• Author Thomas Craughwell has written six books about saints including “Saints Behaving Badly: The Cutthroats, Crooks, Trollops, Conmen and Devil Worshippers Who Became Saints” (Doubleday, $15.95). His new book, which will be published in July is titled “Saints Preserved,” deals with the relics left behind (such as a finger, bones, a lock of hair) that are honored and revered by Catholics around the world.
• William Portier is the Mary Ann Spearin chair of Catholic Theology at the University of Dayton since 1999.
• Dennis Doyle has been a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton for 26 years.
Q When people are described as "saints," what does it say about them?
Portier It suggests that they are generous, care about people, are not self-centered. They do the kinds of things Jesus says you are supposed to do. A saint is someone you want to emulate.
Q How did the tradition of sainthood get started?
Craughwell In the first centuries of the Church, there was no canonization process. Someone became a saint by popular acclaim. With the exception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, all of the first saints were martyrs. Their fidelity and courage is what inspired their fellow Christians to venerate them as saints.
Sometime after the year 400, bishops decided who would be declared a saint. Canonization remained at the local level until about the year 1100, when there was a notorious incident in Scandinavia. A priest got into a bar fight and was killed; his friends began to venerate him as a saint and a martyr. The scandal led the pope to reserve the saint-making process to himself, and it has been in the hands of Rome ever since.
Q What role have the saints played in Catholicism? Don't other religions include saints?
Doyle For the Catholic, the saint is not God and ultimately your prayers are directed to God. But there are those who have gone before us in death who are recognizably holy people and the practice of praying to those who we believe are now with God we regard as an ancient and venerable tradition.
Portier You ask the saints to pray for you.
Craughwell The Orthodox Church has something similar. Recently, some Protestant denominations, including the Episcopalians and Lutherans, recognize certain individuals as saintly, although there is no process and the individual is not given the title “Saint.” Buddhists have saints. There are some Muslim saints, although they are unofficial and appear to be part of a strain Muslim folk religion.
Q Do your early childhood memories include saints?
Doyle When I went to a Philadelphia Catholic grade school, we had an October and a May procession when we would all be decked out in suits and white dresses and march around. It was dedicated to Mary who is a saint. I was conscious of the saints as a child: If I lost something I would pray to St. Anthony of Padua, And if you found whatever you had lost, you would put $1 in the poor box.
Portier I grew up surrounded by saints. My Italian grandmother had a whole room in New Jersey with statues of saints, they were her patrons, she would put flowers in front of their statues and that was very common.
Craughwell From the time I was a little kid, I liked the stories of the saints; my grandmother used to tell me stories about the saints when I was very little. When I was in the fifth grade, the nun called in my mother and complained because I knew more of the saints than she did.
I’ve been studying them more formally for about 25 years now and have found that most of the collection of saints in the library are superficial and even sanitized. When you start scratching below the surface you find these fascinating men and women, red-blooded, with all the failings we have and some of them a lot worse. A little known fact about St. Patrick is that when he was a teenager he was an atheist, he stopped believing in God. We know about it because he left an autobiography.
Q So you don't have to be perfect to be a saint?
Craughwell Human beings aren’t perfect. These are people who are trying to be holy, they are really working at it and when they failed, they got up and tried again.
Portier Saints are all different kinds of people — clergy, lay people, men and women. They work in different occupations, live at different times. It’s common for Catholics to name their children after saints. You can identify with a particular saint for personal reasons. There are patron saints like St. Joseph who was Jesus’ father. The New Testament says he was a carpenter, so he is the patron saint of carpenters. A saint can accompany you through life.
Q What's the process today for becoming a saint?
Craughwell Someone with a reputation for great sanctity dies. People who knew this individual or knew of him/her petition the local bishop to begin an investigation into this person’s life and merits. If the bishop finds nothing objectionable, he permits the faithful to ask the potential saint to pray to God for them. If what appears to be a miracle occurs (typically an inexplicable healing of someone seriously ill or dying) through the prayers or intercession of the candidate for sainthood, then a formal investigation of the case begins. The testimony of everyone involved, especially doctors, is collected, along with all medical records, test results, etc. This documentation is forwarded to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican where it is studied very thoroughly. If the case is judged miraculous, in a formal Church ceremony the candidate will be given the title “Blessed.” To be declared “Saint” a second miracle is required.
Doyle The process of beatification and canonization doesn’t usually begin until someone has been dead for five years. John Paul II made an exception for Mother Theresa and now an exception is being made for Pope John Paul II. On Jan. 14, it was announced by the Vatican that he will be beatified on May 1. Once a person’s cause is declared, someone is made a kind of devil’s advocate to argue against the canonization.
In the case of John Paul II, some people believe he should not be canonized because he was not sufficiently responsible to the sex abuse crisis. Ultimately it’s the decision of the pope.
Q In the case of John Paul II, what was the first miracle?
Craughwell A nun in France suffered from Parkinson’s disease, the same disease John Paul II died of. She asked him to pray for her to God and she went back to the doctor and he could find no trace of the Parkinson’s, it was gone. The testimony for something like this could run 500 to 1,000 pages of documentation. They don’t want to make a mistake. There are cases where to be on the safe side, they’ve ruled against the canonization. One of the longest was Joan of Arc, it took 500 years for her to be canonized.
Q Why are saints so important to the church?
Doyle Catholics traditionally have a sense that they live in a world that’s bigger than what you see. We believe that when you die you don’t just vaporize into nothingness, we believe there are those that have gone before us and are with God. The label is the Communion of Saints: If we really want to think of the church in the biggest sense, members are not only those alive now, but membership includes those who have gone before us in death. The only thing that separates us is death: We are still connected.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2440 or mmoss@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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