So what will it mean? St JP2-St.John23?

[SouthpawLink]

Because they have decided to not follow what the Church teaches about infallbility in regards to the Saints, just because a person is Canonized does not guarantee that they practiced heroic virtue, only that they are in Heaven.

"The Catholic Church canonizes or beatifies only those whose lives have been marked by the exercise of heroic virtue, and only after this has been proved by common repute for sanctity and by conclusive arguments. ...  The reason of this veneration lies, doubtless, in the resemblance of the confessors' self-denying and heroically virtuous lives to the sufferings of the martyrs; such lives could truly be called prolonged martyrdoms. ...  Equivalent canonization occurs when the pope, omitting the judicial process and the ceremonies, orders some servant of God to be venerated in the Universal Church; this happens when such a saint has been from a remote period the object of veneration, when his heroic virtues (or martyrdom) and miracles are related by reliable historians, and the fame of his miraculous intercession is uninterrupted. ...  [In the beatification of confessors, heroic virtue is examined in steps 16-18.]" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Beatification and Canonization).

"The Church is infallible so that it may be a trustworthy teacher of the Christian religion and of the Christian way of life.  But it would not be such if it could err in the canonization of saints.  Would not religion be sullied if a person in hell were, by a definitive decree, offered to everyone as an object of religious veneration?  Would not the moral law be at least weakened to some extent, if a protégé of the devil could be irrevocably set up as a model of virtue for all to imitate and for all to invoke?" (Msgr. Van Noort, Christ's Church, ch. III, art. IV, prop. 2, assert. V).

The Church may not be able to infallibly define that a confessor exercised a life of heroic virtue, but she is to make certain that only those who can be reasonably proved to have done so are to be canonized.  There are obvious, public/televised doubts about the life of John Paul II and they have not been resolved to date.

[Gerard]

Thanks for the edit. To be fair, your questions were not addressed to me, so I didn't feel any obligation to answer them.  Perhaps I shouldn't have even quoted them in the first place.  Personally, I happen to think your stance is wrong. 

Okay.  You don't feel any obligation to rebut my points about why i think I'm right.  But you just happen to think I'm wrong based on something other than my points being wrong. 

To me, the question I asked you (and could have been asked of anyone who agrees with you) is absolutely a question of fallibility and infallibility.

Not really.  You asked me to take the mantle of infallibility and define which canonized saints were not so.  You are making it a question of infallibility and who can claim it.  Not whether infallibility as defined by the Church is applicable in this function. 

This isn't about asking someone to judge another.

It certainly is, the Pope is judging whether or not someone's interior disposition of the soul met God's satisfaction at their particular judgement.

If the canonizations are fallible, then that means that lay Catholics CAN question who is and isn't in Heaven/we CAN question the decisions made by previous popes about who is and isn't in Heaven.

They can question till the cows come home, but they don't have any more infallibility than the Pope does in determining who is in Heaven.  The Pope has the legislative power to add or remove names to the canon of saints.  No one else in the Church has that power. 

If the canonizations are infallible, OTOH, then those men and women are in Heaven and lay Catholics can NOT question it.

Sure they can, because the entire Church would be undermined.  The dogma that Public Revelation closed with the death of the Apostle, which would mean that the Church was wrong on a dogma concerning the faith.  That would mean the Church has failed, which would undermine the dogma of infallibility and the whole thing falls apart in contradiction.

So, if you believe that canonizations are fallible, then there are any number of men and women that Catholics over the years could have said, "Nope, I don't believe they are in Heaven; the Church is wrong."

That would be rash judgment since the Church has never allowed any particular person to be condemned to Hell, since ironically, no one can know the interior disposition of the soul except God Himself.  In other words the Church claims ignorance on this.  But theologians who are not the Magisterium claim the opposite concerning the Revelation that a particular soul is in Heaven.  If infallibility in canonizations were true, the Church would have a Canon of the Damned which would serve as a warning to others, just as the Canon of Saints serves as a model to emulate.  That is putting aside how all of that shreds the dogma of the Church concerning the nature of Revelation. 

[Gerard]

But it would not be such if it could err in the canonization of saints.  Would not religion be sullied if a person in hell were, by a definitive decree, offered to everyone as an object of religious veneration?  Would not the moral law be at least weakened to some extent, if a protégé of the devil could be irrevocably set up as a model of virtue for all to imitate and for all to invoke?"

And how would the identity of a person in Hell be revealed so as to cause this scandal? 

[voxxpopulisuxx]

There's a lot I don't understand, but I'll start by asking this: Why couldn't these 2 upcoming 'canonizations' be doubted without doubting that we have a pope?

Because if he is Pope...he will be asserting something that all the fathfull must accept as true...that these two personages are equals of the apostles in venerableness.

Stop exaggerating, it is saying they are in heaven, it doesn't assign them a score equal in merit to the Apostles or the Virgin Mary, or the Angels. 

So when you pray to all the Saints on all Saints day will you say, All you Saints except JP II and John XIII?  You even said in your rant directed at me farther up that you accepted the possibility of them being in purgatory? How do you know they are not in Heaven?

Listen you rant too...sometimes its called for...so that ad hominum you can put back in your pocket.

A saint proclaimed venerable and worthy of a cultus is a far different matter than simply proclaiming someone in heaven. If one is proclaimed a saint they are placed right next St Joseph and the Apostles...the saint martyrs...Churches are built in their name...the laity are encouraged to speak to them and ask for their help...etc...etc...and the fact that you make no distinction between Nice Aunt tootsy who died a faithfully practicing Catholic mother...in the arms of her parish priest after receiving last rites. And Glorious St Joseph or St Gertrude...or St Patrick....shows how very stupefying the false obedience necter can be.

[voxxpopulisuxx]

But it would not be such if it could err in the canonization of saints.  Would not religion be sullied if a person in hell were, by a definitive decree, offered to everyone as an object of religious veneration?  Would not the moral law be at least weakened to some extent, if a protégé of the devil could be irrevocably set up as a model of virtue for all to imitate and for all to invoke?"

And how would the identity of a person in Hell be revealed so as to cause this scandal?

There would be a violation of the truth. And it would make a mockery of God...and please the devil. Just because the poor dupes never know (until their death) doesn't make it right.

[SouthpawLink]

But it would not be such if it could err in the canonization of saints.  Would not religion be sullied if a person in hell were, by a definitive decree, offered to everyone as an object of religious veneration?  Would not the moral law be at least weakened to some extent, if a protégé of the devil could be irrevocably set up as a model of virtue for all to imitate and for all to invoke?"

And how would the identity of a person in Hell be revealed so as to cause this scandal?

The souls of the damned cannot perform miracles, can they?  No, it would seem that they're made silent (Luke 16), or that they lose their identity (relatively speaking) when they become servants of Satan.

How is it that the Church is so careless as to not recognize that declarations of canonization are acts of public revelation?  How is it that no one's ever addressed this, going on for several hundred years now, except for... you?

They are truths closely connected to revelation, while not themselves being a part of revelation.

[nmoerbeek]

Because they have decided to not follow what the Church teaches about infallbility in regards to the Saints, just because a person is Canonized does not guarantee that they practiced heroic virtue, only that they are in Heaven.

"The Catholic Church canonizes or beatifies only those whose lives have been marked by the exercise of heroic virtue, and only after this has been proved by common repute for sanctity and by conclusive arguments. ...  The reason of this veneration lies, doubtless, in the resemblance of the confessors' self-denying and heroically virtuous lives to the sufferings of the martyrs; such lives could truly be called prolonged martyrdoms. ...  Equivalent canonization occurs when the pope, omitting the judicial process and the ceremonies, orders some servant of God to be venerated in the Universal Church; this happens when such a saint has been from a remote period the object of veneration, when his heroic virtues (or martyrdom) and miracles are related by reliable historians, and the fame of his miraculous intercession is uninterrupted. ...  [In the beatification of confessors, heroic virtue is examined in steps 16-18.]" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Beatification and Canonization).

"The Church is infallible so that it may be a trustworthy teacher of the Christian religion and of the Christian way of life.  But it would not be such if it could err in the canonization of saints.  Would not religion be sullied if a person in hell were, by a definitive decree, offered to everyone as an object of religious veneration?  Would not the moral law be at least weakened to some extent, if a protégé of the devil could be irrevocably set up as a model of virtue for all to imitate and for all to invoke?" (Msgr. Van Noort, Christ's Church, ch. III, art. IV, prop. 2, assert. V).

The Church may not be able to infallibly define that a confessor exercised a life of heroic virtue, but she is to make certain that only those who can be reasonably proved to have done so are to be canonized.  There are obvious, public/televised doubts about the life of John Paul II and they have not been resolved to date.

Read a bit farther down in the same Catholic Encyclopedia

What is the object of this infallible judgment of the pope? Does he define that the person canonized is in heaven or only that he has practiced Christian virtues in an heroic degree? I have never seen this question discussed; my own opinion is that nothing else is defined than that the person canonized is in heaven. The formula used in the act of canonization has nothing more than this:

"In honour of . . . we decree and define that Blessed N. is a Saint, and we inscribe his name in the catalogue of saints, and order that his memory by devoutly and piously celebrated yearly on the . . . day of . . . his feast."

(Ad honorem . . . beatum N. Sanctum esse decernimus et definimus ac sanctorum catalogo adscribimus statuentes ab ecclesiâ universali illius memoriam quolibet anno, die ejus natali . . . piâ devotione recoli debere.)

There is no question of heroic virtue in this formula; on the other hand, sanctity does not necessarily imply the exercise of heroic virtue, since one who had not hitherto practised heroic virtue would, by the one transient heroic act in which he yielded up his life for Christ, have justly deserved to be considered a saint. This view seems all the more certain if we reflect that all the arguments of theologians for papal infallibility in the canonization of saints are based on the fact that on such occasions the popes believe and assert that the decision which they publish is infallible (Pesch, Prael. Dogm., I, 552).

[nmoerbeek]

There's a lot I don't understand, but I'll start by asking this: Why couldn't these 2 upcoming 'canonizations' be doubted without doubting that we have a pope?

Because if he is Pope...he will be asserting something that all the fathfull must accept as true...that these two personages are equals of the apostles in venerableness.

Stop exaggerating, it is saying they are in heaven, it doesn't assign them a score equal in merit to the Apostles or the Virgin Mary, or the Angels. 

So when you pray to all the Saints on all Saints day will you say, All you Saints except JP II and John XIII?  You even said in your rant directed at me farther up that you accepted the possibility of them being in purgatory? How do you know they are not in Heaven?

Listen you rant too...sometimes its called for...so that ad hominum you can put back in your pocket.

A saint proclaimed venerable and worthy of a cultus is a far different matter than simply proclaiming someone in heaven. If one is proclaimed a saint they are placed right next St Joseph and the Apostles...the saint martyrs...Churches are built in their name...the laity are encouraged to speak to them and ask for their help...etc...etc...and the fact that you make no distinction between Nice Aunt tootsy who died a faithfully practicing Catholic mother...in the arms of her parish priest after receiving last rites. And Glorious St Joseph or St Gertrude...or St Patrick....shows how very stupefying the false obedience necter can be.

Vox could you point out to me where I am drinking the false obedience nectar?

That I accept the Church's judgement that if JPII is canonized he is in heaven?
That I believe that the process for Canonization and the way Saints have been proclaimed has Changed many times?
That I believe the canonization is infallible in so far that it declares that person is in heaven?
That I am not throwing a fit over his canonization?

Or perhaps it is something else?

[SouthpawLink]

Yes, nmoerbeek, I read that section as well, and I granted in my post that heroic virtue need not be infallibly declared.  The Church still has the obligation, however, to canonize, as far as possible, only those whom she's certain to have led lives of heroic virtue.  And John Paul II's unheroic acts are on video (as well as in photographs) and his words are in print and online ("May St. John the Baptist protect Islam...").  These actions and words were never publicly recanted and it would therefore be scandalous to canonize him and encourage people to imitate him.

[nmoerbeek]

Yes, nmoerbeek, I read that section as well, and I granted in my post that heroic virtue need not be infallibly declared.  The Church still has the obligation, however, to canonize, as far as possible, only those whom she's certain to have led lives of heroic virtue.  And John Paul II's unheroic acts are on video (as well as in photographs) and his words are in print and online ("May St. John the Baptist protect Islam...").  These actions and words were never publicly recanted and it would therefore be scandalous to canonize him and encourage people to imitate him.

Southpawlink, I misunderstood the point you were getting at, Im sorry. 

[Gerard]

Canonizations are not additions to divine revelation; they are applications of doctine to matters of fact.

How exactly are they "matters of fact"?  How does Bob Summers going to his judgment become known to us and how is his going to Heaven or Hell invalidate the Communion of Saints that existed before he was born? 

They are no more additions to divine revelations than are dogmatic facts. If we are to accept Gerard's theory, then we are forced to dispose of dogmatic facts as well, since they are additions to divine revelation.

No, because canonizations of saints doesn't fulfill the criteria of testability that other dogmatic facts such as the identity of the Pope fulfills. 

That so and so is the pope to whom all must submit as a condition of salvation is only true if his appointment satisfies the factual and conditional criteria. The doctrine establishes the criteria; the facts satisfy this criteria here and now in this or that case.

That would be true if Heaven were located at the end of the forest in a cave and you pay the ferryman to carry you over to investigate whether or not Bob Summers is actually there. 

You can however go to a city called Rome and find a bishop who was consecrated with witnesses and documents and film in some cases and see his activity there. 

Thus, as the Catholic Encyclopedia points out, we only know that this or that man is pope as a matter of dogmatic fact: the facts meet the criteria for the application of the doctrine: "If this man meets this factual criteria, then he is pope."

Again there is no factual criteria for the particular judgment of a soul gone before God. 

Dogmatic facts bind as a condition of our very salvation; did they not, we would not be obliged to submit to a true pope, since no where in divine revelation did it say that Pius X would be a true pope. We only know that he was based upon the application of dogma to the historical facts; thus, Catholics at the time were obliged to submit to his authority as a condition of their salvation. 

We know the general criteria for how to identify a Pope.  Only one man in this temporal sphere can hold the office and that can be tested.  We know how to identify future Popes though we don't know their names, because the papacy is here on earth, human reason is sufficient to know this. 

We do not know any criteria for peering into Heaven and gaining a sneak peak on the Book of Life.  Human reason is insufficient to know that Bob Summers is among the saved or the damned.  It would require a communication from Heaven for that to be known.  That is Revelation.  For the Pope to bind it under infallibility it would be Public Revelation which would alter the Deposit of Faith, end the Dogma of the close of Revelation, which would also end infallibility and the whole Church would collapse under the weight of the contradictions. 

If we accept Gerard's theory, then we would not be required to submit to submit to Pius X, since no where in revelation does it state that he was a true pope.

No. You're operating on the wrong assumption that infallible canonizations would be dogmatic facts.  The criteria for the temporal office of the Pope is verifiable by human reason.  The occupancy of Heaven by Bob Summers is not a temporal office or event that can be known by human reason. 

The dogma only says that we are obliged to submit to the Supreme Pontiff, but who is the Supreme Pontiff is a question of historical fact that satisfies the dogmatic conditions.

As pointed out above. Rome is a place in time and space accessible to human perception. A bishop is identifiable by human reason spelled out by the Church.  The Church has no procedure using human reason to identify how Bob Summer's One on One with the Almighty turned out.  The only way for that to be known would be if the Almighty directly communicated it to the Church, which He won't do if the Church is to be trusted concerning the close of Public Revelation. 

Together, they equal a dogmatic fact that commands the assent of the faithful. No new dogma or addition to divine revelation is being proposed in accepting this, since the divine revelation concerns itself with the conditions, not with their factual application to this or that person.

There are no factual applications to apply to the specific person that can be grasped by the intellect to say that Bob Summer's is currently one of those people that we talk about when we say "Communion of Saints." 

That specific information cannot be known by human reason.  The only way it can be known is by Revelation.  Either Revelation is closed or it is not.  If it is not, the Church is a fraud, infallibility is a fraud and it's a humanly created con-game in which none of it can possibly hold together. 

Canonizations are of the same category, and if we reject them on the basis of Gerard's argument, we must also reject dogmatic facts for the same reasons, in the name of consistency.

Consistency is what holds my argument together and makes it correct.  The faulty logic is trying to hide the indisputable consequence of infallibility applying to canonizations under the guise of dogmatic facts. 
Unless you or anyone can address the practical realities of the argument concerning Revelation as applied to knowing the specific information about a specific person's particular judgment and somehow demonstrating how human reason can know that forbidden from our minds that spiritual event without communication from the Dvine, you have to concede to the non-contradictory dogma of the Church and go against the common assertions of a number of non-Magisterial theologians. 

But if we are guilty of the latter, then submission to any given pope in history (say, Pius X) is not necessary, since we do not have divine revelation that he is a valid pope.

No. The knowledge of who the Pope is, is knowable by human reason.  The knowledge of Bob Summer's "come to Jesus" meeting is not.  To know the identity of the Pope, you don't need Divine Revelation, to know whether Bob Summer's upon his death got the new car or the Turtle Wax is something the Divine Revealer would have to communicate to us. 

Divine revelation only says that we must submit to the pope, but since it doesn't say who that will be in every case, we can't know for certain that Pius X is really pope without adding to divine revelation.

We actually don't have an infallible canonization process for the election of Popes by the way.  The Popes don't confirm infallibly their predecessors, themselves or their successors.

But we can determine who the Pontiff is and actually do it by process of elimination because it is a matter of one man, one temporal office in one space over which he operates. 

We don't have a process of elimination for Bob Summers, we don't have a way to locate his soul by means of longitude or latitude and we don't have any clue to his interior disposition which is known only to God. 

Thus, we do not have to submit to him, since we can't know ever know (short of divine revelation) whether he is or isn't factually pope.

Wrong as demonstrated above.  And to make the analogy work, is there an infallible declaration from the Pope concerning his occupancy of the chair? 

With this view, at best we would only have moral certitude with regard to this or that pope, meaning that we are only permitted morally or are allowed to presume that he is pope without blame to ourselves , when in fact he might not be.

St. Vincent Ferrer? 

This sounds good enough at first, bit when we apply this to his infallible pronouncements, we are then left with plausible deniability about each of them; for, were he to ever declare or define something via council or ex cathedra, we would only be permitted to believe it via moral certitude (since he might not actually be the pope), but it might not actually be true.

Whoa...who said anything about his infallible pronouncements?  You can't get circular in your argumentation by stating off the bat that his infallible pronouncements are up for question.  We are talking about canonizations and whether or not they fall under the power of infallibility. 

We are looking at the logical consequences of infallibility being applicable to a particular pronouncement by the Pope. 

By not applying infallibility to the situation, the consequences are the non-contradictory cohesion of the entire faith and the indefectibility of the Church.

By applying infallibility to the situation concerning canonizations, the contradiction with previously defined dogma undermines the integrity of the faith and the whole thing collapses. 

Thus, each ex cathedra declaration might actually be false, since we don't know whether he really had the authority and security to define it; we have only permission to believe it on account of our moral presumption that he is pope.

Objective certitude takes precedence over subjective certitude.  There is no subjective certitude if the objective certitude is undermined by imputing infallibility to pronouncements that don't fall under the criteria of infallibility defined by Vatican I.  Vatican I by its definition retains the integrity of the Church and the faith.  It makes no mention of canonization or dogmatic facts as being infallible by the way. 

The Immaculate Conception, therefore, might not actually be true, because we have only moral certitude that the man who defined it was pope, so you can dissent from it and still remain Catholic.

Moral certitude is what would make you act in a certain way in favor of something, so moral certitude would say that the man who defined it was Pope.  You are turning moral certitude into a form of doubt.

Engaging in moral certitude that the man is Pope answer this, Yes, or No: Did Pope claim that this event in the life of the Church was a dogmatic fact or was it "...divinely revealed and as contained in the deposit of heavenly revelation..."?

Did this event occur prior to the death of the last Apostle?  Is this event claimed to be a part of the Deposit of Faith?  Are anathemas attached to the support of the opposing view? 

So, you can see, you are engaging in a false equivalency concerning the criteria by which the Immaculate Conception is defined and the fate of Bob Summers' soul is dealt with. 

As we can see, Gerard's theory is on a very slippery slope when carried all the way back to St. Peter. Every council, teaching, and definition can be called into doubt since we can't be sure that any of the men through whom these teachings were defined were actually true popes. At best, we are merely permitted to believe these teachings; at worst, they are all heresies.

You've made several errors.  You've applied the concept of "dogmatic facts" to canonizations.  This is clearly inapplicable since the elements by which the "facts" can be known is beyond human reason.

The fact that this knowledge is beyond human reason, makes it necessary to put it in the category of Revelation.

You've then expanded "dogmatic facts" to encompass all instances of infallibility. 

But you need to start with Revelation or you won't get to "dogmatic facts." 

If you believe in Revelation, you believe in the papacy, if you believe in the papacy, you believe in the "dogmatic facts" and the criteria available to human reason for identifying the Pope. 

But if you incorrectly assign the canonization of a saint as a "dogmatic fact" when there is no criteria of human reason for determining the "fact" of something that occurs outside of our capability of measuring, you don't go down a slippery slope, you fall in a total collapse of everything.

It's Revelation that tells you that there is a papacy.  It's that papacy that has claimed infallibly that Revelation is closed, this is a protection for the Church.  If you assign to the Pope that he is the vessel for new Revelation (specific knowledge that is not attainable by human reason) i.e.. Bob Summer's is in Heaven as of July 31st 1964. 

Then Revelation has not closed. 

Therefore the infallible declaration that Revelation was closed failed. 

Therefore infallibility is false

Therefore Revelation is false. 

And the whole thing collapses.   

[Gerard]

But it would not be such if it could err in the canonization of saints.  Would not religion be sullied if a person in hell were, by a definitive decree, offered to everyone as an object of religious veneration?  Would not the moral law be at least weakened to some extent, if a protégé of the devil could be irrevocably set up as a model of virtue for all to imitate and for all to invoke?"

And how would the identity of a person in Hell be revealed so as to cause this scandal?

There would be a violation of the truth. And it would make a mockery of God...and please the devil. Just because the poor dupes never know (until their death) doesn't make it right.

You've skipped ahead and assumed the identity of the person in Hell is already known.  What is the mechanism by which this is known? 

We have the same problem in "knowing" that someone is in Hell as we do someone who was canonized. We would require another Divine Revelation about their status. 

As I stated before, were Revelation still open, and canonizations were infallible, the Church would have a Canon of the Damned as well as the Canon of Saints because it would provide infallibly both models for sanctification and identifiable personal warnings to avoid damnation. 

But the Church claims ignorance on the specific knowledge of anyone damned because it cannot know the interior disposition of a person. 

So, how does the positive interior disposition at the judgment seat of God of a canonized saint come to be known as a fact by human reason? 

But, forget about Hell for a second because people on this thread opposing my position seem to think that the choice is "infallible" or "Hell" but what about someone living a life of heroic virtue and being a great model but being in Purgatory for attachment to one last personal sin of human weakness when the canonization pronouncement says they are in Heaven?  Are they a protege' of the Devil even though the canonization was wrong?  Of course not. 

To address your other points, were this impossible to know scenario to be actually known, would it really be a mockery of Truth if it is not an infallible statement?  It would simply be a statement that was in error. 

Is it a mockery of God to fault something for which He made no provision for it be faultless?  Who's fault is it? God for not making it infallible or specific Churchmen for indulging in an over-enthusiasm for infallibility and pushing it beyond the markers set by God? 

Re: The Devil.  He is never pleased.  His torments never end,he gets no relief from damned souls.  His nature is to suffer eternal torment.  Hypothetically, even is all souls were lost to the Devil it would not lessen his tortures and agony one bit. 

Re: the poor dupes.  People don't make it into Heaven because they were "right" intellectually on all things.  God does not ask for the impossible.  If people are taken in or fall into error because of fallen human nature or deception and they make it into Heaven, they rejoice at knowing the Truth.  Nobody is duped into Hell, ultimately we go where we will ourselves to go. 

If people believe piously in the infallibility of canonizations, that is an error theologically, but it does no harm in the narrow sense any more than one might choose to believe any of the hundreds of legends in the Church or the approved visionaries that are doctrinally sound.   If Mary Magdalen did not live her life as the Golden Legend says, no harm done for any soul in Heaven. 

It does become problematic in the larger sense when people start making the pronouncements of their own claim to infallibility that "this person can't be in Heaven, therefore the Church is wrong or the See is Vacant." Small errors in the beginning lead to large errors down the line.

The Church has never ruled on the infallibility of poem "the Lord's Descent into Hell" in which the Lord gives a beautiful monologue awakening Adam and Eve.  Who cares if it turns out to be fiction?  It would be cool if it turned out to be true, but it's beautiful and I don't need an infallible ruling on it, unless there was a doctrinal error in it. 

[voxxpopulisuxx]

There's a lot I don't understand, but I'll start by asking this: Why couldn't these 2 upcoming 'canonizations' be doubted without doubting that we have a pope?

Because if he is Pope...he will be asserting something that all the fathfull must accept as true...that these two personages are equals of the apostles in venerableness.

Stop exaggerating, it is saying they are in heaven, it doesn't assign them a score equal in merit to the Apostles or the Virgin Mary, or the Angels. 

So when you pray to all the Saints on all Saints day will you say, All you Saints except JP II and John XIII?  You even said in your rant directed at me farther up that you accepted the possibility of them being in purgatory? How do you know they are not in Heaven?

Listen you rant too...sometimes its called for...so that ad hominum you can put back in your pocket.

A saint proclaimed venerable and worthy of a cultus is a far different matter than simply proclaiming someone in heaven. If one is proclaimed a saint they are placed right next St Joseph and the Apostles...the saint martyrs...Churches are built in their name...the laity are encouraged to speak to them and ask for their help...etc...etc...and the fact that you make no distinction between Nice Aunt tootsy who died a faithfully practicing Catholic mother...in the arms of her parish priest after receiving last rites. And Glorious St Joseph or St Gertrude...or St Patrick....shows how very stupefying the false obedience necter can be.

Vox could you point out to me where I am drinking the false obedience nectar?

That I accept the Church's judgement that if JPII is canonized he is in heaven?
Here..this one...because the position held by many here including myself is that it is beyond credulity to think the Holy Spirit would protect as infallible an OBVIOUSLY incorrect act......again it is not just about proclaiming them NOT in hell..they are going to encourage a cultus for them (and their council) and Churches built and writings promulgated and insert their names next  to even Glorious St Joseph....so I would gladly accept the Churchs Judgment but I wont accept these churchmen...and aye there be the rub

[SouthpawLink]

No problem, nmoerbeek.

Gerard,
Part of the factual criteria are miracles performed through the intercession of a blessed soul.  Miracles are sensible facts and can be known with certitude; there are also rules on discerning miracles from diabolical works.  This is on top of a thorough examination of a confessor's life (his writings, the testimony of his priest, family and friends, employers).  These are the determining factors on whether a soul can be declared to be in Heaven.

Miracles performed through the intercession of a blessed are evidence of that soul's salvation; if a particular soul isn't in Heaven, but is prayed to, either God will not answer the prayer or He will delay answering it until the petitioner prays to a soul that is in Heaven.  The person's testimony that a particular blessed interceded for him will be severely scrutinized as to its veracity (aside from the testing of the miracle itself).

[voxxpopulisuxx]

Gerard you make a very compelling Case...but on a few things I quibble....First off we know that Martyrs go to heaven...we know that St Stephen for example is in Heaven..(we have a scriptural description of his death)...we know elisha and Moses are there.....we know that All the Apostles (except Judus whom Jesus himself absolutely implied he was damned) are in heaven...we of course know because of the dogma of the assumption that the BVM is there...there are visions and miracles that attest to certain saints...etc etc.....but I do accept your point that maybe doom and gloom isnt in order because they couldn't proclaim such a  thing infallibly anyway...I accept it as a legitimate possible position...BUT you cannot deny that in NO ordo land such nuanced positions do not exist...They will turn these two into Demi gods...and Vat2 as the bookend to Trent (instead of its opposite)