Not looking through the prism of Catholic or Protestant, but in the name of Christian love, I'll pick on us Proddies.
qUESTION: who is the greater modern saint:
or
My point here being, we must guard our hearts against false doctrine and nor look at those who are easy on the eye, or preach a seductive doctrine of health and wealth. We must have a strong enough sense of sound doctrine to detect manure when it is packaged in a seductive manner.
Great comparison.
Yep...you know the teaching, by your fruits you will know them -
I was thinking of Bonhoeffer, myself...who worked so hard do do the right thing during WWII and was martyred because he loved God more than his own life. I believe he was Lutheran.
And Francis of Assissi, another person deeply and totally in love with God.
And the lady at a local church who supervises the Altar guild (it's a Lutheran church), and radiates love of God.
And a person I know in Pakistan, where being Christian is almost equal to saying "Martyr me!"
And this dear man, working with the poorest of the poor, rag pickers' children, to teach them something about God and Jesus where the workers are far too few and the harvest is huge.
They're there - those who love the Lord with all their heart and all their soul and all their mind, and their neighbor as themselves.
They've all figuratively stood beneath that cross of Jesus, and looked up at those eyes of love, and falling to their knees, clinging to that cross, say, "Thank you, Lord" and sometimes, often quietly, move mountains out of that love, for they are doing it for their beloved.
It's hard for a big-name preacher to sometimes reach or stay at that place. Yet, they reach so many people, and open the door for a lot who might never hear the word and take it to heart at all, that all I can say is let God be the judge. John Osteen preached some sermons that helped me on my way to where I am....and I might have had trouble making it if it hadn't been for some of these televangelists.
God's willing and will use all of us as much as we're open to him.
Yet watered down gospel is at the root, I believe, of a lot of stuff nowadays. It's thin gruel where we need to get the meat of the Cross, and what it really means.
Lord,
teach us to stand brave,
filled with your spirit,
under the banner of your cross,
unashamed,
ready to be your witnesses,
this day,
and always,
Amen.
I'll leave it to Protestants to decide how they want to determine who constitutes a great saint. Any answers a Catholic maight provide would seem triumphantalist, or reference articles of faith you don't believe in.
[OK, I'd like to keep these issues seperate, but these are the issues I have as a Catholic trying to address that question. The magisterium in the Catholic Church is not any given person, although the Pope represents it. Rather, it is the consensus that the Catholic saints have come to. Historically, there seems to be a lack of consensus among Protestants about key doctrines, besides simply agreeing that Catholics are wrong. However, to the extent that any such consensus does exist, it provides a good example of what I'm putting forth: the adherence to and elucidation of an "orthodox consensus."
With this established, it becomes more possible to discern those whose faith yields miraculous signs (Fatima, for instance) apart from the charlaitans and crackpost (Bayside, for instance). Of course, the best accompanying sign is a resurgence of religious dedication. Again, this has to be distinguished from a religious fad through the lens of history and orthodoxy. Obviously, however, what consititutes miracles and orthodox adherence will be an inevitable source of disagreement.]
Of course I realize I did treat your question as if it were rhetorical. Joel Osteen's web page and ministry certainly seems all glitz. That is not a critique on his role as a teacher. But the great Catholic saints have tended to eschew worldliness in a way Osteen doesn't seem to have done. Remember how I lumped "bishops and preachers" together as mere teachers? That wasn't to disdain their roles, but it was to acknowledge the great saints are set apart from them.
I don't mean to assert that Protestantism doesn't have its humble, un-worldly, "doctors of the faith," like Therese of Lisiuex, Catherine of Sienna, or Francis of Assissi, or even the likes of Padre Pio, Faustina of Poland, or Maximillian Kolbe. I have not learned of these saints through the secular press, so even if I were a neutral observer who did not think Catholicism to be the true faith, my own ignorance alone could account for why I have not heard of such men and women among Protestants. (I'm hoping you'll realize why I don't compare them to such figures as Jonathan Edwards or John Calvin.)