Making Lakota holy man Nicholas Black Elk a Catholic saint takes another step forward this month as a Vatican official comes to Rapid City to write a position paper on Black Elk’s fitness for canonization. If the Pope’s man likes what he hears, Black Elk’s supporters will still have to come up with two miracles to put the saint pips on Black Elk’s collar.
I take a skeptical stance toward any claim of the miraculous, but I hope Black Elk’s Catholic backers can come up with better miracles than Deacon Marlon Leneaugh of the Rapid City Diocese mentions in the press:
Leneaugh believes he knows of two non-healing miracles. The first, he said, was that a grandson of Black Elk, George Looks Twice, coincidentally sat next to an archivist from Marquette University, Mark Thiel, at the canonization in Rome of the first Native American saint Kateri Tekakwitha, an Algonquin-Mohawk from the 1600s who is recognized as the first indigenous American Catholic to be canonized.
Leneaugh said Looks Twice turned to Thiel, whom he did not know, and said, “I hope one day they do this for my grandpa.”
Thiel would prove instrumental in assembling the petition and initial materials submitted to the bishop in Rapid City.
“Of the hundreds of thousands of people (present at mass that day), you pick out the one guy (who could help you),” said Leneaugh.
The second miracle is a little closer to home — and more bureaucratic.
“The changing of the name (of the mountain) to Black Elk Peak,” Leneaugh said, laughing. “That’s kind of like a miracle” [Christopher Vondracek, “Vatican Official to Take up Black Elk Sainthood Cause,” Rapid City Journal, updated 2018.07.16].
Miracles are not happy coincidence. Miracles are not government actions resulting from social action. Miracles are extraordinary reversals of the normal order of events that can only be explained by supernatural intervention.
Black Elk was a great South Dakotan. He deserves recognition, honor, and historical study. But we don’t “honor” anyone by stretching the word “miracle” into meaninglessness.
What someone could easily read as humor, we should instead interpret as an attempt to reduce miracles to the mundane.
Seriously? He was making a joke.
“Of the hundreds of thousands of people (present at mass that day), you pick out the one guy (who could help you),” said Leneaugh.
Wouldn’t you think that at a canonization in Rome there would be assigned seating and that it wouldn’t really be a miracle or even a coincidence?
cont. … Assigned seating for the VIP’s, I mean. Like an archivist and for the grandson of another native American Priest.
The whole sainthood gig is merely a publicity stunt. It’s no church’s business to decide who is a saint and who’s not. When the Vatican “fast tracks” someone like John Paul II or Mother Teresa due to popular demand and the likelihood of increased free publicity — members and donations donations donations — they make it clear what the whole scam is about. The RCC ought to at least be embarrassed, if not ashamed.
The political organization known as “The Roman Catholic Church” still owns an active political “Papal Bull” (what a great characterization for it) that gave leave to its members to slaughter the infidels they found on this continent.
If Black Elk became Catholic, it most likely was a matter of self-preservation. On the other hand, there are lots of Catholics who are able to not delve too deeply into the crimes committed by the operatives of this political organization.
Miracles, schmiracles.