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”.
We can still have these examples of people who lead exemplary spiritual lives, but we should not "cheapen" sainthood in the process.
War on the cheap. Saints on the cheap. Ahhh why not!?
Next, this koran-kissing, worships-with-animists "Pope" will eliminate the "anachronistic" need for Saints to be Catholic, or even Christian. Make way for Saint Luther and Saint Ghandi!
That's the problem. JP II has pretty much made a joke of the entire process. All of these, when the church is free of his sort, and set itself right, by God, will have to be scrapped and individually reconsidered. Just think of every 'Saint' or blessed under JP II as essentially 'probationary', and temporary. That's how they'll be treated, in future, even if MANY will then, again, be called Saints, but by proper vetting and a sincere and holy consideration.
Is the Pope considered infallible when determining who is and who isn't a Saint?
What I found most appalling is the Pope's desire to make the "father" of the European Union a saint. Even the most ignorant observer can realize that the EU is at odds with everything Christian.
Let's bring back simony too!
Only as definitively stated by The Vatican Council - and I don't mean Vat II. He must speak to the whole world, on matters of dogma, concerning faith and morals, saying that this is imminent in Revelation and irreformable. Some suggest a lesser but still serious standard applies to the pronouncements on a possible female priesthood. But that isn't technically an exercise of the Solemn Magisterium.
The irony is that in the defense of this Pope's foolishness in many things, generally stemming from ecumenism, his defenders tend to say that everything he does is infallible, but that rarely were any Popes prior to Paul VI infallible in the same way. Those who criticize His Holiness do so on the basis of all those other Popes, Tradition, and that once the Truth is served, those interested in Truth wish it applied and spread to the whole world, not 'reformed' and remade.
"OUTCOME-BASED" sainthood????!!!!
So when does Mo-ham-head get to become a saint?
No, no, no! I strongly object to this. If they won't bring back the advocatus diaboli, they should at least keep the miracle requirement.
The Pope is infallible only when speaking "Ex-Cathedra" which literally means "from the chair." The doctrine of papal infallibility comes from the first Vatican Council (1870) and the pope has only used it once ... when proclaiming that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without stain of Original Sin (the Doctrine of Immaculate Conception, not to be confused with the Virgin Birth).
IMHO only, this process, the annulment process, and the response the church had to the major assault from the Left after the molestation scandals are the main reasons why so many of us former catholics don't attend services anymore.
I for one think it's embarrassing and ridiculous. This "Saints 'R Us" corporate mentality just illustrates how bloatedly bureaucratic the church has become.
So I'll always be "spiritual but not religious" to quote an oft-used cliche.
While the Vatican Council defined Papal Infallibility, it was merely a clarification of the authority bestowed by Christ. However, I don't believe that canonization in a papal prounouncement of dogma concerning matters of faith and morals. Canonization, in the early Church, was an honor bestowed on Christ's chosen Apostles and the fathers of the Church. Later it became a more formalized process. This process required proof that beatified ("saintly") persons be shown to have performed miracles through intercession or that after their deaths that prayers for their intercession resulted in miracles for which there is no scientific explanation. However, these determinations of miracles are made by men, there is no claim that these determinations (and subsequent canonizations) are themselves Divine.
Actually, the Church teaches that anyone in Heaven is a saint.
I may be incorrect in this and please correct me if I'm wrong. The first Vatican Council simply defined papal infallibility. However, it defined than when speaking "ex cathedra" the pope in inerrant in matters of dogma concerning faith and morals. Infallibility was bestowed by Christ to Peter (and his successors), and thus has existed since the Resurrection; it was not simply "invented" in 1870. Therefore, while the Immaculate Conception has been the only pronouncement "specified" as being infallible, many other articles of faith (the Virgin Birth, Christ's divinity, the Resurrection, the Trinity) are equally infallible.
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