Viewpoint Saints both antidote and example to
world
By EUGENE KENNEDY
On the last day of April, Pope John
Paul II canonized the Polish nun, Faustina Kowalska, the latest of the saints
he has made in his 22 years as bishop of Rome.
In the religious equivalent of the Guinness Book of Records, he
has declared more saints than any previous pope.
Why does this pope make so many saints, anyway?
John Paul may have at least three reasons: one evangelical,
another cultural and, perhaps the most important of all, one that is
structural.
He believes in holiness, of course, and declaring new saints is a
powerful evangelical tool for him. He understands that sanctity is not some
cheap grace, as easily purchased as a spurious sense of mystery by the
religionless religion of the New Age. In the latter, a misty spiritual gain is
available without any suffering or loss.
The pope is also insisting that, despite the remarkable accord
with the Lutheran church on the long dispute about whether we are saved by
faith or good works, the Catholicism he intends to hand on still values good
works. The process of declaring a saint, therefore, contains a message for
ecumenism in general and for Lutheranism in particular: We havent really
changed, no matter what documents have been signed.
Every time he makes a saint, he also differentiates sacramental
Catholicism from the vague beliefs found in political oratory or in the
one-size-fits-all worship of plush-seated suburban churches. John Paul the
evangelist defines Catholicism anew every time he raises, as the saying goes, a
worthy Christian to the altar, thereby preaching that, if you want
to know what Catholicism means, examine the lives of these men and women. Go
and do likewise.
Culturally, canonizing the blessed is one public way in which he
can emphasize what hardly anybody even mentions anymore: the pursuit of
goodness in living rather than the pursuit of the good life.
The search for the good life has always shared many
characteristics with the fox hunt: wealth and leisure, conspicuous consumption
in the great houses, horse-riding lessons and plentiful drink in early-morning
stirrup cups that may leave the crimson-coated participant worn out and hung
over.
In short, the West, as the pope views it, is in full pursuit of
the so-called good life and slipping instead into decadence.
Come aside with me, the pope counsels the world, and see how
different a truly good life is from this good life. Sanctity frees
you from its strangling imperatives. True holiness does not seek attention, has
no fears about approval by peers, requires no expensive wardrobe and, because
it is built on forgetting ones self, it is inoculated against
self-consciousness.
Every time he introduces a new saint, he tells the world in which
a blizzard of change falls every day, that nothing important changes at
all.
Saints are relevant in a relativistic culture, for they are
unshakable pillars that stand through storm and revolution -- both antidote and
example for the modern world.
Most significant of all is that the pope, in entering so many
people into the catalog of saints, is reading his last will and testament to
the cardinals who will select his successor, to the worlds bishops and to
the faithful. By making saints, he makes his inheritance clear. He believes in
and wants to bolster in every way his conviction that God made the Catholic
church hierarchical and he intends to keep it that way.
The saints constitute a level of mediation between ordinary
believers and God. People are encouraged to pray to them for favors and
blessings. Every such prayer acknowledges that a hierarchical structure exists,
that it defines our spiritual geography as step-like with the pope presiding
over everyone from the top.
Every time the pope makes a saint, therefore, he is furthering his
generation-long program to restore the Catholic church to what he sees as its
pre-Vatican II glory. With every new intercessor, he peels back a little more
of the Vatican II consciousness of a collegial church in which, although he is
first among the bishops, he does not dole out their authority from an imperial
height. Collegial bishops, on the other hand, enjoy authority by their
ordination and stand on the same plane with him.
The pope, we remember, is a playwright, aware that symbols are
more influential than intellectual lessons in moving an audience. Each
canonization is a fresh drama telling us about a particular saint but also
about him. As we pray to these saints, the pope deftly employs them to
reconstitute in Catholic practice the acceptance of traditional hierarchy as
the true nature of Catholicism.
Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic
church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and
author most recently of My Brother Joseph, published by St. Martin
Press.
National Catholic Reporter, May 26,
2000
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