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Saintly Bad BehaviorThe lives of the saints show us that being holy means being human, not perfect.

By James Martin
Posted Friday, April 20, 2007, at 12:18 PM ET
Pope John Paul II. Click image to expand.

Recently, word came that the miracle required for Pope John Paul II's beatification may have happened: A French nun's Parkinson's disappeared after her religious community prayed to him to intercede. But amid the growing enthusiasm for the canonization of Pope John Paul II comes some dissent from a surprising place—within the Catholic Church. Not that the dissenters are airing their grievances publicly. Grumbling about someone's canonization is a little like complaining about a co-worker's promotion: It makes you look like a spoilsport.

The naysayers, mainly on the left, see John Paul not as one of the great religious figures of the age, but as a person with whom they often disagreed, particularly on issues of the ordination of women, the Vatican's response to the sexual-abuse crisis, and treatment of gays and lesbians. The most common arguments against his canonization can be boiled down to two: First, I disagreed with him. Second, he wasn't perfect.

Both objections fundamentally misunderstand who the saints are, and were. Many people envision the saints as perfect human beings whose flaws, if any, miraculously evaporated once they decided to become, well, saintly. Popular iconography does little to correct this misconception. Those pristine marble statues, romantic stained-glass images, and kitschy holy cards make it easy to forget that the saints were human beings who sinned not only before their conversions, but afterward, too.

Early sinning in the lives of the saints has always been a staple of hagiography, the study of saints. Biographers played up the preconversion badness to make clearer postconversion goodness. Even pious biographies of St. Augustine mention his dissolute early years, his living with a concubine and fathering a child out of wedlock. ("Lord, give me chastity," he prayed, "but not yet.") According to Butler's Lives of the Saints, the standard reference manual, the party-hearty young Francis of Assisi spent his father's money "lavishly, even ostentatiously." And St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, may be the only saint with a notarized police record, for nighttime brawling with intent to inflict serious harm.

But even after their decisions to amend their lives, the saints remained stubbornly imperfect. In other words: human. And the history of sinful saints begins right at the start of Christianity. St. Peter, traditionally described as the "first pope," denied knowing Jesus three times before the Crucifixion. As the priest in the film Moonstruck says, "That's a pretty big sin."

Four centuries later, St. Jerome, the brilliant polymath who translated the Bible into Latin, was a famously nasty Christian. When confronted with criticism, he was reliably uncharitable. In the early fifth century, the future saint wrote a snide public letter to a prominent theologian named Rufinus, addressing him as "my most simple-minded friend" and commenting that he "walked like a tortoise." Jerome kept up the invective even after Rufinus' death, when a gentler appraisal might have been expected.

Likewise, St. Cyril of Alexandria, archbishop of the city from 412 to 444, is described by Butler's Lives as "brave but sometimes over vehement, even violent." Reconciliation was apparently not his strong suit. During a church council in Ephesus in 431, Cyril led a group of unruly followers to depose and exile another bishop who had disagreed with Cyril's theological writings. The late Edward A. Ryan, a Jesuit church historian and seminary professor, said wryly, "We don't know anything about the last years of Cyril's life. Those must have been the years in which he was made a saint."

Contemporary avatars of holiness also had their foibles. Trappist monk Thomas Merton, one of the great spiritual masters of the 20th century, could be vain, impatient, and short-tempered. Late in life, he also broke his monastic vows by sleeping with a young nurse he met during a hospital stay, sneaking off the monastery grounds to meet with her. (Afterward, Merton repented over misleading the woman and recommitted himself to a life of chastity.) And Mother Teresa could be occasionally tart with any of her sisters whom she suspected of malingering. "You live with the name of the poor but enjoy a lazy life," she wrote to one convent.

All these men and women were holy, striving to devote their lives to God. They were also human. And they knew it, too. Of all people, the saints were the most cognizant of their flawed humanity, which served as a reminder of their reliance on God.

Unfortunately, well-meaning hagiography often tries to dial down the saints' human side to make their lives seem more virtuous. So, the modern-day conception of Francis of Assisi ends up depicting him as a kind of well-meaning peacenick, rather than the complicated man who was something of a hothead. (Francis once clambered atop the roof of a house his brothers built and began tearing it apart—he felt it was not in keeping with their life of poverty.)

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Remarks from the Fray:

So James Martin makes his case that saints aren't perfect. Fine by me. But he never explains to the satisfaction of this lapsed Protestant what saints are, or what makes one person a saint and others not. […]

In the case of John Paul it looks to me suspiciously like his elevation to sainthood is more of a political effort than anything else. […] I'm not sure what the deal is with old JP. Maybe the conservatives want to send a message that their hold on the Church is still strong, and to legitimize their agenda further by sainting a guy who was its advocate. Think of how Republicans talk about Ronald Reagan. Bet they'd love to stick his grinning mug on the twenty-dollar bill instead of that damned Democrat Jackson. […]

Like I say, we Protestants are educated so as to be able to sneer at Catholicism, so if somebody can straighten me out on this one, by all means do so.

--O_Hellenbach

(To reply, click here.)

Disagreeing with John Paul II on some of his quite orthodox teaching — something I oft enough did — isn't evidence that he was flawed. But, yes, he was a flawed human being trying to live the life of Christ. So, I ask: Did Jesus ever act on his human nature?

Certainly, just ask those who corrupted the temple.

Even what seems an act of human fault — Mother Teresa's chastising letter to a convent of her sisters — might be a virtuous act of charity. So too might be John Paull II's public scolding of Ernesto Cardenal, the Nicaraguan priest who held a public office in Ortega's Sandinista government.

Jesus would allow his human nature an expression that is an act of charity — he rebuked the money changers for their sin not out of anger, but out of love of God and love of Man.

Living the life of Christ is about becoming becoming more perfectly human, — following Christ's example — not "being perfect."

--TonyAdragna

(To reply, click here.)

Who prays to the Pope John Paul II anyway? Devout Catholics and just about no one else. So if they have no "Saint John Paul" to provide greater clout than his current revered state, they can always turn to many other old stand bys as they are always ready with a sympathetic ear.

Surely John Paul does not need the recognition for his own sake, this cannot possibly touch on vanity or it would immediately be cause for disqualification. So I do not get the rush to judgment myself? I might add some of the sins or habits of the earlier saints the article referenced would never fly in this current age. Simple as that.

Instant sainthood in our present age can be too easily connected with affluent culture's ever present instant gratification demands on all levels. For that reason alone, I object to a quick procedure.

--JV-12

(To reply, click here.)

Of the approximately 3000 Catholic Saints about 480 owe their sainthood to Jean Paul II's generous redefinition of sainthood. There are another 1600 cases pending. Jean Paul II did two things to speed up the saint production line. The most important thing was to eliminate the "Devil's Advocate" from the proceedings. There used to be a priest whose job it was to look at the evidence skeptically; but, skepticism apparently no longer has a place when one is talking about making saints.

Secondly, the proof of sainthood as opposed to saintliness was made much more elastic. Certified miracles performed or at least a heck of a good national sponsorship used to be required for sainthood. This has been true since Buddha (St. Josephat) was accidentally installed as a saint and the Bollandists were commissioned the clean up the sainthood roster in the 16th century.

Times change. John Paul II proclaimed more saints and blessed than all his predecessors together since 1588.

As Jean Paul II noted, "the saints and blessed manifest the charity of a local Church."

So, the more saints, the more charity and everyone likes charity.

The current standard for attaining sainthood is the satisfactory proof of the 'real' holiness of the prospective saint. This is determined by the examination of the documentary evidence of committees at the local and then the diocesan levels. After that one or several committees in Rome will take their shot.

There is the theological commission which must study, in the light of the documentation received by the diocese, if the real holiness of the person does or does not emerge.

A smart saint actually avoids miracles these days. They slow the saint train down.

--bubbuh

(To reply, click here.)

(4/23)

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