The Saint of the Day… or the Faith of Every Day?

The Saint of the Day exists precisely to teach the Faith of Every Day. To honour the saints while neglecting the truths for which they lived, laboured, and often died is to admire their crowns while forgetting their crosses... 

Prologue

A recent social media post that  sought to dismiss Sedevacantists with the following remark caught my attention: 

“Ever seen a sede post about the saint of the day? Now that is a unicorn. If you know the sins of the pope more than the Ten Commandments or Beatitudes (without needing to look it up), you may need to re-evaluate your life choices.”

It is witty. It is memorable. It is also a striking example of rhetoric replacing argument.

The remark succeeds as satire because it appeals to emotion and caricature. It fails as theology because it rests upon a series of hidden assumptions that collapse upon examination.

More importantly, it misunderstands both the saints and the Catholic Faith, and that is unfortunate. 

The saints were not canonized merely because they prayed. They were canonized because they persevered in the true Faith and defended it, often at tremendous personal cost. The Church commemorates them not simply to inspire cheap admiration or devotion, but to remind us that sanctity and fidelity are inseparable.

The question, therefore, is not whether Catholics should know the saints or defend the Faith.

The saints themselves teach us to do both.

The False Choice

Notice that the criticism rests upon a classic false dilemma.

It suggests that Catholics must choose between:

• learning the lives of the saints,
• studying the Ten Commandments,
• living the Beatitudes,

or

• paying attention to doctrinal corruption and the public acts of churchmen.

But this is a choice the Catholic Faith has never required.

The Church has never opposed devotion to the saints with vigilance for the Faith, nor personal holiness with doctrinal fidelity. On the contrary, she has always taught that the two belong together.

Truth and holiness are not rivals.

They are inseparable.

One may faithfully pray the Rosary, meditate upon the Commandments, cultivate the Beatitudes, study the lives of the saints, and at the same time remain vigilant against errors that threaten the deposit of faith.

Indeed, these duties mutually reinforce one another.

The saints themselves prove the point. Their love of prayer deepened their love of truth; their pursuit of holiness strengthened their defence of the Faith. They did not become holy by ignoring the errors of their age, but by remaining steadfast in the truth despite them.

The Catholic tradition has always answered:

Both the Saint of the Day and the Faith of Every Day.

A Straw Man Instead of an Argument

The criticism also caricatures the position it seeks to refute.

It speaks as though traditional Catholics spend their days cataloguing “the sins of the pope,” as though their religion consisted in scrutinizing personal failings.

But that is not the issue.

Traditional Catholics are not principally concerned with private faults, which belong to the judgment of God unless they become publicly scandalous.

Their concern is with public doctrine, public acts, and public scandals that touch the integrity of the Catholic Faith and the salvation of souls.

The real question is not:

Has this man committed personal sins?

The real question is:

Are his public teachings, official acts, and religious practices compatible with the perennial doctrine of the Catholic Church?

That is not gossip.

It is a theological question concerning the virtue of faith itself. Or, has the meaning of gossip changed lately?

Throughout history, the Church has judged bishops, theologians, councils, and even popes according to this very principle; not by personality, but by the orthodoxy of their public teaching.

Once personalities are set aside, only principles remain.

Persons and Principles

Another confusion follows.

The criticism reduces the controversy to personalities, as though the debate were about liking or disliking particular churchmen.

It is not.

Persons are accidental to the controversy.

Principles are substantial.

Individuals come and go.

The truth entrusted by Christ to His Church remains.

Catholic doctrine is not determined by the dignity, popularity, or office of the person who speaks, but by its conformity to divine revelation and the perennial teaching of the Church.

Thus the decisive question is never:

Who said it?

Rather:

Is it true?

Or more precisely:

Does it agree with the Catholic Faith handed down from the Apostles?

That has always been the Church’s standard.

Every saint was judged according to that standard.

 What Is a Saint?

This leads naturally to another question.

What exactly is a saint?

• A saint is not merely someone who was kind.
• Nor merely someone who prayed.
• Nor simply a person of admirable moral character.

A saint is one who loved God above all things, persevered in sanctifying grace, and remained faithful to the truth God revealed and the Church proposed for belief.

Holiness is the perfection of charity, but charity itself is inseparable from faith.

For this reason, many of the Church’s greatest saints are remembered not only for their virtues but also for their unwavering defence of Catholic doctrine.

• St. Athanasius defended the divinity of Christ.
• St. Cyril of Alexandria defended the divine maternity of Our Lady.
• St. Dominic opposed the Albigensian heresy.
• St. Thomas Becket defended the liberty of the Church.
• St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More refused to betray the Church for royal favour.
• St. Robert Bellarmine defended Catholic doctrine against Protestantism.
• St. Pius X fought Modernism with uncompromising clarity.

They became saints not merely because they prayed, but because they persevered in the truth.

 The Saints Teach Doctrine

The Church commemorates the saints not merely to recount inspiring biographies.

She proposes them as teachers.

Throughout the traditional liturgical year, the feasts of the saints become lessons in both holiness and orthodoxy.

Across Sedevacantists Chapels, daily sermons ordinarily explain:

• the Saint of the Day,
• the history of the feast,
• the saint’s virtues,
• practical lessons for Christian life,
• the historical circumstances in which the saint lived,
• and the doctrinal errors or moral evils against which the saint contended.

Thus:

• St. Athanasius teaches the defence of Christ’s divinity.
• St. Cyril teaches the defence of the Mother of God.
• St. Dominic teaches zeal against heresy.
• St. Thomas More teaches fidelity under persecution.
• St. Pius X teaches vigilance against Modernism.

The liturgical calendar therefore forms Catholics not only in devotion but also in doctrine.

The Saint of the Day continually teaches the Faith of Every Day.

Charity and Truth

The criticism also assumes that charity requires silence regarding public error.

Sacred Scripture teaches precisely the opposite.

The prophets denounced false worship because they loved God’s people.

Our Lord warned against false shepherds and false doctrine because He loved His flock.

St. Paul publicly withstood St. Peter at Antioch because Peter’s conduct endangered “the truth of the Gospel” (Gal. 2:11–14).

Throughout history the Church has followed the same principle.

Public errors that endanger souls require public refutation.

Charity seeks the true good of one’s neighbour.

No good is greater than the salvation of his soul.

For that reason charity sometimes consoles, sometimes instructs, sometimes corrects, and sometimes warns.

The First Commandment and the Beatitudes

The criticism urges Catholics to know the Ten Commandments and to live the Beatitudes.

Excellent advice.

But both support the duty to defend the Faith.

The First Commandment not only forbids idolatry; it positively commands the worship of the true God according to the religion He has revealed.

Traditional Catholic theology therefore teaches that it requires:

• profession of the true Faith,
• adherence to divine revelation,
• rejection of heresy,
• avoidance of false worship,
• and fidelity to the Catholic religion.

Likewise, the Beatitudes do not commend theological indifference.

• Those who hunger and thirst after justice first render to God what belongs to Him.
• The pure of heart preserve integrity of faith.
• Those persecuted for justice’s sake endure suffering rather than betray revealed truth.

The Commandments teach what Catholics must believe.

The Beatitudes teach how they must live what they believe.

 Knowing Error Is Not Loving Error

Another confusion underlies the criticism.

Speaking frequently about error does not prove an unhealthy fascination with controversy.

• A physician studies disease because he loves health.
• A fireman warns about fires because he wishes to prevent destruction.
• A shepherd teaches his flock to recognize wolves because he loves the sheep.

So too in spiritual life.

False doctrine matters because souls matter.

A priest who warns against heresy is not obsessed with controversy.

He is fulfilling his office.

Throughout history the Church’s greatest pastors devoted themselves both to teaching truth and refuting error, for every heresy is a corruption of revealed truth.

The purpose is never controversy for its own sake.

It is the preservation of souls, the integrity of the Faith, and the glory of God.

The Saints Were Not Quietists

Modern imagination often portrays the saints as gentle souls who avoided controversy.

History tells another story.

The saints loved peace, but never at the expense of truth.

Defenders of Christ’s Divinity

• St. Athanasius endured repeated exiles for defending the Nicene Faith.
• St. Hilary of Poitiers suffered banishment for the same cause.
• St. Basil the Great resisted immense imperial pressure rather than compromise with Arianism.

Defenders of Christological Truth

• St. Cyril of Alexandria opposed Nestorianism.
• St. Maximus the Confessor endured torture rather than accept Monothelitism.

Defenders of Sacred Tradition

• St. John Damascene defended the holy images.
• St. Dominic spent his life preaching against the Albigensians.

Defenders of Ecclesiastical Liberty

• St. Thomas Becket died defending the rights of the Church.
• St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More embraced martyrdom rather than submit the Church to Henry VIII.

Defenders Against Protestantism

• St. Peter Canisius preserved countless souls through preaching and catechesis.
• St. Robert Bellarmine became one of the Church’s greatest controversial theologians.

Defender Against Modernism

• St. Pius X exposed and condemned Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies.”

Fr. Frederick William Faber wrote in one of the most penetrating reflections on the virtue of faith:

“Where there is no hatred of heresy, there is no holiness.”

He immediately explains why:

“Our charity is untruthful because it is not severe; and it is unpersuasive because it is untruthful. We lack devotion to truth as truth, as God’s truth… We are so weak as to be surprised that our half-truth has not succeeded so well as God’s whole truth.

It is also worth considering Fr. Faber’s concluding sentence, which is every bit as striking:

“A man, who might be an apostle, becomes a fester in the Church for the want of this righteous indignation.”

This is not a call to hate persons.

The Church commands us to love sinners, pray for their conversion, and desire their salvation.

But she has always taught us to hate error because error separates souls from Christ.

The saints understood this distinction perfectly. They could love their enemies while resolutely opposing false doctrine. Their charity was measured not by indifference to error, but by their zeal for the salvation of souls.

Their defence of the Faith was not accidental to their sanctity.

It was one of its highest expressions.

 The Saints Teach Both

Every saint teaches two inseparable lessons.

• Love God above all things.
• Never surrender His truth.

These are not competing duties.

They are two expressions of the same supernatural charity.

To profess love for God while remaining indifferent to His revealed truth is sentimentality.

To defend truth without charity degenerates into pride.

Catholic sanctity embraces both.

The saint loves truth because he loves God, who is Truth itself.

He opposes error because he loves souls.

Prayer and doctrine.

Humility and courage.

Charity and fidelity.

The saints unite them all.

Summing Up: The Real Question Restated

The real question has never been:

“The Saint of the Day… or the Faith of Every Day?”

The saints themselves answer:

Both.

For the Saint of the Day exists precisely to teach the Faith of Every Day.

The Church does not place the saints before us merely as admirable personalities from a distant past. She presents them as living witnesses to the perennial truths of the Catholic Faith. 

• Every feast in the liturgical calendar is both a celebration of sanctity and a lesson in doctrine. 
• Every martyr proclaims that truth is worth suffering for.
• Every confessor reminds us that fidelity is more precious than comfort. 
• Every virgin teaches that love of Christ surpasses every earthly attachment. 
• Every holy pastor demonstrates that genuine charity seeks not only to console souls but also to protect them from error.

To honour the saints while neglecting the truths for which they lived, laboured, and often died is to admire their crowns while forgetting their crosses. Their sanctity cannot be separated from their fidelity. St. Athanasius cannot be understood apart from his defence of Christ’s divinity; St. Dominic apart from his struggle against heresy; St. Thomas More apart from his witness to the liberty of the Church; St. Pius X apart from his resolute opposition to Modernism. Remove the truth they defended, and much of the meaning of their heroism disappears.

This is why the criticism with which we began ultimately misses the point. It assumes that devotion to the saints and vigilance for the Faith belong to different worlds, as though Catholics must choose between prayer and doctrine, holiness and orthodoxy, charity and truth. The saints themselves expose the falsity of that choice. Their lives proclaim that the love of God necessarily includes love of His revealed truth, and that authentic charity can never be indifferent to errors that endanger souls.

The Church has never called her children merely to admire the saints. She calls them to imitate them. That imitation includes prayer, penance, humility, obedience, charity, courage, perseverance, and an unwavering adherence to the Catholic Faith handed down from the Apostles. 

To follow the saints is to walk the same path they walked: loving God above all things, confessing His truth without compromise, resisting error with charity and firmness, and remaining faithful whatever the cost.

Every generation of Catholics is tested. The forms of error change, but the duty of fidelity does not. As in every age before us, the question is not whether the truth will remain, for Christ has promised that His revelation does not change. The question is whether we shall remain faithful to it.

In contemplating the Saints with liturgical calendar as a map, uncompromising Catholics, styled Sedevacantists, entreat this singular grace through their intercession: 

to grow daily in holiness, to persevere steadfastly in the true Faith, and, when called upon, to confess Christ with the same courage by which they attained their eternal crowns.

Why so? Precisely because there can be no genuine holiness without fidelity to the truth, and no lasting fidelity to the truth without the holiness to live it. Think on it!