Sorry, got distracted from the topic for a moment.

Cardinal Newman, eh. On the way to becoming ratified as a saint. Hmmm.

To an outsider, the "justification" seems horribly thin.

That's not of concern to anyone except the church itself, of course.

But it is interesting to speculate exactly why the process is becoming increasingly reliant upon what can best be described as "third-party" miracles.

There was a time when it was essential that the candidate had been eaten by lions (St. Ignatius), peppered with arrows (St Sebastian) or at the very least, beheaded (St Alban).

(If you chose to martyr yourself as a team - as did the "Forty Martyrs of Sebaste" - you don't get to be a saint. Despite the fact that you were first stripped naked and frozen overnight, then burned in the morning. There's no pleasing some people, is there?)

Over the years the qualification requirements became increasingly... detached, shall we say, from the individual concerned, and the process now seems to rely on reports of "successful" invocations.

To an impartial observer, this might seem to provide the congregation with a far less potent symbol through which their faith is personified. Which is I guess progress, after a fashion. And quite typical of the times in which we live, too.

But no matter.

For me, Newman deserves to be canonized on the strength of "Gerontius" alone, for inspiring Elgar to write some of the most passionate life-and-death music, ever. Right up there with Mozart.

Nice one John.

Incidentally, does anyone know of someone who has been scratched from the waiting list? Or do they just hang around, as it were, until sufficient miracles are recorded?

Just interested.

Peri (cles)- you have dishonored this Greek statesman's name, so won't use it

Here you go again making ill-considered comments. It was compulsory (you know - no choice) to join the Hitler Youth. Didn't you know that?

Whether it is the careful work of Catholic spin doctors or not, there is more evidence that Ratzinger was a reluctant and disobedient member of the Hitler Youth - and a deserter, at that - than anything else. That this is used against him so frequently suggests either that there is nothing else to hold against him or that his accusers are simply too lazy to find something solid. Few men rise to his status without a skeleton or two, so I would suspect the latter is the case.

As for Newman, I should clarify my earlier comment. Whether or not he was a homosexual is really of no consequence. The processes of the Church have found him worthy of sainthood and, as such, sainthood will be conferred. Good for him. If Peter Tatchell wants to make some mileage out of it, good for him.

If I had been a member of Hitler Youth, I'd want to play it down too.

But this is all about re-writing - or at least, re-nuancing - history, isn't it.

>>...there is more evidence that Ratzinger was a reluctant and disobedient member of the Hitler Youth - and a deserter, at that - than anything else.<<

Like so many others, he "deserted" in the final days of the war. Fair enough. I doubt he was the only scared teenager to do so, they were pretty horrific times.

But that really isn't the point here.

It was the Pope's reference to the "Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society", when that organization was so clearly based upon the Christian religion, and guided by a person who insisted that he was doing the Lord's work.

One of the ugliest aspects of the Church is, and has always been, its unwillingness to accept that it has erred - in any way, at any time - except under the strongest and most persistent pressure. Without an acceptance that Germany, and the Nazis, were populated predominantly by Catholics, and that the wartime Papacy leaned significantly towards the Nazi camp, this remark of his stands out as both tasteless and inflammatory.

The relevance of fact that Ratzinger was a member of Hitler Youth has little to do with the leanings and intentions of a teenage German in that period of history.

But everything to do with the fact that he should know, first hand, that the church - his church - was in no way and by no means blamesless.

Valid point, Pericles. I could make all sorts of excuses for the Catholic Church at the time - that the Vatican existed purely at the mercy of Mussolini, that the Church was under pressure from Hitler's 'new' and semi-pagan church - but the fact remains that, if the Church was the beacon of goodness and justice it claimed to be, it should have allowed its own martyrdom as a consequence of standing up to Hitler and his cronies.

Perocles,

Easy to say "oh the errs of the Catholic Church". Try to imagine what it would have been like living under Nazism.

"Many Catholics and Lutheran openly opposed Hitler, risking death.

Hitler came to power in 1933. In December of that year, Cardinal Michael Faulhaber, the "Lion of Munich," delivered a sermon in defense of biblical Judaism. When the persecution escalated, he spoke more directly to the point:

"History teaches us that God always punished the tormenters of…the Jews. No Roman Catholic approves of the persecutions of Jews in Germany."

In October 1938, the chief rabbi of Munich told Cardinal Faulhaber that he feared his synagogue would be burned. The Cardinal provided a truck to transport the Torah scrolls and other important things from the synagogue for safekeeping in his palace. Nazi mobs gathered outside the palace, screaming, "Away with Faulhaber, the Jew- friend!"

But Faulhaber and other bishops, including Conrad Cardinal Count von Preysing of Berlin and Bishop Clemens August Count von Galen of Muenster, continued to speak out in defense of the Jews in sermons and pastoral letters. (It was von Galen went to Rome to plan the resettlement of German Jews in Sao Paulo Brazil with Pope Pius XI.)

Faulhaber's books were banned, and in 1934 and 1938 attempts were made to assassinate him. He continued to preach against the Nazis until the end of the war.

In Stuttgart, the Resistance developed a well-organized underground to help the Jews to escape. In Hamburg, Raphaels Verein, a Catholic lay association, helped Jews to emigrate until they were shut down by the Gestapo in 1941.

Also in 1941, Fr. Bernard Lichtenberg, a priest at the St. Hedwig Cathedral Church in Berlin, declared in a sermon that he would include the Jews in his daily prayers "because synagogues have been set afire and Jewish businesses have been destroyed."8 He was arrested for subversive activities and sent first to prison and then to a concentration camp. He asked to be sent to the Jewish ghetto at Lodz, but died on his way to Dachau."