Are Canonizations Infallible?: Revisiting a Disputed Question

by Peter Kwasniewski (Editor)

For a long time now, the majority position of Catholic theologians has been that canonizations conducted by the pope are infallible and inerrant. A minority current has always existed that disputes this view. Perennial difficulties with the nature and extension of papal infallibility as well as problems peculiar to recent decades in the Church make it timely to reexamine a debate that has lain dormant for too long, and to give proponents of the minority view an opportunity to make their case. The twelve contributors, sharing a desire for a candid and searching inquiry, argue both sides of the question fairly and fully. Each author brings distinct facts, observations, and arguments to the conversation. The result is a panoramic review of the historical, doctrinal, liturgical, and moral aspects of canonization, which displays a greater complexity than summaries in encyclopedias and manuals would suggest. This book is published as a spur to intensive theological engagement with a quaestio disputata that should not be prematurely treated as definitively solved.
Essays by Phillip Campbell - Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P. - Roberto de Mattei - William Matthew Diem - Christopher Ferrara - Msgr. Brunero Gherardini - Fr. John Hunwicke - Peter A. Kwasniewski - John R.T. Lamont - Joseph Shaw - Fr. Jean-François Thomas, S.J. - José Antonio Ureta

Genres: Catholic, Religion

274 pages, Hardcover

Published July 28, 2021

About the author

Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Thomas Aquinas College in California and an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

After teaching at the International Theological Institute in Austria and for the Franciscan University of Steubenville’s Austrian Program, he joined the founding team of Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming, where he currently serves as Professor of Theology and Choirmaster. He is a board member and scholar of The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, which is publishing the Opera Omnia of the Angelic Doctor, and a tutor for the Albertus Magnus Center for Scholastic Studies.

Kwasniewski has taught and written extensively on a wide variety of subjects, especially Thomistic thought, sacramental and liturgical theology, the history and aesthetics of music, and the social doctrine of the Church. He has published two books with The Catholic University of America Press and a volume of music for liturgical use, Sacred Choral Works (Corpus Christi Watershed, 2014). His latest book, Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis: Sacred Liturgy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and Renewal in the Church (Angelico Press, 2014), is being translated into eight languages.

Dr. Kwasniewski writes for several major weblogs, including New Liturgical Movement and Rorate Caeli.

Reviews

[Paul Robinson]

This book collects a number of articles from the past ten years or so that try to grapple with the problems of modern canonizations. What is the problem? That canonizations have traditionally been considered infallible, but many of today's canonizations are clearly questionable.

The essays do a good job of pointing out why Catholics do not need to consider modern canonizations to be infallible:
1. Canonizations have never been unanimously considered infallible. There have always been some theologians who have thought that they are not so. That they are infallible is a common opinion of theologians, but not proxima fidei or de fide.
2. They do not fulfill the conditions for infallibility laid down by Vatican I.
3. The traditional process for canonization, the process which many theologians of the past considered to yield an infallible judgment, has been radically changed. It is now much less serious, because it has removed the devil's advocate, it has reduced the number of miracles required, it accepts miracles with far less rigor, and it evaluates what is needed for sainthood very differently from the past.

To the third point, in the past, Popes who were considered for canonization were judged for their sanctity partly on how well they ruled the Church. Prospero Lambertini, who later became Pope Benedict XIV, and who wrote a landmark and definitive treatise on canonization before being elected, notes that a saintly Pope will rule the Church well. But, the Conciliar Popes, who have almost all been canonized now, were not assessed in this way. It was particularly noted for Pope Paul VI that he did not govern the Church well, but he was "canonized" anyway.

Furthermore, canonizations of the past required that there be some popular cultus in honor of the candidate before he be proposed for canonization. Now, however, this is not necessary, and candidates for saints are more often determined by who puts money forward for their cause or the fact that the candidate serves some political interest.

In short, these essays make it clear that a Catholic can question modern canonizations with a clean conscience.

[Kaleb]

This book, essentially a collection of essays by several noted scholars in the field, offers answers to what has in history been a disputed but relatively minor problem, namely, the infallibility of canonizations. Before the pontificate of John Paul II, the canonization process was so rigorous that canonizations were simply accepted by the vast majority of Catholics as reliable, while the question of the infallibility of papal acts of canonization was a dispute among theologians, not a popular question between ordinary Catholics.


But since John Paul II made the canonization process much easier by removing the Devil's Advocate role, reducing miracles from 4 to 2, and many other changes aimed at simplification and efficiency, such that more saints were canonized in his pontificate than in all those preceding it, and even it has now been surpassed by Pope Francis's hundreds of canonizations - this has now become a question relevant to all Catholics.


The specific occasion of this book, and the most troubling issue of all pertaining to this question, is the canonization of Paul VI, whose miracles and cult of veneration, as several of this book's contributors prove, are thin at best and nonexistent at worst. While the majority of modern saints are unquestionably holy and deserving of veneration and imitation, with indisputable miracles proving it, a few others are also problematic, including John XXIII and John Paul II, whose highly popular cults cannot gloss over their many errors and scandals as popes.


The contributors prove that the canonization process was streamlined largely so that it could be used as a political tool, to canonize particular individuals useful to the Vatican's agenda, including almost every pope since Vatican II (even John Paul I has an open cause today). Now, with Leo attempting to open the cause of Francis, the most erroneous pope in history, this issue is even more pertinent.

Fr. Crean, the strongest pro-infallibility advocate in this book (William Diem also offers a subtler argument in favor of infallibility), makes an admirable case, but the other contributors' opposing cases are overwhelmingly conclusive: canonizations are not and cannot be infallible. The infallibility advocated by those such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Pope Benedict XIV was much broader than that defined by Vatican I, whose doctrine of infallibility cannot be made to include canonizations, as you will see when you read this excellent book. It is ordinarily impious to argue that a canonization is false, as these saintly figures emphasize, but even they admit that a false canonization is hypothetically possible, and this applies today more than ever before. Fr. Crean's application of the doctrine of the indefectibility of the Church also cannot make canonizations infallible, since indefectibility only guarantees that the Church cannot bind the faithful to error or sin, but canonizations are not binding; they simply authorize and permit the veneration of an individual, and such permissions, while authoritative, are not infallible. This is why the calendars of saints vary in the different churches in communion with Rome and now even in the Novus Ordo and traditional Latin calendars, because no cult of veneration is binding.

After reading this book, one point that was only briefly mentioned I think deserved a fuller treatment: the role of Tradition in the reliability of canonizations. This would apply to what are called "equipollent" canonizations, when the pope simply recognizes that someone is a saint after centuries of veneration, but I would say also to those who, such as St. Patrick, St. Augustine and St. Christopher, have never been officially canonized but who are nevertheless saints due to the witness of Tradition, the ultimate rule of faith. These cults are in a sense infallible, due to their consistent recognition by the ordinary and universal Magisterium and the sensus fidelium. Otherwise, as this book proves, canonizations cannot be considered infallible; hopefully one day the Magisterium will rule on this point and realize this same position.

As always, Dr. Kwasniewski's publishing and editing are high-quality and each contributor's chapter was well-written, lucid and thorough, some being more scholarly while others were more popular writing but all answering the question fairly and succinctly. Highly recommended for anyone troubled by recent canonizations or for those who are interested in the history of canonizations in general.