While the enthusiasm for the canonization of saints may be

BY CYRIL O’REGAN
The following text was originally delivered as part of the “Saturdays with the Saints” series,
hosted by the Institute for Church Life during the fall of 2012.
While the enthusiasm for the canonization of saints may be somewhat
less exuberant than was the case with John Paul II, the behavior of
Benedict XVI suggests that there is no essential break between himself
and his charismatic predecessor in terms of the basic conviction that
the Church is or is to be the Church of saints; and that saints signal the
catholicity of the Church in being male and female, in being of different
ethnicities, in being religious and lay, in comprising different histories,
in having lived in, through, and being marked by different historical
circumstances, and in having faced very different—indeed sometimes
unique—challenges.
Pope Benedict XVI canonizes six new saints, including André Bessette, C.S.C.,
during a Eucharistic celebration at St. Peter’s Basilica on October 17, 2010.
Photo: Steven Scardina. Used with permission. www.scardinaphoto.com.
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BENEDICT XVI ON THE SAINTS / CYRIL O’REGAN
Benedict has demonstrated during his pontificate a particular predilection for considering
the relation between theology and sainthood, as illustrated in his writings on St. Paul and his
conferences on the Church Fathers, his elevation of the medieval mystical writer Hildegard of
Bingen to the status of Doctor of the Church, his very personal interest in the ongoing process
of the canonization of John Henry Newman, and the fervency of his espousal of the case of
John Paul II. Still, as with John Paul II, the backgrounds of those canonized or who are on the
way (Blessed) are extremely various. Two of the more recent elevations—seventeenth-century
Mohawk Indian Kateri Tekakwitha, who lived a life of simple witness through her suffering,
and Marianne Cope, a nineteenth-century Franciscan nun who spent her life caring for lepers in
Haiti—illustrate well Benedict’s catholicity in this regard.
Nonetheless, a cynical view might have it that (here
as elsewhere) what is important for Benedict is the
Petrine office rather than some deep conviction of the
value of sainthood, and that this expresses itself in a
kind of “business as usual” mentality with respect to
the processes of canonization. Of course, such a view
would necessarily have to conveniently ignore Benedict’s
long-standing conviction of the fundamental rightness
of Catholic support of the saints against Reformation
objections, as well as his sense of the enduring value
of popular Catholic piety in which devotions to the
saints have played an important role. Above all, it would
ignore the fact that consistently throughout his writings
prior to becoming Pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
(or the future Benedict XVI) not only defended saints
against the secularist dismissive sneer and the tendency
in modernity to pathologize the saints (as obviously
unhealthy, excessive, fanatic, and at least uncouth) but
he also made the argument that today, perhaps more
so than any time in history, the Church is in need of
saints. There are essentially two reasons why this is so:
1) to validate and vindicate Christianity which, even if
it is guided by a basic vision that gets expressed in ideas
is, in the final analysis, a life; and 2) to prove a leaven
in a secular world riddled with relativism and inclined
towards a fatuous moralism in which—and here I go
beyond Benedict—God gives us a sticker for being good
and for being ethically and politically responsible.
It is important to explore a bit more the double edge of
Benedict’s sword here. In The Ratzinger Report (1979)—
in reminding the Church of the fruitfulness of saints
and the world of the need of witness—the future Pope
queries a burgeoning hierarchy in the Church which,
relatively speaking, exaggerates the importance of the
theologian and relativizes that of the saint. Benedict
seems to think that the exaggeration of the importance
of the theologian lies in thinking of the theologian as
a kind of virtuoso in Christian thought, who is rightly
admired for his or her genius or talent in religious
matters. But to think this is to have become infected
with a Romantic bug. The theologian, whether religious
or lay, is an ecclesial person for whom the simple faith of
the Church provides the bedrock. Theology is nothing
more nor less than “faith seeking understanding” ( fides
quarens intellectus), an elucidation of the faith given to
the Church in and by Christ and articulated in human
symbols, practices, and forms of life with the help
of the Holy Spirit. The theologian cannot be—or at
least should not be—a kind of ecclesial rock-star. The
second deformation is the functional priority given
to reflection in Christianity over the consideration of
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Christianity as a life to be lived
towards God through Jesus Christ.
At first, it would seem odd that
the future Pope—who is himself
a major theologian; a supporter of
doctrine; even early in his career
arguably one of the foremost
catechists in the Church; and
above all a critic of activist forms
of Catholicism that too easily, in
his view, leave behind normative
Christian thought—would be
making this kind of complaint
about too much reflection. But
make this complaint he does, for,
in his view, genuine Christianity,
which is the Christianity of the
Gospel, means discipleship, as this
is undergirded by faith. What is
indefeasible about Christianity, he
believes, is conforming one’s entire
life to the Incarnation, Passion,
Death, and Resurrection of Christ.
To become a Christian is to become
“christoform.” This means that all
Christians are called to be saints.
If it is peculiarly a contemporary
temptation to replace this vocation
by the ambition of being a moral
self, it has been a perennial
temptation to presume that
holiness is the prerogative of a
special cadre of persons—whether
monks, clergy, or religious—and
does not apply to all Christians
by dint of their Baptism. As a
faithful interpreter of Vatican II in
general, and of Lumen Gentium in
particular (both before and after he
was Pope), Benedict enthusiastically
supports the universal call to
holiness.
Saint as Icon
To say that the saint is an icon is to say something
quite specific and precisely not to say that the saint
is more famous than the rest of us because of some
extraordinary religious traits and near-superhuman
capacities. An icon is a figure that you see through to
Christ, who is the definitive expression of God’s love, of
God’s unfathomable desire to be with us and redeem
us—we who have become strangers to him and to
ourselves in and through misguided uses of our freedom.
The saint is not the idol—a charismatic figure, a largerthan-life celebrity who arrests our attention. The saint
does not “sub-in” for Christ either permanently or—to
continue the sports metaphor—to give Christ a blow.
The saint is indeed a “light in the world,” but precisely
one who does not interpose herself between the believer
and Christ, thereby displacing Christ. While overall
Benedict believes that the Reformation went too far in
its assumption that there is necessarily a zero-sum game
between Christ and the saints (similarly a zero-sum
game between Christ and Mary); he is, nonetheless,
grateful to the Reformers for bringing to Christianity’s
attention the ever-present danger that the saint becomes
the idol, the one who is our last thing rather than the
true last thing, that is, the infinite triune God. Surely,
this has happened in the past and can happen in the
future. Benedict’s point is that when it happens, it is
purely a contingent affair. It happens, but there is no
inbuilt necessity for it to happen. And it won’t happen
if Christian vision is not distorted. Christianity is
not a religion of intermediaries in a great chain of
being between God and the world, in which the saints
function as semi-divine beings (daimons) filling in the
gaps between ourselves and the distant and unreachable
God. In a host of Ratzinger’s texts, but perhaps preeminently in his magisterial Jesus of Nazareth, Christ is
the one and only true mediator.
For Benedict, saints are real rather than ideal persons.
Saints are persons with particular strengths and
weaknesses, marked by different charisms, and all
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BENEDICT XVI ON THE SAINTS / CYRIL O’REGAN
saints live unrepeatable lives. They
are “heavenly” not because they
are angelically pure and outside
history and the complex contexts
in which all of us find ourselves
making decisions; but because, as
Paul says, they have “all run the
race” (1 Cor 9:24), and permitted
grace to raise them beyond their
frailties, and precisely to use these
frailties for the glory of God.
Frailties cover different aspects of
ourselves as embodied beings who
are creatures of God: vulnerabilities
such as fatigue and disappointment,
fear of pain, and fear of being in
the wrong or being alone; frailties
are also those capacities that we
almost have too much of and which
can just as easily get in the way of
a deep relation with God as they
can foster it; and finally frailties
can be characterized not simply as
what is human and creaturely in
us but as a disposition or pattern
of behavior that separates us from
God. With regard to the first, we
can see how Oscar Romero deals
with the all too human fear of
death and being in the wrong
as he makes his way towards
martyrdom. With regard to the
second—the frailty characterized
by what we have too much of
rather than too little—we can see
how if it initially obstructs, then
finally it becomes the instrument
of a profound relationship with
God. With Augustine this frailty is
passion; with Ignatius Loyola it is
the mentality of the warrior, with
Catherine of Siena it is a fearsome
and adamantine will, with Thérèse
of Lisieux it is her sense of her
own extraordinariness. It is in
conversion, or “turning around,”
that these would-be weaknesses are
made strengths: in Augustine in a
restless passion for God, in Ignatius
in the decision to serve the banner
of Christ, in Catherine of Siena
in coming to make one’s furious
will pliant and solely an expression
of God’s will, and in Thérèse in
putting one’s own extraordinariness
on the backburner to the
extraordinariness of God.
What we have too much of
(passion) and sometimes too little
of (energy), as well as our habits
of doing and non-doing, are not
neutral with respect to God. For
Benedict, if this gets twisted or
slanted in a certain way, we are
talking about sin and our capacity
to sin, and especially the tendency,
fathoms deep, to draw attention
to one’s deeds, aspirations, and
expressions of goodness—the
tendency, that is, to incurve, to
loop back to ourselves in admiring
self-regard and thus, after so much
promise, reduce Christ to the
status of an uninvited guest. To
avail of Facebook: one can see
with saints that they are suspicious
regarding the “friending” of Christ;
precisely in the act of friending
there may simultaneously be an act
of “unfriending.” Almost all of the
Christian saints were aware of just
how treacherous our self-regard is.
We have no sooner given it up, and
it returns through the back-door
to buffer us and to buff us up. And
this is why John Henry Newman—
who, with Augustine, is perhaps
one of Benedict’s theological
models—thought that when saints
speak of themselves as great sinners,
they are not posturing and not
vying with each other in some kind
of spiritual Olympiad as to who is
the most humble. They are being
totally realistic. Pride is literally the
X factor: it is variable rather than a
constant. You can be proud of your
looks, your position, your education,
your athletic accomplishments. You
can be proud of your total lack of
these. You can become proud of
your goodness and sweetness, of the
sacrifices that you have made, you
can become proud of how honest
you are with regard to your sins:
everywhere the emphasis falls on
my or mine. At any moment it can
happen: the mirror becomes the
world. And as you stand in front of
it and ask: “Mirror, mirror on the
wall, who is the fairest of us all?”,
you see yourself smiling back.
To assume the office of Peter—and
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger felt
this in the most acute fashion—is
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in the strict sense a “terrible”
thing. It is not only to assume
an extraordinary burden, but it
involves essentially a contraction
of oneself into the Tradition of
the Church and a fundamental
erasure of one’s own particular take
on things. It seems appropriate to
think that in becoming Benedict
XVI the erstwhile Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger has experienced the
pain of surrendering his privacy
and the quiet joy of being a
thinker who negotiates complex
theological issues, agreeing with
some theologians while disagreeing
with others. In one fairly obvious
sense, it probably was easier for
Ratzinger—although hardly easy—
than it would have been for other
major modern theologians, since
throughout his entire career as a
theologian he tried to express the
faith of the Church rather than
gain kudos for the brilliance of
his own views. Accordingly, his
articulation of the idea of the saint
is no exception. Sainthood has been
exhibited throughout history; it
is for us to see the spiritual depth
of the saints and their unique
witnessing to Christ. And it is not
as if the Church has not thought
deeply about sainthood in terms
of the requirement of grace and
how saints as such do not mediate
salvation. What is required is that
we remember what has been said,
whether by Augustine or Newman,
or by Bonaventure or Thomas
Aquinas. When we look at the high
view of the human being in
Pope Benedict XVI preaches his
homily during the canonization
Mass on October 17, 2010,
recounting the heroic virtues
of the six men and women to be
named saints in the Church.
Photo: Steven Scardina. Used with
permission. www.scardinaphoto.com.
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BENEDICT XVI ON THE SAINTS / CYRIL O’REGAN
Benedict’s encyclicals, we realize
that as Benedict is arguing for the
universal call to holiness, he is also
recalling the importance of the
theological virtues of faith, hope,
and charity as defining Christian
life and thus the life of the saint.
The saint, the first instance, is
the one who has faith, whose
two basic constituents are vision
and commitment: determinate
beliefs and doctrine arise out of
and explicate a vision, as ecclesial
practices and faith-filled forms of
life elucidate a commitment. Faith
is primitive and primordial; it
cannot be replaced by reason, no
matter what the amp. Second, the
life of the saint is a hope-filled life.
As Cardinal Ratzinger, the proper
understanding of hope was a major
concern. As Pope, Benedict XVI
puts a final seal to its importance
in his Encyclical Spe Salvi (Saved
in Hope). Whether as theologian,
cardinal, or Pope, Benedict relies
on the Tradition to avoid two
confusions: first, that hope and
optimism are synonymous or
nearly so; second, that hope rests
in the conviction that a just world
will be actual in the future and
that we have the means (political,
institutional, and moral) to
bring it about. Benedict cannot
think of Christianity as being a
“sunny” religion. He does think of
Christianity as “joyful,” but joy
occurs against the backdrop of
accepting pain, frustration, and
failure in life. And in his encyclicals
and also his non-papal Jesus of
Nazareth he inveighs against
confusing the Kingdom of God
with the kingdom of this world
and from having confidence that
a certain set of tactics or strategies
enables one to secure an unrepealable justice and peace. Justice
and peace are everywhere to be
sought, but (a) it is a more than
human justice and peace that is
truly desired, and (b) it is God and
not human beings who exercises
rule over history. The hope of the
sanctified Christian or saint is then
often more nearly hope against
hope and the posture of the saint in
the final instance when it comes to
outcomes is, “Thy will be done.”
The final and ultimate characteristic
of the saint is love. One cannot be
a disciple of Christ and not love;
for Christ is the full expression of
the triune God who is love. This is
the central vision of Christianity
and is articulated in its most
comprehensive form in Benedict’s
Encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God
is Love). The saint is a place where
love happens and is displayed in a
witnessing to God that goes beyond
an individual’s strength, and in
forgiving one’s enemies, which
is something that is more nearly
impossible than simply difficult
for us. I could say much more
here, but one point that should
almost certainly be made is that
Benedict is anxious to think of the
average Christian and the saint to
be on a continuum, rather than
the Christian and the saint to be
fundamentally distinct kinds of
Christian believer.
Is there anything uniquely
specifiying or individuating about
Benedict’s view of the saints? Or
put another way, are there any quite
specific influences that come out
in Benedict’s interests in the saint
and how he sees them? I think
the answer is yes, and here—as
with reflection on Christ, God,
and the Church—the influence
of Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs
von Balthasar is paramount. Early
in his theological career, Benedict
worries with de Lubac about the
tendency in the Catholic Church
to distinguish between ordinary,
or exoteric, and extraordinary,
esoteric forms of Christianity. Now
while this usually takes the form
of contrasting the institutional
Church and a charismatic elite, it
can also function to open up a
gap in reality rather than function
between saints and ordinary
members of the Church. Benedict
does not wish to criticize any of
the roles that saints have played
throughout history, but it is
important not to think of saints
as fundamentally different than
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the ordinary Christian, for this
is to make a Gnostic mistake—
similar in kind to thinking of
the Christian theologian, who
knows much and knows well, as
being the Christian exemplar.
And Benedict seems to have been
both generally and specifically
influenced by the reflections of
Hans Urs von Balthasar on the
nature of the saints. Balthasar
insisted on the continuum between
saints and the ordinary Christian
by thinking of each as being
supported and elevated by grace
and each as being specially called
by God. The difference between the
saint and the ordinary Christian
believer lies in the quality of the
response. In the case of the saint,
the response moves towards—but
does not realize—the total self-
giving manifest in the Incarnation,
Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ.
Unlike what we find in the Gospels,
in contrast to Christ, in every saint
there is something that resists full
conformity to the will of God
which is a will to unconditionally
trust, hope, and love.
But Benedict also seems to share
Balthasar’s sense that, as touched
by God’s glory, saints are tokens of
beauty in a world that is destitute of
it. To use the somewhat degraded
image, the saints are points of
divine light in the world, the
points at which the glory of God
shines and attracts. Balthasar is
not saying that saints are nice, or
that they are kinds of ornaments
of goodness. This is at once kitsch
and a colossal misunderstanding.
The lives of many of the saints are
hardly beautiful; their lives are
hard, traumatic, disease- and deathfilled. In short, in a worldly sense,
their lives are ugly—sometimes
incomparably ugly. Moreover, it is
only if one forgets that the saint
is a disciple of Christ that one
would ever have been inclined to
such a view. For the Cross itself is
terrible. Thus, if the life of Christ
onto the Cross is beautiful in
some fundamental way, it is, I take
it, a terrible beauty. I think, after
Balthasar, Benedict wishes to say
this, and to say no less than that the
saint forces us to reconsider what
we take to be beautiful, and what
we understand to be the beautiful
life. Even more than Balthasar,
Benedict understands our inherent
paganism on this score.
Speaking to the Modern World
Benedict wants contemporary Catholicism not only
to be unembarrassed by the saints and martyrs, but
to understand that the saints in their extraordinary
variety show us the almost infinite variety of ways to
be disciples of Christ and participators in the mystery
of God. His message is not simply directed to the
Church, but—in line with the double-sided reflection of
Vatican II (Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes)—is
also directed to the world. Of course, Benedict thinks
that the lives of the saints are as much an argument
for and a validation of Christianity as the rational
unfolding of the truths of Christianity, perhaps even
more. He cannot see why that would change even in the
profoundly confused modern period, in which there
was never so much invested in reason and never so much
lack of confidence in it. Of course, the signs are hardly
auspicious that saints will get a hearing.
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BENEDICT XVI ON THE SAINTS / CYRIL O’REGAN
Contemporary secular culture is
both relativistic and iconoclastic.
It is relativistic in two different
ways, although these ways usually
go together. On the one hand, the
secular world wants to refer to the
bevy of forms of sainthood and
excellence throughout history and
suggest that different cultures
and societies have different
constructions. And, of course,
Christians should beware of
thinking they have a monopoly.
There are Jewish and Muslim
saints, and there are “holy” men
and women in all the major
world religions. On the other, the
secularist also wants to suggest
that sainthood represents an idiom
of excess and fanaticism that is
dangerously uncontrollable, and
thus should be discouraged if not
shunned. Benedict keeps in mind
both Pascal and Newman on this
point: Pascal when he says that
the new world order emerging in
the seventeenth century is that
of l’ homme moyen sensuel (“the
average sensual man”) and Newman
in the nineteenth century when he
suggests that under the umbrella of
enlightened Christianity the saint
has been replaced by the citizen,
the good enough person whose
virtues fundamentally amount to
socially approved vices, such as
making money and lots of it. It is
not surprising, therefore, that these
relativistic views are supported by
the pathological construction of the
actual or would-be saint. That is,
the constitutive lack of moderation
in the saint speaks to an unhealthy
lack of balance. In Dostoyevsky,
we find an analysis of this “lack of
balance” in the parallel he draws
between saint and criminal, as
he illustrates the kind of social
maladjustment that is the common
measure of both, even if they are
mirror images. Of course, neither
saint nor criminal is concerned to
conform to society’s expectations,
but for entirely different reasons.
The secular age is prepared to
use this Dostoyevskian analysis
of the proximity of the saint and
the criminal against Christianity:
the saint is unhealthy and is an
unhealthy influence on any and all
who would be well-adjusted, as well
as up-to-date.
These two sides of the relativistic
modern age militate against the
acceptance of the very idea of the
saint. And then there is the natural
iconoclastic tendency of modern
culture: its tendency to level even as
it arbitrarily elevates. For example,
Mother Teresa’s apparently heroic
sacrifice in the streets of Calcutta
over a period of sixty years becomes
for a secularist like Hitchens a sign
of adamantine stubbornness and
feral stupidity—in her not realizing
that the alleviation of poverty and
disease is rightly programmatic,
rather than a particular response
to a leper dying in the streets for
whom you can only give palliative
care. In significant respects
iconoclasm with respect to the
saint is similar to the iconoclasm
exercised with respect to athletic
and military heroes, as well as those
who either hold important office
or happen to be celebrities. The
saint and these others provide an
opportunity for spectacle: one part
Schadenfreude (joy in their fall from
grace) and one part moral lesson,
which puts the unmasker in the
position of control, of being at once
cynic and ardent moralist. Perhaps,
however, in the contemporary
world, the take-down of the wouldbe saint is often more virulent and
unyielding. There is a slight margin
of forgivability for heroes, officials,
and celebrities, for they do not
dare deny that they have clay feet.
Thus, the bulimic and self-involved
Lady Diana can find some measure
of exculpation in the tabloids the
very same week that Mother Teresa
is condemned. On the secularist
account, frailty is supposedly what
saints and their supporters deny.
Now this despite the fact that the
secularists are at the same time
accusing the saints of another
bigotry: that is, the claim that we
are all sinners, and they themselves
most of all.
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One can think of Benedict’s Encyclical Caritas in
Veritate (Charity in Truth) as a kind of commentary on
the secularist attack against the idea of the Christian
saint: when Benedict speaks to the excess of charity
over justice, he points to what is unprogrammatic about
Christianity—that the Church is charged not only with
the alleviation of material suffering, but with being the
custodian of the Yes that God says to each person at the
time of creation and renews in the redemption wrought
by Jesus Christ. Benedict is mindful of Dostoyevsky’s
diagnosis of the constitutive dilemma of the modern
do-gooder, whether utopian or non-utopian, that is, that
they are much more comfortable dealing with human
beings in general than dealing with this broken and
flawed human being in particular, who might invalidate
one’s prejudices about the noble poor.
Benedict understands that there is a trap, and wants
the secular world to admit that it has set it. But in the
meantime, the Christian is called to holiness, to let her
life be a light in the Church and in the world. This is
the way it has always been, and though we understand
that our circumstances are dire, we have no way of
gauging whether or not the obstacles set by the modern
age are intrinsically more serious than other times in
which the very idea of sainthood was also challenged.
We can think of the early Church, and of Origen in
particular, who had to justify martyrdom in a world
that did not have conceptual means to see the point. So
having discerned the specific difficulties of the modern
period, one has simply to go on to shape a life according
to the truth, and to do so without absolute guarantees
and certainly without the guarantee of the applause of
a world which constructs the saints as constitutionally
odd and unhealthy. Doubtless, this demands courage.
But, for Benedict, the emphasis does not fall here. To
believe that the saint is the model for every Christian
is to be convinced that the Christian life is true and
that this truth shows itself. It shows itself where it
does; and one can no more completely repress it than
make sure that it is seen for what it truly is. All of this
is God’s business. Our task is to live the Christian
life. That there will be pain is perfectly evident. But
in the end, Benedict wants to say that the life of the
saint is luminous and beautiful even in suffering and
death; that since the life illustrates faith and hope
and above all love, it is the measure of the reasonable.
Moreover, a life that is defined by a particular vocation
and represents an obedient answer to the call of God
to be whom you are meant to be: this bespeaks a life
of genuine freedom. For what else is freedom but your
uncoerced response of yes to God’s Yes to you, that was
so unconditionally and so gratuitously given?
†
Cyril O’Regan is the Catherine F.
Huisking Chair in Theology at the
University of Notre Dame. His latest book
is The Anatomy of Misremembering:
Von Balthasar’s Response to
Philosophical Modernity. Vol. 1:
Hegel (New York: Crossroad, 2014).
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