Return to Main Page

 

Miracles? 

We Don’t Need No Miracles!

 

Having approved a Mass without a consecration, Cardinal Ratzinger now wants to canonize saints without miracles, thus dispensing with God’s own evidence in the matter.  But how could such canonizations be infallible?

 

Christopher A. Ferrara

REMNANT COLUMNIST, New Jersey

http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/

 

An entire website is devoted to variations on the famous lines of Alfonso Bedoya in the filmic morality play The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. When Mexican bandits posing as the law confront Humphrey Bogart and his men, Bogart asks to see their badges, and Bedoya replies: “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges.  I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!” Bogart’s demand for credentials quickly exposes the imposture, and then the shooting begins.

 

     A candidate for sainthood without miracles is like a lawman without a badge.  How can we really know his heavenly status without credentials?   Our Lord Himself deigned to display His “badge” by performing miracles, precisely so that the Jews He confronted would know they had encountered the Law as perfectly fulfilled in Him: “If I had not done among them the works that no other man hath done, they would not have sin: but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father” (John 15:24). What God Himself displayed for his subjects that they might believe, the Church has always required in canonizing saints.  Indeed, miracles are the one credential of sanctity that admits of no doubt.

     In an interview with 30 Days magazine in April 2004, Msgr. Michele Di Ruberto, Undersecretary of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, explained the indispensable requirement of miracles this way: “Declaring the sanctity of someone is not like conferring a noble or honorary title. Even if someone is in heaven, it could be that he/she is not worthy, as seems, of a public cult…. We can always make a mistake, we can always deceive ourselves, whereas God alone performs miracles, and God does not deceive…. It’s therefore of capital importance to preserve their necessity in causes of canonization.” 

     When asked by the interviewer if the Church has always required miracles for canonization, Di Ruberto replied: “Always. The miracles have always had a central importance.”  As the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, even in cases where a Pope dispenses with formal juridical proceedings in the canonization process,  “the saint has been from a remote period the object of veneration… his heroic virtues (or martyrdom) and miracles are related by reliable historians, and the fame of his miraculous intercession is uninterrupted.”  In short, no canonized saint in the history of the Church lacks the credential of miracles obtained through his or her intercession.  Not one.

     It was not until 1983 that John Paul II reduced the requirement of miracles from four to only one for martyrs and two for other candidates for canonization, dispensing altogether with the requirement for the beatification of martyrs. With the aid of his streamlined procedure, John Paul II has managed to canonize 482 persons and beatify 1,337 others in his 26 years as popemore than all his predecessors combined. This works out to 1.5 new saints and 4.2 new beati a month since 1978.  How can this veritable factory output fail to trivialize the entire process of elevating souls to the altar? How could the faithful possibly keep track of them all?  Who would want to?

     The official trivialization of sainthood would be assured if the Vatican carries out the latest stupefying innovation now apparently in the works. As reported by the London Times online edition on December 20, 2004: “Yesterday Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa, disclosed that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pope’s ideological ‘enforcer’ for two decades, had presented a formula for the abolition of the ‘the miracle clause’ to the Pope.”

     Yes, “our only friend in the Vatican” is at it yet again, seemingly poised to tear down another tradition.  We are reminded once again of the sentiments the Cardinal expressed back in the 1980s in his book Principles of Catholic Theology (at page 391 for those who are checking): “The fact is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out as early as 1952, that ‘the demolition of bastions’ is a long-overdue task…. She [the Church] must relinquish many of the things that have hitherto spelled security for her and that she has taken for granted. She must demolish longstanding bastions and trust solely the shield of faith.”

     As we know, in 2001 Ratzinger demolished a longstanding bastion when he approved as a valid Mass a “Eucharistic prayer” used by the schismatic Nestorian Assyrians, called the “Anaphora of Addai and Mari,” which lacks the words of the Consecration. Since a Mass without a Consecration is preposterous, traditionalists objected to Ratzinger’s utter novelty (the implications for the entire Catholic doctrine of matter and form being obvious), only to be accused by the neo-Catholic gallery, yet again, of being “more Catholic than the Pope.”  But, yet again, the traditionalist objection has been vindicated.  In the November 5, 2004 issue of NCR, John Allen reported that Divinitas, a theological journal published by the Vatican press, ran no fewer than four articles questioning Ratzinger’s decision (as well as six in favor). One of these articles, by German scholar David Berger, who is associated with Una Voce in Germany, states “the Church has no authority to change something in the essential rites of these sacraments which is based on a divine ordinance.”  Allen noted that “another strongly critical piece was written by a veteran Vatican monsignore, Fr. Brunero Gherardini, who was the postulator for the beatification of Pope Pius IX. Gherardini is the editor-in-chief of Divinitas.”  Gherardini lists five arguments against Ratzinger’s decision.  Even more telling, “the journal comes with an imprimatur from Cardinal Francesco Marchisano, arch-priest of St. Peter’s Basilica and the pope’s vicar general for Vatican City.”  Allen concludes: “All this suggests that the decision of 2001 has some powerful critics inside Vatican corridors.”  The neo-Catholic gallery has suddenly fallen silent.

     Having approved a Mass without a consecration, Ratzinger has evidently now approved canonizations without miracles. And what justifies this innovation, given that the Pope is already declaring an average of 1.5 new saints per month? Apparently, certain candidates are just not progressing fast enough, heavenly speaking, so the Vatican wants to dispense with the evidence of divine approval to get things moving.  As The Tablet observed: “Abolishing the miracle requirement could open the door to sainthood for candidates whose cause is stalled because they lack the kind of charisma that attracts prayer. Foremost among them are Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), who is still at the venerable stage, and Robert Schuman, the post-Second World War French foreign minister who was a founder of the European Economic Community.” Robert Schuman?  Who he?

     If only the tedious and time-consuming business of waiting for miracles could be eliminated, the way would also be opened, conveniently enough, for the “canonization” of Paul VI, whose cause has likewise been “stalled.” Of course, in Paul’s case the usual background check reveals a little matter of wrecking the Roman Rite for no good reason and bringing unprecedented chaos to the entire commonwealth of the Church.  On the other hand, Pope Paul is associated with at least one miracle: the Church survived his pontificate.

     But it appears there is more at work here than simply helping the Pope fast-track his favorite candidates for addition to the select 482. According to the Times, “Cardinal Bertone said that there was a growing feeling in the Vatican that the need for miracles for both beatification and canonization was ‘anachronistic’.”    Attend well, members of the faithful: it seems that Cardinal Ratzinger and Archbishop Bertone have a growing feeling that eternal God’s own evidence of sanctity has become outdated and is no longer worth waiting for. God’s time-bound creatures in the Vatican apparatus wish to get moving with the timeless God’s election of saints!  If the press accounts are accurate, God is about to be informed that His laggardly assistance in this matter will no longer be required.  When it comes to Newman, Schuman, Paul VI or any other candidate “stalled” by a lack of heavenly validation, the Church would no longer present the badge of sanctity she has always presented in bidding the faithful to honor the saints. Miracles?  We ain’t got no miracles. We don’t need no miracles. We don’t have to show you any stinking miracles.

     Is it possible to assume that men who view reliance upon God’s evidence as “anachronistic” still possess the Catholic faith? I do not see how, but that is between them and God.  In any case, if the requirement of miracles is abandoned, at least we can take comfort in the probability that any resulting “canonizations” of Novus Ordo heroesand that is what this whole innovation is all aboutwill be subject to error. For the commonality of theologians has based its opinion that canonizations are infallible (by no means an article of faith) on the traditional process for declaring them, which has always had miracles at its core.  Take away the miracles and you have only human assessments of a candidate’s virtue, which in turn depend upon historical facts whose verification cannot be cloaked in the charism of infallibility. 

     I am not saying that if the requirement of miracles is abandoned, canonizations cannot be considered infallible. That is not for any layman to say with certitude.  What I am saying is that we would have reason to doubt any canonization declared without benefit of miracles, unless the Pope removes all doubt by an infallible definition excluding their necessity.  Otherwise, it seems to me, we would be free to think as the Vatican’s own Msgr. DiRuberto thinks: “We can always make a mistake, we can always deceive ourselves, whereas God alone performs miracles, and God does not deceive…”

     If the Vatican apparatus wishes to dispense with God’s evidence for the first time in Church history, then the Pope should declare infallibly that Ratzinger’s decision is correct. (A papal decree on Ratzinger’s hotly disputed Mass-without-a-consecration theory is also urgently needed.) Otherwise, I, for one, reserve the right to doubt any canonization not supported by miracles.  In that doubt may lie our refuge in the dark days to come.

        

Return to Main Page