Any number of saints were failures in their tasks, and yet they persevered in heroic virtue until the end, which is what makes a saint

Are Canonizations Based on Papal Infallibility?

by Donald S. Prudlo *

Afew days previously Catholic Family News published an interview with Italian professor Roberto de Mattei. The subject of the interview, which one should certainly read before perusing my own thoughts, is on the subject of the upcoming canonizations of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. In particular, de Mattei discusses his concerns regarding recent canonizations, and challenges the accepted theological consensus on the infallibility of the pope in the proclamation of saints. Professor de Mattei is an expert on the Christian foundations of Europe, and I myself am grateful for his scholarship defending the Christian roots of Western society. As regards this piece, though, I wanted to offer an alternative perspective.

There is much I agree with in the short interview, which give a summary of the positions held by some thinkers on the traditionalist side of the Church. As an historian of saints and sainthood, I agree with many of his assessments about the current state of the canonization process. In particular I too would very much like to slow the process down, and provide greater scope for careful meditation and scholarly analysis. While I approve of the shift from a simply juridical mechanism to an historical and contextual analysis in the reforms of 1983, I too fear that the transition away from an adversarial process has reduced its thoroughness somewhat. The professor also raises a concern about the constant impetus to recognize the holiness of recent occupants of the papal office, while so few in the past 700 years have been raised to the honors of the altar. Such recent pressure raises questions about the motivations of those pursuing the causes. All of these are valid questions raised by Professor de Mattei.

As an historian of sainthood, my greatest hesitation with the current process stems from the canonizations done by John Paul II himself. While his laudable intention was to provide models of holiness drawn from all cultures and states in life, he tended to divorce canonization from its original and fundamental purpose. This was to have an official, public, and formal recognition of an existing cult of the Christian faithful, one that had been confirmed by the divine testimony of miracles. Cult precedes canonization; it was not meant to be the other way around. We are in danger then of using canonization as a tool to promote interests and movements, rather than being a recognition and approval of an extant cultus. It is a similar case with doctrines of faith and morals. For example, Bl. Pius IX didn’t pull the Immaculate Conception out of the air. His definition of 1854 was a recognition of the immemorial faith of the Christian people, slowly developed and unfolded by theologians over centuries.

These things said, it is perhaps understandable where Prof. de Mattei’s criticisms flow from. The problem is that his critiques draw him away from the very theological tradition that he is attempting to defend. In the first place he contends that a canonization is a certification of personal holiness, presented by the Church to the faithful. He disregards out of hand the traditional position that what the Church actually declares is that a person so proclaimed currently enjoys the Beatific Vision. Personal holiness and valid miracles are merely the preconditions of such a definition. As St. Thomas says in Quodlibet 9, q. 16 “the honor we pay the saints is in a certain way a profession of faith, i.e., a belief in the glory of the Saints.” When the Pope solemnly canonizes a saint he certifies that a man or woman is in heaven. While this definition is certainly rooted in holiness and miracles, such are not the object of the definition.

As a result of his position, de Mattei proposes that when the Church so honors a bishop or pope, they are proclaiming that such an individual was a “perfect pastor” or that their period of ministry was one of unqualified prosperity for the Church. This is not the case at all. It is not required for sanctity that one find worldly success, or produce unlimited good spiritual fruit in others. Holiness in not predicated on such success. Any number of saints were failures in their tasks, sometimes miserably, and yet they persevered in heroic virtue until the end, which is what makes a saint. Further there are any number of saintly bishops and popes whose tenure damaged sections of the Church. St. Peter Celestine was a horrible pope, but he was an exceptionally saintly man. His papacy was a disaster (he is the Pope of Dante’s “Great Refusal”), yet he was canonized for his sanctity mere decades after his death. Likewise there were many popes whose papacies were unqualified successes in strengthening the Church of God, who have not received the recognition of canonization, men like Alexander III, Innocent III, and Leo XIII.

Having done this, De Mattei then proceeds to undermine the theological consensus for the infallibility of the Pope in canonization, an opinion so common since Thomas and Bonaventure as to constitute unanimity. In his classic study, Die Unfehlbarkeit des Papstes in der Heiligsprechung, Max Schenk traces this unanimity through 1965, a period it would seem that de Mattei would respect. Between the late 1300s and the 1600s, there are only four thinkers who dissented from the teaching. After Pope Benedict XIV’s (r. 1740-1758) definitive 7-volume work on canonization, there was total unanimity. While de Mattei is correct that Benedict XIV taught as a private theologian on the matter, nonetheless he is the greatest authority in history on the subject (indeed one could even call him the “Thomas Aquinas” of canonization). His opinion obtained universally.


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* Donald S. Prudlo is Associate Professor of Ancient and Medieval History at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. He is also Assistant Professor of Theology and Church History at the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College. His specialty is saints and sainthood in the Christian tradition, and he is the author ofThe Martyred Inquisitor: The Life and Cult of Peter of Verona (Ashgate, 2008) and has recently edited The Origin, Development, and Refinement of Medieval Religious Mendicancies (Brill, 2011).


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