Posted on 12/20/2004 5:45:44 PM PST by wagglebee
CANDIDATES for sainthood will be exonerated from the requirement to have performed a miracle under guidelines being considered by the Pope.
Already under fire from some Roman Catholics for running a “saint factory”, the Pope is preparing to overturn a centuries-old rule that candidates for canonisation must have performed “medically inexplicable” posthumous miracles.
The Pope, 84, has created 482 saints in his 26 years as pontiff — more than all his predecessors put together — and has beatified 1,337 people. He believes that “latter-day saints” offer a much-needed example at a time when Christianity is under threat from secularism and rival religions.
Abolishing the need for miracles would speed up the canonisation of some of the Pope’s favourite candidates, including Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who was beatified last year. It could also revive plans to beatify Robert Schuman, the French-born founder of the EU, shelved earlier this year because of lack of evidence that anyone had been cured after praying to him.
The Pope last streamlined the beatification and canonisation process in 1983, when he decreed that martyrs — those killed for their faith — could be beatified without the need for a certifiable miracle.
Yesterday Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa, disclosed that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pope’s ideologial “enforcer” for two decades, had presented a formula for the abolition of the “the miracle clause” to the Pope. Cardinal Bertone said that there was a growing feeling in the Vatican that the need for miracles for both beatification and canonisation was “anachronistic”.
At present, candidates for beatification, which confers the title “Blessed” and is the penultimate step before sainthood, must be shown to have performed at least one miracle after death by curing the terminally ill in response to prayers of intercession. For sainthood, evidence of at least two miracles is required. Claims of miraculous cures are examined by a panel of five medical experts at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, a Vatican body.
The panel, drawn from a pool of a hundred doctors and specialists, must conclude that the cure was “sudden, complete and permanent” and had no scientific explanation. Cardinal Bertone said what mattered was not whether saints had performed miracles but whether they had displayed “heroic virtues” and led an exemplary Christian life.
Il Secolo XIX, the Genoa newspaper, said the proposed “revolution in saintmaking” would upset traditionalists who regarded miracles as “one of the cornerstones of the Catholic faith”.
Merry Christmas, I hope you get a new code maker. (And a less vivid imagination)
PS, I'm not RC, hence my remark on no dog in the race.
I was made to believe that his hunches were infallible and irreversable but by this same "voice" from above.
Confused again!
What's happening?
Are we to wait for the next "clap of thunder" and dive for cover?
One problem with that belief is that it's not mentioned in the Bible. Instead, the Bible records Christ instructing us to take our disputes "to the church," "the pillar and foundation of truth."
Another problem with Luther's Bible-alone theory is that the Bible doesn't tell us what books constitute the Bible. The Church does.
1. I with firm faith believe and profess each and every article contained in the profession of faith which the Holy Roman Church uses, namely: I believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen. And in one Lord Jesus Christ the only-begotten Son of God. Born of the Father before all ages. God from God, light from light, true God from true God. Begotten not made, of one substance with the Father: through whom all things were made. Who for us humans and for our salvation came down from heaven. He was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary: and became man. He was crucified also for us, he suffered under Pontius Pilate and was buried. The third day he rose again according to the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. And in the Holy Spirit, the lord and the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. Who together with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified: who spoke through the prophets. And one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the remission of Sins. And I look for the resurrection of the dead. And the life of the world to come. Amen.2. Apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and all other observances and constitutions of that same Church I most firmly accept and embrace.
3. Likewise I accept Sacred Scripture according to that sense which Holy mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures; nor will I ever receive and interpret them except according to the unanimous consent of the fathers.
4. I profess also that there are seven sacraments of the new law, truly and properly so called, instituted by our lord Jesus Christ and necessary for salvation, though each person need not receive them all. They are:
1. baptism, 2. confirmation, 3. the Eucharist, 4. penance, 5. last anointing, 6. order and 7. matrimony; and they confer grace. Of these baptism, confirmation and order may not be repeated without sacrilege.5. I likewise receive and accept the rites of the Catholic Church which have been received and approved in the solemn administration of all the aforesaid sacraments.
6. I embrace and accept the whole and every part of what was defined and declared by the holy Council of Trent concerning original sin and justification. Likewise
7. I profess that in the mass there is offered to God a true, proper and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead; and that in the most Holy sacrament of the Eucharist there is truly, really and substantially the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our lord Jesus Christ; and that there takes place the conversion of the whole substance of the bread into his body, and of the whole substance of the wine into his blood, and this conversion the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation.
8. I confess that under either species alone the whole and complete Christ and the true sacrament are received.
9. I firmly hold that purgatory exists, and that the souls detained there are helped by the suffrages of the faithful. Likewise, that the saints reigning with Christ are to be honored and prayed to, and that they offer prayers to God on our behalf, and that their relics should be venerated.
10. I resolutely assert that images of
1. Christ and
2. the ever Virgin Mother of God, and likewise those of
3. the other saints, are to be kept and retained, and that due honor and reverence is to be shown them.11. I affirm that the power of indulgences was left by Christ in the Church, and that their use is eminently beneficial to the Christian people.
12. I acknowledge the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, the mother and mistress of all the Churches.
13. Likewise all other things which have been transmitted, defined and declared by the sacred canons and the ecumenical councils, especially the sacred Trent, I accept unhesitatingly and profess; in the same way whatever is to the contrary, and whatever heresies have been condemned, rejected and anathematized by the Church, I too condemn, reject and anathematize.
This true Catholic faith, outside of which none can be saved, which I now freely profess and truly hold, is what I shall steadfastly maintain and confess, by the help of God, in all its completeness and purity until my dying breath, and I shall do my best to ensure that all others do the same.
You seem to believe that my accepting the traditional teaching on the indefectibility and inerrancy of the Roman See and the obligation to assent to the doctrinal decisions of the Supreme Teaching Authority of the Church and the firm and unanimous conclusions of catholic theologians somehow makes me a promoter of modernism. This is not true, because all Church teaching, including that of Bl. John XXIII, Paul VI, and JP II, is anti-modernist, anti-protestant, and anti-liberal.
They're gonna have to find a way to cannonize post Vatican II types who have abandoned the Faith and Tradition...so this is the way to do it.
Next up? Joan Chittester...guaranteed.
Hell may not have prevailed against the Church yet but this may be the beginning.
It could also revive plans to beatify Robert Schuman, the French-born founder of the EU
...this development makes a mockery of the Communion of Saints. External enemies of the Church could not fashion an abomination like this..looks like internal ones have.
I'm just a simple Presbyterian boy, but I thought the bible was pretty clear on not praying to anyone but God. How is this different that false idol worship? Not looking for a fight, just curious!
This comment represents a detachment from reality.
Christ can't keep His promises?
Are you saying this would also be true on each and ever dogma of the church since its inception that it is only as powerful and effective as the number of members(professing)that believed it is true.
It seems to me that it could be said with authority that 50,000,000(or whatever is the accurate count)Catholics can't be wrong(I was told that by a Catholic priest some 56 years ago)did not believe it then nor now.
I recall during a discussion about WW1 it was said that 50,000,000 Frenchmen can't be wrong when they went to war against Germany, boy were they mistaken!
Suggesting that Joan Chittister will be the next saint is what represents a detachment from reality.
Hmmmm I didn't know that miracles on demand made one a "Saint". The Bible states a believer is a "Saint" with or without miracles.
Paul asks his brethren to pray for him all the time. "Pray" just means ask - we ask the saints to pray for us to God.
We do not address God and the Saints in the same manner, for we implore God to grant us blessings or to deliver us from evils; while we ask the Saints, since they are the friends of God, to take us under their patronage and to obtain for us from God whatever we need. Hence we make use of two different forms of prayer. To God, we properly say: Have mercy on us, Hear us; but to the Saints, Pray for us ... In the performance of this duty, it is strictly incumbent on all not to transfer to any creature the right which belongs exclusively to God. For instance, when we say the Our Father before the image of a Saint we should bear in mind that we beg of the Saint to pray with us and to obtain for us those favours which we ask of God, in the Petitions of the Lord's Prayer, in a word, that he become our interpreter and intercessor with God. That this is an office which the Saints discharge, St. John the Apostle teaches in the Apocalypse. (Roman Catechism, "On Prayer")True, there is but one Mediator, Christ the Lord, who alone has reconciled us to the heavenly Father through His blood, and who, having obtained eternal redemption, and having entered once into the holies, ceases not to intercede for us. But it by no means follows that it is therefore unlawful to have recourse to the intercession of the Saints. If, because we have one Mediator Jesus Christ, it were unlawful to ask the intercession of the Saints, the Apostle would never have recommended himself with so much earnestness to the prayers of his brethren on earth. For the prayers of the living would lessen the glory and dignity of Christ's Mediatorship not less than the intercession of the Saints in heaven. ("No False Gods")
The miracle is a confirmation that the person is in Heaven (a saint), since his prayers would be of no effect if he were damned: "We know that God doth not hear sinners" (John 9:31).
Your exchange raises some questions: If the Pope has personal, unquestioned infallibility in matters of beatification and canonization, why would he need to float a "Vatican trial balloon"? Are "Vatican trial balloons" infallible? Only if they float, maybe?
Christ can't keep His promises?
Christ can and will ... but that won't stop Hell (i.e. Satan, Modernists) from trying....this may be the beginning of the final struggle....clearly the smoke of Satan (i.e Spirit of Vatican II) has entered the Church.. cough ..cough ...to the liberals and neo-Catholics it is a perfume.
Divorce is not allowed in the Catholic Church what do communist Brits have to do with it?
What did you want Mother Theresa to do with Diana? Condemn her? We view Divorce like Death...it is the death of a marriage...what do you do with someone who has experienced a death? Kick them in the shin?
SO, Mother Theresa should have gone around with a needle an euthanized those children? Did keeping them in her facility in Calcutta prevented hospitals from treating them? She picked those kids off the street!!!!
You're a doctor...oh nevermind...that explains it.
I'm calling on you to defend Mother Theresa. These criticisms of her are scurrilous, devious, diabolical and beneath contempt. Where are you when the Church is getting attacked?
You do love to cite Pius X and Pius XII--who are turning over in their graves in horror at what Paul VI and JPII have done. Here is a Traditional source that is impeccable--Vatican I:
"For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the Successors of Peter that by His revelation they might disclose new doctrine."
Got it? New doctrine gets no divine protection. Novelty can't bind anybody--especially when it contradicts true magisterial teaching. And it continues:
"But that by His help they might GUARD the revelation transmitted through the apostles and the deposit of faith, and might faithfully set it forth."
Read it and weep. It is the job of the papacy, in other words, to PROTECT Tradition and to FAITHFULLY set it forth, not to invent a new Gospel or a new Advent or a Second Pentecost.
That's Vatican I talking--DOGMATICALLY--not some second rate pastoral council gussied up to give the pretext to a fraudulent revolution.
Now I ask you--has Rome been PROTECTING Tradition--or has it sought to destroy it? Has it FAITHFULLY set that tradition forth, or does it suppress and subvert it every chance it gets?
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