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NCR Becoming saint trickier than going to heaven
When someone is declared a saint it
ought to be an exhilarating occasion: up above, God singing When the
Saints Go Marchin In and, down here, the rest of us relieved that
one more soul has a seal of approval slapped on it like a stamp on a passport.
Odd, then, how often canonization gets mired in undignified distractions.
Two recent papal occasions have resurrected old tensions between
Catholics and Jews, and, beyond that, older questions about the canonization
process itself.
First was the Oct. 3 beatification of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac,
former archbishop of Zagreb widely accused of collaboration with the pro-Nazi
Ustasha regime in Croatia. The fact that Stepinac eventually repudiated the
Ustasha atrocities and saved many Jews, Gypsies and others from extermination
has not blunted the controversy.
After World War II, Blessed Stepinac was convicted of
collaboration with the Nazis, spent years in prison, then further years under
house arrest until his death in 1960. Presumably a personally holy man and a
man of staunch convictions, he seems nevertheless a quaint choice for sainthood
seeing (a) how relatively few saints are declared and (b) what unusual scrapes
this particular candidate got himself into.
Next, on Oct. 11, at St. Peters in Rome, came the
canonization of Edith Stein (Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), (see Open
letter to John Paul: Speak the whole truth about Christians and the Holocaust).
A Jewish woman from Poland who first became an atheist and then a Catholic and
finally a nun, Steins is a great human drama. But, again, controversy is
in the air. The pope canonized her for her martyrdom as a Catholic nun at
Auschwitz, Poland, but many Jews insist she was killed because she was
Jewish.
With all this canonizing in the air (not forgetting the upcoming
beatification of Mother Theodore Guerin, founder of the Sisters of Providence
of St. Mary-of-the-Woods, Oct. 25), readers have been phoning in asking how
saints are made. The question becomes a conundrum.
Official saints have to be dead, for example. And renowned for
holiness. And they have to work miracles. Just for starters. But even this
demanding formula fits a lot of candidates. Who goes forward -- thats the
conundrum.
Jesus made it clear enough that his authentic followers would be
signs of contradiction. On the other hand, if ever there ought to be an
occasion for healing in the battered old world, elevating saints for admiration
and imitation ought to be part of it. Instead, a political aura seems to hover
over all decisions pertaining to official sainthood. Pope John XXIII, for
example, seemed on the fast track, at least until John Paul II took over --
this may not be true, of course, but the byzantine and secretive process lends
itself to such speculation.
There are other intangibles of personality, politics and the rest.
One kind of pope is more likely to canonize a certain kind of saint who might
never catch the fancy of another pope. In a speech not long ago, John Paul II
dropped the word martyr from a prepared speech on the late Archbishop
Oscar Romero. While saints started out as popular favorites, the recent history
of sainthood seems to reflect more subtle political calculations.
Popes, of course, are entitled to have their favorites. But if
saints are designed for the edification and encouragement of the rest of us,
perhaps we should have more say about who is and who isnt sainted -- as
we had in days of yore.
An article in the Oct. 9 issue on
the Justice for Priests and Deacons Program, which aims to help people with
canon law problems who are concerned that they cannot be adequately represented
by diocesan canon lawyers, got the attention of readers. The phone number for
further inquiries is (619) 280-7500.
-- Michael Farrell
National Catholic Reporter, October 23,
1998
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