In an unseemly rush, the Vatican leaders are claiming they feel an upsurge of support to name the barely deceased John Paul II a saint. (Claims of miracles -- two are needed before someone can become a saint -- have already started flooding in.) According to the New York Times, some of this is political (trying to push cardinals into supporting a really conservative candidate by showing how much people loved JP II); some is just the rush of emotion after the outpouring of affection for the Pontiff. It's all dubious Catholicism (at best), since sainthood is traditionally a slow and careful process that typically doesn't even begin for five years after someone dies and usually takes AT LEAST decades if not centuries before winding up. He would be only the fourth Pope in the last 900 years to be named a saint.Look, if the church was not in such a mess right now, they wouldn't be trying to do this. It's complete PR - pure and simple.
However, it would be appropriate in some ways for John Paul II, who turned the Vatican into a Saints R Us factory. JPII churned out almost 500 saints -- more than all his predecessors of the past 2000 years COMBINED. After that rush to judgment, sainthood has been so devalued that it wouldn't seem so extraordinary to pass the honor on to him so quickly.
The Catholics are getting desperate, and instead of trying to address their issues, they deflect and mislead.
One thing the Catholic church had always had is "mystery". There was weight to sainthood and such. Now the entire religion is dispensed out of a vending machine. Insert your money, push "saint", and one drops out the bottom.
Thinking another way, the Catholic church is just like any other large organization. Imagine if the United States military just started handing out the Congressional Medal of Honor to every person who got their boots dusty in Iraq. The citation would become meaningless.
It took 2000 years to build the Catholic church. It's only taken about 25 years to destroy it.
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