Can a saint be uncanonized?

[Kingofalldems]

I just read about the life of St. Charles Borromeo. He had people put to death (gruesomely) for things such as "witchcraft" and heresy. I don't understand how this can be justified.

[Angry Dragon]

1. He was saving the church from non-believers

There is no god without believers

[ScreamingMeemie]

2. Saint Simon

In 1965, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, the Church began to reinvestigate the story of Saint Simon and opened the trial records anew. Finally declaring the episode a fraud, the cult of Saint Simon was disbanded by Pope Paul VI and the shrine erected to him was dismantled. He was removed from the calendar, and his future veneration was forbidden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_of_Trent

Saint Ursula--leader of a group of maidens who, according to legend, went from Britain to Rome and were massacred on their return by Huns near Lower Rhine (various dates given, AD 238, 283, 382, 451); church erected at Cologne in their honor; removed from sainthood by Pope Paul VI in 1969.

Although Ursula was kept in the Roman Martyrology.

[hedgehog]

18. There are a number of child saints like St. Simon -

it was always easier to blame the murder of children on the outsiders - usually Jews or sometimes Gypsies than to admit the murderer was "one of us." It's amazing how similar the crimes are to current crimes against children!

[catnhatnh]

3. Yep, Ask Mr. Christopher.

http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=36

[meow2u3]

4. Escriva is the "saint" I'd like to see have his sainthood revoked

He's the founder of Opus Dei, and he's been reputed to have abused women in the organization he founded. Besides, he was an ardent admirer of Mussolini and Hitler, and of fascism in general.

[Kingofalldems]

5. Is he actually a saint?

[tjwmason]

7. Oh yes.

Canonised by John Paul II.

Interesting that shortly beforehand the old position of promoter of the faith (commonly called Devil's advocate) had been abolished...

[cmkramer]

15. No he wasn't

He was canonized around 1610 which was a little before JPII's time.

[tjwmason]

16. That comment was in relation to S. Josemaria Escriva not S. Charles Borromeo n.t.

[Matilda]

8. That whole process was tainted.

People who knew him said what an unpleasant man he was, and how any doubters among his followers were abused to a point that amounts to torture. He was narrow-minded, bigoted, vindictive, and yes - a fascist.

JPII thought he was wonderful (although I wonder how much he was under the influence of Card. Ratzinger at the time), and it's amazing how conveniently miracles were reported to support the pope's wishes.

I wouldn't pray to him in a pink fit.

[meow2u3]

9. More on Opus Dei and the way it sneaked into the Catholic Church

Opus Dei and the War on Birth Control: Neofascism Within the Catholic Church

What we are seeing today in the fight over birth control is a revival of a very old, and very dangerous kind of Catholicism. It is not one supported or practiced by most Rank and File Catholics. It is a kind of Catholicism which has done irreparable harm. It is a kind of Catholicism unfit for existence in the modern world.

It was the underpinning of the regimes of Mussolini in Italy, The National Catholicism of Francisco Franco, in Spain; The Parti Rexiste in Belgium; The Irish Blueshirts; The CroatianUstaše, the Nazi puppet government in Croatia, and ultimately, was the kind of Catholicism practiced by the Sainted Josemaría Escrivá, founder of the Catholic order Opus Dei.

That's where the story begins and ends: Opus Dei.

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/804698/opus_dei_and_the_war_on_birth_control%3A_neofascism_within_the_catholic_church/#paragraph3

Opus Dei Wikipedia article

Opus Dei and Catholic Church leaders

Opus Dei controversies (very important)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonization_of_Josemar%C3%ADa_Escriv%C3%A1

Criticism about process of canonization

Opus Dei critics take issue with what they see as Escrivá's lightning canonization.[3] They argue that the whole process was plagued by irregularities. Kenneth L. Woodward, the longtime religion editor and senior writer for Newsweek, a center-left American newsmagazine, says that the ‘Devil’s advocate’ system was bypassed and witnesses hostile to Escrivá were not called. According to him, it is not true that eleven critics of Escrivá’s canonization were heard. He says there was only one. He says the "consultors" were mainly Italian and members of Opus Dei: this stopped Escrivá’s many critical Spanish peers from upsetting the procedure, but it also broke the convention that "consultors" should be the fellow countrymen of the proposed saint. He also states that Opus Dei argued that Escrivá was too "international" to need this.[citation needed]

Serious charges were brought that Opus Dei prevented critics of Escrivá from testifying at church tribunals called to investigate his life. Several former members were refused a hearing. Among them: Maria del Carmen Tapia, Father Vladimir Feltzman and John Roche. The positio claims, for instance, that Escrivá lost his temper only once, yet many former members who knew him will insist he was routinely abusive of anyone suspected of being an enemy of Opus Dei.[citation needed] Former numerary Maria del Carmen Tapia relates this in her book "Beyond the Threshold: A Life in Opus Dei"

On Santorum and Opus Dei: This is the guy Santorum answers to--not the Constitution of the United States and not even the bishop of his diocese! In other words, he's allowing foreign radical clerics to dictate American politics--the exact same behavior the Radical Totalitarian Right accuses Islamists of doing!

[Matilda]

10. So Santorum is a member of Opus Dei?

n/t

[white_wolf]

17. I don't know about him, but...

I've heard Scalia and Thomas are.

[47of74]

13. The whole process is messed up

[tjwmason]

6. Depends what you mean by 'uncanonized'

A Saint is a person who having died has achieved the beatific vision and reposes for eternity in the bliss of heaven. There are thousands upon thousands of these, most of whom have never been canonised nor ever will be - their collective veneration is the purpose of All Saints' Day.

The formal process by which the Church recognises a Saint is two-fold: first the formal assurance that a person is a Saint (i.e., is in heaven), and second the recognition of a public cultus within the Church.

To add a complication, the formal process for canonising Saints is relatively new and what took place before certainly lacked a degree of rigour.

Once a person has been canonised, the Church will not revoke that canonisation - i.e., will never say that the person may not be in heaven. What the Church as done in a limited number of cases is to suppress the public cultus of the Saint (e.g., the case given above of Simon of Trent) without revoking the formal statement that the person in question is in heaven.

[Matilda]

11. Yes, canonisation used to be by acclamation,

i.e. it was based on the holiness of a person's life, and people who knew him/her agreeing that s/he was indeed a saintly person. That is why there are many saints that most Catholics have never heard of, because they came from little towns or villages and were acclaimed by the local people.

I would guess that along the way, there were some whose stories were just legends passed on by word of mouth, and with no basis in reality, such as St. Christopher.

I think if we had canonisation by acclamation in modern times, Blessed John XXIII would have got there decades ago, and Escriva would be a nobody.

But I'm very biased on that score.

[white_wolf]

12. What if the Saint in question never existed such as...

Josaphat whose life was based on the story of the Buddha and was included in both the Orthodox and Catholic calendars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlaam_and_Josaphat

[Matilda]

14. That's why they took some saints' names out of the calendar.

St. Christopher was one - obviously, the story of him carrying the Christ was a legend, but turns out he never existed at all. Just a popular story that took off amongst the people.

That was a hard one for many, I'm sure – I wore a little gold St. Christopher medallion all the time I was travelling, many moons ago, and somebody looked after me, but now I don't know who.