Protestant views on incorruptible saints?

[Godisgreat23]

Unfortunately, apart from the Shroud, and perhaps Fatima/Lourdes, most Protestants rarely or never hear of miraculous claims of any sort in the RCC.

And the ‘incorrupt saints’ stories probably sound eerie and macabre to any who happen across such reports.

It doesn’t help that most of the books on this topic are generations old, written in a style unappreciated by modern readers. You can tell by some of the comments here that Protestants are often just now hearing these cases and don’t know the details.

Another thing–Protestants rarely know how thoroughly the Church investigates any miracle before it is deemed “worthy of belief”. They think these miracle claims are akin to those of Benny Hinn, Oral Roberts, and Smith Wigglesworth. The latter reportedly once began to awaken someone from the dead while in their casket–then repented of the idea, realising the departed had been embalmed and would suffer grievously from the effects of the embalming fluid if restored to life.

In other words, non-Catholics need to know more about how we establish certain claims as ‘miraculous’, or they think we’re pushing hokum. And while miracles can bolster a faith, remember the parable of Abraham’s Bosom: “They will not believe even if one rose from the dead”.

I agree the process is really lengthy. Even the process of canonization of saints needs atleast 3 miracles to be attirbuted to the saint before he can be considered for canonization in most cases there have way more than 3 miracles attributed to the saints.

 

[Godisgreat23]

According to this article, Saint Bernadette’s face and hands have wax coverings.

*A precise imprint of the face was molded so that the firm of Pierre Imans in Paris could make a wax mask based on the imprints and on some genuine photos to be placed on her body. This was common practice for relics in France as it was feared that the blackish tinge to the face and the sunken eyes and nose would make an unpleasant impression on the public. Imprints of the hands were also taken for the presentation of the body and the making of wax casts.
Maybe the Catholic Church has more so-called incorruptibles because non-Catholic religions/sects don’t exhume bodies looking for them?

What about Padre Pio

youtube.com/watch?v=bSaiQGVatZE

Stigmata proof

youtube.com/watch?v=XaQ8_N0O5jk

Eucharistic miracles

youtube.com/watch?v=N6SH93arrIE

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Lanciano

Ps there are well over 100 saints who are incorrupt

 

[Attejohannes]

Again. This particular phenomenon appear to be important for Catholics, while it does not make any impression to me (and I quess to most other Protestants). If it enhances and supports your Faith, then they serve their purpose.

My caveat regarding too much attention to anything miraculous is, that it may shift our focus from our actual object of Faith, Christ and His saving grace. If we believe only on the basis of something inexplainable and mysterious, then that kind of Faith may collapse, if - for example - a perfectly natural expalantion to the preservation of a dead body is found. If your soul is solidly anchored in Christ, then miracles are redundant (but, of course, God may do them if He pleases).

In my life I have witnessed only one instance that can be called miraculous - and I am very shy to talk about it. Suffice to say that a person’s health was restored and a wrong deed corrected, and I came out as a chastised but a slightly better person (better in the sense that I saw my sin clearer than before) after that experience. That effect could not have been produced by seeing a body of any incorruptible saint.

 

[Godisgreat23]

Again. This particular phenomenon appear to be important for Catholics, while it does not make any impression to me (and I quess to most other Protestants). If it enhances and supports your Faith, then they serve their purpose.

My caveat regarding too much attention to anything miraculous is, that it may shift our focus from our actual object of Faith, Christ and His saving grace. If we believe only on the basis of something inexplainable and mysterious, then that kind of Faith may collapse, if - for example - a perfectly natural expalantion to the preservation of a dead body is found. If your soul is solidly anchored in Christ, then miracles are redundant (but, of course, God may do them if He pleases).

In my life I have witnessed only one instance that can be called miraculous - and I am very shy to talk about it. Suffice to say that a person’s health was restored and a wrong deed corrected, and I came out as a chastised but a slightly better person (better in the sense that I saw my sin clearer than before) after that experience. That effect could not have been produced by seeing a body of any incorruptinble saint.

What about the Miraculous healing at Fatima and Lourdes.

Padre Pio himself gave vision to a lady who has no pupils. Still she doesn’t have any pupils but she can still see. The lady’s name is Gemma DiGiorgio

padrepiodevotions.org/2002april.asp

Lourdes healing link below…

lourdes-france.org/upload/pdf/gb_guerisons.pdf

Mystical Fasts

Another amazing miracle seen on numerous occasions throughout the centuries is mystical fasts, where Saints of the Catholic Church, under close supervision, have lived on the Holy Eucharist alone for years at a time. Many of them openly admit to taking in nothing but the Holy Eucharist for weeks and months at a time, and attribute this miraculous phenomena to God.

An example of this is St. Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) who was observed to live on the Holy Eucharist alone for weeks and months at a time. In fact she would actually get ill when forced to eat food, but remained healthy and feeling well when left to receiving the Holy Eucharist alone.

Bl. Angela of Foligno (d. 1309) remained 12 years without taking any nourishment.

Bl. Catherine of Racconigi (d. 1547), also a stigmatist, lived on the Holy Eucharist alone for 10 years.

Bl. Elizabeth the Good (d. 1420) was known not to have eaten for nearly three years with exception of Holy Communion.

St. Catherine of Genoa (d. 1510) was also recorded to go on extremely long fasts from food, usually 30 or 40 days at a time, while remaining in perfect health.

St. Peter of Alcantara was known to sleep but an hour and a half each night for 40 years.

Bl. Mary Anne De Paredes (d. 1645) was known to have scarcely taken an ounce of bread every 8 or 10 days. Her only food intake was Holy Communion each morning.

St. Gemma Galgani (d. 1903) also a stigmatist, ate no food except for the Blessed Sacrament from June 1902 until her death on April 11, 1903.

Many other Saints experienced the same miraculous phenomena including St. Catherine Fieschi of Genoa, St. Ida, St. Nicholas of Flue, Switzerland, St. Lidwina of Holland, St. Joseph of Cupertino, St. Rose of Lima and many others. This phenomena has not experienced by anyone other than Catholic Saints!

PS from some of the earlier posts some ppl have converted after reading about these miracles browse back to page 2…

 

[Attejohannes]

I have no argument. Obviously these miracles mean a lot to you. Rejoice in them, if you find them enhancing your Faith. To me they do not have that kind of effect - no disrespect intended, I just mean that my Faith in Christ is not affected whether they happened or not.

You wanted to hear Protestant views on incorruptible saints. You have heard a couple, mine being one that I think to be pretty common in the mainstream Protestantism.

 

[JustaServant]

… this is a little bit like God of the Gaps…

Not to go off topic, but could you explain what the God of the Gaps is?

 

[Monergistic]

Not to go off topic, but could you explain what the God of the Gaps is?

It’s a term invented by Christian theologians but currently, perhaps, used more often by non-religious people in criticism of Christianity. Henry Drummond is the original source, and since then Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Chuck Colson have both commented on it. It’s a criticism of certain kinds of teleological arguments for the existence of God- of course, in the hands of the aforementioned men, it’s not a criticism of the conclusion but of how the argument is made. Bonhoeffer talks about “…how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know.” Colson says “There is no ‘God of the gaps’ to take over at those strategic places where science fails; and the reason is that gaps of this sort have the unpreventable habit of shrinking.”

So sometimes people say “Look at this miracle we discovered, which we are completely sure isn’t a hoax. Science has no explanation for this, and where science is silent, our faith increases!” And to this, a GotG response (in the hands of a Christian) might say “There is no explanation- yet- as far as we know. But maybe there is or will be, so let’s take a little more care with our faith. This isn’t a healthy or sustainable way to help it grow.”

 

[flameburns623]

“God of the gaps”–the idea that whatever God is, he exists somewhere between the gaps of our scientific, deductive, and logical explanations for things.

When we knew nothing about gravity, it was God who caused things to fall. Now that we have an understanding of gravity–God is the the creator of that force.

When we knew nothing about the origins of the universe, God made everything ex nihilo, in a literal seven day period, and formed Adam out of clay. Now that we know about the Big Bang and that the universe is billions of years old–God caused the Big Bang, gave everything down to the level of atomic particles the characteristics needed to form the worlds as we know them today.

In other words, from being a direct and immediate cause of almost everything we experience, God has become an increasing remote and indirect cause.

Now, as to the attempt to argue a case for Roman Catholicism from incorruptibility of Saints or other unexplained phenomena–I would agree that someone contemplating joining the RCC could do worse than to give some time to learning about these sorts of things. The Church defines them as faith-affirming, as “worthy of belief”, and when one realizes the degree to which natural explanations have been tested against these purported miracles and found lacking in one or more important respects. . . If one has even a nascent faith in the workings of God through our Holy Church and through His Saints, that faith will be nourished.

Protestants, although they have a high degree of faith in God and in Scripture, may effectively not have any faith to affirm or to nurture when it comes to Roman Catholicism. They come to us more with skepticism and doubt; and in the vast majority of cases need to be won over first by sound reasoning and by Scripture.

In some cases, I suppose that reading about Fatima or Padre Pio or the incorrupt body of some Saint immersed in water may awaken a sense of wonder and inspire questions. Just attending a reverent, holy Mass, or even hearing the performance of a classical operatic Mass might do the same thing. Watching a movie or reading about some Saint might do it. But at some point, one must move past that sense of wonder and engage the mind. And I think in most cases, that is the starting-point.

So–pressing the issue of miracles, in many cases, may be putting the cart ahead of the horse.

My two cents worth. God bless!

 

[Monergistic]

But aren’t you curious about their lives? How did they pray? How much they prayed? what sacrifices they made? . There are quite a few saints who suffered stigmata - the wounds of Christ.

The election of the new pope has made me more curious about St. Francis of Assisi, and I find myself wondering which lives he directly affected that went on to do great things that I haven’t heard about yet. I’m also more curious to know about other people from various places and time periods who helped and served the least of these. But I’m not as curious about what may or may not have happened to corpses throughout history. Evangelical Protestants aren’t trained or prepared to be curious about corpses. There’s nothing wrong with corpses, but think about this for a moment. Take a list of the 500 greatest Protestants of all time. Then take a list of the 50 most influential Evangelicals in America today. Looking back, we don’t concern ourselves with the state of those 500 dead bodies. And when the 50 influential people are 50 corpses, we don’t ask ourselves what will happen. That’s our starting point amongst ourselves, and we don’t see very much in ourselves that relates to the incorruptibility of Catholic and Orthodox people (often saints, but I guess not always). We don’t even have saints like that.

It might be a little self-centered, but when something is foreign to our own understanding and experience, we don’t deal with it as much. Where would that be headed, anyway? No disrespect, but we’re not going to start checking Protestant corpses for incorruptibility. And if we don’t care about our corpses one way or the other, it significantly detracts from the awe and wonder we can experience in the event that someone else’s holy man did not see decay. Not only is it someone else’s holy man- it’s also a thing that we wouldn’t be likely to try and notice.

Supposing there was a very hypothetical Protestant who started proclaiming that a great Reformer did not decay these last few centuries, the rest of us Protestants would be surprised, embarrassed, and probably try to shut that whole thing down. I know we don’t always respond to Catholic and/or Orthodox incorruptibility in a totally ideal way, but I think we do take it down quite a few notches from where we’d be if that hypothetical somehow did happen.

 

[cornbread_r2]

Please provide your reference that the Church exhumes people for the purpose of checking for incorruptibility (not that it would matter).

…]

The article on Saint Bernadette that I referenced previously indicated that she was exhumed three times. To be fair though, those exhumations may have been as much to obtain body parts (for relics) as they were for checking for incorruptibility.

…]

One can then go to the next incorruptible and explain that away too. St John Vianney below.

From this article on John Vianney:

*On 4 August 1859, Vianney died at age of 73. The bishop presided over his funeral with 300 priests and more than 6,000 people in attendance.
Statue of Jean-Marie Vianney in the church of a small village in France.

Before he was buried Vianney was fitted with a wax mask.*

From this article on Padre Pio:

*Padre Pio’s body was exhumed in a service that began late at night March 2 to verify the state of the body and to allow technicians to ensure its long-term preservation.

The friars had said the body was in “fair condition,” although the skull and parts of the upper body showed serious signs of decay.

The archbishop and the Capuchins hired Gems Studio, the London-based firm that makes figures for Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, to create a silicone mask – including a short moustache and ample beard – for the body. *

 

[flameburns623]

The election of the new pope has made me more curious about St. Francis of Assisi, and I find myself wondering which lives he directly affected that went on to do great things that I haven’t heard about yet. I’m also more curious to know about other people from various places and time periods who helped and served the least of these. But I’m not as curious about what may or may not have happened to corpses throughout history. Evangelical Protestants aren’t trained or prepared to be curious about corpses. There’s nothing wrong with corpses, but think about this for a moment. Take a list of the 500 greatest Protestants of all time. Then take a list of the 50 most influential Evangelicals in America today. Looking back, we don’t concern ourselves with the state of those 500 dead bodies. And when the 50 influential people are 50 corpses, we don’t ask ourselves what will happen. That’s our starting point amongst ourselves, and we don’t see very much in ourselves that relates to the incorruptibility of Catholic and Orthodox people (often saints, but I guess not always). We don’t even have saints like that.

It might be a little self-centered, but when something is foreign to our own understanding and experience, we don’t deal with it as much. Where would that be headed, anyway? No disrespect, but we’re not going to start checking Protestant corpses for incorruptibility. And if we don’t care about our corpses one way or the other, it significantly detracts from the awe and wonder we can experience in the event that someone else’s holy man did not see decay. Not only is it someone else’s holy man- it’s also a thing that we wouldn’t be likely to try and notice.

Supposing there was a very hypothetical Protestant who started proclaiming that a great Reformer did not decay these last few centuries, the rest of us Protestants would be surprised, embarrassed, and probably try to shut that whole thing down. I know we don’t always respond to Catholic and/or Orthodox incorruptibility in a totally ideal way, but I think we do take it down quite a few notches from where we’d be if that hypothetical somehow did happen.

The point of incorruptibility is that “Thou dost not allow Thy Holy One to see corruption”, that the miraculous preservation of bodies is a sign of sanctity and a reflection of the promisethat our bodies, the temple of the Holy Ghost, will one day be reunited with our spirits.

God doesn’t provide that every Saint’s body be incorruptible, just as not every Saint bilocates or heals people, etcetera. These miracles are signs: if they were common or normative, they’d cease to be miracles. The word “miracle” means “wonder”, and if these Divine interventions were common, they’d cease to inspire wonder.

On the other hand: as you point out, most modern people don’t find much “wonder” in corpses, incorrupt or not. Now, some of the other mysterious things in the catalogue of Catholic mysteries are perhaps more interesting.

But miracles tend only to magnify or amplify faith–they only rarely create faith, and only if one is predisposed to such. IMHO, anyhow.

 

[Offdoodykcrn]

Incorruption does not defy science, it is simply unexplainable by it.
When President Lincoln was exhumed in 1900, he was said to just look asleep, except for red and blue dust on his clothes and hands (coming from the flag that disintegrated over him.)
So corruption and incorruption have a whole constellation of variables.

Just interesting to note: President Lincoln had been embalmed (although this now modern practice was in its infancy at the time). The man that provided this service, Dr. Charles B. Brown - traveled with the body on its 13 day tour from Washington D.C. to the burial site and provided ‘touch-ups’ as needed along the way. There was an interesting documentary on the whole affair recently that chronicalled the events from the night at Ford’s Theater to Springfield, Illinois.

Also, there is a practice among Buddhist monks called Sokushinbutsu, in which a monk deliberately turns himself into a mummy through a diet of salt, nuts, seeds, roots, pine bark, and urushi tea.

According to Victor H. Mair in the Discovery channel series The Mystery of the Tibetan Mummy, the self-mummification of a Tibetan monk, who died ca. 1475 and whose body was retrieved relatively incorrupt in the 1990s, was achieved by the sophisticated practices of meditation, coupled with prolonged starvation and slow self-suffocation using a special belt that connected the neck with his knees in a lotus position, believing that could solve scorpions problems in local population.