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”.
I sincerely hope that they never get used to it if it happens.
"We hereby suggest, recommend and imply that St. Goodintent is saint and we associate him among the saints, encouraging him to be recognized by the whole Church as for outstanding achievement."
No need to worry.
Yeah ... and it goes back at least as far as the third century, before the Edict of Milan.
Exactly, and in the original (as far as we know) Greek, it refers to Mary as "Mother of God" (Theotokos) many years before the Council of Ephesus!
You can post citations all day and night. It will make no difference.
Rome has rejected the Faith of two millenia. They maintain the structure and the buildings but these new creations are a new religion. The Church is Truth. Truth, by its nature, cannot change. We face one of two scenarios: prelates, including the Pope, have lost jurisdiction due to material heresy, or the See is vacant.
One thing is for certain. The Holy Spirit is no longer safeguarding the hierarchy from error.
Well, that is easy enough.
"God forbid we ever see a St. Bill Clinton."
According to the bishops of South Africa, Bill Clinton was in full communion with all of the saints when he received Holy Communion a couple of years ago.
God help us! I strain and strain to convince myself that this guy is not hellbent on destroying the Church.
St. Michael, defend us!
1. Buy into Sedevacantism, or
2. Buy into the New Theology of a counterfeit Church.
Of course, while all the acting as if you believed neither is an option. As for myself, I would firmly state that I would without a doubt reject either option.
I have no real confidence in your sincerity. I would love to be proven wrong on that score.
God help me, but I am getting depressed, Deb! Is JP2 TRYING to destroy the Church? All I need now is for pinkspur to jump up and get me banned for something.
Crap! That was supposed to be private. See what happens when you get sickened by yet ANOTHER wackjob manifestation of liberal modernism in your Church?!?!?
God, what horrid times we live in!
But since the Church is such by divine will and constitution, such it must uniformly remain to the end of time...Wherefore, as appears from what has been said, Christ instituted in the Church a Living, authoritative and permanent Magisterium, which by His own power He strengthened, by the Spirit of truth He taught, and by miracles confirmed. He willed and ordered, under the gravest penalties, that its teachings should be received as if they were His own...
God indeed even made the Church a society far more perfect than any other ... no true and perfect human society can be conceived which is not governed by some supreme authority.
... Jesus Christ, therefore, appointed Peter to be that head of the Church; and He also determined that the authority instituted in perpetuity for the salvation of all should be inherited by His successors, in whom the same permanent authority of Peter himself should continue ... Now the proper nature of a foundation is to be a principle of cohesion for the various parts of the building. It must be the necessary condition of stability and strength. Remove it and the whole building falls. It is consequently the office of St. Peter to support the Church, and to guard it in all its strength and indestructible unity. How could he fulfil this office without the power of commanding, forbidding, and judging, which is properly called jurisdiction? It is only by this power of jurisdiction that nations and commonwealths are held together.
... It was necessary that a government of this kind, since it belongs to the constitution and formation of the Church, as its principal element-that is as the principle of unity and the foundation of lasting stability-should in no wise come to an end with St. Peter, but should pass to his successors from one to another.
... just as it is necessary that the authority of Peter should be perpetuated in the Roman Pontiff, so, by the fact that the bishops succeed the Apostles, they inherit their ordinary power, and thus the episcopal order necessarily belongs to the essential constitution of the Church. (Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum)
Your statement essentially asserts that the constitution of the Church has failed, that the Church has been destroyed, that the gates of Hell have prevailed. I don't understand why you said "post citations all day and night. It will make no difference". Don't you attempt to follow the traditional faith? I doubt this sort of doctrine is even what you're getting from SSPX priests.
Are you trying construct a mechanism whereby people seem forced to either:
1. ...buy into Sedevacantism, or
2. ...buy into a new, counterfeit theology?
...all the while, coming off as if you thought personally that neither was an option, and that you are loyal to the Roman Pontiff?
Your personal SSPX slur aside (can't resist, can you?), your posts prove the case for sedevacantism more than any sede's post on this site.
The Holy Spirit safeguards the Magisterium when they adhere to and practice the Faith of two millenia. He does not force any human soul. They must come willingly. We all have free will. I repeat: the vast majority of the hierarchy in Rome have lost the Faith as predicted by Our Lady of La Salette. By their own choice they have lost Divine protection.
If the next Pope is a Mahony or Kasper, I will become a card carrying sedevacantist.
It is perfectly possible to be a member of the Catholic Church while believing in Her doctrines. I'm not sure why you think otherwise.
Doesn't the SSPX oppose sedevacantism?
The Holy Spirit safeguards the Magisterium when they adhere to and practice the Faith of two millenia.
The Spirit safeguards the Magisterium precisely so it will adhere to the Faith! As for your appeal to free will, I counter with Augustine: "Almighty God is able to turn to belief wills that are perverse and opposed to faith ... the Almighty sets in motion even in the innermost hearts of men the movement of their will, so that He does through their agency whatsoever He wishes to perform through them" (On Grace and Free Will 29, 45).
The first condition of salvation is to maintain the rule of the true faith. And since that saying of our lord Jesus Christ, You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, cannot fail of its effect, the words spoken are confirmed by their consequences. For in the Apostolic See the Catholic religion has always been preserved unblemished, and sacred doctrine been held in honor. (Council of Constantinople IV, Profession of Faith)
All your complaints are justified, all of them are correct. Your love of the Church and your understanding of the Faith is sincere.
But the modernists are on the inside, and they want you out. They want to turn things upside down, and to call their unholy things in and your holy things out. Desolation, standing where it ought not. But they don't want it to look as if they had tossed you out, they want to make it look like you left of your on own.
They actually want you to become a sedevacantist. That is, having failed, thank God, to incrementalize you into NeoCatholicism. Again, a classic "either/or" close; just a cheap sales trick.
My two cents. Keep up the good fight, but don't fall for it.
Ooh, look. Dishonesty. Looks like I'm on to something.
What a bunch of nonsense. Don't you attend an indult Mass, pascendi? Are you "incrementalized into NeoCatholicism"? What exactly is "NeoCatholicism"? The way you use it, it seems to be synonymous with just plain Catholicism - you know, the kind in the Baltimore Catechism:
Q. 492. What is the duty of the faithful?A. The duty of the faithful is to learn the revealed truths taught; to receive the Sacraments, and to aid in saving souls by their prayers, good works and alms.
Q. 494. What do we mean by "lawful pastors"?
A. By "lawful pastors" we mean those in the Church who have been appointed by lawful authority and who have, therefore, a right to rule us. The lawful pastors in the Church are: Every priest in his own parish; every bishop in his own diocese, and the Pope in the whole Church.
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