So it was with distress that I learned that he supported the brutal Norman invasion of the Byzantine Empire while also ginning up support for the eventual crusades. The specifics are complicated, but it’s a bit rich for Catholics to maintain the “Crusades to free the Byzantines from the attacking Turks” narrative when the same popes were supporting the proto crusade of stabbing the Byzantines in the back.
Canonization is not an endorsement of every action taken by a saint during his lifetime. Biblical examples of saints like Peter’s lapse under pressure from the “circumcision party” in Acts and John’s attempted worship of the angel in Revelation are provided to illustrate this.
Modern canonizations and venerations sometimes seem to be used as a weapon to brand anyone who dares to criticize the holy man or woman as an unhinged extremist. I have seen this done with John Paul II and Fulton Sheen.
But saints have done dreadful things, and basic honesty and spiritual maturity demand that we reckon with these things. By blinding ourselves to real faults of the saints, we block our ability to flag real problems and real solutions in the Church today. Realizing that canonized saints have indeed made grave lapses in judgment can also free us from the modern argument over the infallibility of recent canonizations without forcing us to accept every decision made by those canonized.
Oddly, this hangup doesn’t seem to apply to saints before the modern era. Faithful Catholics today feel at ease with heavy criticism of the Crusades, even though the first two were preached by Blessed Urban II and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Many likewise criticize Saint Ambrose for refusing to pay to rebuild a Jewish synagogue that was destroyed by a Christian mob. The same goes for Saint Thomas More’s burning of protestants while Chancellor of England.
But try to make a suggestion that Pope John Paul II’s stewardship of the Church was less than perfect, or that Fulton Sheen’s enthusiasm for Conciliar reforms may have been misguided and inconsistent with his previous views, and you’ll be accused of schism and sedevacantism.
I share this series of brief vignettes as part of my own journey of coming to terms with serious imperfections among the canonized and arriving at a deeper understanding of what canonization means and what it does not.
The Eastern Church reveres Constantine as a saint, and Constantine murdered his wife and son by asphyxiation.
Saint Jerome was such a vicious trash talker that his Contra Helvedius on the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Mother began with “ I was requested by certain of the brethren not long ago to reply to a pamphlet written by one Helvidius. I have deferred doing so, not because it is a difficult matter to maintain the truth and refute an ignorant boor who has scarce known the first glimmer of learning, but because I was afraid my reply might make him appear worth defeating.”
Gregory VII, as we have said, encouraged barbarian Norman raids on the Byzantines and did nothing to repair the East-West rift in the Church, even though the 1054 bull of excommunication 20 years before his pontificate was invalid.
James Larson makes a compelling case that Saint Bonaventure knowingly destroyed the rule of poverty of the Franciscan order given to Saint Francis by Christ and built a whole theology justifying his moves.
Pope Saint Celestine V knowingly handed over the Church to a brood of vipers by resigning and refusing to use the power of his office to push back against the mafiosi in the hierarchy terrorizing the faithful.
Saint Thomas More wrote a letter contra Luther laced with profanity that would be shocking to hear from a raunchy teenager: “For I am ashamed even of this necessity, that while I clean out the fellow’s (Martin Luther’s) sh*t-filled mouth I see my own fingers covered with sh*t.”
More seriously, Pope Saint Pius V encouraged harebrained schemes to invade England and reestablish Catholic supremacy that got many killed, and also released a bull that implicitly threatened excommunication to anyone who acknowledged Elizabeth as Queen. This was a death sentence to already struggling English Catholics, persuaded the mass of the English people that Catholics were violent traitors, and was so problematic it was dialed back 10 years later by Gregory XIII.
Saint John Henry Newman flirted with the idea that the doctrine of papal infallibility that had been declared at the First Vatican Council could be walked back by the bishops.
Saint Pius X established a cabal that went on a witch hunt of modernists so indiscriminate that Saint John XXIII, then Angelo Roncalli, was flagged for supporting workers’ right to organize.
This seems to be the line at which it becomes impermissible to criticize saints without being verbally attacked and cast out of polite Catholic society.
It is disingenuous to suggest that criticism of saints, including popes, is inherently wrong and schismatic. Moreover, the obvious reason that people feel comfortable criticizing saints prior to our modern era is because those saints are criticized for transgressing against the liberal, pluralistic values under which we live today. Those who defended orthodoxy with force can be freely judged as too excessive while those who embraced religious tolerance are shielded from complaints under threat of censure.
This is one reason why it is imprudent to canonize saints within the lifetime of those who knew them, except in extreme cases (such as Saint Francis of Assisi). It is even worse with Popes, since it often involves people who worked under them or knew them personally priming the pump of the canonization process. Politicization of canonization is always present, whether it is Pius V in an attempt to canonize Trent or every founder of a religious order after the 16th century to canonize the Counterreformation. But it is particularly dangerous when Popes are canonizing predecessors who promoted them to positions of power. Canonization is the highest honor the Church can bestow. When it is watered down, fast tracked, and handed out by those with a vested interest for clearly political reasons, it deals a blow to the credibility of the faith.
The answer, besides praying for future papal restraint, is to realize that canonization does not affirm every act of a saint’s life and to celebrate the good while charitably recognizing the bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment