From inside the Vatican, the book that became a modern classic on sainthood in the Catholic Church. Working from church documents, Kenneth Woodward shows how saint-makers decide who is worthy of the church's highest honor. He describes the investigations into lives of candidates, explains how claims for miracles are approved or rejected, and reveals the role politics -- papal and secular -- plays in the ultimate decision. From his examination of such controversial candidates as Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador and Edith Stein, a Jewish philosopher who became a nun and was gassed at Auschwitz, to his insights into the changes Pope John Paul II has instituted, Woodward opens the door on a 2,000-year-old tradition.
"Sainthood" has been, and remains, a contested category in China, given the commitment of China's modern leadership to secularization, modernization, and revolution, and the discomfort of China's elite with matters concerning religion. However, sainted religious leaders have succeeded in rebuilding old institutions and creating new ones despite the Chinese government's censure. This book offers a new perspective on the history of religion in modern and contemporary China by focusing on the profiles of these religious leaders from the early 20th century through the present. Edited by noted authorities in the field of Chinese religion, Making Saints in Modern China offers biographies of prominent Daoists and Buddhists, as well as of the charismatic leaders of redemptive societies and state managers of religious associations in the People's Republic. The focus of the volume is largely on figures in China proper, although some attention is accorded to those in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other areas of the Chinese diaspora. Each chapter offers a biography of a religious leader and a detailed discussion of the way in which he or she became a "saint." The biographies illustrate how these leaders deployed and sometimes retooled traditional themes in hagiography and charismatic communication to attract followers and compete in the religious marketplace. Negotiation with often hostile authorities was also an important aspect of religious leadership, and many of the saints' stories reveal unexpected reserves of creativity and determination. The volume's contributors, from the United States, Canada, France, Italy, China, and Taiwan, provide cutting-edge scholarship. Taken together, these essays make the case that vital religious leadership and practice has existed and continues to exist in China despite the state's commitment to wholesale secularization.
How does God manifest himself in the world? Through the righteous lives of his holy people (the saints). As a religion of witnesses, Christianity is dependent upon its saints (defined as activated disciples) to "testify" to the grace of Christ and the kingdom of God. Their lives are walking billboards of the value of Jesus' teaching and authenticity of Christianity as an ancient spiritual pathway. This is a book about saints who are alive now, and whose everyday acts of kindness and goodness announce that God is at work in the world. Like Jesus, their Master, they are the message, the messenger, and the working model of the kingdom of God, in a lesser key. In following Jesus, ordinary saints are willing to give away their lives in order to convey the substance of their faith to a watching world. If ever there was a time when saints need to live courageously for Christ in the world, it is now. But it will take conviction, credibility, and a great deal of audacity. Ordinary Saints explores what it means to be a saint in the twenty-first century, by exploring the depth-dimensions of saints' lives, bodies, emotions, values, and relationships.
