No More Canonizations

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justnmartr

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This morning I heard the priest of the parish I am currently attending say in his homily that we should no longer have canonizations.

The reason he said this was because he wanted people to realize that there are more saints than on the “celebrity hit list.” He wanted us to recognize the other saints around us in our personal lives. He also did not rule out the possibility of incorporating the Saints into our own personal spirituality, but just didn’t wanted us focusing too much the Saints and his proposal is to get rid of canonizations.

Do you agree or disagree with what this priest said? I have my own leanings but I want to hear from others. God bless.
 
I totally disagree with that- and so does the Church. If the Benedictine College you go to is the one in Kansas (that may be the only one- I don’t know), I happen to know there are plenty of parishes around where such things will not be taught. I would go to one of those, if I were you.
 
Thank God he is not Pope. 😃 Sounds like he is worried about “self-esteem issues”.

We need all the role models we can get. We need the super heroes of our faith to help us to be saints ourselves. Recognizing people who have given their lives in martyrdom teaches us something important. Most of the saints have given their whole lives to God in one way or another. Sounds like your priest wants to lower the bar and make more Catholics feel better about themselves.
 
From one point of view, the priest is right–we are surrounded by saints we may not even know.

But what he vulgarly called “the celebrity hit list” are those whom God has chosen to reveal. It’s not the definitive list.
 
justnmartr said:
This morning I heard the priest of the parish I am currently attending say in his homily that we should no longer have canonizations.

The reason he said this was because he wanted people to realize that there are more saints than on the “celebrity hit list.” He wanted us to recognize the other saints around us in our personal lives. He also did not rule out the possibility of incorporating the Saints into our own personal spirituality, but just didn’t wanted us focusing too much the Saints and his proposal is to get rid of canonizations.

Do you agree or disagree with what this priest said? I have my own leanings but I want to hear from others. God bless.
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There are two requirements for being a saint. The first is to live a life of heroic virtue. The second is to come to public attention.

Whilst it is to be hoped that there are many unknown men and women of spiritual greatness, the danger with the priest’s proposal is to suppose that this is common, and not worthy of much note. It simply isn’t true that most Catholics are heroes of the faith. A lot of people are reasonably well commmitted, although if you’ve ever tried to do fundraising for a parish you’ll realise that there are also a lot of people who are very minimally committed. Also quite a few people have flashes of heroism. A young lady might give up a good boyfriend rather than have premarital sex, for example. However consistent, self-sacrificing devotion is rare. Most people think about themselves and their family most of the time.

We are not a Church of saints. We have a few saints, and it is right that those who come to attention should be held up as examples for the rest to follow.
 
We’ll never stop proclaiming Saints as long as we have holy, pious people within the Church. I like the fact that we still canonise Saints because it shows that we are a “living” Church.

There are many, many Saints who are not held up for veneration or respect but those who are help to inspire and encourage the rest of us.

Frankly, I don’t think the Priest should share those types of opinions from the pulpit because many people would find this upsetting.
 
The more I get closer to the Church the more rotten I realize I am and have been even when I thought I was good.

There is always room for improvement and if we just sit back and think of ourselves as “Saints” we can easily become prideful and self justified. We need to seek to please God and not just ourselves. This is very difficult and it is much easier to say that we are good already as that just makes us feel good, but takes no real inward change.

Pray for that priest and every priest as sometimes they seek to make people feel good instead of doing what they should. Being a priest is very difficult but truly a holy thing to do and they should all be commended for taking that step in imitation of Christ.

God Bless
Scylla
 
He is probaply refering to Pope John Paul and the fact that he canonized more people during his reign then any other Pope in the history of the Church.

Pope orders cutbacks in the ‘saint factory’
guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,1763173,00.html

“Virtually no nation or community was forgotten as he proclaimed almost 500 saints - more than in the previous five centuries.
On a single day in October 2000, John Paul canonised 120 from China, a Sudanese slave, an American heiress, and the first female Basque saint.
But yesterday, in what appeared to be the first major policy innovation of his year-old papacy, Benedict XVI quietly slid a spanner into the factory’s works. In a document made public yesterday, several days after it was handed to the Vatican’s saint makers, he stressed caution and the need for strict definitions in deciding who should be proclaimed a saint.”
 
I think he has a way to go before he will even be a candidate for pope.😃
 
stmaria said:
He is probaply refering to Pope John Paul and the fact that he canonized more people during his reign then any other Pope in the history of the Church.

Pope orders cutbacks in the ‘saint factory’
guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,1763173,00.html

“Virtually no nation or community was forgotten as he proclaimed almost 500 saints - more than in the previous five centuries.
On a single day in October 2000, John Paul canonised 120 from China, a Sudanese slave, an American heiress, and the first female Basque saint.
But yesterday, in what appeared to be the first major policy innovation of his year-old papacy, Benedict XVI quietly slid a spanner into the factory’s works. In a document made public yesterday, several days after it was handed to the Vatican’s saint makers, he stressed caution and the need for strict definitions in deciding who should be proclaimed a saint.”
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The 120 from China were MARTYRS! John Paul 2 canonised a few other large groups of martyrs as well, which of itself accounts for the large number of canonisations in his reign.

The mere fact that there were a large number of these martyrs doesn’t mean their canonisations are illegitimate, since they did indeed die for the faith.
 
LilyM said:
The 120 from China were MARTYRS! John Paul 2 canonised a few other large groups of martyrs as well, which of itself accounts for the large number of canonisations in his reign.

The mere fact that there were a large number of these martyrs doesn’t mean their canonisations are illegitimate, since they did indeed die for the faith.
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Not to mention that canonizations are infallible acts. Whom do those who protest say ISN’T a saint?
 
bpbasilphx said:
From one point of view, the priest is right–we are surrounded by saints we may not even know.

But what he vulgarly called “the celebrity hit list” are those whom God has chosen to reveal. It’s not the definitive list.
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The process of recognition is always open to reform - but to do away with it completely is not a good idea: people need encouragement, & recognising particular individuals as having exemplified Christian holiness in their lives helps to put faces & names to lives of Christian holiness. “Philip Neri is a Saint” gives a specific identity to one of these examples of holiness - this is very different from giving general encouragement to lead a Christian life, because he has a name, a date, a​

place. Like so many thousands of Saints, he can be identified.

When the Word became Incarnate, He was born as a particular man, in a particular place, time, & environment - this man is God Incarnate. This particularity is very important - because it saves us from a vague belief in the divinity of man-in-general; it saves us from idolatry. The Saints are particular individuals, because He is - Christian holiness-in-general would not underline the uniqueness & finality & completeness of the Incarnation, or the individuality of the Saints. The Church’s faith in Christ is not religion-in general - it is very specific: which is why it is so offensive. To recognise a specific person as a Christian Saint is a protection against religion-in-general, & against pantheism.

Besides, Christianity is an historical religion - not a myth set in the dateless past: “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate” - the work of salvation has a date. God works in history: & the Saints underline this fact, because they too have dates, places, times.

In any case, the idea of recognising them is present in the NT. The heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 were examples to the Christians addressed by the writer of the letter - the Saints recognised by the Church are of the same kind.
 
As I understand it one of JP II’s goals was in some ways similar to the OP’s priest’s thoughts: he wanted to cannonize people from all walks of live so that we would realize that anyone can become a Saint. Yes, you need to live a life of heroic virtue, but Saints are not all from long-ago, neither are they all consecrated religious of some type. Our priest gave a wonderful All Saints day homily on this topic. He spoke about how there are Saints who were powerful in their lifetimes (Popes, kings), but also Saints who were beggars or children, Saints who were cradle Catholics, converts, reverts, Saints of all types.

We should not do away with cannonization, but we should realize that anyone of us can become a cannonized Saint (and of course, after purgatory, we will all be saints in heaven!)
 
justnmartr said:
This morning I heard the priest of the parish I am currently attending say in his homily that we should no longer have canonizations.

The reason he said this was because he wanted people to realize that there are more saints than on the “celebrity hit list.” He wanted us to recognize the other saints around us in our personal lives. He also did not rule out the possibility of incorporating the Saints into our own personal spirituality, but just didn’t wanted us focusing too much the Saints and his proposal is to get rid of canonizations.

Do you agree or disagree with what this priest said? I have my own leanings but I want to hear from others. God bless.
Click to expand...
Disagree.

Saints deserve all the honor we can give them. And only a canonized Saint is somone we KNOW is in heaven.
 
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