That was fast!

July 5, 2013 • 4:48 am

I thought vetting someone for sainthood was supposed to be a slow deliberative process. Apparently not—when the Vatican wants to cater to popular acclaim. According to a CNN news bulletin, Pope John Paul II has been declared a saint, along with Pope John XXIII:

he Roman Catholic Church will declare the late Pope John Paul II a saint, the Vatican announced Friday.Pope Francis signed the decree Friday morning, the Vatican said. John Paul was pope from 1978 until his death in 2005, and was essentially the first rock star pontiff – drawing vast crowds as he criss-crossed the globe.

At his funeral, thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square chanted “Santo Subito” — Sainthood Now! The Polish-born pope was fast-tracked to beatification when he died in 2005, and became “the blessed” John Paul II barely six years after his death — the fastest beatification in centuries.

This bulletin omitted another new saint, which I got in an email alert:

Pope John XXIII, who convened the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, also will be declared a saint.

I wonder what their miracles were. (As I recall, becoming a saint requires two documented miracles involving the candidate.)

And, just in case you didn’t know, the “devil’s advocate” is a formal term in this process, for during canonization the “advocatus diaboli” is required to make the case against sainthood during the canonization process.  One of the more famous in recent times is Christopher Hitchens, who spoke against Mother Teresa’s canonization in 2002, an incident he describes here.

76 thoughts on “That was fast!”

  2. The miracle must be attributable to the candidate Saint’s intercession. as in God wouldn’t have bothered otherwise, but [whoever] put in a good word for me. the real miracle is that anyone has time for this.

    1. Ah, but how can you know that God wouldn’t have done it otherwise?

      Or did someone record something like this: “Oh, sorry, JP2. I know I’m omniscient and loving, but I’d just completely neglected that poor sinner until you’d brought her to my attention. Thanks, mate.”

      /@

    1. Father Sarducci explains it:

      “There is a lot of pressure to a make her a saint, to fast a track the a process. I think that a they have a come up a with three miracles, kinda in a hurry, Hard to say if they are legit a…eh ..a couple of them maybe card tricks.”

      1. Can I be made a saint if I could perform a miracle, whatever it is, while still alive or it must wait for me to be gone to the land of the dead?

      1. Surely not.

        “The testimony, written in 2006, formed part of John Paul II’s cause for beatification, which will conclude Sunday.” and a second miracle is required for canonisation.

    2. The Vatican has not publicised any details with regard to John Paul II’s second ‘miracle’, except to say that it was an “inexplicable recovery” on the very day of his beatification. In other words, he performed the second miracle from the grave, so one wonders how his personal intercession is supposed to have manifested itself, especially as the Catholic Church’s official line is that the notion that the spirits of human souls who have died can remain here for some reason is not possible.

      It is also worth noting that John Paul II himself created more saints than all previous popes combined. Perhaps sainthood has become devalued.

          1. So which one was canonized, John 22 or John 23? They were VERY different guys.

      2. Perhaps J-PII was Jewish: the 3 day death and resurrection idea probably derives from the 1st century Palestinian Jewish notion that the soul remains, as it were, floating above the corpse for 3 days, before whisping off into the ether.

        Now I’d love to see a Catholic and a Jew argue either way with that one…or perhaps not.. life is too short, quite literally so on this question.

        1. In other ancient Mediterranean religions, the Sun god would die just before the winter solstice, lay in the grave for the three days that the Sun doesn’t appreciably move on the horizon, and be resurrected when the Sun does start to visibly resume its northward journey. Those same Sun gods tended to be born in the springtime, when everything else is being born.

          I do not think that it’s a coincidence that the Christians got it backwards.

          b&

    3. …The result was that John Paul II beatified and canonised more people than all previous popes combined.

      So it is just cronyism. JP II canonized a whole buncha of his buddies, the laity prays to his saints and they put in a good for him. God the father lets it be known to Francis, probably during his weekly report, that the process is moving too slowly. The fix was in.

      1. I find it amusing that the Catholic Church still does this (thought I know I shouldn’t) but I find it even funnier that there is cronyism in heaven. 🙂

  5. Since the RCC can’t handle current affairs, it relies on creating more dead zombies to go along with the thousands of other semi-demi-deities.

    Why is Chritianity called a monotheistic religion?

    1. Primarily to differentiate themselves from, and to vilify, the competition.

      1. The Catholic Churches’ (there are at least three) Holy Trinity (father, son and spirit) and the Hindu Great Triad (creator, preserver, destroyer) concur with the tertiary nature of the divine: one person with three aspects or avatars (or attributes, attitudes, whatever); it is a very old and mostly global concept. The Druids also believed this, although they saw it more as the three stages of life (commonly maiden/matron/crone.) The concept of monotheism, with or without the ‘3 in 1’ is way, WAY older Christianity, Judaism or Hinduism.

  6. “I wonder what their miracles were. (As I recall, becoming a saint requires two documented miracles involving the candidate.)”

    “Documented” as in “I really really think that must have been a miracle and therefore my feelings count as evidence”.

  8. Pope Francis is already marking his cards, one way or another. I thought it was an attempt at an early miracle: that we atheists were also bound for heaven. But with objections from the Vatican, and possibly God, and not least from atheists, it may have shot his bolt. He’s going to have to come up with better. Like forgiving peodo-priests. If they get into heaven then Pope Benedict XVI would have proved himself I think.

  9. The bigger elephant in the room being that the mainstream media still can’t bring themselves to at least a nudge if not a wink when reporting on this or any other religious absurdity.

    1. Why would you assume mainstream media is anymore educated, intelligent or wise than the mainstream population?

  10. Upon this rock-star I will build my church.

    Gibbon remarks somewhere that no saint, when they were alive, ever claimed a miracle.

    2. What is it about papal infallibility that makes you think that pope-saints aren’t humble guys?

    3. I don’t think that’s true, especially the earlier ones. I know St. Bridged was credited with ‘miraculously’ making a fetus disappear’ from a young novice’s womb. Never heard where is reappeared, though.

  11. Actually, the requirement for a “Devil’s Advocate” was abolished in 1983 by the self-same John Paul II, making it much easier to declare sainthood. Appears he will be the beneficiary of his own decree. However, they can still request counter-testimony, which is what Christopher Hitchens provided in the Mother Teresa case. But such testimony is no longer required.

    1. Here is a BBC article mentioning that:

      John Paul II ‘set for sainthood’ with second miracle
      “John Paul II reformed the sainthood process in 1983, making it faster, simpler, and cheaper. The office of “Devil’s advocate” – an official whose job was to try to knock down the case for sainthood – was eliminated, and the required number of miracles was dropped.“

    2. Well that’s a shame because advocatus diaboli just sounds so extra evil in Latin. In fact, I think I’m going to use the Latin ironically when speaking in the vernacular about playing one during meetings. 🙂

  12. I thought the Vatican ended the devil’s advocate after Hitchens’ stint.

    1. Hitch was always proud to say he appeared “pro bono” for the devil.

  13. Actually, the office of Devil’s Advocate (known formally as Promoter of the Faith/Promotor Fidei) has been abolished by the very Pope Wojtyla in 1980-something.

    It’s true, Hitchens was asked to testify at the beatification of “Mother” Teresa, but only informally. In any case, he couldn’t have played the role of Advocatus Diaboli, which is held by a canon lawyer, an official of the Catholic Church.

    I guess Pope John Paul II _had_ to strike off this office, otherwise he couldn’t possibly have manufactured the hundreds of saints that he did. Not in this day and age, when the vast majority of objections raised to a miracle don’t stand up to scrutiny — even by the standards of the Catholic Church (especially if the objector “happens” to be a Jesuit). Better not have anyone ask uncomfortable questions about the purported miracles than have them dismissed…

    1. Oops. I meant, of course, “the vast majority of _miracles_ don’t stand up to scrutiny even by the standards of the Catholic Church.”

  16. Pity they don’t care about giving the devil his due anymore. I would really like to see how they will take suspected criminal Ratzinger (at least one ongoing court process AFAIK) through the process.

    and was essentially the first rock star pontiff – drawing vast crowds as he criss-crossed the globe.

    So now they admit Beatles were “more popular than Jesus“?

    “We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.”

    Seems rock now has won as meme too, after winning the popularity contest.

  17. A more interesting question: which popes haven’t been beatified? And, at current beatification rates, how long until all the stragglers will get their tickets punched? The Church can then move on to cardinals and bishops, and eventually even all parish priests and deacons. And maybe even a few random nuns for color.

    Just goes to show the lack of imagination amongst the religious. If the Morons, for example, were smart — but I repeat myself — they’d have a revelation about some new super-spell that allows them to forcibly baptize every human, dead and alive, past and present, now and forever. They could keep stirring up controversy on a regular basis by celebrating the baptism of selected dead non-Morons, but they’d have their theological bases covered.

    Cheers,

    b&

    1. It would be a bit more work to figure out which popes have been beatified (which is a step short of sainthood), but about 29% of popes have been made saints, so that means 71% of popes have not been canonized.

      And with regard to John XXIII, the miracle requirement was waived, so no miracles are officially attributed to him.

      1. So Mr. 23rd is a second class saint. Not much point in praying for a miracle from him!

      2. A quick search combined with your stats suggests that therefore there’re a couple hundred unsaintly popes just waiting to be loaded into that cannon and fired into the heavens. Francis needs to get crackin’!

        b&

    2. Among the popes who haven’t gotten beyond the “blessed” stage is Pius IX — he of The Syllabus of Errors fame.

      Also, there’s probably many more figures stuck in that stage than there are canonized saints. One of the reasons is money and time. In order to keep a candidate’s case before the relevant church body you have to have boots on the ground pleading the case. For the vast majority of candidates, once their immediate family members and cult followers die off, there’s no one left to haul the water.

  18. We’ve had Pope John Paul. We’ve had Pope John Paul II. I’m still waiting for Pope George Ringo.

  19. Fortunately for JP miracles count even if they happen AFTER the putative saint has died. So if there are no ‘miracles’ attributed to him, they just have to wait until someone prays to him or near a picture of him and their wart goes away.

    If I remember rightly, one of the miracles attributed to that horrible Bojaxhiu woman was supposed to have happened after her death.

  20. JP2 had a huge number of fails. His attitude towards paedophilia, for exemple, that B16 tried to correct.

    Yet he gave in 1978 one of the best advises I’ve ever heard : “have no fear”.

    2. My favourite is the description of Saint Isidore: “Burned out on book learning and unable to plagiarize from Wikipedia, Isidore did something unlike American students: he turned to God for help, instead of weed and gallons of alcohol.”

  22. Should we now keep a look out for JP II on our morning toast, or is that an honor reserved for JC and his mom?

    1. Be on the lookout for XXIII (the numerals) on a grilled steak – that oughtta happen fairly often.

  23. It’s just a PR gimmick to divert the negative press the Catholic Church has gotten in recent years.

    1. Agreed – ‘oh, look, a miracle!’ ‘oh, look, a saint – why, by gum we have two….or possibly three’ Isn’t this exciting girls and boys.

    1. So, JPII can perform advanced brain surgery from the grave.

      And, yet, stroke remains a leading cause of human suffering and death. Even amongst devout Catholics.

      Something just doesn’t quite add up, here….

      b&

  26. Nothing more than the RCC looking for ways to repair their heavily tarnished image.

  27. Well – all that’s left now is to declare a certain Mr. Adolph a saint – I’m surprised the previous pope didn’t do it; he’d declared quite a few other utterly vile people as saints.

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