You were right to correct me on this matter Father. Either I was given wrong information or I misunderstood what I was being told. I would assume the latter.
I subsequently found this on relics:
First class: A part of the body of a saint, a blessed, or a candidate for sainthood.
Second class: An item or piece of an item worn or used by a holy person during his or her lifetime.
Third class: An item that has been touched to a first-class relic. Usually, a third-class relic is a bit of cloth.
Don’t be hard upon yourself.
There is a great value in an element of what you were saying…the body, or parts thereof, of a person should not be exposed to the public veneration of the faithful. That is of perennial value to remember. The body is what is so often understood to be what is being referenced when the term relic/relics is used.
What public veneration means practically can be a bit murky, I readily grant.
Years ago, on a visitation, I was at the Basilica of Saint Anne in Quebec. They have a major relic of Saint Anne…her forearm. It is exposed in a reliquary in the upper basilica. The basilica is in the care of the Redemptorists. They have been promoting for years the cause of Venerable Alfred Pampalon, C.Ss.R. He was from Lévis and died at the shrine at the end of the 19th century; his cause, however, has yet to come to fruition but he has what I, at least, would term a shrine in the lower basilica. Canonically, of course, it isn’t…it’s just an elaborate and singular sarcophagus…that happens to be in chapel…with images for the taking praying for his beatification.
Presuming he is beatified, the reality is a stroke of the pen will make that chapel a shrine. I make no pretense that this distinction, which would be appreciated by theologians and canonists (I trust), is at all thought of or recognised by the vast majority of people who pass that chapel in the thousands and on a daily basis across many decades now. I could just as easily say the same thing about any number of cases in Europe.
The whole categorisation (first class, second class, third class) is really more a convention. However, it does serve an important distinction relative to the *cultus *or its lack.
*Cultus *is proper when a person is canonised and, with a greater restriction that is a distinction of limited meaning or significance outside the communities of theologians and canonists, for the beatified.
*Cultus *is not proper for those not beatified…and yet there is something to be expressed regarding the mother foundress/significant person to whom there is singular esteem, respect and love by those who legitimately inherit the spiritual patrimony that was handed on.
The Lord will, at times but not exclusively, use a visit to their grave or some article or another from their lives, as a tangible seal of approval, in conjunction with effecting a miracle that indicates to the Holy See that the person could be elevated as a Blessed or a Saint.
The convention would support, in the case I used, referring to Father McGiveny’s cassock as a relic. His body, however, really should not be referred to using that term yet. Your answer had the value of preserving that distinction, which is a worthy thing. As for finer points…well, if they were widely known, there would be less job security for theologians and canonists, one could suppose.
I would like to live to see the beatification of Archbishop Sheen with my own eyes. I remember him in life from my much younger days. He was an extraordinary man. He studied in Belgium, you know. He always retained a great affection for Europe. Let us hope the American courts will act quickly so that what needs to happen will happen so that soon we can honour him as one of the Blessed.
