Sez who?
What was the name of the Pope who canonized Padre Pio?
Is canonization part of the charism of infallibility?
His Canonization is invalid. It would need to be done again using the infallible method.
Canonization was infallible and used the charism of infallibility up until 1983 when JPII took out the infallible protections.
A better question for you would be why you believe the evil Escrevaria is a Saint, when he was a habitual liar, a heretic, and by the admission of his own people a tyrant and manipulator bent on power. He also demanded a royal title he had no right to use, Marquis of something I forget.
I've heard negative stuff about Opus Dei but never formed an opinion one way or the other. What little information I've read was on the internet. We all know the internet is not always a very reliable. Lord Phan do you have any sources to back up what you say about Josemaria Escriva?
http://www.sspx.org/miscellaneous/opus_dei.htm[/quote]Is the upcoming October canonization of Msgr. Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer to be considered infallible or not?
The huge number of the present pontiff’s canonizations [of Pope John Paul II] have certainly been a great concern to us, for the traditional rules contained in Canon Law, to prevent any possibility of error or of canonization of a person whose faith and life were not perfectly exemplary, have been done away with, and replaced with much less demanding rules. However, hitherto they have been all pre-Vatican II saints, and very holy Catholics. But the projected canonization of the founder of the Opus Dei is different. For he it was who anticipated and developed 30 years before Vatican II a revolutionary, new, secular theology of the laity, and accepted the principle of pluralism, accepting into the Opus Dei men of every faith and religion.1 This indifferentism cannot be considered, according to any traditional guidelines, as an example of sanctity.
It is indeed accepted by the theologians as theologically certain that the Church is infallible in the solemn canonization of the saints, as distinct from the beatification of the blessed.2 The reason for this is that a canonization is not just a permission for the honor of a saint, as is a beatification. It is a definition, and a command, made by the Sovereign Pontiff with the use of his full authority, and consequently binding on Catholics. Consequently it is similar to a profession of faith, having as its object the glory of the saint in heaven.
However, not all canonized saints are solemnly declared by the Church as such. In the first ten centuries of the Church’s history, the popes simply gave their approval to the veneration of saints and martyrs by the faithful. These are known today as saints. However, since there was no solemn canonization process, the full authority and infallibility of the Church are not engaged for such saints. Consequently, it is not the fact that a person is called a "saint" that makes it infallible, but the solemn declaration and definition by the Sovereign Pontiff, as binding on all Catholics. It is upon this that the answer to the question concerning the infallibility of the canonization of Escriva depends. If the decree defines formally and obliges the acceptation of his sanctity, then it will be infallible, regardless of the defects in the processes for the canonization of saints that exist since Vatican II. However, if the decree of canonization were not to be solemn, and not to contain such expressions as "we define" and "we command" the veneration of this saint, then it would not be infallible, just as the approval of canonized saints in the early centuries of the Church. The same applied to Vatican II, for by not wanting to define doctrines clearly, it refused to use the infallible authority of the Extraordinary Magisterium that it could have used to condemn heresy.
The question then arises as to whether, if the canonization is duly performed with solemnity, we are bound to venerate this particular saint as a model and patron. St. Thomas states that the veneration that we display towards the saints is "that by which we believe that they share the glory of the saints."3 The object of the canonization is then the saints’ vision of God in heaven, and only indirectly the sanctity of their life and its value as a model for us. These are consequently not the object of the infallible definition, and although they would not normally be questioned in a canonized saint, in such a particular case it would seem possible to seriously doubt these, whilst still accepting that the canonized St. is in heaven. We could consequently accept that Msgr. Escriva is a saint in heaven, (hardly surprising for a priest, given his conservative mindset, genuine piety, frequent reception of the sacraments) without accepting in any way the pluralism and secularism that he taught.
1 Cf. "Opus Dei: A Strange Pastoral Phenomenon", The Angelus, Sept. 1995.
2 Cf. Zubizarreta, Theologia Dogmatico-Scholastica, Vol. I, §§487-489.
3 Quodlib. 9, a. 16 in Zubizarreta, op. cit.
Topic: Is Padre Pio a Saint? (Read 2241 times)