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”.
Catholics and non-Catholics alike can use their God give common sense to see a Church in full meltdown. No infallibility required. Why are personal digs necessary when someone disagrees with you?
Perhaps you can answer the following questions for me. Do Mahony and Kaspar hold the Catholic Faith full and entire? Partially or microscopically? Is the Holy Spirit guiding a Church whose hierarchy make the following claims and more?
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Did the Holy Spirit safeguard Mahony when he wrote an heretical document claiming the Eucharist is present in the assembly? Even Mother Angelica had a problem with it. How about when he ruled there was no liturgical abuse going on in his diocese despite PICTURES to the contrary?
Was the Holy Spirit present when Mahony built his pagan temple complete with an inverted pentagram roof, a snake winding through the children's garden and sheep dogs about to attack the sheep?
Is the Holy Spirit present every time Kasper opens his mouth to utter yet another heretical statement?
Was the Holy Spirit present when the Pope kissed the Koran, a book which commands our slaughter as infidels?
Was the Holy Spirit present when the Magisterium claimed the Jews no longer need convert to be saved?
Do you call all of the above adherence to the Catholic Faith?
Second, we must mind the heretics. They are the ones who are destroying the Church. Sometimes the behavior is bold, such as Mahony and Kaspar, other times it is subtle by seemingly harmless word and liturgical changes. We are obliged to resist
1 Peter 5:8-9 Be sober, and watch: because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist ye, strong in faith; knowing that the same affliction befalleth your brethren who are in the world.
Come, Lord Jesus. (Apoc 22:20)
When he returns it will be too late
Traditionally, one of the signs of Christ's return was the en-masse conversion of the Jews to Catholicism.
... the coming of Enoch and Elias, who live even now and shall live until they come to oppose Antichrist himself, and to preserve the elect in the faith of Christ, and in the end shall convert the Jews, and it is certain that this is not yet fulfilled. (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Summo Pontifice, 1:3)
Well you might say if The Church isn't sufficient. I did try to explain. And you didn't reply to a bit of it.
I agree with everything you said in #187. The Pope is a liberal. We know that from his pre-papal writings. He may be well-intentioned but naive, too trusting and philosophically out there. However, the last few years have exhibited a rapid descent into novelty and borderline heresy at a speed which we didn't see in the early years of his papacy. The Pope may be mentally incapacitated and/or no longer in charge. None of us can know what is happening behind Vatican doors.
That's very much like saying that John Kerry was a rightwing conservative.
Read what I wrote again, instead of ignoring it. They spoke of one thing. There's something else, today. Read it to understand what I was trying to say to you. It's the only way.
You know as well as I do the Jews reject Christ. Many Jews have died will die before the end time Jews convert. Is that acceptable to you?
Do NOT try to use Scripture or the writings of the early Church to pretend it is okay.
And the sooner Christ comes, the less Jews will die unbelieving. So what's wrong with praying for Christ to come sooner, or having Jews pray for it?
The Jews are praying for a different Messiah. They do not accept our Messiah.
No Pope should join in that prayer.
It is more like saying Barry Goldwater was a conservative, even though he failed to put his policies into practice (since he wasn't elected). Their teaching is orthodox, even if they haven't managed to impose it on the Church. Mysterium Fidei, the Credo of the People of God (issued directly against the heretical Dutch Catechism), Humanae Vitae, Evangelium Vitae, Ecclesia de Eucharistia - all these are opposed to the liberal, modernist, protestant doctrines.
That's how it began. That's how it ended for Reagan. And to call JP II or Paul VI somehow traditionalist Catholics is to say that John L Kerry was a Reagan conservative. If you said that, it wouldn't be believable.
There have been many errant bishops down through the ages. There have been plenty of miscreant popes too. Neither of these things bear on the Church's infallible teaching authority.
You cannot teach what you do not have.
Except it's not true.
For that reason? No. You didn't actually think I'd buy that, did you?
"This is not true, because all Church teaching, including that of Bl. John XXIII, Paul VI, and JP II, is anti-modernist, anti-protestant, and anti-liberal."
What teaching. Name one for each pope. Just one. You can't do it. Popes don't have teachings of their own.
And JP II is not an anti-modernist, an anti-protestant, or an anti-liberal... let alone one who has produced anything to definitively drive a stake through the heart of any one of these three things which infect the Church and make it sick in the head and sick in the heart. Nothing.
You post the creed, heh. Because of this fact alone, I am able to neither confirm nor deny that you hold these beliefs.
And I precisely answered you.
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