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.”
I’m not trying to offend anyone, but certainly on the SDMB we would state that there was insufficient evidence for any ‘miracle’ claims of the Saints.
For me, the trouble with Church recognition of ‘miracles’ is that it leads to claims of Christ appearing on all sorts of food, plus statues weeping and healing at prayer meetings and Lourdes.
Shouldn’t the Church have the confidence to have its amazing claims thoruoghly investigated?
Very good question. Along the lines of the thread, when the Church is investigating/looking into making someone a saint, there is an investigation in general. What good deeds were done? What miracles happened after the death of this person?
What about bad deeds? Do they actively search for the bad that was done? It seems that in the past they did not, going by the examples given here and by my basic knowledge of history/Crusades/fill in the blank. How about now?
Nitpick: Charles I is not an Anglican saint. There is a group of Anglicans who are strong advocates for his canonization, and have been since before I was born. But nobody official has ever formally recognized him as a saint. (As far as I know – I make no claim to be the world expert on what, e.g., the Church of the Province of Rwanda has done or not done.) The arguments on this are arcane even by Anglican standards, but there is some solid evidence to suggest that in the confused hodgepodge of political and religious sentiment of English Civil War times, the final straw leading to his execution was his refusal to accede to the Presbyterian/Separatist concept of the Church. Not that his “divine right” claims didn’t have a lot to do with him getting to that point in the first place.
Yeah I agree that in 1297 that was a big boon to your candidacy (although the site notes that the inquiries as to exactly why he was made a Saint don’t exist any more).
I was saying that doubt if an uber-Catholic leader, say President Rick St. Ant-or-Rum, lead a crusade today, and put down a political/Economic civil revolt (even if he were on the Church’s “side” in the conflict), these would lead to his canonization today - and in fact I doubt there would be anything short of Jesus coming back and ordering it that would make him a Saint in 2006.
Father Guido Sarducci: “We got some Italian people, got fifty, sixty, seventy miracles to their name, they can’t get in because the Pope says there’s already too many Italian saints. Then along comes this Ann Seton, three lousy miracles. I understand two of 'em was card tricks…”
Not for the oppressed people behind the uprisings and the innocent people killed or subsequently oppressed by the crusades. You need to realize that revolutions and uprisings, while usually led by rivals to the established regime, often receive the support of the working or peasant classes who believe that the revolution will free them of oppression and exploitation. A ruler who puts down such an uprising is therefore championing the continued oppression and exploitation of the majority by a rich and elite minority. Since the Church leaders were (and still are) part of this rich and elite minority, it’s no surprise that they seek to glorify rulers who acted against uprisings.
Sure, of course, but like you said, that’s because our values, and the values of the Catholic church, changed, and smiting the heathen and oppressing the commoners aren’t considered good anymore.
But that’s different than the OP’s question, which asked:
So, the question seems to be, not, “Did they at one time, canonize people for stuff we wouldn’t now?”, but “Did they ever canonize someone, being ignorant of the stuff that he or she did, that, had they known it, would have stopped the canonization?”
Anyone who wishes to bring up some negative evidence about the person can just submit it before the investigating panels. I dunno if Bricker or tom~ may be more up to date on this, IIRC there used to be an overtly adversarial component to some phases of the process – what was popularly referred to as the “Devil’s Advocate”, which was not really about fishing for things to impugn the character of the person (after all, doesn’t God absolve all sins if you truly repent and believe? ) 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.
) 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.