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217 {6} It Is Beautiful to Live with Saints The Americanization of Modern Sanctity Our Lord is going to have an Irish American saint! —Words attributed to Archbishop Patrick Hayes by Lukas Etlin in a letter, 1923 One is never a saint except for other people. —Pierre DeLooz, “Toward a Sociological Study of Canonized Sainthood in the Catholic Church,” in Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore, and History, edited by Stephen Wilson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 194 It is beautiful to live with saints. —Lukas Etlin to Carmelita Quinn, December 1927 Piouscustomdictatesthattwelvestigmaticsarealiveatanyonetimeintheworld inrepetitionofthenumberofChrist’sapostles.Evenifthistraditionissuspect, it emboldened the supporters of Margaret Reilly to make connections between her and other spiritual virtuosi throughout “Christendom,” a concept that the church keenly hoped to revive in the wake of the First World War. From an institutional perspective, stigmatic cults were helpful in affirming divine presence in support of the church’s larger concern to reenchant the modern world andtoaffirmthebenevolentmasteryofGodandtheredemptivesacrificeofhis son,eveninthewakeofthebarbarismof1914–18.Thischapterconsidershowa CatholiccommunitythatwasalreadyconvincedofSisterThorn’scharismawas preparing her as a potential saint by establishing her virtues and associating her with a network of similarly extraordinary holy individuals. The chapter makes a shift in perspective from Sister Thorn’s personal experiences to her audience by exploring how her advocates circulated stories and anecdotes about her. A second goal of the chapter, one related to the theme of audience, is to argue that within the Archdiocese of New York, the budding cult of Sister Thorn created a “mini-Christendom” that reflected the values and beliefs propagated from Rome—the institutional and moral center of the Catholic Church—but 218 The Americanization of Modern Sanctity in an American context.¹ Third, the chapter locates Sister Thorn in relation to the saint-making process as it existed prior to its revisions in 1969 and 1983. It remained to be seen what kind of saint Americans were seeking in the decades after her death—an ethnic symbol or a national one. Finally, I suggest that stigmatic cults continue to evolve in the post–Vatican II era, enabled by new communications technologies like the Internet that have altered the ways in which audiences encounter stigmatic and visionary cults. Sister Thorn’s followers hoped to provide the convincing background for a Vatican investigation for canonization. For a holy person’s cult to succeed, however, the local bishop must first permit it. Sister Thorn’s cult never received the unqualified support of Archbishop Hayes and therefore did not secure an official diocesan investigation. If an investigation had materialized, the mechanisms for opening canonization proceedings at that time followed a three-stage process. First, to establish Margaret as a Servant of God, the local investigation would be petitioned by the archbishop no sooner than five years after Margaret’s death. (This waiting period may be waived or decreased by the pope, as Benedict XVI did in the case of the proceedings for his predecessor, John Paul II, and for Mother Teresa of Calcutta). If approved , the petition opened a Cause for Beatification and Canonization. The Vatican would assign a so-called Devil’s Advocate whose task was to gather and present the case against canonization. (This position was eliminated in 1983.) Second, witnesses would attest to Margaret’s heroic Christian virtues before a diocesan tribunal, and any written documents by and about her would be collected and read. Third, members of the general public would be invited to add information about the candidate. If the investigation result was positive, the local bishop presented the cause as a bound volume of documentation (Acta) to the Vatican’s Congregation of the Causes of Saints, which assigned a postulator to the investigation. Members of the American Catholic hierarchy who knew about Margaret Reilly and who helped to foster her cause included Cardinal Dennis Dougherty of Philadelphia, already an ardent promoter of the Little Flower cult in America; and Cardinal James McIntyre of Los Angeles (1886–1979), who was advantageous to Margaret’s circle because of his local roots. Born in New York City, McIntyre was ordained by Patrick Hayes in 1921 and performed pastoral work in New York until 1923. He served as diocesan chancellor from 1923 to 1934 and became the auxiliary bishop of New York in 1940. Later, as the ultraconservative archbishop of Los Angeles (1948–70), he refused to implement the new Mass after Vatican II, embroiled himself in a power struggle with local nuns, and established himself as an enemy of [3.141.0.61] Project MUSE (2024...

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