How The Increase In Saints Shows The Decrease In Quality Science
This post is about Science. It will not seem so until the end.
Most know the Catholic Church had, and still has, the position of Advocatus Diaboli, a.k.a. the Devil’s advocate. The canon lawyer who takes the position of prosecutor against the defense. The defense advocates for the sainthood of certain individuals.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (this is from the turn of the last Century), the Devil’s advocate’s “duty requires him to prepare in writing all possible arguments, even at times seemingly slight, against the raising of any one to the honours of the altar.”
This is to be praised because, we emphasize, of those required “even at times seemingly slight” arguments. Compiling every bit of relevant evidence in favor of your case is, after all, what a competent lawyer must do.
This is in the vein of the West’s argumentative style of justice. There’s no need for us to rehearse the arguments, for you know them well, that the best way to discover truth is open and robust examination. Married, of course, to the judgement of an impartial jury.
The consequences of sainthood are, or were, and should be, important, and designating sainthood should not be taken lightly. All relevant and pertinent information must be publicly given. Nothing hidden. No secrets. Especially since you’re asking people not involved in the decision-making process to act on the results.
Enter John Paul II, now himself a saint. As Pope, he reduced the powers of Devil’s Advocates’s office, weakening its powers and ability to advocate against sainthood.
After this move, in a curious coincidence, the number of newly proclaimed saints shot up. Whereas in prior days the proof required for sainthood was burdensome and difficult to procure, it is now somewhat easy, even trivial.
The man in office now, as of this date, has conferred sainthood on 909 individuals. This is not a typo. Nine hundred and nine. There was a “group canonization” in this, which boosted the numbers. But still, it’s 909.
Pope Benedict the XVI canonized forty five. But Benedict, God bless him, was in his heyday known as a hard ass. Theologically speaking.
His predecessor, saint JP II, slipped 482 through the door.
From the Thirteen Century (records before are not as sharp), if this article is accurate, double digits were exceedingly rare, happening only four times or so, before our three examples above, with three of the four being quite recent.
Naturally, given population increases, we might expect, given a current background level of saintliness, more saints now than before in history, simply because there are more people alive now who might considered.
Yet no one—that I know, anyway—argues for anything but a decrease in saintliness. Current headlines concur in this depressing opinion.
Therefore, we must account for the increase in official saints in reasons other than population growth. And one prominent reason is standard “democratic inflation”, i.e. the loosening standards, in membership.
And those standards have been loosened, in part, by requiring less of the Devil’s advocate. By ignoring, that is, those “even at times seemingly slight” bits of evidence against a candidate.
I said this post was about Science. Now, please, this well known clip:
Feynman’s advantage is both sublime and profound. The physicists of old were lucky, or they chose their objects of study well. The objects under examination, large or small, were amenable to isolation. They could be pulled out of ordinary life and put into cleverly oh-so-carefully designed experiments, all meant to tease out cause.
As Feynman said, it isn’t easy. Indeed, discovery of cause is brutally hard. It’s error-prone, it’s confusing, it’s subject to confirmation bias the same way a Pride parade marcher is to disease. The easiest person to fool, as people used to say, is oneself. They might still say it, but most now don’t believe it.
We have in Science made it at least as easy to “prove” results as JPII has to canonize “saints.” And we did in the same way as the Pope. We have hamstrung the Devil’s advocate.
Evidence against hypotheses is ignored, castigated, even thought suspicious, or inserted by dark “deniers.” Or by “racists”, “homophobes”, whatever.
Buy my new book and learn to argue against the regime: Everything You Believe Is Wrong.
JPII is a fake saint just as he was a fake pope, as have been all the other “saint” “popes” spawned by Vatican II. These “canonizations” are meant to canonize Vatican II, the Judas Council.
The entity now led by Jorge Bergoglio (stage name, “Pope Francis”) and founded at Vatican II is not the actual Catholic Church; it's the Novus Ordo (New Order) Antichurch, with Antipope Francis as its latest wolf in shepherds' clothing.
1) Actual popes must be actually Catholic.
2) Jorge Bergoglio is manifestly not a Catholic, is indeed rabidly anti-Catholic, as most recently proven by his participation in a demon-summoning ceremony in Canada. Much, much more could be cited; it’s indeed cited at the superb Novus Ordo Watch site.
3) Therefore, Bergoglio cannot possibly be an actual pope.
Francis and his fellow Novus Ordo Antichurch confreres are the wolves in shepherds' clothing we're repeatedly warned about in Holy Scripture. We weren't repeatedly warned about them, in both the Old and New Testaments, without reason. We're endowed with the capacity to recognize them as the total impostors they are, as the infernal wolves they are, and to flee from them.
We're divinely assured that the actual Catholic Church is indefectible. But the Novus Ordo Antichurch has manifestly defected from the Faith. Hence it cannot possibly be the actual Catholic Church.
Similarly, since Francis manifestly isn't an actual Catholic--since he's indeed rabidly anti-Catholic--he can't possibly be an actual pope, since actual popes must be actually Catholic. One cannot be the head of a body of which one is not a member.
And he's not just a "bad father." One must first be an actual father to be a bad father. But Francis has never been an actual spiritual father at all. His status as an impostor has nothing to do with any electoral irregularities or any attempted bifurcation of Benedict XVI's "papacy" in 2013. Francis isn't a father, isn't a pope, solely because he isn't a Catholic; and he wasn't a Catholic long before 2013. Only actual Catholics can become actual popes. Just as only actual Catholics can be popes, only actual Catholics can become popes.
Moreover, it takes absolutely no legal authority whatsoever to recognize all of this manifest reality, just as one need not be a coroner to recognize a dead body. Our minds were made for truth. It's permissible, and indeed good for us, to recognize the truth. Comfort is irrelevant. Any future legal judgment by the actual Catholic Church, which is now in the catacombs once again, will simply be a recognition of the present factual reality spitting in our faces daily.
It's time to get real; really real.
So, to give Martin Luther his day in court and to make sure that sainthood does not go the way of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Church needs to reappoint its independent Special Counsel? I like it! (Maybe Bob Mueller?) Some of these miracle stories and supernatural visions could use a little skepticism. Henry Wigmore, the great legal scholar, described cross-examination as "the greatest engine ever devised for the test of truth." It is! It's even better than the rack and water boarding. As for giving the Devil his comeuppance in court, read Stephen Vincent Benet's marvelous short story, "The Devil and Daniel Webster." Finally, I hope you are not suggesting that Saint Pope JP II is the consequence of grade inflation.