*comes in, notices there’s no OP … Hmm, time to improvise!
In a shocking report, the Vatican has revealed that the Blessed Virgin did not perform the requisite three miracles and has thus been stripped of her sainthood! An unidentified source is speculative of her very existence: “According to our records, she hung around a lot with some blokes named Christopher and Nicholas. It’s all a crock.” Comment is expected from His Holiness later today. {Reuters}
hangs head in shame I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be making fun of my faith. Maybe we should pray to St. Anthony for the OP? or St. Jude for the recurring problem?
lessee…
conceived a male child while not receiving male DNA;
getting her fiance’ to believe it was a Divine event;
raised this Kid while keeping her sanity!
There’s the three miracles right there!
Did St. Nick get “decanonized” like St. Christopher, or did I misunderstand what you meant?
I’m sorry - what’s the debate topic? Mary isn’t a saint? Shouldn’t be a saint? Has no documented miracles to her credit? Unidentified sources’ reports should be regarded with suspicion? Reuters needs to hire string reporters with better compositional skills?
As a technical point here, the requisite miracles for Sainthood have to happen after the person has died. Hence, Padre Pio couldn’t be canonized until after the three post-mortem miracles happened, even though he had the stigmata, could bilocate, etc.
As for the BVM…the best thing I can think of off the top of my head is that she’d meet the technical definition of a “saint” (note the lowercase “s”) in that she’s understood to be in heaven. (A “saint” is, in the simplest definition, someone who does God’s work. Anyone who makes it to heaven is definetly a “saint”.) Probably the reason why she doesn’t get the “Saint” (capital “s”) title is because she’s reserved a special place as the Mother of God, and is honored by being set apart from the other Saints.
Besides, Mary has at least 325 different titles in the Catholic Church. Imagine how crammed her resume must look.
Canonisation didn’t become a wholly centralized process, carried out in Rome, until the 17th Century. Prior to that, authorising the veneration of a saint was to a greater or lesser extent a matter for local bishops or patriarchs, and rules and procedures followed (where there were any) would have varied both from place to place and from time to time. Certainly there was no uniform “three miracles” requirement; this is a modern innovation. The overwhelming majority of those who are nowadays venerated as saints were never formally canonised; this includes the Virgin, the Apostles, most of the early martyrs and fathers and most local and national saints.
The Virgin is a saint. I myself am a former student at Saint Mary’s College, an impeccably Catholic institution, and the Mary after whom it is named is the Virgin. The University Church at Oxford is the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin. It is now, of course, an Anglican Church but it was called by that name prior to the Reformation. One of the principal Roman Basilicas is the Church of St Mary Major; again, the Mary in question is the Virgin. There are countless other examples.
I think we’re doing pretty well discussing this, given that there’s no OP.
But only one with Bing Crosby.
I’m under the impression that the Catholic Church has now decided that the people we know as Sts. Christopher and Nicholas may not have actually existed. I’m positive that’s the case with St. Christopher, and I believe there was a similar issue with at least one other saint. I believe this saint was Nicholas, but I could’ve been misremembering. I’ll go look for a cite.
[This site](http://www.catholic.org/saints/faq.shtml#St. Christopher) seems to imply that St. Ursula, in addition to St. Christopher, is merely legendary (which I interpret as meaning “exists only in legend”).
[This site](http://www.st-therese-church.com/Answers2.htm#From Paul) clarifies the issue, saying that Christopher is still a saint, just not one whose feast is celebrated by the church entire.
This site makes passing reference to St. Nicholas not being a saint, but that’s not the site’s focus and I’d prefer more information myself.
This site repeats that saints can never be “decanonized”, in reference to St. Philomena.
This list is by no means exhaustive; I’m sure there’s a lot more information out there.
The Roman Calendar includes something like 2,000 recognized saints with official feast days for each, although not every church is required to observe the feast of St. Johann Nepomuk or St. Stanislaus the Wonder-Worker.
And the Roman Catholic Church has arrogated to itself the right to formally decide which among the saints (Christians who have died) are Saints (deserving of public acknowledgement), and to do so has set up the canonization process, including the three-miracles requirement.
However, in the Orthodox Church a saint is recognized as such by the local laity and if lay remembrance is longlasting and widespread enough that saint becomes part of the official list. A similar process occurs in the Anglican Communion and may be true elsewhere. King Kamehameha and Queen Emma of Hawaii, for example, are on the Episcopal calendar.
Occasionally it’s discovered that somebody on the calendar is probably merely legendary. That’s the problem with Christopher and a few others. When this is the case, they’re dropped completely from the lists – but not “decanonized.”
Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, has never been among the “only legendary” crew – although some of the stories about him are probably accretions. But there’s hard evidence that he existed. I don’t know whether he’s been dropped from the Roman calendar, though I suspect not – he’s on the Orthodox and Anglican ones.
The last Tsar and his family are also martyrs in the Orthodox church, and considered to be saints by many.
Yo! Enola Straight! You wanna tell us all what this thread is supposed to be about?
StephenG: Thanks for the info and links. 
Mephisto: No problem; sorry they weren’t better!
Bricker: I just noticed that crack about my compositional skills in your post, and I’m a little offended, but I’ll let it slide.
I’ve just had two thoughts:
[ul][li]Perhaps the OP was wondering if Mary isn’t really a saint beecause she never died? (I.e., she was assumed bodily into heaven according to Catholic dogma.)[/li]
[li]Is Mary a Catholic Saint? I know we “pray to the Blessed Mary, Ever-Virgin, and all the angels and saints” … perhaps she isn’t a saint.[/li][/ul]
“Saint” is a little mundane in describing the role played by Mary, the Immaculate Conception in the Catholic faith. She is, after all, the Mother of God. The next two most important saints, Peter and Paul, were just really motivated publicists by comparison. Mary the Immaculare Conception is a whole higher level of being (and is also the Patroness of the United States, among her many titles).
Mr. Moderator, the hamsters ate my OP, but the dopers here seem to get the gist of my question from the thread title.
I was simply wondering why the Virgin Mary…the Mother of Jesus Christ…was never considered a Saint.
From Catholic Online’s index of saints:
As the article goes on to note, she’s basically considered a “saint plus”, “the highest of God’s creatures” and “exalted by divine grace above all angels and men”.
I guess the counter to the OP would be "why did Enola Straight[]b] think that Mary wasn’t considered a saint?"
I simply observed that in all the times I’ve seen references to Saint So-and-so, I’ve only seen references to Mary as “Virgin” or “Blessed Virgin Mother” or something similar…NOT as “Saint.”
Well, probably for the same reason as John Paul II is never referrred to as a deacon – he is one, having been ordained as a deacon before being ordained as a priest, which in turn was before he became a bishop, before he was made Archbishop of Cracow, or made a Cardinal.
But he definitely is a deacon – and a bunch of other things. And Mary is a saint – and the only one among them who happens to have been a Virgin Mother and the Mother of Christ.