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As I was reviewing page proofs for the book Are Canonizations Infallible? Revisiting a Disputed Question, I was struck once again by the account that was given during John Paul II’s pontificate of why so very many people “had” to be beatified and canonized starting in 1983. The rationale was this: the Church taught at Vatican II that holiness is everyone’s calling. And since the Church always remains faithful to Christ, there must therefore be a whole lot of saints in every category, especially from recent times, that need to be accelerated through the process in order to provide lots of examples and encouragement.
Now, this is a curious mixture of truths and falsehoods. It is of course true that the Church will always produce sanctity; no age is without saints. But it is not true that we can, as it were, crank up the factory and simply make more saints while maintaining the most rigorous standards of what constitutes publicly venerable holiness, or Christian perfection in charity. Nor is it by any means guaranteed that any particular age will be more fruitful than, or even equally fruitful as, any other age in verifiable saints. It could well be that modernity erects more barriers to the achievement of beatifiable and canonizable holiness. Indeed, this seems to be implied in Leo XIII’s letter Testem Benevolentiae.
One claim I have frequently seen in the literature surrounding John Paul II’s pontificate is that he wanted to present lots of examples of married sanctity to the laity. In and of itself, and taking into account the caveats of the preceding paragraph, we can say this is a laudable intention. For instance, we can rejoice in Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who, living relatively near to us in history, make spousal and parental holiness more vivid to our eyes. One also occasionally meets with cynical interpretations of hagiography that accuse the Church of denigrating marriage and promoting only a celibate model of sanctity. While some writers over the centuries doubtless had an axe to grind with marriage, this is by no means an operative assumption, nor is the dogmatic teaching that virginity consecrated to Christ is a more perfect state of life incompatible with a generous estimation of the good of sacramental marriage.
A way to see that the Church has not, in fact, been slow to recognize the sanctity of married couples and parents is to become more familiar with the traditional Roman Martyrology, which, as I have grown familiar with it over the years, has placed before me daily after Prime a remarkable procession of spouses, parents, and widows who have been part of our collective memory and liturgical worship for untold centuries. I continue to believe that it is highly valuable to read the Martyrology daily, for it furnishes a fuller picture of the models of sanctity venerated by the Catholic Church than the vastly smaller number of saints who are venerated in the Mass itself can give us by itself.
When we look more closely, we find in fact quite a good number of married saintly couples listed in the traditional Martyrology. By this, I mean something very specific: an entry that lists both the husband and the wife as saints. There are, as one would imagine, many more that list a saintly man or woman, husband or wife, without making mention of the other spouse or parent; and there are times when the whole family is martyred but only the husband is named. These have also been listed, because they too bear witness to the sanctity achievable in the married state and in the responsibilities of parenthood. (I have also included a few entries that speak of continent marriages, but these are few in number compared to the other categories.) It should also go without saying that plenty of other saints in the Martyrology would, in fact, have been married and/or parents, but here I am listing only those where the text itself includes such a description.
This article concludes with a litany in the usual style, for devotional use.
Continued below.
New Liturgical Movement: Married Couples Recorded in the Roman Martyrology, with a Litany for Private Use
Now, this is a curious mixture of truths and falsehoods. It is of course true that the Church will always produce sanctity; no age is without saints. But it is not true that we can, as it were, crank up the factory and simply make more saints while maintaining the most rigorous standards of what constitutes publicly venerable holiness, or Christian perfection in charity. Nor is it by any means guaranteed that any particular age will be more fruitful than, or even equally fruitful as, any other age in verifiable saints. It could well be that modernity erects more barriers to the achievement of beatifiable and canonizable holiness. Indeed, this seems to be implied in Leo XIII’s letter Testem Benevolentiae.
One claim I have frequently seen in the literature surrounding John Paul II’s pontificate is that he wanted to present lots of examples of married sanctity to the laity. In and of itself, and taking into account the caveats of the preceding paragraph, we can say this is a laudable intention. For instance, we can rejoice in Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who, living relatively near to us in history, make spousal and parental holiness more vivid to our eyes. One also occasionally meets with cynical interpretations of hagiography that accuse the Church of denigrating marriage and promoting only a celibate model of sanctity. While some writers over the centuries doubtless had an axe to grind with marriage, this is by no means an operative assumption, nor is the dogmatic teaching that virginity consecrated to Christ is a more perfect state of life incompatible with a generous estimation of the good of sacramental marriage.
A way to see that the Church has not, in fact, been slow to recognize the sanctity of married couples and parents is to become more familiar with the traditional Roman Martyrology, which, as I have grown familiar with it over the years, has placed before me daily after Prime a remarkable procession of spouses, parents, and widows who have been part of our collective memory and liturgical worship for untold centuries. I continue to believe that it is highly valuable to read the Martyrology daily, for it furnishes a fuller picture of the models of sanctity venerated by the Catholic Church than the vastly smaller number of saints who are venerated in the Mass itself can give us by itself.
When we look more closely, we find in fact quite a good number of married saintly couples listed in the traditional Martyrology. By this, I mean something very specific: an entry that lists both the husband and the wife as saints. There are, as one would imagine, many more that list a saintly man or woman, husband or wife, without making mention of the other spouse or parent; and there are times when the whole family is martyred but only the husband is named. These have also been listed, because they too bear witness to the sanctity achievable in the married state and in the responsibilities of parenthood. (I have also included a few entries that speak of continent marriages, but these are few in number compared to the other categories.) It should also go without saying that plenty of other saints in the Martyrology would, in fact, have been married and/or parents, but here I am listing only those where the text itself includes such a description.
This article concludes with a litany in the usual style, for devotional use.
Continued below.
New Liturgical Movement: Married Couples Recorded in the Roman Martyrology, with a Litany for Private Use
