Are Canonizations Infallible? invites the reader to reconsider a theological question that, by the contributors’ own admission, has enjoyed a strong weight of learned opinion against the position that nearly all of them take. Their case is both theological and historical, and should be seen as part of the ongoing dispute over the patterns of Church life that have emerged in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.
This book is an excellent and readable introduction to the history of the making of saints. Only in the second millennium did anything like a canonization process appear, and it was not until the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that it attained the characteristic features that would remain in place until after Vatican II. Are Canonizations Infallible? also showcases serious theological debate on open questions within the bounds of orthodoxy; the contributors are able to take different positions while speaking the same language. Much of the discussion centers on the connection between canonization and the truths of revelation, since the safeguarding of the latter must be the ultimate rationale for the claim that the Church acts infallibly when she raises men and women to the altars. The contributors carefully sift through the works of the most important theologians and make crucial distinctions between levels of authority and assent, while debating about the consequences of venerating someone who is not actually in heaven. The dispute over the teaching of Aquinas and his commentators is especially interesting in this regard. It must be said that the contributors’ theological methods will be unfamiliar to many readers, but their intellectual rigor is most welcome.
Some contributors raise serious and unexpected objections. For example, how does the existence of different liturgical rites and their respective calendars affect the claim that the Church canonizes saints for universal veneration? In most instances, canonizations only affect the calendar of the Novus Ordo in the Latin Rite, not the Vetus Ordo or any of the eastern rites. In this light, can canonizations really be regarded as exercises of the universal magisterium?
Although the discourse contained in this book is primarily theological, some contributors make it clear that their reconsideration of the infallibility question was occasioned by the major changes to the canonization process and the outcomes that it has produced. The “streamlining” of the process that John Paul II carried out has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of canonizations, but critics charge that this has lowered the standards and rendered the outcomes dubious. Many of the older procedures intended to ensure the temporal endurance of a cult or the authenticity of miracles have been removed, and certain cases seem to have been pushed through with haste. Some of the contributors zero in on the canonization of Paul VI as especially problematic in this regard, both in terms of his public behavior and decisions as the Roman Pontiff, and the questionable status of his miracles and cult. This in turn raises the question of the role of the investigative process as such. Does the reliability of a given canonization depend on the quality of the investigation, or does the latter merely provide helpful information for a decision that, in the end, is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit?
One issue that deserved fuller treatment is what ought to be done in the instance of a dubious canonization. Even granting that such a thing is possible, is it reversible? It would seem at most that a dubious saint could be removed from the liturgical calendar (as indeed happened in the 1960s), although this is not equivalent to declaring that a person is not a saint. One author suggests withholding participation in the cult of a dubious saint by not celebrating his Mass or asking for his intercession, which seems like a strategy of consigning him to oblivion. This entails something of a paradox: how can someone be both remembered (as a case that demonstrates the fallibility of canonization) and forgotten (as the object of undeserved veneration)?
Are Canonizations Infallible? deals with a major theological question in a serious, even if sometimes polemical, way. It is not meant for everyone, but it will be a valuable primer and significant contribution to the discussion of why and how the Church raises her holiest members to the altars.
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