[QUOTE=glee]
Don’t you need to have performed miracles to be a Saint?
If so, I’m confident that no scientific investigation has ever taken place, which leaves us with a circular argument:
- X is a Saint because they performed miracles
- we know X performed miracles because they are a Saint.
[/QUOTE]
Touchy question, and I’ll try to respond without getting too deep in GD territory.
There are levels of credulity. Compare the difference in:
[ul][li]Devout Catholic goes to the grocery, buys taco shells, notices that one has a discoloration resembling the bust of a woman wearing a mantilla. DC decides it’s a message from the Blessed Virgin warning of worldly sinfulness.[/li][li]Three children claim to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary at a given time and place, and that she had said she would reappear in a month. Crowd gathers, and is debriefed separately. 3,000 people claim to have seen an apparition of the Virgin, accompanied by “dancing” sundogs alongside the Sun.[/ul][/li]Both strain credulity as miracle-apparition. But the first is substantially less solidly documented than the second. Sure, the taco’s there, but there are many other potential explanations than a divinely inspired imprint of the BVM. Second could be mass hallucination, the eyewitness-confirms-the-popular-explanation phenomenon, etc. – but objectively the evidence is relatively stronger.
The typical canonization procedure calls for nomination by people who knew the sanctabile, reviewed and forwarded to the appropriate Vatican congregation by the local bishop, and then reviewed critically by that congregation. Their definition of what constitutes a valid miracle would not suit any Doper skeptic, but is significantly more stringent than the Taco de la Virgen sort of phenomenon. There are a number of clauses in the critical-review procedures specifically targeting the credulous popular-piety “miracle.” As an example, any claim of miraculous cure of an “incurable” disease at Lourdes must involve total remission for a greater time span than medical literature indicates as standard for a “natural” remission.
Orthodox and Anglican procedures begin in the same way but: (a) the local bishop is the final authority for the Orthodox, and takes his critical review job seriously; (b) Anglicans don’t canonize in the strict sense at all – in fact, in England they don’t do it whatsoever – they merely add to the national church’s calendar a commemoration of a saintly leader, e.g., Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, great preacher and author of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
But the bottom line is that there are procedures in place to eliminate the most National Enquirer of claims. They may not be as stringent as the more skeptical might like, but they do exist, and they do eliminate a large number of supposed “miracles.”
) but to challenge the “evidence” presented and/or the credibility of those advocating in favor; it had for some time become a procedural formality, so John Paul 2 officially did away with it.