Posted on 01/01/2005 2:29:21 PM PST by Land of the Irish
Saturday, January 1, 2005; Page B07
Role of Miracles In Sainthood Eyed
Pope John Paul II is reported to be considering a proposal to abolish miracles as a requirement for sainthood.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, archbishop of Genoa, told the Genoa newspaper Secolo XIX recently that there is a growing feeling that the key requirement for sainthood is a life of "heroic virtue" and that miracles are "anachronistic."
Bertone said the proposal was sent to the pope by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Until two years ago, the cardinal was secretary of the congregation, the Vatican's arbiter on questions of faith and morals.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sad ping.
What may appear to be a life of heroic virtue in men's eyes, may be anything but in the sight of God.
Miracles give proof of saints' intercession with God, and therefore their heroic virtue in the sight of God.
Remove this proof, and how will we know with certainty of their sainthood?
What if we raise prayers, devotions and altars to one called saint, thought by men to be holy, but known by God to be evil?
Moreover, even a pagan may live a life of heroic virtue. Can a pagan be a canonized saint, if heroic virtue is all that sainthood is a recognition of?
Translation: we no longer believe in miracles. Further translation: we no longer have the faith. The problem is the Holy See itself, not the process.
"Translation: we no longer believe in miracles."
Exactly!
Main Entry: anach·ro·nism
Pronunciation: &-'na-kr&-"ni-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: probably from Middle Greek anachronismos, from anachronizesthai to be an anachronism, from Late Greek anachronizein to be late, from Greek ana- + chronos time
1 : an error in chronology; especially : a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other
2 : a person or a thing that is chronologically out of place; especially : one from a former age that is incongruous in the present
- anach·ro·nis·tic /&-"na-kr&-'nis-tik/ also ana·chron·ic /"a-n&-'krä-nik/
How would one prove a miracle now days?
How about making people with nice smiles saints.....all of them.
That'd be nice.
Pagans cannot live a life of heroic virtue, since they lack the supernatural virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity.
Thus all virtuous deeds, inasmuch as they are referred to God, are professions of the faith whereby we come to know that God requires these works of us, and rewards us for them: and in this way they can be the cause of martyrdom. For this reason the Church celebrates the martyrdom of Blessed John the Baptist, who suffered death, not for refusing to deny the faith, but for reproving adultery. (St. Thomas, Summa theologiae, II-II q. 124 a. 5)
So a guy who trips, breaks his neck and dies while picking up his neighbor's newspaper is a martyr?
BTW. St. Thomas denied that life begins at conception. Do you therefore think early 1st trimester abortions are ok?
Do you know why Kolbe died?
Why Miracles Are Required For Canonizations
Article originally published in that Catholic bastion "The Times" of London, 12 days ago Saint-making Pope is Ready to Ditch the Miracle Clause.
St. Thomas did no such thing.
Some say that the vital functions observed in the embryo are not from its soul, but from the soul of the mother; or from the formative power of the semen. Both of these explanations are false; for vital functions such as feeling, nourishment, and growth cannot be from an extrinsic principle. Consequently it must be said that the soul is in the embryo; the nutritive soul from the beginning, then the sensitive, lastly the intellectual soul. (St. Thomas, Summa theologiae I q. 118 a. 2)
If Aquinas hadn't been wrong on a few things, it would be hard to believe he was human at all. I think his thought on conception is undoubtedly in error insofar as it tracks absolutely the Modernist who is consumed with Appearance over Substance.
Many Modernists champion Aquinas's poor thinking ... here's one example:
Pasnau has at least a partly political motive for including a full discussion of St. Thomas’s views on human embryology and their bearing on the issue of abortion in his treatment of Question 76. He notes that interest in the philosophy of Aquinas is often directly connected with sympathy for the Roman Catholic Church. Natural as this association may be, Pasnau regards it as unfortunate, especially in light of what he regards as the Church’s “noxious social agenda” (105) on, among other things, abortion. He wants to demonstrate that Aquinas actually “provides the resources to show something of what is wrong with the Church’s position.” (ibid.)
According to Pasnau, Aquinas thinks that the human brain “has sufficiently developed by around mid-gestation to support the operations of intellect.” At that point the human soul is “infused all at once by God.” (50) Before that time, the human embryo has an animal, but not a human soul, and, even before that, a vegetative soul. Aquinas’s position, Pasnau tells us, even though it rests on a dubious empirical claim about neurological development in the fetus, is admirably conservative. Thus, according to Pasnau, Aquinas pushes “the beginnings of human life as far back as he can while remaining consistent with his broader theory of the soul.”
I believe that if Aquinas had benefited from scientific exploration and the witness of those who -- like the late geneticist extraordinnaire Dr. Lejeune -- have a more objective view of human creation, he too would have seen the error of his ways.
Where it is so patently obvious that the new unique life is absolutely COMPLETE and requiring nothing more than the nutrition and shelter naturally extended (by anyone with human charity, much less one's own mother) to sustain that life, there's just no way Aquinas could have held to his medievalist view.
I think the medieval model's an extraordinarily beautiful one but there is a clerkish obstinance in trying to make all -- including the extreme circumstance -- "fit" somehow that it ended up as stifling in many ways and detrimental to genuine quest for knowledge of both God and creation as is the Modernist's arch belief he knows all and all that exists must necessarily be.
This appears to be in the same vein as Paul VI's dumbing down the requirements for recognizing apparitions.
I suspect that -- soon enough -- we'll have saints of a caliber of the Seers of Medjugorje.
Hadn't realized that Kolbe marked the change in martyrdom. That's not cool.
Yes. He gave his life so a Jewish prisoner could be spared. While that is the ultimate act of charity, it is not dying for the Faith.
If Maximilian Kolbe is martyr then every fireman who ran into the burning World Trade Center buildings should also be a martyr.
VATICAN CITY, 7 MAY 2004 (ZENIT).
Come again? Twelve days ago?
Great ferreting!
I have no problem with that at all.
Would you have the guts to run into a burning building to rescue another human being knowing you may not come out again?
What do you think the Faith is anyway? How can you die for a God you do not see if you are not willing to die for a human being you can see?
Perhaps you should check out the Gospel of Matthew and the criterion Jesus says The Judge will use. He never mentions how many times we go to Mass, or even what Mass we attend.
No, all He discusses is "As long as you did it for one of these, the least of my brethren, you did it for me."
Mother Teresa didn't live her life for "The Faith." She lived it for the poor, and is in heaven because of it.
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