In Jesus name. Amen
 
I know, but I also know that st.Mary Magdalene was sinner (impurity) who converted and then followed Jesus as apostles did. She is patron saint of penitent sinners, women, hairdressers, converts, those who are mocked because of faith.
She is asked for intercession for purity, in strugless with porn, lust and sexual temptations.

Then it’s some logical conclusion that she is patron saint of those who are simmilar to what she was before she met Jesus.
Maybe I am wrong.
 
Inbonum said:
I know, but I also know that st.Mary Magdalene was sinner (impurity) who converted and then followed Jesus as apostles did. She is patron saint of penitent sinners, women, hairdressers, converts, those who are mocked because of faith.
She is asked for intercession for purity, in strugless with porn, lust and sexual temptations.

Then it’s some logical conclusion that she is patron saint of those who are simmilar to what she was before she met Jesus.
Maybe I am wrong.
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You know St Nicholas is also a patron of repentant prostitutes? I suppose he must have been one too then!

No. As I said,St Mary Magdalene has WRONGLY been taken to be the same person as other sinful women in scripture. Hence the patronages.

But this is wrong. Please kindly read the Gospels and quote me one verse - even one - that says she ever committed a single sin of impurity. And bear in mind the Gospels are the sum total of what you or anyone actually logically know about St Mary Magdalene.
 
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Inbonum said:
Then it’s some logical conclusion that she is patron saint of those who are simmilar to what she was before she met Jesus.
Maybe I am wrong.
Click to expand...
Well, you can logically conclude that Mary Magdalene was a repentant sinner, because all the Apostles and Disciples were human and therefore sinners, who repented and chose to follow Jesus and try to overcome their individual sins. We don’t know what Mary Magdalene’s sins might have been, and she is primarily notable for her great love for Christ, for the fact that she was at the foot of the cross when almost all of the Apostles were hiding, and that she was the first one to see the risen Jesus.

The portrayal of her as a former prostitute or as someone who committed sins against purity is not based on any historical evidence, didn’t begin until the late 500s, and the Church disavowed that in 1969. From Wikipedia:
The inaccurate portrayal of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute began after a series of Easter sermons delivered in 581 AD, when Pope Gregory I conflated Mary Magdalene, who is introduced in Luke 8:2, with Mary of Bethany (Luke 10:39) and the unnamed “sinful woman” who anoints Jesus’s feet in Luke 7:36–50. Pope Gregory’s false portrayals resulted in an inaccurate but widespread belief that Mary Magdalene was a repentant prostitute or promiscuous woman.[4][2] Elaborate medieval legends from western Europe describe Mary Magdalene’s wealth and beauty, as well as her alleged sea journey to the Gallo-Roman port center of Marseille, in modern day southern France. The false portrayal by the Catholic Church of Mary Magdalene was a major controversy in the years leading up to the Reformation and some Protestant leaders rejected it. During the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church continued to use Mary Magdalene as a symbol of penance.
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In 1969, the false portrayal of Mary Magdalene was removed from the General Roman Calendar by Pope Paul VI, but the incorrect view of her as a former prostitute had been promoted by the Catholic Church for almost 1400 years, and has persisted in popular culture. Mary Magdalene is considered to be a saint by the Catholic, and by the Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. In 2016 Pope Francis raised the level of liturgical memory on July 22 from memorial to feast. Other Protestant churches honor her as a heroine of the faith. The Eastern Orthodox churches also commemorate her on the Sunday of the Myrrhbearers, the Orthodox equivalent of one of the Western Three Marys traditions.
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It’s still fine to pray to her as a patron of women and purity and all that. She’s a great saint and can definitely intercede for the person making the request. But there’s no basis to think she had a “sordid past”. We don’t know how she got infested with seven demons - it may or may not have been due to anything she did, and it might not have been due to an impure or “sordid” life. So it’s probably better to not include her on the list of female saints with bad pasts.
 
Inbonum said:
I know, but I also know that st.Mary Magdalene was sinner (impurity) who converted and then followed Jesus as apostles did. She is patron saint of penitent sinners, women, hairdressers, converts, those who are mocked because of faith.
She is asked for intercession for purity, in strugless with porn, lust and sexual temptations.

Then it’s some logical conclusion that she is patron saint of those who are simmilar to what she was before she met Jesus.
Maybe I am wrong.
Click to expand...
We honestly don’t know what her sins were. We don’t even know for sure if she was the woman the Jews were going to stone or not.

Some think she was, others say that was another woman. We don’t know for sure.

However, what we do know, she was there during the Passion of Jesus and His Resurrection.
 
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