Day of the Dead debate: Should sellers bury St. Joseph statues?

I am sitting at a table with some Catholic friends who have just came from Mass, and to my surprise, one of them buried a statue of St. Joseph to help sell her condo four years ago.  Apparently, she reluctantly buried the statue at the suggestion of her listing agent, who took over a year to sell the property.  (Note, this was while the housing market in Massachusetts was still rising.)

When I asked her what she thought of the practice, she called it "disrespectful"and said she is still doing penance.  So not only did this Catholic, who often attends daily mass, "lose her shirt" but she has been wearing a hairshirt ever since ;-)

Cross post of comment on another ActiveRain post about St. Joseph:

Todd's post: 

I hope it [burying a St. Joseph statue upside down] works, but at worst if you bury it upside down and you then have a new place to center your sign!

Todd,

My guess is that there will be a record number of expired listings in the remaining eight weeks of the year.  I'd be glad to invite thousands of sellers (in states where rebates are legal) to participate in this campaign:

Proposed "St. Joseph Statue Buyback Program" will redistribute referral rebates to charities & causes

Anyone else interested in elevating the practice of burying statues upside down to sell real estate is invited to participate in the proposed referral campaign. 

Faithfully yours,

Bill @ The Real Estate Cafe in Cambridge, MA

Myrl,

Congratulations, seriously.

Please share your "success" stories on "St. Joe 2.0:  Geography of Faith" an interactive map where anyone who believes in the practice can document their prayer experiences to St. Joseph. As the patron saint of families, St. Joseph might also be pleased if you invite clients to "share the wealth" with millions of orphans.  See most recent comment on this ActiveRain thread:

http://tinyurl.com/5dpuo5

Interested in starting a friendly, fund-raising competition in your local market? I'd be keenly interested to see if sellers who bury St. Joseph upside down can raise $1 million for orphans faster than sellers who believe that practice to be superstitious.

Excerpt from link above

• *In recent years the practice has arisen of burying a statuette of Saint Joseph in the yard of property that is for sale in the belief that the sale will be concluded quickly. (Probably because of the saint's association with building and carpentry he has been adopted as the patron of real estate agents.)

  But for Catholics to bury an image of Saint Joseph to effect a quick sale is not a worthy remembrance of this saint! In fact, it is superstitious (emphasis added). To help distinguish true intercessory prayer from superstitious actions, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says this:

§2110: Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition. (emphasis added)

§2138: Superstition is a departure from the worship that we give to the true God. It is manifested in idolatry, as well as in various forms of divination and magic.