Has Hildegard made the cut for saint and Doctor of the Church?

"Man and woman are in this way so involved with each other that one of them is the work of the other. Without woman, man could not be called man; without man, woman could not be named woman. Thus woman is the work of man, while man is a sight full of consolation for woman. Neither of them could henceforth live without the other. Man is in this connection an indication of the Godhead while woman is an indication of the humanity of God's Son." (Hildegard, Liber Divinorum Operum)

Do you really think Pope Benedict will have a problem with this theology?

Jamie, thank you for this. At least I don't feel so alone. I've been stewing ever since I read that Benedict held Hildegard up as a paradigm of feminine obedience to the institutional church. I couldn't, for the life of me, fathom how anyone who knows anything more than her hame could have come out with something like that. Actually I still can't. It's almost like saying that Joanna, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily "served the church in a time of sins of priests and laity". It's true as far as it goes, but this certainly isn't the whole story to say the very least.

The BBC has 2 great DVDs, includes lovely photographic books of paintings in color of her visions, on Hildegard. I borrowed them from public libraries. Matthew Fox and others comment on Hildegard and it is very insightful and wonderful. She was brave and got interdict from the bishop because she stood up for a disillusioned former Crusader who was not allowed to be buried in holy ground.

Hildegard refused to allow removal of the man's body from consecrated ground, so her nuns and her were denied eucharist, denied to sing and punished. She continued to stand up for him. She was consulted by royalty and heads of state because she was very wise, had great integrity and intellect. She wrote about music, medicine, theology, science and ecology. A "Renaissance" woman of long ago.

Great if she is made a saint and Doctor of the Church. Like a lot of saints she argued with the hierarchy of her time. Like a lot of saints she was vindicated many years later. Good if the pope does make her a saint. God bless. Sincerely hope B16 does make her a saint, a Church Doctor.

I was given a lovely book of poems and writings by Hildegard. Amazing. Great wisdom. Great theological insights. Yes she should be made a saint of the church, and a Doctor of the Church. Very beautiful and wise writings. Admirable of Pope BVXI if he does let her be a saint and Doctor of the church. Theresa of Lisieux is also a wonderful Doctor of the Church and saint too. The world needs the balance and wisdom of both men and women. The movies about her are really good too. I have not seen the latest one, however I saw the films I think they were made in the 1990's. I will look at your link regarding Andrea Tornielli too.

"Hildegard's cause for sainthood was actually opened in 1233, 54 years after her death."

Fifty four years.
Half a century . . .

So, like, what's the big rush with wojo, superstar?
Afraid the truth will come out, too soon,
too, undeniably?

Well, you could say she was obedient to her duties as master of her order. She was a medieval person, and the origin of medievalism was distributed authority, to support the new expensive high tech medieval weapons systems, not obedience to a centralised boss system.

I guess the master of an order will respect the pope himself, but this idea of any random priest coming along and disagreeing with some random thing the sister have done, and the sisters respecting him for it is rather bizarre.

As I recall, the orders historically would have their own priest, who serves the order, so they don't need any others.

Nils K. Hammer

Nils K. Hammer, can you please clarify comment of Dec 22? Are you saying as abbess "she supported weapons systems because she was medieval", and medievalism is "distributed authority". I do not understand what you wrote.

I do not know if it was a random priest who placed the interdict on her and her nuns because she refused to let him dig up the body of the nobleman she allowed to be buried in consecrated land.

Is that "the disobedience to a random priest" that you refer to? Was he the bishop? Was he really a "randon" priest? Are you defending her as obedient to hierarchy? She criticized lots of clergy and state leaders too. Is this your own attempt at revisionist history to try to portray her as some kind of a submissive, silent, apathetic, complacent abbess which the facts really dispute that notion.

I agree that medievalism had a feudal system with peasant serfs (servants like slaves) and nobles as masters of the manor population and village population. The nobles gave military service to the kings.

The Australian saint McKillop nun was excommunicated by a local bishop for trying to educate women. So hierarchy abusing saints is quite a common phenomena in our church history. Not surprising that such abuse happened to Hildegard of Bingen too by the clergy hierarchs of her time.

Really, if you're going to offer your own vague suspicions that anything Pope Benedict might have to do with Hildegard is itself suspect, the least you could do is inform yourself on the matter. In his graduate and post-graduate work, Ratzinger focused on 12th and 13th century theologies of history; his Habilitationsschrift (second dissertation) was on Joachim of Fiore (a later contemporary of Hildegard) and St. Bonaventure. It's clear to anyone who has actually read Ratzinger's early work that he was fully aware of Hildegard's powerful presence in the twelfth century, especially as a voice of radical reform against corruption in palace and cathedral alike.

Furthermore, your suspicions also reveal just how little you did to try to confirm the reports. You could simply have written to the nuns at the Abbey of St. Hildegard in Eibingen, Germany, who would have promptly informed you that they've been made well aware of the preparations for the canonization and declaration as Doctor of the Church. But then, maybe the hierarchy is pulling the wool over their eyes, too?