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”.
Have you studied the early church fathers?
Are you accusing me of this?
Traditional support? You'll find none, of course.
this sacred Office of Teacher in matters of faith and morals must be the proximate and universal criterion of truth for all theologians, since to it has been entrusted by Christ Our Lord the whole deposit of faith - Sacred Scripture and divine Tradition - to be preserved, guarded and interpreted, still the duty that is incumbent on the faithful to flee also those errors which more or less approach heresy, and accordingly "to keep also the constitutions and decrees by which such evil opinions are proscribed and forbidden by the Holy See," is sometimes as little known as if it did not exist ... But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians. (Pius XII, Humani Generis 18,20)
Where's the "unless he thinks the Pope is wrong" clause? In fact, Pius XII was dealing with precisely this case (see §18). The theologians he condemned were arguing that the Pontiffs had taught against traditional doctrine and should be practically ignored:
What is expounded in the Encyclical Letters of the Roman Pontiffs concerning the nature and constitution of the Church, is deliberately and habitually neglected by some with the idea of giving force to a certain vague notion which they profess to have found in the ancient Fathers, especially the Greeks.
It is simply not part of the duties of Catholics for them to dissent from the teaching of the Sovereign Pontiff, as if the average layman was qualified to judge the doctrinal value of the Magisterium:
For, together with the sources of positive theology God has given to His Church a living Teaching Authority to elucidate and explain what is contained in the deposit of faith only obscurely and implicitly. This deposit of faith our Divine Redeemer has given for authentic interpretation not to each of the faithful, not even to theologians, but only to the Teaching Authority of the Church. (HG 21)
To say otherwise is the thesis of modernists like Frs. Curran and McCormick, not traditional doctrine.
Some of these beatifications and canonizations are for people who deserved them. The others however...
I'm not even Catholic and I'm offended by that remark.
Offended by which? The comment, or that both things happened?
Is that a new tenet of the RC Church? A new type of Christianity?
Name-calling? The Pope did kiss a copy of the Koran and did go to Assisi for an interfaith service where animists were present. Both are unprecedented before Vatican II.
an·i·mism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-mzm)
n.
The belief in the existence of individual spirits that inhabit natural objects and phenomena.
The belief in the existence of spiritual beings that are separable or separate from bodies.
The hypothesis holding that an immaterial force animates the universe.
Yeah, and your point is?
Absolutely not. The declaration of someone as a saint is not a matter of doctrine.
Sounds like angels to me. I could be wrong.
The hypothesis holding that an immaterial force animates the universe.
I suppose you will make the case that God is material as we understand it. Maybe you can, I don't pretend to be a Catholic theologian.
In anycase, if someone doesn't agree with the Pope, they should pray for him, not attack him, but hey, like I say, maybe some Catholics think differently, so I can't speak for them.
The truth hurts, baby. You can see the pix yourself, with zero effort on Google. JPII kissed the koran and proudly had himself photographed in the act. He has worshipped with animists, voodoo priests, and their ilk many times, most famously at his love-ins while desecrating Assisi. Be offended all you want, but facts are stubborn things.
So, quit the church if you hate the Pope.
Who said the Pope was above criticism? Catholics should respect his authority, but if stupid things like this are proposed, and he does things like kiss the Koran, he is perfectly subject to criticism.
As far as I know, there have been two proclamations by the Pope, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, which have been considered doctrine due to the unique infallibility of the Pope. Although I would also say, it appears to me that the Pope is infallible in his assertion that abortion is always a moral evil and must be opposed by Christians. He seems to be purposely presenting the conditions of infallibility when he addressed the bubject in an encyclical to the world.
Read the biography of St. Catherine of Sienna for a perfect example of someone who loved the Church while criticizing the Pope for living in France instead of the Eternal City.
Go away, little boy. We hear your kind of bleating a thousand times a day, and you contribute nothing to the issue.
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