I remember my mother, a nominal catholic, occasionally explaining her lack of faith. She would say that the holy water used for her baptism wasn't matured enough to infuse her soul with the holy spirit.
When my grandmother dragged my along on her dominical prayer chore, she never asked me to use the stuff because I wasn't a catholic.
I took this photo in a catholic cathedral in China, where the churches are controlled by the communist state apparatus. When I saw the plastic buckets I checked for the date of manufacture and the used by date. Zilch.
BTW Ladles like the yellow and the pink one on top of the buckets are commonly used to flush the ubiquitous squatting toilets.
Most holy water contaminated with fecal matter: study
Austrian researchers have discovered that church fonts contain very high levels of bacteria and a majority of water samples from holy sources contain fecal matter.
Experts from the Institute of Hygiene and Applied Immunology at the Medical University of Vienna analyzed the water in 21 holy springs in Austria and in 18 fonts in Vienna at various times during the year, the Daily Mail reported.
They found that 86 percent of water samples from holy sources contain fecal matter, and every milliliter of holy water contained up to 62 million bacteria, none of it safe to drink.
Not surprisingly, the busier the church, the more bacteria it had in its font from people’s hands.
In addition to E. coli bacteria and enterococci, the holy springs contained Campylobacter, which can cause inflammatory diarrhea, the Mail reported. Nitrates from agriculture also made the water unsafe for drinking.
“We need to warn people against drinking from these sources,” said Alexander Kirschner, a microbiologist at the Medical University of Vienna.
He recommends changing the holy water often and adding salt to the fonts to reduce the chance of bacteria thriving, the Mail reported.
As my father, a life-long Atheist, would so often say, " Holy water = bottled Priest piss."
I liked the juxtaposition of the pompous marble stuff and the banal plastic buckets and the ladles which would be familiar to most people who travelled to China tourist class.