Can a Saint do bad things and still be made a Saint?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Abira
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
A

Abira

Guest
I’ll keep my question brief as I’ve found conflicting reports over Saint Basil - with various accusations etc.

It got me thinking:

Can a Saint do bad things and still be made a Saint as long as they contribute to furthering or evangelising for the church?

I’ll add if anyone wants any more detail but I’m sure someone is more up on Saint Basil (of alexandria) than I am 🙂

Thanks, S x
 
lol, sorry i was writing on autopiolot… I meant to say Saint Cyril lol

I got the town right, though 🙂

anyway he’s just the guy that got me thinking about the q so it’s irrelevent really 🙂

S x
 
are you familiar with Augustine?

Lord, Make me chaste … but not yet.

yes. We are all sinners.
 
Let’s consider St. Augustine. Was the despair of his good Catholic mother. Lived in sin, fornicated, caroused. Most famous tag line, “Lord make me chaste–but not yet.”

Due to the constant prayers of his mother he was able to find the grace to accept God. Went on to become a great Doctor of the Church, renouncing his sinful ways.

So, a ‘bad past’ does not preclude sainthood.

How about Joan of Arc? Young peasant girl heard voices, led her people to freedom from outside forces while dressed as a man. Was caught and prosecuted for heresy, confessed to same and later recanted. Was burned at the state as a heretic.

Even though she succumbed briefly to temptation and confessed to a sin she was not guilty of, even though she was considered to be a heretic by speaking of ‘voices’, she was canonized, an authentic saint.

So even a stumble at almost the very end does not preclude sainthood.

Hope that helped.
 
Well, this book Saints Behaving Badly

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

is a very good read if you’re looking for a book about the saints who had radical conversions. Some of them were con artists, prostitutes, embezelers, etc., who all, by the grace of God, had radical conversions and became some of our holiest people. Did they do bad things AFTER their conversion? I don’t know. I’m sure that none of them were perfect, and did have some doubts, imperfections, etc. I’m also sure that they repented of their sins, and tried to live their lives in an imitation of Christ.
 
what about a saint who dedicated his/her life and then did bad deeds after the deeds which they are remembered, and made into a saint, for?

I know we’re all flawed, bt is there a limit? does teh church simply reward the good behaviour rather than punish (by not rewarding etc) the bad behaviour?
 
Maybe this will clarify:

Saints aren’t made saints. They are ‘recognized’ as such, after a quite lengthy period of time and much investigation by people who have studied and prayed a long time and have specific categories to check in their investigations. No ‘reward the good behavior or punish the bad’. That isn’t the way it’s done.

Therefore, a person who is recognized as a saint is recognized not for ‘what he did’ as opposed to “what he didn’t do”, not for ‘how much he did right’ as opposed to ‘how much he did wrong’. . .

but for very different and very specific reasons.

Now apparently you are considering a saint from the ‘older times’ where the criteria were a little different. Even there, the church has very carefully investigated the events in so far as they are known, and has either upheld the decision (the person is a saint), or has understood that there is simply not enough evidence to know for sure. Considering the times, and the lack of written documentation for many martyrs, and the similar circumstances that probably existed in many people of similar names and backgrounds, we are not sure of Christopher fully, for example, and we were unsure of Catherine of Alexandria for a while (luckily, we’re sure now).

So if Cyril is a saint, the reasons are not that he was ‘cut slack’. Want to tell us where you have a stumbling block on him?
 
Abira said:
I’ll keep my question brief as I’ve found conflicting reports over Saint Basil - with various accusations etc.

It got me thinking:

Can a Saint do bad things and still be made a Saint as long as they contribute to furthering or evangelising for the church?

I’ll add if anyone wants any more detail but I’m sure someone is more up on Saint Basil (of alexandria) than I am 🙂

Thanks, S x
Click to expand...
Look at Saints Peter and Paul. St. Peter denied our Lord three times and St. Paul actually persecuted the early Church until his conversion.

Remember the saying: The Church isn’t a hotel for saints, but a hospital for sinners.
 
well i appreciate that I live in 2007 (most of the time lol) and I can’t appreciate all things from all points of view but with this example my main stumbling block is that he organized ‘mobs’ to violently remove groups or people that opposed him - and i use the word ‘him’ because of individual power that he held and now the power of the position he represented.

and then when people complained to the emperor at the time, the emperor set up nestorius who was the bishop of constantinople to investigate it then Cyril began to discredit nestorius over the argument of the divinity vs the human nature of Christ so Nestorius was branded a heretic and his evidence discredited

i think of saints as role models to try to aspire to in our lives… and i don’t know quite what him as a saint can teach people or me…but there are differing histories from ‘the winners’ and ‘losers’ as always.

S x
 
Nestorius was a heretic. I don’t see what you’re trying to say here? Seems like some loaded kind of language. Could you give a link as to where you are reading this kind of language and these types of conclusions?
 
well it’s not intentionally loaded…so it’s not loaded full stop lol

my friend’s doing a theology/philosophy course. i think the lecturer had some gievance because one of his favourite philosophers was killed during one of these clashes…but im paraphrasing from several books and conversations etc… I’ll get the references if you like but they’re quite dull and about the early church relating to philosophy…not really religion strictly.

i think my gut feeling is that violence isn’t really a model that i can associate with and my question was originally: can a saint do bad things and still be a saint…

so for me, this organized violence (for whatever reason) is not a great thing, although I said earlier that I look at this from the view of 2007 and wasn’t there in person… i’m just using him as an example… but im more interested in the general idea.

S x
 
Tantum_ergo said:
Maybe this will clarify:

Saints aren’t made saints. They are ‘recognized’ as such, after a quite lengthy period of time and much investigation by people who have studied and prayed a long time and have specific categories to check in their investigations. No ‘reward the good behavior or punish the bad’. That isn’t the way it’s done.

Therefore, a person who is recognized as a saint is recognized not for ‘what he did’ as opposed to “what he didn’t do”, not for ‘how much he did right’ as opposed to ‘how much he did wrong’. . .

but for very different and very specific reasons.

Now apparently you are considering a saint from the ‘older times’ where the criteria were a little different. Even there, the church has very carefully investigated the events in so far as they are known, and has either upheld the decision (the person is a saint), or has understood that there is simply not enough evidence to know for sure. Considering the times, and the lack of written documentation for many martyrs, and the similar circumstances that probably existed in many people of similar names and backgrounds, we are not sure of Christopher fully, for example, and we were unsure of Catherine of Alexandria for a while (luckily, we’re sure now).

So if Cyril is a saint, the reasons are not that he was ‘cut slack’. Want to tell us where you have a stumbling block on him?
Click to expand...
and yes, it did clarify a few things 🙂
 
Can a Saint do bad things and still be made a Saint?

You mean like St. Paul?
 
I know that we’re all flawed… i think i was just a bit taken aback today and confused at how, if what i heard was right, that he was help up as a role model…or ‘recognized’ as a role model.

with st. paul i recognise many of my own faults…but i’m not as good as he was lol… i think that even though i have other issues with him (maybe another thread when im feeling v v brave lol :)…I mean to say that I can learn from him in the way he dealt with his own temptations…as a role model

if what i heard about St. Cyril is true… i don’t feel that I can look up to him in that sense because of some of the things he did. does that make sense?
 
LRThunder said:
St. Paul actually persecuted the early Church until his conversion.
.
Click to expand...
Indeed. In modern day language: Saul of Tarsus was a :eek: terrorist when he set out for Damascus, seeking to:eek: destroy Christianity from the face of the earth…
And then there was a great light, & a voice saying, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me??”…
St Paul was about to be born…:yup:

But that is a tale for another day…
God bless all here.
 
A Saint is simply someone who is in Heaven, and so the only One who decides who’s a Saint and who isn’t is God. 🙂

Now there are popular Saints in the Church such as St. Agnes, St. Paul, etc. who are recognized by the Church as being Saints, but these are only a fraction of all the Saints that there are in Heaven - they’re the only specific ones we know of.

There is the aspect of wanting to investigate Saints who are “role models” for Catholics, but at the end of the day, anyone who can overcome the temptations of this world (even ones that they had previously succumbed to) and get into Heaven is quite the role model. 🙂 But ultimately it doesn’t come down to a question of how close to perfection their lives were in their entirety, but whether they got into Heaven in the end. That’s why three miracles have to be performed by a candidate for Canonization in order to prove that they are in fact in Heaven and able to intercede with God on our behalf. 🙂

God bless,

Karolina <><
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top