J
Jaguar
Guest
Research Padre Pio’s wounds, and imagine them thru his wrists, instead!
Also, those individuals with stigmata’s would not have the benefit of large nails in the wound to seal in the blood.
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Also, those individuals with stigmata’s would not have the benefit of large nails in the wound to seal in the blood.
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Farsight001
Guest
That is completely different.
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JReducation
Guest
The only decree of canonization on record that mentions the stigmata is the canonization of St. Francis of Assisi. None of the others mention it. Pope Gregory IX had seen it for himself, because he was a Secular Franciscan at the time and one of Francis’ best friends. He knew the whole story. It was Pope Gregory IX that made September 17 The Feast of The Stigmata of St. Francis. There is a liturgy for that day in both the missal and breviary. However, Pope Pius XII took it off the Latin calendar and left it only on the Franciscan and the Italian calendars, which leads to the possible confusion that Farsight is having.
Canonizations are infallible decrees. They are Ex Cathedra. They declare that it is the faith of the Church that Teresa of Avila is in heaven. I’m using her as an example. The wording is important. If it’s the faith of the Church, it cannot be an error. Therefore, it cannot be retracted.
What the pope says during the canonization is really a decree. He’s not making saints. The person is a saint since the day he died. He is decreeing that because it is the faith of the Church that Teresa of Avila is a saint, he is invoking he authority as the successor of Peter to confirm it and to command that the entire church venerate her by placing her in the canon of saints. Catholics have no choice but to venerate the saint. Whether one has a personal devotion to this saint or that one, the Church does not interfere in that. But the Church commands veneration of saints and blesseds.
It happens that the calendar only has 365 days. There are more saints than that. On several occasions, not just the last time that Pope John Paul II did it, before as well, less popular and older saints were taken off the calendar to make room for younger saints. That is, saints who lived closer to our time.
Another thing that happened during the papacy of Pope Paul VI was that the liturgy was reformed and with the reform of the liturgy came the reform of the calendar to adapt to the new liturgy. Certain saints had to yield to make room for the new arrangement of the missal.
In addition, the religious orders of men begged Pope John Paul II to remove saints from the calendar of whom there was no proof that they ever existed. For example, we do not know if there was ever a St.Christopher. The religious orders wanted to make room on the calendar for their saints, but there were days taken by dubious saints. Dubious does not mean that the Church made a mistake. Dubious means that they could have been legendary people instead of real people.
Remember, formal decrees of canonization do not begin until about the 12th century. Prior to that, bishops canonized and some people were canonized by Vox Populi. For example, the Blessed Mother was never canonized and neither were the apostles or most of the Fathers of the Church. It was the Vox Populi or tradition. This is a legitimate form of canonization, when the faithful share this faith. Which takes us back to the faith of the Church. Then you run into some names and you try to find out more about them, only to come up empty handed. You can’t find any proof that the person existed.
There is another problem here. Many of the saints that were dubious, later turned out to be real people. However, as language evolved, so did their names. The name that appeared on the Church’s calendar will not show up in any historical documents. However, when we research the life events, we find a person who fits the description perfectly. One such person is Thomas a Kempis. That’s not his actual name. His actual name was Thomas Hemerken. If he were 1500 years old, we would not have enough data to run a cross reference through the libraries of Europe. They didn’t have many libraries, nor did we have data bases to store the contents of libraries. Today we do. Thomas would have been declared a dubious person.
I hope that helps.
Fraternally,
Br.JR, FFV
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Farsight001
Guest
Still looking for a source that says canonizations are ex cathedra/infallible.
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JReducation
Guest
It’s in the words themselves. Observe that he is decreeing and defining and then proceeds to order veneration. The Church cannot order us to venerate what is an error.
**“In honour of . . . we decree and define that Blessed N. is a Saint, and we inscribe his name in the catalogue of saints, and order that his memory by devoutly and piously celebrated yearly on the . . . day of . . . his feast.”
(Ad honorem . . . beatum N. Sanctum esse decernimus et definimus ac sanctorum catalogo adscribimus statuentes ab ecclesiâ universali illius memoriam quolibet anno, die ejus natali . . . piâ devotione recoli debere.)**
The doctors of the Church also state the same.
In Quodlib. IX, a. 16, St. Thomas says:
**
“Since the honour we pay the saints is in a certain sense a profession of faith, i.e., a belief in the glory of the Saints [quâ sanctorum gloriam credimus] we must piously believe that in this matter also the judgment of the Church is not liable to error.” **
Several hundred theologians, most of the doctors of the Church and all of the popes subscribe to this, including Pope Benedict.
I would also point out that the law of belief is the law of prayer. The saints are invoked during the liturgy on their feast and at other times as well. The Church can only pray as she believes and she must believe as she prays.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, FFV
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Farsight001
Guest
but the Church isn’t ordering veneration, just allowing. Like Marian apparitions - the church allows veneration, but can still at a later date determine that the apparition is not authentic.
J
JReducation
Guest
Go back and read the formula for canonization. He says** " and order that his memory by devoutly and piously celebrated"**
The Marian apparitions are worthy of belief. The devotion to the saints is an apostolic command given from the Chair of Peter. I does not mean that you have to attend mass every year on the feast of St. X. It does mean that the Church must celebrate a mass to honor the memory of St. X.
Stop and think about it. The most solemn and most important act of the Church is the celebration of the Eucharist. The pope is so sure that someone is in heaven, that he orders the Church to celebrate the Eucharist in memory of this person every year on a specific date.
If there were danger of an error, the Church would never put the Eucharist in the middle of this. If you go back and read the quote from the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas says that a caonization is statement of faith and can’t be in error. The proof is in the celebration of the Eucharist in memory of this saint.
The Church does not celebrate its most solemn liturgy in honor of a dead person if she can’t prove that the person is worthy of such an honor.
To bring this back around to the subject of stigmata, there is the reason that only one stigmata has made it into the liturgical year, that being the stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi, because it’s the only one that the faith of the Church believes to have been by divine intervention and the only one that the Church is absolutely sure that the person merited the honor to bear the wounds of Christ. In all of the other cases of stigmata, they are not mentioned in the canonization, nor may they be used in the process of inquiry as proof of sanctity. This was the only one allowed, so far.
Pope Gregory IX actually wrote a Bull of Canonization for Francis of Assisi. It’s the longest decree of canonization in the history of the Church. And it is the only one that mentions miraculous events during the saint’s life. There were four miraculous events reported during Francis’ life. There were two locutions and one vision. The fourth was the stigmata.
**Therefore, since the wondrous events of his glorious life are quite well known to Us because of the great familiarity he had with Us while we still occupied a lower rank, and since We are fully convinced by reliable witnesses of the many brilliant miracles, We and the flock entrusted to Us, by the mercy of God, are confident of being assisted at his intercession and of having in Heaven a patron whose friendship We enjoyed on earth.
We command you by this apostolic letter, that on this day reserved to honor his memory, you dedicate yourselves more intensely to the divine praises, and humbly to implore his patronage, so that through his intercession and merits you might be found worthy of joining his company with the help of Him who is blessed forever. **
It is very long, about five pages. You can read it here.
Bull of Canonization of St. Francis of Assisi by Pope Gregory IX
What you will notice is that Pope Gregory pulls together Francis’ virtues, proceeds to make reference to the miracles during his life, which is never done in a caonization and then he invokes his apostolic authority to order the faithful to honor Francis and to pray to him on his feast day. He stops short of making it a holy day of obligation.
As St. Thomas Aquinas would later write (I’m paraphrasing) that’s a statement of faith. He’s declaring all of this to be part of the faith of the Church. Catholics have no option but to a) believe that Francis is in heaven and b) believe that the miracles during his life are true, because they are included in the command.
In the case of Padre Pio, one of Francis’ sons, the miracles during his life (which includes the stigmata) were not included in the apostolic command to honor his memory on his feast day. That has been the practice regarding stigmatas and other miracles, with only the one exception.
There may be a second one coming up. The apparition of Our Lady to Bl. John Paul II at the moment that he’s shot. He described how she caught him and he could see and feel her. Doctors say that there is not way that he could have been imagining this or dreaming, because he was in shock. When a patient goes into shock, his brain functions are reduced to emergency life support. All other brain functions cease until the shock is over. When he arrived at Gemelli Hospital he was in shock. There is medical reason to believe that he actually had an experience that is impossible for someone in his medical condition at the time. They can’t use the term miracle, because it’s not their call to name it as such. They can only say what is and is not possible during shock. Otherwise, he lied. Which is unlikely.
What’s interesting in this case is that it was the medical community who first made the statement that this was impossible to be a product of his imagination. His EEG indicated that his brain was dying for lack of blood. We’ll have to see at his canonization how they handle this one. Pope Benedict made reference to it on the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima.
Is there a reason why you feel that canonizations should be called into question? I’m asking, because that’s usually a very Protestant issue, except for Anglicans. Anglicans, Catholics and Orthodox have never had problems with saints.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, FFV
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