Faith: The pope's Latin measuring rods

WASHINGTON, July 31 (UPI) -- You might wonder why the ailing Pope John Paul II, who canonized the first native-American Monday in Mexico, is the unsurpassed world champion in elevating holy people to the sainthood.

A look into the Greek-English dictionary gives you a clue: The term, Kanon, translates into straight rod in the sense of measuring stick. And that is a useful device in this diffuse postmodern era.

In canonizing Juan Diego, a 16th-century Chichimeq nobleman, the 82-year old pontiff acted true to his principal mission as apostle to the world -- he pointed the faithful to yet another example against which they are to measure themselves.

By now John Paul II has canonized 464 people, more than all his predecessors since 1588, when the current, lengthy and costly procedure for this Catholic exercise was first put in place. Furthermore, he beatified 1,250.

Those who are canonized are called saints and must be venerated by the worldwide church. Those who have been beatified are known as the Blessed and revered regionally.

During his current Central American pilgrimage, John Paul II also elevated a 17th-century Spanish missionary to sainthood in Guatemala -- the first in that region. And he beatified two others.

Protestants, a growing minority in Latin America, disagree with Roman Catholics over what constitutes a saint. They follow Martin Luther's Gospel-based definition of saints as "baptized Christians, who love God's word, hold onto it and die in it."

Protestants may invoke the names of saints, but only to pray with them, certainly not to them. For example, in a Lutheran service, the presiding minister might say, "With Mary, the mother of our Lord, with St. Augustine, St. Jerome, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and all the saints we beseech thee, o God ... "

Reformation-era sacred paintings illustrated this Protestant form of hagiology -- hagios is the Greek word for saint -- beautifully: While the living communicants kneel in a semi-circle in front of the altar to receive the sacrament, the dead or saints do the same in a shadowy semi-circle behind the altar.

Together, the living and the dead, saints all, constitute the body of Christ, uniting at this moment with him, the head of the church.

Roman Catholics accord the saints a seemingly more elaborate status. While, strictly speaking, reserving God alone the adoration, Augustine taught, they nevertheless honor the saints because of the divine super-national gifts that have earned them eternal life.

By these gifts they now reign with God as his chosen and faithful friends in heaven, the Catholic Encyclopedia explains. "In other words, Catholics honor God in his saints as the loving distributor of supernatural gifts."

Most Protestants oppose the invocation of saints because in their view it diminishes Christ's role as sole mediator between God and man. The Catholic Encyclopedia retorts, "There is indeed one mediator of God and man, the man Jesus Christ.

"But he is our mediator in his quality of our common redeemer; he is not our sole intercessor nor advocate, nor our sole mediator by way of supplication."

Until the fourth century, only martyrs were canonized. Since then, "confessors" -- Christians who died peacefully after a life of heroic virtue -- were accorded this status as well. Until the 10th century, ordinary bishops could do this. Since then they were only allowed to beatify. The recognition of an individual's sainthood was the prerogative of the pontiff.

But since the 17th century, the popes claim the sole right to accord a deceased person the titles "blessed" or "saint." This follows a lengthy process similar to a court procedure, in which convincing evidence must be provided that at least two miracles can be attributed to the candidate's intercession.

This process starts with inquiries at a local diocesan level and then moves up to the Vatican's Congregation of Rites that was created in 1588 and consists of 25 cardinals, archbishops and bishops, plus six other prelates and 71 advisors.

When the congregation has completed its investigation, the pope consults three separate consistories. There is a secret consistory that includes only cardinals. Then there is an official one made up of cardinals, other senior church officials and lay dignitaries, and finally a semi-official consistory of cardinals and all bishops who happen to be in Rome at the time.

Only after these consultations does the pope declare someone a saint. The legal cost of each case is estimated at $250,000.

Vatican source told United Press International that 1,500 cases are still pending -- 1,500 potential measuring rods. If you want to be so gross this translates into 1,500 measuring rods for Christians. And they'd be worth $375 million in secular currency.