Posted on 09/19/2003 11:56:31 AM PDT by sinkspur
I write this column on my way to the United States and Canada for three lectures this week, one in Cleveland at John Carroll University and two in the Toronto area. I managed to spend one day in Rome after the Slovakia trip, Sept. 15, and that afternoon I gave an interview to CBS’ “60 Minutes” program, which is preparing a segment on saint-making to air in conjunction with the Oct. 19 beatification of Mother Teresa.
By now, most readers of “The Word from Rome” will have heard that John Paul considered skipping the beatification stage for Mother Teresa and moving directly to canonization. The pope sent a letter to cardinals asking for their reaction, which was sufficiently mixed that he decided to back down.
News reports treated this as a sign of the pope’s special esteem for Mother Teresa, which indeed it is. But it also reflects a theological debate that has been going on among experts for some years as to whether beatification really makes sense anymore.
Recall that for the first 1,200 years of church history, the Vatican had virtually no role in the declaration that a given person was a saint. It was not until 1642 that anything resembling the modern process was instituted. The ancient notion was that a saint’s following would develop locally among those who knew him or her, and if the fame of the cult grew, eventually it would be observed by the universal church. Thus when popes began to systematize the business of making saints, they respected this distinction with a two-stage procedure: beatification to approve a local cult, canonization to extend that cult to the universal church.
In the modern world of telecommunications, however, that distinction may no longer have any practical meaning. When Mother Teresa is beatified in October, for example, the ceremony will probably be attended by some 250,000 people or so in St. Peter’s Square, and will be broadcast all around the world. In such a context, it is absurd to believe that her veneration will be restricted to a single diocese in India.
The Oct. 19 celebration may thus end up proving the point that beatification is an institution that has outlived its usefulness.
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