Fr. James Martin, S.J., On St. Joseph And The Housing Market

Home sellers bury statue to spur bids
By SARA SCHAEFER MUNOZ
The Wall Street Journal
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Cari Luna is Jewish by heritage and Buddhist by religion. She meditates regularly. Yet when she and her husband put their Brooklyn, N.Y., house on the market this year and offers kept falling through, Luna turned to an unlikely source for help: St. Joseph. The Catholic saint has long been believed to help with home-related matters. And according to lore spreading on the Internet and among desperate home-sellers, burying St. Joseph in the yard of a home for sale promises a prompt bid. After Luna and her husband held five open houses, even baking cookies for one of them, she ordered a St. Joseph "real estate kit" online and buried the 3-inch white statue in her yard. "I wasn't sure if it would be disrespectful for me, a Jewish Buddhist, to co-opt this saint for my real estate purposes," says Luna, a writer. She figured, "Well, could it hurt?" With the worst housing market in recent years, St. Joseph is enjoying a flurry of attention. Some vendors of religious supplies say St. Joseph statues are flying off the shelves as an increasing number of skeptics and non-Catholics look for some saintly intervention to help them sell their houses. Some Realtors, too, swear by the practice. Ardell DellaLoggia, a Seattle area Realtor, buried a statue beneath the "For Sale" sign on a property that she thought was overpriced. She didn't tell the owner until after it had sold. "He was an atheist," she explains. "But he thanked me." Existing home sales fell 8 percent in September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.04 million units, the lowest level in nearly 10 years, according to the National Association of Realtors. Statues of St. Joseph sold online can be as tall as 12 inches. One, made of colored resin, portrays St. Joseph cradling the baby Jesus. Yet most home sellers favor the simpler 3- or 4-inch reproductions — most of which are made in China and often depict St. Joseph as a carpenter. Most statues come in a "Home Sale Kit" priced at around $5 and includes burial instructions and a prayer. One site, Good Fortune Online, recently added another kit with a statue of St. Jude — known as the patron saint of hopeless causes — "to help those with a difficult property to sell," the site says. Another site, Stjosephstatue.com, takes orders for its "Underground Real Estate Agent Kits" at 1-888-BURY-JOE. Demand for the statues has been growing. Ron Weissman, who sells the statues at Good Fortune Online, says about six months ago he switched to online transactions because the increase in calls — from about two a week to 25 calls a day — was too much to handle. Richard Weigang, owner of http://www.catholicstore.com/, says he sells about 400 statues a month, double the amount he sold a year ago. In Catholicism, St. Joseph, a carpenter, is honored as the husband of Mary and foster father of Jesus. Representing a humble family man, he is the patron saint of home, family and house-hunting, according to the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author of "My Life With the Saints." Popular belief holds that people who wish to enlist St. Joseph's help in selling a house should bury his statue upside-down in the yard. Apartment dwellers are advised to put him in a potted plant. Methods of burying the statue vary. Instructions in one package give buyers several options, including burying it upside-down next to the "For Sale" sign, burying it 3 feet from the rear of the house and burying it next to the front door facing away from the home. Phil Cates, owner of stjosephstatue.com, says the detailed burial instructions are largely intended to prevent people from forgetting where they put their St. Joseph. His kits advise burying it facing it away from the house, to symbolize leaving. Theologians say there's no official doctrine that calls for the statue's interment. The practice may have stemmed from medieval rites of land possession, in which conquerors claimed land by planting a cross or banner, says Jaime Lara, associate professor of Christian Art and Architecture at Yale Divinity School. Lara also suggests the tradition may have gotten mixed up at some point with folklore surrounding St. Anthony. St. Anthony, known as a matchmaker, would often be held ransom, upside-down, until he found a husband for someone's daughter, he says. Some clergy aren't sure how St. Joseph would feel about his likeness ending up on its head in the dirt, and suggest displaying it somewhere in the house instead. "I think it's much more respectful than burying the poor guy," says Msgr. Andrew Connell, the archdiocesan director of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Boston. Some retailers, such as Weigang, owner of http://www.catholicstore.com/, also encourage buyers to put the statues in the house. "We don't advocate burying," Weigang says. "Some of those statues are quite beautiful." Catholic leaders also say that faith and devotion are necessary, in addition to burying a statue, otherwise the practice amounts to little more than superstition or magic. But they are also enjoying the saint's newfound popularity. "If they have a good result and they think it was St. Joseph, it might inspire them to practice more," says Connell. Once someone's home sells, the custom holds, the statue should be dug up and put in a place of honor in the new home. That's what Luna did after she and her husband sold their house shortly after burying St. Joseph. She put the statue in her office in their new home in Portland, Ore. But not everyone is aware of the follow-up step. Trudy Lopez and her husband buried a statue of St. Joseph when they were trying to sell their condo, even though Lopez is Jewish and her husband is a nonpracticing Catholic. They sneaked out late at night, worried they might be breaking a condo association rule. Soon they got an offer, but didn't realize they were supposed to bring the statue with them to their new home. "I'm afraid a lot of the statues won't be unearthed and someone will go over St. Joseph's feet with a lawnmower," says Martin, the Jesuit priest. Link (here)