The Process of Canonization Essay Example for Free

The Process of Canonization Essay The canonization process has existed in Catholicfor centuries. This process is steeped with history, as well as tradition, and rewards people for their unwavering commitment and faith to Catholicism. The process is long, arduous, expensive, and eventually requires authorization from the highest of Catholic officials. This paper will review the history, requirements, and financial expenses involved in the process of canonization into sainthood. History Saints are human, like us, but they personify divine power and have privileged contact with the supernatural. Saints perform miracles, receive visions, and are in love with the spirit. They truly are â€Å"the chosen few† (Dunn-Mascetti, 1994). As Catholics we refer to saints as people who are extremely holy; living their lives as perfect Christians, thus allowing them the right to serve God, on a personal level, in heaven (Schreck, 2004). Canonization is the process in which the pope declares a deceased constituent of the faithful is projected as a model and intercessor to the Christian principles and recognized as a saint due to living their life in a heroic manner or becoming a martyr because of their continued faith to God (Molinari O’Donnell, 2000). This persons name is then inducted into the canon of saints, citing those who are to be given veneration universally into the church. Canonization is an earthly decision, meaning it honors them as a saint on earth, not their entry into heaven (Bunson, M. , Bunson S. Bunson, M. , 1998). According to Molinari O’Donnell (2000), canonization originated during the early formulation of the Christian doctrines of worship, invocation, and intercession. The faithful believed that martyrs were true Christians and saints because they made the supreme sacrifice, by giving their lives, for God, the Gospel, and the good of the church. Their suffering earned them ete rnal life. Toward the end of the great Roman persecutions, the veneration of martyrs was extended to confessors, those who defended and suffered for their faith, but did not die doing so. Those confessors who had been excellent Christians, in austerity and penance, were now eligible to be rewarded with sainthood (Molinari O’Donnell, 2000). â€Å"The first formal canonization came in year 993, when Pope John XV raised Ulric of Augsburg to the altars during a synod at the Lateran Basilica†. As you will see, the qualifications for canonization in the later years became more stringent after previous inductees were found to be of imperfect sanctity (Bunson et al, 1998, p. 17). Requirements The process for canonization is divided into two phases; diocesan and Roman, or apostolic. When a person dies, and it is determined they lived a perfect and holy Christian life, a formal process for canonization is initiated. In the diocesan phase, the investigation is guided by the procedural law of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, by the diocesan bishop who formally conducts the process where the candidate died. A cause defined as â€Å"recent† is one where the person’s eligibility for sainthood can be corroborated through the disposition of eye-witnesses, and can only begin after a five years following the death of the candidate. A cause defined as â€Å"ancient† is where the evidence of virtues or martyrdom can be gathered only from written sources, subsequently, there is no time limit for this cause (Molinari O’Donnell, 2000). The postulator, a person approved by the bishop and responsible for the presentation of evidence for authenticity, also agrees to bear the moral and financial expense of the cause. Their primary job is to supervise the investigation and to determine the candidate’s fitness for canonization, by researching their life, work, and holiness. After the diocesan phase is complete, the postulator will reside in Rome where he will develop the formal argument for canonization with the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which is comprised of cardinals and bishops. During this time, the postulator will create a Positio, a book containing an account of the candidate’s life and virtue (Molinari O’Donnell, 2000). In the diocesan phase, information, both positive and negative, on the candidate’s life, work, and holiness are collected and documented to establish the validity for the petition to canonize. In order for the nominee to advance to the next step, their published writings will be submitted for approval to two theological censors, selected by the bishop, and will be graded on doctrine and moral teachings. Other writings from the candidate will then presented to a historical commission, also selected by the bishop, which will conclude this particular phase. Evidence must clearly show that the candidate lived a life of faith, hope and charity beyond that of a common Christian (Molinari O’Donnell, 2000). The Roman, or postolic, phase commences when the acts of the diocesan process have been turned over to the Congregation for the causes of Saints, and they have declared the cause as â€Å"valid†. At this point a â€Å"relator†, an official of the Congregation, will be appointed and will assist in the creation of the Positio. Another official of the Congregation, known as the â€Å"promoter of faith†, will be accountable for the assessment of the cau se by historical and theological consultants to whom the Positio may be submitted for their endorsement. At last, all of this information is submitted to the Congregation for the causes of Saints, who will then forward it to the pope upon their endorsement. If the pope determines the candidate as suitable for canonization, a Bull of Canonization is issued, infallibly affirming the candidate’s perfection of the saint’s life and distinguishing their role as a divine intercessor; thus becoming a saint (Molinari O’Donnell, 2000). Even through the long, demanding process involving in-depth research, historical study, and theological manifestation, the decision to canonize lies solely with the pope, and requires a confirmation from God in the way of two miracles, which is scrutinized heavily by the Congregation. Miracles are a product of divine intervention and reinforce the candidate’s holiness as a servant of God. Martyrs are exempt from this miracle requirement because the act of sacrificing one’s life is viewed as the perfection of charity; they need not prove their worthiness in miracles (Molinari O’Donnell, 2000). Financial Expense The tremendously long hours of interviews, research, travel, and other intangibles make the canonization process an exhaustive event. The thoroughness of the process comes at a steep price. After sainthood is declared, the expenses include paintings representing the new saint which is given to the pope, cardinals, and other officials of the Congregation for the causes of Saints. Other expenses include decorations of the Basilica, Pontifical Mass, Sacred Vestments, and incidental expenses that make for a sizeable bill to the postulator of the cause. For example the final expenses for the canonization by Saint Leo XIII of Saint Anthony Maria Zaccaria and Saint Peter Fourier came to the total of 221,849. 10 Italian lira. When we convert that to the U. S. dollar, the total becomes $42,816. 87 (Beccari, 1907). Conclusion Canonization has long been a tradition in Catholicism that goes all the way back to year 993. The process is a thorough procedure that involves intensive investigation of a nominee and standard they maintained in their Christian and personal life. The requirements are tightly scrutinized, and for good reason, due to the nature of the appointment to saint. A saint is in personal contact with God in heaven; we worship and pray to them. We rely, trust, and place our faith in the pope and Congregation to make the right decision, to allow only the most deserving and most holy to be rewarded with the highest honor the church can bestow upon a human being. The cost is great, but the return on the investment is heavenly.

Censorship of Music :: Music Censoring Singers Bands Musicians Essays

Censorship of Music During the Doors concert in Miami, in 1969, lead singer Jim Morrison, "did lewdly and lasciviously expose his penis and shake it. . ." (Rosen et al. 90). Today, Billy Joe Armstrong, lead singer of Green Day, bares all at his concert in Philadelphia (Bernstein 95). The eccentric Courtney Love will rip off her bra for the audience to marvel and glorify at her action (Bernstein 95). She acts in such a fashion because she is insane and wants to prove it to the world, where as Billy Joe just performs naked for the shock value and the love of hearing tabloids and gossip. Both performers of past and present conducted strange acts on stage for the shock value and attention, but with performers of old, it reflected their life and what they were really like. Today's performers, however, do not act like that in real life, for the most part. Today, performers take on challenges, like the dare of a child. . . "Betcha won't do it!" These rock performers cannot turn down a dare or back away from even the slightest bit of public notoriety. By listening to one of their "questionable" albums, it is easily noticeable how they thrive off of it. All of these performers do have one thing in common, at one time or another, censorship made them victims because of their social unacceptable actions or the content of their music and lyrics. While censorship is slightly more realistic and open-minded (no more censoring performers from the waist down, like Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show), it still affects listeners and their choice of music quite significantly. Although the government, music associations, and other various groups try censorship, the music a person chooses is still, and always should be, his choice. Some children are too young for the exposure to certain types of music. Albums containing sexually explicit lyrics depicting sexualacts in great detail are not good for young children to hear. Also, sexual content within the albums, as in their artwork, is unacceptable. For example, the Frankenchrist album by the Dead Kennedys, which portrays an extremely sexual painting by H.G. Giger, entitled Landscape #20: Where Are We Coming From (Wishna 444). Not to mention all the shows and concerts in which some kind of pornography is used or displayed that is inappropriate for younger kids, such as Billy Joe Armstrong, of Green Day, baring all for a concert of his in Philadelphia (Bernstein 95). Also, in Cleveland, a frustrated Courtney Love tore off her bra and screamed, "Now you know how I get all the guys," (Bernstein 95).

Economics of Baseball: Revenue Sharing

Economics of Baseball: Revenue Sharing Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada. The organization is comprised of a partnership between the National League, founded in 1876, and the American League, founded in 1901. There are currently 30 teams in Major League Baseball, 14 in the American League and 16 in the National League. â€Å"Since 1903, the best of both of these leagues have met in the World Series, with the winner of the best-of-7 series being declared World Champion† (Burnett). When the World Series ends, baseball's business season starts.Receipts are tallied to determine how much the teams that earned the most will have to pay the teams that have earned the least. Large market teams like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Chicago cubs â€Å"have an overwhelming advantage over smaller market teams which created an uneven playing field† (Alice). Revenue sharing gives small market teams like the Kansas City Royals, Tampa Bay Rays, Florida Marlins, and the Pittsburgh Pirates, a better chance at success by providing more resources to improve their roster.In 1999, a â€Å"blue ribbon† panel commissioned by MLB found that â€Å"baseball franchises traditionally generate and retain a large majority of their revenue locally† (Jacobson) rather than nationally, causing a large and growing revenue disparity. Vince Gennaro, author of Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning In Baseball, found that 70 to 80 percent of a team's total revenue is contributed to local revenue. Local revenues consist of gate receipts, local television, radio and cable rights fees, ballpark concessions, advertising and publications, parking, suite rentals, postseason, and spring training.Revenues that are retained locally are a problem because all teams participate in the same national labor market. MLB has no salary cap; therefore, it is the teams’ decision how much they spend on payroll. The teams with the largest revenues have higher payrolls and are able to obtain and make offers on players that teams with lower payrolls cannot. As big market teams began setting up their own sports networks on cable, the revenue disparities accelerated. The clubs started profiting directly from subscriber fees and advertising sales. At the same ime, other clubs began to benefit from building new stadiums. According to the Report of the Independent Member of the Commissioner's Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics, the amount of a club's payroll is determined by the amount of the club's revenue and it has been argued that â€Å"the size of a club's payroll is the most important factor in determining how competitive the club will be† (Elanjin and Pachamanova). It showed in just five years the ratio of local revenues between the top seven clubs and the bottom fourteen clubs more than doubled from 5. :1 in 1995 to 14. 7:1 in 1999, because of fast g rowth rates on already large revenues (8). The ratio of payroll spending between the highest and lowest clubs went from 2:1 in the 1980s to 3. 5:1 in the 1990s (9). From 1995 to 1999, no clubs from the 14 lowest payroll-spending teams won a Division Series game or a League Championship game and no clubs from the bottom 23 clubs won a World Series game (Levin, Mitchell, Volcker, and Will p. 2-9). All of the World Series Championships have been won by one of the top payroll spending teams.The conclusion was drawn that these problems were getting worse and unless the MLB took action, the problems would remain severe. They would have to break more than a century’s worth of tradition, â€Å"to ensure baseball's broad and enduring popularity, and to guarantee it's future growth† (Levin, Mitchell, Volcker, and Will p. 13). The panel recommended that the league should impose revenue sharing, a competitive balance tax, central fund distributions, a competitive balance draft, re forms to the Rule 4 Draft, and should utilize franchise relocation. Revenue sharing money comes from two pools.The first is central funds revenue, which comes from national television and radio deals, MLB Advanced Media, merchandise sales, and the MLB network. The other is net local revenue, which comes from ticket sales, concessions and media deals that each club negotiates individually. â€Å"Against that money, each club is hit with a marginal rate of 31 percent, which is applied across the board to each of the 30 clubs† (Brown). In October 2006, the MLB and the players association reached an agreement that requires all teams to pay 34 percent into a common pool, which is than split evenly among all 30 teams.The Competitive Balance tax, also known as the Luxury Tax, penalizes teams with high payrolls by making them pay a tax rate to the MLB central fund, based on how far they go over their payroll ceiling on opening day. Only four teams have broken the threshold since it w as put in place in 2003, the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels and, Tigers. The Yankees have â€Å"exceeded it every year, paying $25,689,173 last year, a high of $33,978,702 in 2005, and a grand total of $174,183,419 over seven years† (Brown). As of 2010, clubs are taxed if they exceed $170 million in total player payroll.Teams who exceed this amount get a further â€Å"repeat offenders† penalty, which raises the percentage they pay to 40 percent. In 2009 alone, $433 million of wealth was transferred from high to low revenue teams (Brown). Major League’s revenue sharing agreement does not dictate what the recipients must do with the money once it is received. Simply stated by Baseball's collective bargaining agreement, all that is required by teams is that they must use their revenue sharing money â€Å"in an effort to improve its performance on the field†.This is so vague; the money can virtually go anywhere, even the club owner's pockets. The main problem is th at the teams receiving payments use them as their primary source of income. This allows them to keep their payrolls low but continue to receive large revenue sharing payments. Two of the biggest offenders of this are the Florida Marlins and the Tampa Bay Rays. In 2003, the Marilins won the World Series with a team of â€Å"great young players† and â€Å"talented veterans† that included Josh Beckett, Brad Penny, Mike Lowell, and Ivan Rodriguez. That year, the team had a payroll of $49. 5 million (Cohen). Rather than keeping the players that made up that payroll, they traded Penny and Beckett for much cheaper players, and lost Lowell and Rodriguez to free agency. â€Å"By shedding these stars, Florida was able to cut its payroll down to $14. 9 million in 2006, which is less than 20% of the Major League average of $78 million. It was also less than half of the $31 million in revenue sharing dollars the team received that year. † Instead of using the money to buy or retain talented players, the owners used it as part of the teams $43 million profit in 2006 (Ray).The most extreme example of revenue sharing offenders has been the Tampa Bay Rays. From 2002 to 2006, the Rays received an average of $32 million a year in revenue sharing payments (Ray). In 2006, the team had a payroll of $35. 4 million (Cohen), $42 million less than the 2006 league average. â€Å"It won only 38 percent of its games and filled less than 40 percent of its seats for home games†¦ and collected more than $30 million in revenue sharing† (Lewis). Other teams, like the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Kansas City Royals, also received significant revenue sharing money but have kept their payrolls low.In Contrast, teams like the Colorado Rockies, have not been so frugal with their money. They received $16 million in 2006 and increased their payroll by around $15 million the following season (Lewis). Since 1999, millions of dollars have been transferred from richer big m arket teams to poorer small market teams in an attempt to create competitive balance and allow all 30 teams to share in the economic advantages associated with playing in big market teams; a large fan base, lots of press coverage, lucrative cable television contracts, and high payrolls and revenues.However, baseball doesn't force revenue sharing recipients to use the money on payroll. All that is required is that the team uses the money to improve the product on the field. The system hasn't restored any true competitive balance for the league since, generally speaking, we see the same teams in the World Series year after year. The stark reality is that lower payroll and smaller market teams can make more money by losing than they can by winning because of revenue sharing.So long as the rules and regulation in Major League Baseball remain lax and enforcement stays nonexistent, teams will continue to take advantage of the system. Work Cited Alice, Lynette. â€Å"Examining why MLB rev enue sharing doesn't work. † Helium. 2002-2010 Helium, Inc. 10 Dec. 2010. Brown, Maury. â€Å"Revenue Sharing Is Making An Impact. † Baseball America. 2 Mar. 2010. Baseball America, Inc. 10 Dec. 2010. Burnett, Dashielle. â€Å"Major League Baseball. † Business Insider. 6 Dec 2010. Business Insider, Inc. 11 Dec. 2010. Cohen, Gary.The Baseball Cube Statistics. 2002. 17 Dec. 2010 Elanjian, Michael, and Dessislava A. Pachamanova. â€Å"Is Revenue Sharing Working for Major League Baseball? A Historical Perspective†. The Sport Journal. Volume 12. Number 2. United States Sports Academy, 2009. 8 Dec. 2010. Gennaro, Vince. Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball. Hingham, Massachusetts: Maple Street Press, 2007. Jacobson, David. â€Å"MLB's Revenue-Sharing Formula. † BNET – The CBS Interactive Business Network. 14 July 2008. CBS Interactive. 8 Dec. 2010.Levin, Richard C. , George J. Mitchell, Paul A. Volcker, and George F. Will. â€Å"T he Report of the Independent Members of the Commissioners Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics†. The Official Site of Major League Baseball. MLB Advanced Media, L. P. , July 2000. PDF. 11 Dec. 2010. Lewis, Michael. â€Å"Baseball's Losing Formula. † The New York Times. 3 Nov. 2007. 11 Dec. 2010. Ray, James Lincoln. â€Å"Baseball's Revenue Sharing Problem: Major League Baseball Hurt By Teams Who Don't Spend Money On Players. † Suite101. 12 Nov. 2007. 11 Dec. 2010

Modern History The Vietnam War - 854 Words

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