new saints?

martinedwards

Just spent some time recently in Durham cathedral and it seems like half the folk who professed faith 1000 yrs ago got made a saint.

Before any of my fellow prods wade in, yes, I know all believers are saints....

But anyway.

What are todays criteria for sainthood in the RC church? St Nicholas got the nod on the basis of his charity work.

By the old criteria, Mother Teresa should already be st Teresa. Any progress on that?

ScumLord

martinedwards wrote: »

By the old criteria, Mother Teresa should already be st Teresa. Any progress on that?

Mother teresa's credibility has been called into question as far as I know.

It seems like you have to be a really dedicated catholic that dedicates their life to promoting Catholic values and willing to undergo suffering to bring those values to places.

It's probably harder now that there are so many people and groups doing selfless acts out of the goodness of their hearts just to help people who need it. How do you give a catholic a medal for doing something good when someone else is doing the same thing without the pretense that the person receiving the help should really become a catholic to say thank you.

Mrs OBumble

Today, there's a process - which you can read about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonization

But there are exceptions, eg what happened for John Paul II (yes, the "children of Ireland I love you" guy whose dealings with erring priests left so very much to be desired - even though the Polish people won't hear a word of that).

Theresa of Calcutta is well along the process (read about it here) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa - again, despite the misgivings that some people have.

There are a number of more recent saints. Very long list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_list_of_saints_and_blesseds_in_the_20th_century This is a list with some modern ones and a focus on English-speaking: http://www.liturgytools.net/2015/09/modern-shorter-calendar-of-saints.html

Manach

The criteria for being recognised as such, Afair from Allen's Catholic Church, is in the vast majority of cases to live devout lives in service to the community in accordance to Church teachings. The process itself is multistage with numerous criteria sets of proof, but overall it has been winnowed by centuries of use into one that is fairly robust process.

Giacomo McGubbin

martinedwards wrote: »

Just spent some time recently in Durham cathedral and it seems like half the folk who professed faith 1000 yrs ago got made a saint.

Before any of my fellow prods wade in, yes, I know all believers are saints....

But anyway.

What are todays criteria for sainthood in the RC church? St Nicholas got the nod on the basis of his charity work.

By the old criteria, Mother Teresa should already be st Teresa. Any progress on that?

Just to clarify, the Church and / or Canonisation doesn't 'make saints'. The word canon, in this sense, means a list. According to Catholic teaching everyone in heaven is a saint regardless. Canonisation in the Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodoxy, and Anglican Church, means the person is included in the canon, or list, of specially recognised saints because some aspect of their lives on this earth has been particularly noteworthy in terms of Christianity and worthy of study by other Christians. Also another common misconception bandied about is that if someone is canonised, they have lead a perfect life and never have committed a sin or made any mistakes , this is also incorrect.

lazybones32

JPII canonised many Saints, and made the criteria a little less strict (I think) in order to make holiness and sanctity seem more within the grasp of people and to try promote them to make a decision to actually reach for it.
I read a few years ago, but haven't thought much about it until now, that the author of "The Imitation of Christ" Thomas a Kempis, had his body exhumed some time after his death. They found that he had been buried alive, evidenced by the scratch marks on the inside lid of his coffin and the timber shavings where his nails would have been. Supposedly, this evidence was used against him at a cause for beatification, since he was shown to have not fully accepted or reconciled himself to God's will for him to die that way. So yeah, it's easier now to be canonised than it ever was.

Peregrinus

lazybones32 wrote: »

. . . So yeah, it's easier now to be canonised than it ever was.

Actually, no.

For the first millenium or so it was an uncontrolled, organic, bottom-up process. You became a saint if there was a cult of devotion to you that was accepted and established in your local church (i.e. your diocese). The great bulk of recognised saints that we have today were "canonised" in this way and, as we know, there are quite a number of saints of questionable historicity (i.e. they may never have existed) and a few who are re-imaginings of pagan deities. There are also a great many of purely local interest. As we know, there's an impressive litany of Irish saints, of whom only two - Laurence O'Toole and Oliver Plunkett - were canonised under the newer top-down scrutiny-followed-by-official-approval process that we know as canonisation.

During the second millenium the top-down official-scrutiny process was brought in, but for several centuries it was local; in most cases, you weren't canonised in Rome but in the diocese where there was a devotion to you. It's only in modern times - since the Protestant reformation - that the entire process has been centralised in, and controlled from, Rome.

That did cut back on the number of canonisations signficantly, and in fact led to a situation where, unless you had founded or were a prominent member of a religious order which had both the means and the motivation to pursue the process on your behalf, there was little chance of canonisation. Ninety-something per cent of people canonised since the Council of Trent have been clerics or religious. JPII felt that that gave an altogether distorted view of holiness in the church, and his reforms to the system were designed to make it more lay-friendly - as in, better adapted to recognising heroic sanctity in lay people.