Now I don't normally go bashing anyone for their beliefs, but the latest news to hit the headlines has, to my mind at least, started to stretch credulity a bit too far.
We already have fast food, fast cars and fast weddings and now the church are about to give us fast sainthood's!
Leading on from the gathered crowds chant of "santu subito" ( 'make him a saint now' or 'saint immediately' ) at the now deceased Pope John Paul II's funeral on April 8th 2005, the current pope and church leaders are in motion to do away with years worth of debating and red tape to streamline the process. In fact Pope Benedict XVI himself has been quoted as saying "do it quickly".
To start with they have done away with the minimum of 5 years after death restriction before allowing the process to be started.
Next, the initial phases of a sainthood which usually take decades, and in some cases has been drawn out over hundreds of years is being streamlined, with Pope John Paul II's own submission having been completed in less than three years.
And finally, in order to become a saint it requires a person to first be beatified following a first approved miracle, and then further elevated to canonisation following a second. However there are strong indications that this second miracle prerequisite is also soon to be abolished.
Now, while this all seems to be good news, I personally feel that this could very well be a slippery slope, especially when you start to take a closer look at recent miracles and their frequency.
During almost a 27 year pontification, Pope John Paul II beautified 1,340 people and canonised 483 saints, meaning that he approved at least 1,823 miracles ( more than 1 every week on average ), which is more than all his predecessors over the past five centuries.
Having researched a few of the miracles recently attributed to saints, many of them involve apparent healing of diseases of removing of dangerous cancers, often never actually involving direct physical contact with the saint, and which in all fairness could be nothing more than a mis-diagosis by the attending physician.
Furthermore, Pope John Paul II's own miracle is said to be the curing of a nun in Aix-en-Provence (over 600km away) who was suffering with a serious disease.
Apparently she prayed to him for healing and exactly two months after his death she felt better and was 'miraculously' free of her malady, at least according to her doctors and physicians. There is no mention of what might happen if the disease should later reappear, but it is unlikely that it would lead to any retractions.
Now it might be me, but doesn't the news of a man who spent the last three decades of his life seeing miracles ever week waiting until two months after his own death before performing long distance healing from beyond the grave have a rather worrying or ominous overtone.
Or the fact that following an already massive surge in recognised miracles that the Vatican is now streamlining the red tape in order to make more saints and quicker than ever before all seem like the top echelons are just greasing the wheels thus guarantee their own positions?
All I can say is that when I learned that there was a veritable explosion of new saints, with miracles being approved on almost a daily basis, then I have to wonder is the structure and spirituality of it all being diluted. Finally, if miracles are indeed going on every week then why is there still widespread hunger, poverty and conflict causing pain and suffering to millions all around the globe.
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