Sainthood as a papal retirement perk. This is a terrible modern innovation, When Pius X was canonized in 1954, he was the first pope to be canonized in 242 years. Popes are not prophets nor, usually, saints. They are holders of an important office in the Church, and that is all.
PopeWatch: Gold Watch
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
It’s a bad look. And that’s the whole point of Declaring Saints.
A bad look, indeed. And it calls into serious question, IMO, the notion that canonizations are infallible. That is unfortunate, to put it mildly.
I can believe that every pope since Vatican II is in heaven. (Surely they were going to Confession regularly?) As far as I can tell that’s the part that’s infallible. But that doesn’t mean they should have churches named after them.
[…] – Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, Anniversary of Battle of Vienna – Fr. Z’s BlogPopeWatch: Gold Watch – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at The American CatholicShocking Secrets in James Earl […]
Has there been a move to canonize Benedict XVI?
Personally I don’t like the canonization of saints within the lives of their contemporaries, unless God yells at us to do so. However, I can recognize how it can be inspirational to some people. It’s important for us to realize that the Church is eternal and continuous, so it may help people to acknowledge a Mother Teresa as a Saint Teresa. But only the wondrous ones, or if there’s some reason like settling a controversy.
PopeWatch: Gold Watch
I thought Patriarch Kirill was the only highly placed cleric who wore gold or otherwise very expensive watches (in this case, a $30K Breguet watch). Is Pope Francis trying to play catch up with someone better (er, I mean more corrupt) than he is?
This, I think, is a sad by-product of the Cult-of-Personality mindset that has adversely affected the way we look at saints and the canonization process as well.
@Mike: If the post-Vatican II popes were “going to confession“ and we assume sincerely practicing their faith, they likely, we may piously believe, avoided hell, but more likely may be in purgatory now: but it might be a tall order to assume they are all “now” in “heaven.”
The context for that is the three children at Fatima being told by the Blessed Virgin, based on their inquiry, that another young child of their village, a friend of theirs who had recently passed away, indeed had avoided hell but “would be in purgatory until the end of time.”
It gives one pause that a child of tender years who committed a sinful act, but obtained absolution and remission of the sinful effect of that act, according to the Virgin’s own testimony, was to be in purgatory a long, long time.
Perhaps we shouldn’t lightly “place wagers” (as it were) that all of the post Vatican II popes are “now in heaven”: as also too we have our work cut out for us, that we need to pray for all of us, our own sincere contrition and to do penance and satisfaction for sin, for ourselves and others, to reduce ours, theirs, and every sincere believer’s, penalties for sin.
One of the recent Pope saints John 23 or Paul 6 did not have the recquisit miracles. It seemed that Francis was pushing their canonizations through too quickly.
CAM, yeah, I don’t dispute their canonizations or their positions in Heaven, but I wasn’t being facetious when I said that sometimes God makes it clear that the Church needs to recognize a saint, and that didn’t happen with these two. You read the lives of some saints, even if the author was being generous or not investigating claims too closely, you have cardinals or entire villages reporting miraculous interventions. There’s every reason to believe that the Church takes its official investigations seriously. Maybe if a person subscribes to the idea that God doesn’t want to make recognition of His existence inevitable and thus has cut back His public miracles, there are plenty of low-profile cures on the records. It just seems unnecessary to canonize two popes quickly.