Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!SUVM!GATLING From: GATLING@SUVM (Keith E Gatling) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia Subject: Canonized Saints - KEG Message-ID: Date: 15 Jan 90 02:02:41 GMT Sender: Practical Christian Life Reply-To: Practical Christian Life Lines: 29 Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM Gateway Donna, I hope you won't mind a Lutheran adding to what you were saying before about the canonized saints. I think this might clear up some more confusion that many non-Catholics have about the issue. A while back someone on the list made a comment about the "Catholic saints" or something similar to that. It may even be the post to which Donna was responding. Waiting for someone else to respond (I get so tired of being one of the only non-Catholics to ever try to explain this stuff to the rest of you), I forgot all about it until now. However, no one has yet done it, and so I shall do it now. Contrary to popular belief (even among some Catholics), the Catholic church has NEVER said "X is a saint, Y isn't." What they have said is something roughly equivilant to "This is a person that we're pretty sure must have made it," but they have never said that a particular person was condemned to Hell. Excommunicated, maybe...but that's an- other issue altogether, and only of consequence in this world. It is also important to note that when the Catholic church canon- izes William of Lawrence as a saint, but fails to do the same for Lauren of Delaware, it is not saying that she is not a saint. It is merely saying that there is insufficient evidence for them to say that she definitely is. It's sort of like the Academy Awards in that in popular opinion you're a loser if you didn't get the Oscar. Yet people tend to forget that you had to be pretty good to get a nomination in the first place. I hope this clears things up a bit. keg