The other day, Megan and I were discussing the fact that so many of the Roman Catholic Church’s saints had people killed during their lifetimes. Saints Robert Bellarmine and Thomas More, for instance, were fine with burning heretics at the stake.
I mean, think about that for a second. They were fine with burning a conscious person to death. Have you ever seen a person on fire?
I’ve noticed that folks tend to react in a few set ways to this kind of thing. Some will get defensive and insist that it wasn’t actually the church (and therefore, not actually the saints) who had people killed. It was the government. Heresy just happened to be considered a capital crime at the time. And besides, capital punishment was happening all over the place, so it’s not that big of a deal. (This is usually the defense given when someone brings up the Inquisition, too.)
Others will take the canonization of such folks as evidence that the church is obviously corrupt and cares more about the powerful, no matter how wicked they are, than it does about the powerless, no matter how holy they are (*ahem* Romero, Day).
And others just throw up their hands and say, Eh, yeah, it’s complicated, or will tone it down by saying See, even the saints struggled during their lives; they’re human just like us. (Nooo, really?)
Maybe all of those things are a little bit true, but they are certainly not satisfying theologically. I sort of cringe when I hear any of them.
There’s been a lot of fuss lately about the relation between John Paul II’s impending beatification (NB: not the same as canonization) and his botched handling of the sex abuse crisis, prompting such strange comments as “Pope John Paul II is being beatified not because of his impact on history or on the Catholic Church, but because of the way he lived the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love.” …And those are mutually exclusive??
But this is not a new problem–not if you know anything about the history of the church and its saints. So I wonder if this might not be a good opportunity for parishes to think seriously about the presence of sin–or maybe we should say evil, since what else do you call having people burnt alive?–in the holiest of people and institutions (for lack of a better word)?
Given that they are in heaven now, what would the purification of people like this actually look like? In what could it consist? These are questions worth considering, and taken seriously they could affect how we think about sin, redemption, and the communion of saints in relation to all sorts of things–say, the death penalty or penance or the criminal justice system or prayer or God.
A few weeks ago, I read something where Stanley Hauerwas observed that we often self-deprecate in order to hide from ourselves and from others just how evil we’re actually capable of being. I think he is right on. Perhaps the elevation of our saints–without paying attention to the real evil they committed during their lives–works in a similar way.
Thoughts?
Just a wee bit of correcton, Sonja: canonization (or beatification) is not an indication that someone is “in heaven”–just that their lives are exemplary, worthy of imitation, they get a “feast day” in the liturgical calendar, intercessory prayers may be addressed to them (i.e., they can also join the “litany” and have “holy cards”), and churches may bear their name (it seems that using a “saint’s name” for baptism or confirmation has gone the way of things like “ember days” (judging by the names of some of my Catholic students
Nice post, however!
Really! Thank you for the correction, Prof. Hinsdale. I had always heard that beatification implied that a person was presently in heaven and that it was for this reason that his/her intercession was effective. But perhaps this is a bit of folk wisdom that has crept in and isn’t officially on the books. And thank you very much for the compliment!
Prof. Hinsdale,
Does green-lighting them for intercession imply at least that they aren’t in hell? Having Bellarmine take a time-out in purgatory, for instance, might allow us to make sense of him as a saint without whitewashing his legacy.
oops–I meant “correction”–I’m on a train, and it’s bumpy. By the way–this is a great blog!
Like the Hauerwas reference a lot! Keep up the great work!
Yes, isn’t it cool? Did I steal it from you, by the way? I can’t remember where I read it.
If you did, I don’t remember. I just love Hauerwas, who unfortunately doesn’t get as much play in Catholic circles as he should.
I never comment on this blog, but I am always reading you. This post is really well done… as are all of them. As someone halfway through their graduate studies in theology, I so appreciate all that you do here. Thank you.
I must admit that I took sharp notice when I clicked into comment and saw the esteemed Mary Ann Hinsdale here. And then Br. Dan, also esteemed and who I have the good fortune to have met. The reason I bring this up is because I was going to write all that *and* make a self-deprecating joke… And having read the post, will have a lot to think about before that reflex goes off again.
Haha! Thanks for the compliments.
I find your post brilliant. You’ve started me thinking, even though I must admit my mind cannot comprehend that some are beatified when others like Day and Romero are not. I have my own saints, I guess. As to evil and sin in the church, in our midst, in ourselves, in our structures… I love the Hauerwas’ quote. Thank you.
Aw Sonja, I thought you were going to solve this for me! Today being the feast of St Catherine of Siena, and all I can think of is how she encouraged men to sign up for the Crusades to kill the heathen instead of fighting among themselves (the Christians). I think she also had an eating disorder. She had something else, I don’t know what, that caused Popes and Kings to listen to her and even sometimes to obey her.
The thing is, I don’t encourage fighting, and enjoy a good meal, and can’t get even my dog to obey me. I might want to imitate her devotion to the sick sometime, but hospitals do a better job these days.
My “saints” are not all canonized, none of them are Popes except for John 23. I treasure my friends who teach me about loving and forgiveness and dedication to what is “Gospel” They do it without fanfare in the simplicity of their lives. If I find that in the canonized variety of saint, I rejoice in it there too. But the whole Vatican canonization thing seems like so much empty chatter.
You know, I didn’t even realize it was Catherine’s feast day until Bridget put up her post a few hours after mine. And then I thought, Sonja, you idiot, what jackass timing.
But I guess it’s actually a felicitous coincidence, as you point out: those sinful parts of her life don’t detract from the model that the holy parts of her life give to us. So I wonder how that works. Is there a way of thinking about this that doesn’t result in saying that someone’s holiness “detracts” from their sinfulness and that their sinfulness “detracts” from their holiness, some way that is less mathematical? How can we talk about that…tension (less pronounced in Catherine’s case, I think, than others) when it comes to saints? We certainly have our ways of talking about it with contemporary “secular” figures, which is usually to completely isolate the negative things from the good things and attribute one of them to a lapse in character–a simple fluke. It’s very hard to think about, let alone admire, a person who is really a mix of good and bad. The fact that it’s so difficult to imagine is what makes Jesus’ analogy of good and bad trees work: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart” (Luke 6).
But, as the saints show us, good trees do in fact bear bad fruit. So what do we do?
I think we need to review our attitude toward “sin”, “good” and “bad”. We are, I believe, simply in a process of growth. We are people of our time and place. Even Jesus “grew in wisdom”. I think we need more compassion and less worry about “figs and thornbushes”. Then we will be not only more gentle with ourselves, but also with others. We will have less fear (of heaven or hell) and more energy to love as Jesus loved.
Not to beat a dead horse, but I think that the official interpretation of the magisterium is that those who have been canonized (not sure about beatified, although I would imagine the same goes for them) are actually in heaven. I would like to make abundantly clear that I do not necessarily share this view in every case. But, for instance, CCC states, “The witnesses who have preceded us into the kingdom, especially those whom the Church recognizes as saints” (2683), and most directly in reference to their roles as intercessors, Lumen Gentium notes, “Being more closely united to Christ, those who dwell in heaven fix the whole Church more firmly in holiness…Once received into their heavenly home and being present to the Lord (cf. 3 Cor 5:8), through him and with him and in him they do not cease to intercede with the Father for us” (49). Regina Coll writes that saints are, “in a strict sense, those officially recognized (canonized) by the Church as persons who have lived a holy life, who now share in a the Beatific Vision, and who may be publicly venerated by the faithful” (McBrien, “Encyclopedia of Catholicism,” 1155). While it may be a matter of personal opinion whether canonized people are in heaven, I don’t think there is a question of the Church’s official position.
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Myself, I think the most likely explanation is that we often consecrate and elevate the most evil and perverse members of our species. This not only refers to saints, but also to famous people in general: celebrities, royalty, great artists and the rest are frequently noted for the utter tranquillity of mind with which they execute actions that normal people would regard as unacceptable.
According to Nietzsche, abstraction from, or at least elevation over, good and evil, is a necessary prerequisite for greatness. I would rather suspect that the best way of hiding something is to put it on view: i.e., if it is filthy, glorify it.
Probably the great achievements of humanity owe far less to saints and other gloriously hellish individuals than to ordinary people who did their best for those around them, and passed unnoted by history. Passing unnoted might be the true glory.
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