Burn of the Day
- 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.
For better or worse, the process has already been cheapened. I find myself gravitating only toward those who have displayed undeniable heroic virtue rather than whom they *tell* me I ought to venerate. Personal failing on my part? Possibly, but I now largely tune out the noise about recent canonizations; the recent Popes are the most outward symptom of this phenomenon.
This thing of canonizing 20th century Popes, and now going into this century, has to stop. I’m still mystified by who actually thought Pope Paul VI should be canonized, or even Pope John XXIII. I loved John Paul II, but I thought the fifty-year rule should be kept in place even for him and Mother Teresa. It’s cheapened sainthood in this modern world. It is such a bad look, it’s becoming like the deification of the Caesars in the Roman Empire. You’re a Caesar, you’re a god, you’re a Pope, you’re a saint. Stop this unseemly practice.
IMHO excepting for martyrs perhaps, I’d say the 50 year rule should have been kept.
The entire sainthood process has become a factory.
It’s a fan club system which, I believe, started with Josemaria Escriva.
Perhaps earlier.
They are canonizing The Council™️. That’s all this is about.
If I make the Beatific Vision, I will be most curious to find out how many we canonized, especially since JP2 opened the floodgates, who ended up in the basement. And how many we assumed were in the basement who actually end up in Heaven.
I don’t think the Church can canonize someone who fails to attain Heaven, but for me it’s a question of prudence. I like that there are more modern saints, because it gives us examples to relate to and emulate. But I’m as unlikely to be a pope as to be a seventh-century nun. I can seek to emulate them in piety and other virtues but not in practical ways. I’d like to see more lay saints, and (selfishly) more Americans – not for representation but for example, both personally and for the country.
Benedict probably blushes at the haste, for he struck me as a modest man.
Part of the “acceleration” is better access to records and greater speed in accumulating and verifying details of the lives of those recently deceased. When the ancient Church was small and highly localized, many martyrs were declared so quite quickly by local Christians. I also appreciate JP II’s recognition that the last century saw many martyrdoms and other heroic witnessing to the faith that ought to be recognized, and that young people needed to see some saints that looked like them and met their challenges in the modern era. I remember childhood books on the saints (1960s) where someone past the French Revolution was “modern”. Yet the pendulum has swung too far.
Haste is a hallmark of the modern world.
And not a good one.
We are also thoroughly convinced of the uniqueness of modern man.
That too is a lie.
Tom – great observations!
”I saw and recognized the shade of him who, due to cowardice, made the great refusal.”. Inferno III, v. 59-60.
I have tremendous affection and respect for our late saintly Pope Benedict XVI, but I cannot help regretting his abdication. Had he stayed the course, we would have likely been spared the grotesque reign of Francis, who would have been too old to participate in a conclave by the time of Benedict’s death in 2022.
Dante, in his Divine Comedy, referred to a shade he recognized condemned to the vestibule of hell, a shade who made “the great refusal”. After Dante’s death his son affirmed that the shade in question was Pope Celestine V, who abdicated the papacy in Dante’s lifetime. Like Benedict’s abdication, that of Celestine also ushered in a period of Rome being run by decadent, cynical political animals. Interestingly enough, Celestine V was canonized within 17 years of his death— very quickly indeed for those times.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, I suppose…
For what it’s worth, since it normally takes at least two miracles to get through the process–and while I’m aware this is an area of debate, I would argue that canonizations do fall under the umbrella of the Church’s infallible teachings–God seems to be ratifying these efforts.
His purposes are His own. We’ll see happens with Benedict.