St. John Paul II. Get used to saying it. Say it with joy, say it with reluctance, say it with gritting teeth, but prepare to say it nonetheless. We should be happy. A pope is being canonized. Yet there are some who aren't going to like this. Holy Mother Church has done a lot of things you didn't like. This will be one of them. Accept it.
Now for the rest of you, what are we to make of this occasion? This solidifies what has always been the popular view: that Pope John Paul II was a deeply holy individual, and that he is in heaven. Canonizations state nothing more and nothing less. It doesn't mean everything he has done was perfect. It means he has performed heroic virtue and Catholics can be certain that he is now in communion with God in heaven, ready to intercede that we may join him in said communion.
While there will be those who will try to limit his canonization simply to virtues and not his teaching magesterium, such is likely to fall on deaf ears. The man was pope for two and a half decades. The Church isn't just going to take a mulligan. (To say nothing of just forgetting Vatican II happened.) For some this will require some getting used to. Yet if traditionalists are to ever flourish within the Church, get used to it they must. Far better for us to take those things which are good and promote them. If we come across things that we don't particularly care for, so what? One doesn't have to like everything one reads in Augustine or Aquinas, and they are doctors of the Church, not just saints.
In other words, his magesterium is not perfect, but it's going to be pretty darn valuable. This will be of particular importance when attempting to understand the Second Vatican Council. He wrote a lot about this Council, and we should become familiar with it. While we can and must always use all of tradition in interpreting the Council, we can and should now recognize John Paul II as part of that great tradition.
In another affirmation of the Second Vatican Council, Blessed John XXIII will also be canonized, and without the normal miracle required for canonization. (One already exists for beatification.) We should remember that Popes are free to handle canonizations as they see fit. One could question the wisdom of it, but that doesn't change the fact that if the Pope decides this is the criteria by which he will canonize, this is how it is done. While there are various debates amongst theologians about the exact status of canonizations in regards to infallability, one thing is for certain: it is clearly taught that amongst the faithful, while maybe not infallible, Catholics are bound to accept canonizations as certain. So if you want to go around saying this or that person isn't a saint..... stop.
If there are those who thought the Church would inevitably do a mulligan over the Second Vatican Council, these canonizations end that. Vatican II happened, and quite frankly, we need to move on from feuding over whether or not we should view it a positive influence or not.
In the end, we shouldn't be afraid to ask for their intercession, and to question what wisdom we can take from them, and what virtues of theirs we may imitate. Sts. John Paul II and John XXIII, pray for us.
[This solidifies what has always been the popular view: that Pope John Paul II was a deeply holy individual, and that he is in heaven. Canonizations state nothing more and nothing less. It doesn't mean everything he has done was perfect. It means he has performed heroic virtue and Catholics can be certain that he is now in communion with God in heaven, ready to intercede that we may join him in said communion.]
ReplyDeleteWell stated!
[While there will be those who will try to limit his canonization simply to virtues and not his teaching magesterium, such is likely to fall on deaf ears. The man was pope for two and a half decades. The Church isn't just going to take a mulligan. (To say nothing of just forgetting Vatican II happened.) For some this will require some getting used to. Yet if traditionalists are to ever flourish within the Church, get used to it they must...If we come across things that we don't particularly care for, so what? One doesn't have to like everything one reads in Augustine or Aquinas, and they are doctors of the Church, not just saints.]
Also well said. The value of Pope John Paul II's magisterium I should note is separate from his canonization as a saint. Meaning, the magisterium was exercised by virtue of his Petrine primacy and while the holiness of John Paul II surely had something to do with it; at the same time, canonizing a pope as saint does not mean that every decision the pope made was correct. The Church leaves that for subsequent generations to assess.
To use a past example, Pope St. Pius X's handling of the modernism issue is in not a few respects today considered to have been more problematical than helpful. However, his personal holiness is a matter apart from his magisterial decisions as pope. Like John Paul II, he was a holy man and while this would have impacted decisions he made as pope; at the same time, like all folks he was a product of his age and shared some of its assumptions and outlooks.
Another example is Bl Pope Pius IX who is going to have a very tough hurdle getting that final step to sainthood because he made a number of decisions as pope that history has judged to be either wrong or problematical and also call into question whether he possessed certain traits or characteristics that they look for in folks who are canonized. (These were summarized by the Devil's Advocate under the sainthood process as it was prior to the reforms of Pope John Paul II in 1983 which to a certain extent streamlined the process.) And before anyone bites MY head of for saying this, among those who doubted whether the impediments to Pius IX's canonization would ever be overcome was Pope St. Pius X himself!
If Bl Pope Pius IX is ever canonized, the same principle will apply to him as to John Paul II, John XXIII, Pius X, Pius XII when he gets to that point, Pius V, Celestine V, or any other pope who has been canonized. (Heck, you want to see a pope who was canonized who was the biggest flustercluck as pope you can imagine, its Celestine V who was a very pious and holy man but wholly unfit for his office!)
Oh and for the record, as one who read an overview of the realtor of Pius IX's cause's positio on the matter, I think in time he will as the realtor appears to have satisfactorily addressed the previous objections by the old Devil's Advocate. It seems that the major hold up right now is either a second miracle or (if they already have that) the reigning pope's assessment of the opportuneness of the canonization. (Most folks do not know that Pope John Paul II formed a secret commission in Rome to advise him on the opportuneness of beatifying Pio Nono back in 1985 and the miracle for Pio Nono's beatification was approved back then. The issue was the opportuneness of his beatification and the only reason he was beatified in 2000 was as a last minute substitution for Pius XII whom John Paul II had hoped to beatify with John XXIII in 2000 but Pius XII's cause was not ready for him to do so at that point.)