THE AUTHENTICITY OF CATHOLIC SAINTHOOD?
Nwokedi Felix Chiemezie
1.0. INTRODUCTION
Catholicism emphasizes faith in a supreme being in whom we live, move and have our beings. The truth about this Supreme Being is revealed not only by the Scripture but by sacred tradition and teaching office of the Church. The magisterium triggered by the desire to present before us role models who preached and lived the word of God has also expected us to reflect and imitate the faith and lives of those who have grasped the eternal bliss. The doctrine of communion of the saints dividing the body of Christ into the church militants, purgative and triumphant has also invited human reason which supports this belief in the Supreme Being. Thus, who has transcended this material world in order to grasp an indubitable position of the above fact? Is it the duty of the Church or that of God to make one a saint? How certain are we that all those declared saints by the Church are in eternity with the Lord? Therefore, in bid to answer the above simple but sophisticated questions this write up aims at exposing the background of sainthood together with the procedures employed by the Church before she declares one a saint.
2.0. CANONISATION IN HISTORY
Canonization is the official process for declaring someone a saint. The first Catholics revered as saints were martyrs who died under Roman persecution in the first centuries after Jesus Christ was born. As Catholics who have sacrificed their lives, these martyrs were honoured as saints instantaneously after their deaths. With time, sainthood would be extended to those who defended the faith and led pious lives. At the initial stage of the Church, the criteria for naming one a saint were not strict. At death, bishops would name anyone a saint based on their own discretion. Under this atmosphere, by sixth and seventh centuries the number of the saints has become alarmingly overwhelming.
With time, the Church felt the need to tighten this process. Unfortunately, sometimes legends were honoured as saints. Once, the local Church in Sweden canonized an imbibing monk who was killed in an alcohol-fueled brawl. Outraged over the existing proliferation of sainthood, around 1200, Pope Alexander III decreed that only the pope had the power to determine who could be identified as a saint. By 1234, Pope Gregory IX established the procedures which must be followed before one is declared a saint. In the year 1588, Pope Sixtus VI entrusted these procedures to the Congregation of Rites which with time would be called the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (CCS). With Pope Urban VIII in 1634, the procedures for canonization began to be reformed and some other popes followed in this undertaking.
3.3. THE PROCEDURES FOR NAMING ONE A SAINT: A JOURNEY FROM SERVANT OF GOD, VENERABLE, BLESSED TO A SAINT
According to the promulgation of the 1983 apostolic constitution, Divinus Perfectionis Magister (25 Jan 1983) and its Normae (7th Feb., 1983) “a beatification cause may be initiated by a petitioner five years after the death…” of the individual. The petitioner is the individual or a group (can be a parish, diocese, religious congregation, association/committee of friends etc) duly recognized by the ecclesiastical authorities and his/her/their task is to finance and promote the whole enterprise of canonization of his/her/their candidate for sainthood.
The petitioner otherwise known as the actor must name a postulator who must be duly recognized by the diocesan bishop (canonically known as the competent bishop) where the servant/s of God died. A postulator serves as the lawyer of the cause and representative of the actor/petitioner before the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (CCS). The postulator has the right to appoint a vice postulator who works on his behalf within the diocese. It is the task of the actor through the postulator to request the competent bishop to launch a formal diocesan inquest into the candidate saint’s life. The bishop must also publicly publish the petition of the postulator and invite the faithful to report to him any information they may have about the servant of God.
If it behoves the competent bishop to officially initiate the cause then he has to assign two theologian-censors to examine both published and unpublished writings of the servant of God. A positive response is imperative for the process to continue. The competent bishop has to assign a promoter of justice the task of drawing up a questionnaire for witnesess based on everything that has been collected concerning the cause. Finally, the bishop obtains the decree known as nihil obstat from CCS. This decree empowers further causes for sainthood.
With the nihil obstat obtained, the competent bishop or his delegate summons and examines witnesses before a diocesan tribunal. The witnesses include those brought by the postulator as well as those forwarded by those who examined the life of the candidate. These will further be examined using the questionnaire drawn by the promoter of justice. After this, the bishop must ascertain that there is no public cult accorded to the servant of God in the process of his/her burial. When the diocesan inquest is accomplished, two faithful copies known as the transumptum are sent to the CSS.
Having done the preliminary tasks and having forwarded the transumptum to the CSS, the CSS accepts the document based on the validity of the diocesan inquest. Once accepted, the person is to be addressed as venerable. CSS has to appoint a relator to the cause of beatification if the body finds the decree for beatification worthwhile. The relator whose task it is to supervise the writing and publication of the positio must be an official of the CSS. The relator is assisted by a collaborator who may or may not be the postulator himself. Essentially, the positio consists of the informatio and the summarium. Informatio is a critical biography of the servant of God based on the transumptum. The summarium is a collation of the testimonies of the witnesses during the diocesan inquest and documents relative to the life of the servant of God. The informatio and summarium have to undergo critical review by three different bodies of experts-historians , theologians and prelates. These experts must be officials of CSS and their votes are very decisive in the final analyses. When these experts give favourable decision to the positio, the CSS draws up a decree on the heroic virtues or martyrdom of the servant of God. This decree is formally read and promulgated before the pope in a public audience. With this declaration, the servant of God becomes a referent to the appellation, “venerable.”
With regard to martyrs, what succeeds the above procedures is the designation of the date for the solemn beatification. But for non martyrs, another decree is needed. The Vatican requires another miracle to have been performed through the intercession of the venerable. When the miracle occurs, the postulator together with diocesan bishop updates CSS to authorize its investigation. All the records gathered during the investigation are to be sent to CSS who then appoints a body of qualified physicians or scientists to judge its extra-ordinariness (quest for first class miracle). A favourable response from this body is presented to the theologians and prelates of the CSS. The pope formalizes the recognition of the miracle through a decree. With these conditions fully satisfied, the date for the beatification is fixed.
The beatification ceremony takes place in Rome. However, Blessed pope John Paul II celebrated this rite in the country where the would be saints lived. From 1971-2004, the pope himself officiated this. Before then, the pope delegated power to cardinals to officiate this rite in his stead. After the solemn act of beatification, the person will be called a Blessed. However, his/her cult is canonically restricted within a particular ecclesiastical region, jurisdiction, etc.
For the canonization of the blessed to take effect, the actor of the cause must again figure out extra exceptional miracle. The same procedures leading to beatification are to be repeated. When the decree over this miracle is promulgated, a special consistory consisting of the pope and cardinals is later called to determine the date of canonization. After canonization, the Blessed is to be known as a saint. He/she is also presented to the entire Church for veneration and emulation.
3.0. CONCLUSION
From the above it is apparent that the diocesan bishop is imperative for the cause of canonization. One has to die before his canonization process commences. Whenever somebody who is apparently identified to have fame of sanctity or fame of martyrdom dies investigations will be kicked-off after five years. The candidate is thoroughly examined. Purity of doctrine is also expected from his/her writings. The person is also expected to have performed first class miracles. Doctors are invited in order to verify that the miracle is not as a result of modern sciences. In case of martyrdom, the circumstances surrounding the death of the person is critically analyzed in order to figure out whether the death is due to selfish interest or in bid to defend the faith.
However, the knowledge of Johari’s window has tremendously challenged the facts expressed in this research work. Johari’s window has elaborated four aspects of knowledge about man. These are realities about man known only by God, those known only by God and that man, those known by God, the man and other men and those known alone by God and other men and not known by the particular individual. A critical mind will question how the Church who has no full knowledge of the past, present and future can transcend to proclaim one a saint despite the fact that there are certain aspects of the candidate’s life known only by the individual and God? On the other hand, one discovers that only God is constant in the four realities of the Johari’s window. The Church is the source through which we can know God. And in knowledge, the knower makes himself present to the known. With regard to God, this is done through revelations inherent in the Scripture, sacred traditions and magisterium.
Again is the question of human element in the confensional secrecy. What if a member of the CSS was a confessor to the candidate to the sainthood, will he not help the Church not to make a wrong person a saint by revealing the content of ones confession? With regard to this and in line with my arm chair theology, I fly to the code of Canon Law which states that “the sacramental seal is inviolable. Accordingly, it is absolutely wrong for a confessor in any way to betray the penitent, for any reason whatsoever, whether by word or in any other fashion.” (Canon 983 $1)
Finally, the hallmark of the ongoing discourse is that in the Catholic faith, only God can make one a saint, the task of the Church is to declare one a saint given the person’s heroic virtue, fame of sanctity and fame of martyrdom. The means by which these saints are identified and by whom have varied over the history of the Church. Resonating with the Jesuit priest, James Martin in his “My Life with the Saints “ in all of Catholic history, the saints have been a central part of Catholic spirituality…they are like elder brothers and sisters –people who help us along.” Therefore, having seen the meticulousness of the procedures for sainthood, the divine authority of the Church and her teaching and the rationale behind sainthood, may never underrate this indubitable reality. Rather, with faith may we journey to eternal bliss with the Lord.
