{"id":2567,"date":"2006-04-27T22:21:35","date_gmt":"2006-04-27T22:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/benedict-and-canonization.html"},"modified":"2006-04-27T22:21:35","modified_gmt":"2006-04-27T22:21:35","slug":"benedict-and-canonization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/benedict-and-canonization.html","title":{"rendered":"Benedict and canonization"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, Pope Benedict released a letter to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. (That link is in Italian, but go for it)<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s an article from Catholic News Agency on the letter.<\/a><\/p>\n

And here, canon lawyer Ed Peters takes a look at the letter, letting us know, in the midst of all the speculation of documents and reports that might or might not be relased – here’s something concrete. And it’s rather important.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Of those matters we know anything about (an important qualification when discussing papal activities), Benedict XVI’s letter <\/span><\/a>to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints <\/span><\/a>seems to me to be one of the most important things he’s done to date. It is certainly shows the clearest difference between him and John Paul II to emerge so far. Benedict XVI could have communicated his concerns about the beatification and canonization process in a simple telephone call; instead he wrote a short treatise on the topic. The world was meant to take notice<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

….Moreover, most of the examples of those living the universal call to holiness seemed less than universal: while they came from many places around the world, the vast<\/em> majority of canonizations and beatifications under John Paul II were of clergy and religious; of those laity lifted to the altars, almost all of them<\/em> were martyrs. But how many examples of how to be a good nun, even in the twentieth century, does one need? Is there really<\/em>, for all practical purposes, no way for laity to become saints except by martyrdom?<\/p>\n

Beyond these pastoral questions, Benedict XVI’s letter also communicates some important theological points. I’ll mention just one: martyrdom must be carefully distinguished from other instances of religious persecution and murder, even those committed against Christians, by this crucial fact: a martyr accepts death<\/em> delivered out of hatred for the Faith<\/em>. A drive-by shooting victim, shot outside of a church because the killer hates Catholics, is not a martyr (for lack of acceptance of the death by the unaware victim). A Catholic priest thrown into a concentration camp because he is a priest, is a victim of religious hatred, but not a martyr (for lack of the witness ending in death). A pious Catholic girl who flees soldiers intent on raping the women of a village, during which flight she is shot, is not a martyr (for lack of the soldier’s hatred of the Faith).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, Pope Benedict released a letter to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. (That link is in Italian, but go for it) Here’s an article from Catholic News Agency on the letter. And here, canon lawyer Ed Peters takes a look at the letter, letting us know, in the midst of all the speculation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBenedict and canonization - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/benedict-and-canonization.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Benedict and canonization - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today, Pope Benedict released a letter to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}