The Roman Catholic Church’s theology of saints is un-biblical, the Bishop of North Sydney, Dr Glenn Davies has argued, as it creates extra-Biblical criteria of holiness that subordinates divine actions to human works.Writing on the website of Anglican Media Sydney in the wake of the Vatican’s announcement that Pope Benedict XVI had confirmed a second miracle attributed to Mary MacKillop --- leading to her likely canonization as Australia’s first Roman Catholic saint --- Dr Davies, the Australian head of the Evangelical Fellowship of the Anglican Communion (EFAC), questioned the theology of sainthood espoused by the Catholic Church.
“To award [MacKillop] with sainthood for these achievements and two alleged miracles is to misunderstand what the Bible describes as the qualifications of a saint,” he wrote on Dec 22.
Under Catholic canon law, two miracles must be officially attributed to an individual for that person to be canonized. In 1993 the Vatican held that Mother Mary MacKillop --- the founder of the Sisters of Saint Joseph in Nineteenth century Australia --- was responsible for miraculously curing a woman who had leukemia in 1961, after the women prayed for her intercession.
On Dec 19 Pope Benedict confirmed her second miracle, after the Vatican held that a woman suffering from inoperable lung cancer in 1995 was cured by Mother Mary’s intercession. The dying woman was given a relic of Mother Mary’s to wear and the sisters of the order prayed for her, and the woman was healed of her cancer.
Catholic Archbishop Philip Wilson said news that the Vatican had the second miracle "paved the way for her to be declared Australia's first saint.”
"Born in Melbourne, and fired by a deep desire to serve God and to help alleviate the plight of the poor, Mary was an ordinary person who lived a holy life," he told reporters, while Sister Anne Derwin of Sisters of Saint Joseph, said the canonization would "inspire future generations both in Australia and throughout the world".
Dr Davies was less sanguine. “Now no one wishes to belittle Mary MacKillop’s achievement in Australia — the founding of a religious order and her work among the poor with the establishment of an orphanage, a women’s refuge and a home for older women.
“It is not the woman but the theology behind this move with which Anglicans would disagree,” he said. “Anyone whose sins have been forgiven by God, through faith in Jesus Christ, is a saint,” he said, as it is not the “achievements of a person’s life, but rather the gift of God through Christ, that makes us saints.”
The Catholic Church’s canonization process “obscures the importance of God’s description of his people and replaces it with a human analysis of miracle working. Who can prove that the reported miracles were actually the work of Mary MacKillop?” Dr Davies asked.
The New Testament describes all Christians as saints, he observed. Being a saint is a “title that God has bestowed upon us through our union with Christ, and we should therefore own it with pride,” Dr Davies said.
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