Any site can call itself a Catholic site. Doesn’t make it one. There are plenty of other so-called Catholic sites that (if you have the stomach to check them out thoroughly) do not recognize the current Pope as their leader, or claim that a Catholic teaching such as only males can be priests can be ‘changed’, etc. I doubt that you would accept it if some anonymous person started what he or she claimed as a Jewish website and made all sorts of false claims that Jews believed this or that, would you? What would you say then if somebody asked you, “Well, the site SAYS it is a Jewish site, doesn’t it?” Wouldn’t you, as a Jewish person who knows the correct Jewish teaching, repudiate a site which claimed to be Jewish and gave false teaching? Well, we as Catholics can do the same–we know true teaching and can repudiate a site which teaches falsely.
According to this Wiki article while Simon was ‘venerated’ at one time, he was never canonized. IOW, never a saint.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_of_Trent
As far as the others, William of Norwich and Hugh of Lincoln, one must consider the times, the cultures, etc. and that the concept of discerning (not making) a saint did not rest on whether or not the death was a result of a falsely claimed ‘blood guilt’ but on the revelation of the Holy Spirit and the soul of the saint himself.
IOW, suppose that a good and holy person happened to be killed. The authorities found the supposed killer, tried and convicted him, and the good, holy person was revealed by the Holy Spirit to be a saint in heaven.
Then–suddenly new evidence came out that a cop had FRAMED the supposed killer, and that the good and holy person had actually died a natural death and not been killed.
Do we ‘invalidate the sainthood’ because this was no longer a ‘martyr’s death?’ NO. One cannot ‘invalidate’ a revelation of the Spirit, and the Spirit does not make mistakes. One does not HAVE TO BE A MARTYR to be a saint. So those who were truly canonized were done so not because of a ‘false blood claim’ but because they died as truly holy and are in heaven.
Do you understand?
After all, Catholics, other Christians, even Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, pagans and Jews as well etc. have no ‘monopoly’ (all being ‘fallible humans’) on committing sin, grave sin. . .and not simply by virtue of the religion they claim to profess, either.
God knows that both our late John Paul II as well as our current Benedict XVI–not to mention countless other cardinals, bishops, priests, AND lay people–have not only apologized for our own personal offenses in charity but for those which took place in past times.
Are you ready to do the same?
