Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 September 2

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September 2

The process of being named a Saint in the Roman Catholic Church

I had asked a few questions up above about Saints in the Roman Catholic Church. These led me to think of another question. When an individual is being considered for sainthood, there is essentially a four-step process. (See chart below.) These are: (1) Servant of God; (2) veneration; (3) beatification; and (4) canonization. Here is my question. There are many saints (all of them, in fact) who move from Step 1 to Step 2 to Step 3 to Step 4. In fact, to be named a saint, one has to progress through all four steps. I am wondering this, however. Are there ever any instances in which the Roman Catholic Church progresses an individual through some of the steps and then simply "stops the process"? In other words, for example, they say: Person X has gone through Step 1; and also Step 2; and also Step 3. So, we will call this person "Blessed". However, we will not advance this person's case to Step 4. We will just stop at Step 3. This person meets the criteria at Step 3 (to be beatified), but does not meet the criteria for Step 4 (to be canonized). Or – in the alternative – every single person who advances to Step 1 will eventually advance to Step 2 and then Step 3 and finally Step 4. It's just a matter of time to get through all the steps. Being brought to Step 1, it is essentially a "fait accompli" that the person will (eventually) be brought to Step 4. In other words, I can't imagine that the Roman Catholic Church will elevate someone to Step 3; claim that they meet the "requirements" for beatification; and then, when scrutinized further, the person does not meet the "requirements" for the final step, Step 4. Any thoughts or insights? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:11, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, the requirements for each step are fairly liquid/ad hoc/mutable. A candidate would be proposed, his/her life examined, they would found to be unworthy, or to have been a martyr or to have possessed heroic virtue, which would bring them to venerable (step 2). But progression to Blessed or Saint status would depend on the certification of miracles attributed to the saint's intervention. Once you're venerable, the church isn't supposed to doing anything more than waiting for someone to report a miracle to them. Not really much of a process.

That's not strictly true, of course: if the Church wants someone made a saint, they'll reduce the number of miracles needed from 2 to 1, or some other tinkering to get the result they want, but it's the way it works on paper. - Nunh-huh 04:24, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

I'd say that many of those at the earlier stages—those in list of blesseds, for instance—will never be canonized. Take Odoric of Pordenone, who was beatified more than 250 years ago; barring some sudden increase in his "popularity", it's unlikely that anyone will see fit to revise his status. Deor (talk) 10:26, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

It's also important to note that in the very early days of the Church, getting to Sainthood was not quite so formal and structured. Blueboar (talk) 11:50, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

'Very early' seems quite recent - the predecessor of the current Congregation for the Causes of Saints was only created in the late 16th century. AlexTiefling (talk) 11:59, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

I think you might be making a bit of a mistake in assuming the church as a body sees itself as being in total control of this process. The big hurdle to conquer to go from beatus to saint is the requirement for 2 canonically recognized miracles. That is of course for non-martyrs who as I recall have different rules. Basically, in the eyes of the church, the miracles are entirely in God's hands and the church effectively leaves that in his hands.

At the lower levels, one of the other factors involved is funding. The Church itself doesn't pay for the gathering of information on a candidate, some private source has to. Today, the average cost is over 1 million US dollars. If the funding runs out the investigation does too. There are also, in general, different requirements at each level. Considering the Church itself is doing all such investigations at the request of some group or individual advancing a cause, it isn't itself so concerned with the outcomes of each case presented as the questioner seems to believe.John Carter (talk) 16:15, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes. I remember seeing a documentary about the canonisation of Mary McKillop, which was a very long process that started in the 1920s, stalled for many decades, and was restarted (effectively recommenced from scratch), by different people in the early 1970s. The person latterly in charge of prosecuting her cause, a Catholic priest, was talking on the doco about how his many years in the priesthood had left him completely unprepared for the colossal degree of apparently pointless but unavoidable bureaucracy, but also how he was totally frustrated to discover there was absolutely no official guidance about this bureaucracy or how to proceed with the matter. It was effectively "Oh, we have rules and procedures about all this - lots and lots of them - but it's your job to find out what all of them are, and you ain't gettin' no help from us. Nada." While there are 4 main stages in the canonisation process, there are dozens of minor stages that nobody ever talks about. He had to find out what they were as he went along, which meant a huge amount of research, time, correspondence and money, and having to restart certain sub-processes because a particular form wasn't supplied, or a prescribed form of words wasn't used somewhere, or some deadline of whose existence he was not aware had passed. If this arcane hodgepodge was meant to test the applicants, it worked (or didn't work, depending on your point of view), because McKillop was finally canonised in 2010. If I could track down the doco, I'd link it. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:51, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:54, 4 September 2014 (UTC)