#310b: Print The Legend

EXCERPT:
It turns out, however, that the publicity surrounding Mary's canonization may have embellished her story. According to one of my blog readers, MacKillop’s official biography corrects the popular media count on several details. First, the Josephites actually blew the whistle while Mary was away. Second, Mary's excommunication resulted from her assertion of the Josephites’ rights to receive due process under canon law. The excommunication itself may have been invalid. Finally, Mary's consistent character was one of obedience to "rightful superiors."

Of course, the main point stands: Mary's story includes several struggles with members of the hierarchy, in which struggles she was ultimately vindicated. The same is true for Joan of Arc, Thomas Aquinas, Jacques Maritain, Galileo, and many others. And while actions against these people were ultimately invalidated, they nonetheless suffered the immediate consequences. Hierarchical sanctions, even excommunication, are (1) sometimes illegitimate yet (2) always painful. And they prove nothing about the ultimate rightness of the person sanctioned. Many such people were merely ahead of their time.

For better or worse, somewhere at the core of our Catholic tradition is this paradox: many of our tradition’s heroes have suffered martyrdom or at least banishment, and not a little of that suffering has been at Catholic hands.

So running afoul of the Catholic hierarchy by itself proves nothing, except that the hierarchy has a problem with someone’s thought, speech, writing, or behavior. Which may in fact be their own problem, not the Church’s.

But while Mary’s story stands, the gap between media accounts and biography contain another lesson for us.

Our tradition has always held up certain historical figures as models for the rest of us--and the process of honoring them has always mixed authentic history with popular embellishment. Thus the lives of saints have often blended with the legends about saints. The literature on saints, called hagiography, thus presents a unique blend of fact and fiction:

It seems scarcely worth while to insist on the considerable part played by legend in hagiographic literature, which is emphatically popular both in its origins and in its aim. Indeed it is from hagiography that the name itself has been borrowed. In its primitive meaning the “legend” is the history that has to be read, legenda, on the feast of a saint…
Hagiographic literature has come to be written under the influence of two very distinct factors…There is, first, the anonymous creator called the people…Beside him there is the man of letters, the editor…Both together have collaborated in that vast undertaking known as “The Lives of the Saints," and it is important for us to recognise the part played by each in this process of evolution.
…The interior working of grace offers nothing that can be grasped, and the mysterious colloquies of the soul with God must be translated into palpable results in order to produce any impression on the popular mind. The supernatural is only impressive when it is combined with the marvellous.
Hence it is that popular legends overflow with marvels. Visions, prophecies and miracles play a necessary part in the lives of saints….In this direction popular imagination knows no bounds, nor can it be denied that…these bold and naive fictions frequently attain to real beauty.
--Père Hippolyte. Delehaye, S.J., the Legends of the Saints

Recognizing this, one Princeton scholar even included fiction in his formal definition of “saint’s legend”:

The saint's legend is a biographical narrative, of whatever origin circumstances may dictate, written in whatever medium may be convenient, concerned as to substance with the life, death, and miracles of some person accounted worthy to be considered a leader in the cause of righteousness; and, whether fictitious or historically true, calculated to glorify the memory of its subject.--Gordon Hall Gerould

This should not surprise observant Catholics. We know Saint Patrick is honored for "driving the snakes" from Ireland, but we don't expect historical proof. We read that a dove departed Joan’s burning body--and we find it a beautiful image, whether accurate history or not. We expect--and extend--great latitude in the way we remember our heroes.

This is especially true of our patron saints. For generations Saint Christopher was the patron of travelers, though he may not have existed at all. Saint Clare of Assisi was declared the patron of television, on the ground she once heard Christmas Mass while ill in bed miles away!

So why be surprised, in this age of scandal and cover up by "wrongful superiors," if Mary MacKillop is portrayed as the patron of all who fight for a more transparent church? Why not make her patron of whistleblowers?

Fans of America's greatest filmmaker, John Ford, cannot help but recall the famous reply the editor gives (in the classic western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) when a senator complains his newspaper’s story was not accurate:

"This is the West, Senator. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Ford was a good Irish Catholic; he knew that the Catholic Church had been printing the legend for twenty centuries. Why stop now?