The Call's Fine Print

Published on by D. G. Hart

Still waiting for Jason and the Callers to weigh in on these matters:

In life, Archbishop Fulton Sheen was exceptional, a riveting Catholic preacher on radio who outpolled star comedian Milton Berle in the early days of television, winning two Emmys and a following that was the envy of Bible-thumping Protestants.

After his death in 1979, it was no surprise that Sheen would be pushed for sainthood. But now two bishops have clashed in an unusual public dispute over who holds claim to Sheen’s body: the New York archdiocese, where he is buried, or the diocese of Peoria, Ill., where he was raised and ordained.

The fight between Illinois Bishop Daniel Jenky and Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York erupted into public view Wednesday, when Jenky issued a statement blasting the New York archdiocese for thwarting Sheen’s expected beatification next year by reneging on an agreement to return the late archbishop’s body to Peoria.

“Bishop Jenky was personally assured on several occasions by the Archdiocese of New York that the transfer of the body would take place at the appropriate time,” the Peoria diocese said in a statement.

The statement said that senior Vatican officials were set to approve a miracle attributed to Sheen’s intervention — the revival after an hour of a stillborn baby — clearing the way for him to be beatified in a few months, the final step before formal canonization, which would require a second miracle.

Rome expected that Sheen’s body would be transferred from the crypt under St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where he is buried, to Peoria to collect relics from the body, the Illinois diocese said. Peoria has been in charge of Sheen’s cause for canonization since it was opened in 2002. In 2012, then-Pope Benedict XVI declared Sheen “venerable,” a requisite first step before beatification.

But the New York archdiocese denied Jenky’s request to move the body and “after further discussion with Rome, it was decided that the Sheen Cause would now have to be relegated to the Congregation’s historic archive.”

The Callers’ spin? The veneration of relics is biblical:

I began to appreciate was just how biblical the practice really was. I realized that the veneration of relics, belief in their miraculous powers, and in the intercession of departed saints and angels was deeply Hebraic and Jewish.

Never mind how deeply political and messy and unedifying the making of saints is. Just set your mind on things above (except when you’re receiving notices from the Vatican and looking at maps on your way to the remains of your favorite saint).

14 thoughts on “The Call's Fine Print”

  1. An unmarked grave remains Calvin’s last stroke of genius (though I imagine he may turn in it every October 31 or whenever there are Reformationpaloozas).

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  3. “Never mind how deeply political and messy and unedifying the making of saints is.”

    As was the background of many of the ecumenical councils. As was the background of the Reformation and its divergent outcomes. As was (as many liberals and non-believers will say) the formalization of the canon. Something being political and messy does not invalidate it automatically.

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  4. foxy lady, so you’re saying that because Alexander VI was a vicious pope, we shouldn’t expect the bishops or priests to be virtuous? It’s all good, right?

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  5. I don’t know why you think what I said entails your conclusion (“So you’re saying…”) – sure it’d be nice if everyone in the church was wheat and not tares and we didn’t live in a fallen world. But not happening (2k remember?). Doesn’t mean God cannot work through those means – if He can’t then bye-bye Reformation and the (whichever ones you like) ecumenical councils as divinely approved. That does not mean we should be apathetic and sit around (“it’s all good”) – false dichotomy – there’s a mean between indifference and trust in providence.

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  7. DG, save your fingernail clippings next time you trim and mail them to me. They might be worth something some day…ya know, if the Reformedish keep trending Romeward.

    Why not just his cigar butts and ash trays, and portions from the Hart’s kitty litter? I can see it now….” Oh Saint Deegh…. grant me the sanctified spirit of snark”….

    I literally threw up in my mouth while typing that. Relics are worse than bad antiques. Blech. I am going to wash my hands now.

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  8. Foxy lady, so where does your church go for the mean? When is there any discipline like in the old days? Remember, you’re engaging the modern world now since 1965 — all that pre-Vat 2 stuff of opposing the modern world won’t do.

    ‘s’all good.

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  9. Jed, the funny thing is that I wear my deceased father’s high school ring. I also believe he’s a saint. And some apologists say that’s all the relics are. But I know the ring isn’t holy nor does it communicate grace. Duh.

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  10. Talk about fine print:

    Cults should arise out of spontaneous devotion and proper ecclesial supervision and care. Saints should be “from the ground up” as it were. Saints were never intended to be top-down impositions of models of life or patterns of holiness dictated by mere authority. Cults should be allowed to spread organically, and sometimes be permitted to die out of their own accord, with careful shepherding by Church authorities. This is why the old fifty-year rule was in place. This should permit enough time to make sure that a cult was genuine, that it was a result of the unfolding of an authentic discernment of holiness in the life of the Church, and provides the needed leisure for the operations of the various complex tasks associated with presenting a cause. The Church should not conform itself to this age of instant gratification, with its attendant shallowness. The old rule also provided a cooling-off period so that people too intimately involved in the life and career of the potential saint had been mostly laid in their graves. Unfortunately a kind of historical chauvinism afflicts many today, thinking that they either live in the darkest times in Church history or in the “broad, sunlit uplands” of Pollyanna-ish progressivism. The endurance of a cult long after the principals are dead is a telling mark of its validity. . . .

    In addition, the staff at the Congregation for Saints’ Causes is massively overworked and grossly underpaid, how does this advance the proper recognition of sanctity in the Church of God? Are saints being as thoroughly vetted as both they and the People of God deserve? It is therefore good to see a cause placed on hold, with all sides being given time for reflection and true cultivation of veneration. . . .

    The bodies and tombs of the saints are a privileged nexus, a place where heaven and earth come together in a special way. There, before the devotee, lie the earthly remains of one whose soul is now in heaven, beholding the beatific vision. There one supplicates before not simply moldering bones and flesh, but that very body redeemed by the Risen Christ, which will with certitude be raised unto glory on the last day. It is one of the most stunningly Incarnational affirmations made by the Christian faith which is, as Robert Wilken said, “an affair of things.” We are not saved by Gnostic spiritualism, we are saved through bread and wine, water and oil, and yes, even through the bodies of the dead. This is something easily lost even by Catholics, especially those who live in a post-Protestant, post-modern world, alienated from the traditional human proximity to death. The struggle for the bodies of saints is at root a profoundly Christian act. Tawdry motivations can come into play it is true, even in the most sacred transaction. But here at least, Cardinal Dolan and Bishop Jenky are acting in accord with the deepest traditions of Christianity, traditions that rooted themselves in the sub-Apostolic era itself. The bodies of saints, besides the Eucharist, are the greatest thing possessed by the Church on earth, and both of them are present witnesses to the deep Incarnational reality of historical Christianity.

    Saved through the bodies of the dead? But isn’t Jesus alive?

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  11. Uhhh how do I say this?
    Uhmm DG, I think you missed the fanatical print.
    Further on the article says:

    It is no minor thing to have the body of a saint at the heart of a local Church, something those of us across the Atlantic tend to forget. I will offer no opinion here on which local Church should win, save by reminding the participants of a well-established custom, saints have heads and bodies. Relics, even major ones, are divisible. How advantageous to a cult to have two centers of veneration?

    Is this an argument for what ISIS is becoming known for?
    You know, where the article talks previously about “the attendant removal of first-class relics“.
    Sort of a quid pro quo, ‘we get the head, you get the feet’ kind of a deal?
    Where’s the “nothing that I have said is incompatible with an erroneous paradigm” character to explain all this?

    The same responsible for this:

    St. Paul wrote his letter (Romans) to our principal Church, and his bones, as well as those of St. Peter, are buried in Rome, St. Peter’s being under the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica. You have no Apostolic letters written to your congregation in Texas, or your PCA denomination founded in 1973. You have no bones of the Apostles.

    So there we have it, boys and girls?
    Reading between the lines and comparing nonsense with itself, forget about dividing things in two, it’s all about the bones.

    IOW no bones about it, the absence of any bones means our separated brother bona fides are no good and we are without the pale. Dunno, but my private judgment says that beats the “removal of first class relics” aka idolatry, before or after death.

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  12. Cletus,

    Doesn’t mean God cannot work through those means – if He can’t then bye-bye Reformation and the (whichever ones you like) ecumenical councils as divinely approved. That does not mean we should be apathetic and sit around (“it’s all good”) – false dichotomy – there’s a mean between indifference and trust in providence.

    The point isn’t that God CAN’T work through such means. The point is that it strains credulity to believe the same church that approved the Inquisition, thought we were going to hell but now doesn’t, today wants to give peace a chance but good luck during the Reformation, etc. etc. is infallible whenever it says it is, especially in the light of such nonsense that Darryl is pointing out.

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  13. IRISH CATHOLICKS- 31 MICHIGAN WASP WITH FLAT CAPS thinking they are RC-000000000000000000000 Goose friggin egg. Put that in your waspy roo cap!

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  14. Papal audacity bends rules in the making of sausage saints:

    Pope Francis today gave Sri Lanka its very first saint, canonizing a 17th- and 18th-century missionary named Joseph Vaz who helped keep Catholicism alive on the island nation during a time of severe persecution.

    Vaz was beatified exactly 20 years ago by Pope St. John Paul II during his own trip to Sri Lanka, and Francis was obviously determined to bring things to conclusion, setting aside the normal requirement of a second miracle to declare Vaz a saint.

    Who is he to judge?

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