Is Saint Rasputin Next?

Posted on July 15, 2002 in Myths & Mysticism Scoundrels

Neo-Czarists in the Soviet Union have employed fraud in an effort to secure the canonization of Nicholas II. Nicholas retains a death grip on the imaginations of many people, including my mother, who feel so bad that he and his family were shot as a hedge against reimposition of the monarchy in Russia. Joe Nickell writes in the most recent Skeptical Inquirer that icons of the Czar have been caught “weeping myrrh”, a aromatic oil that was once the major support of the land of Yemen and one of the gifts brought to the infant Jesus by the three Wise Men.

Weeping images are nothing new — Skeptical Enquirer has exposed many such frauds, but when a new one begins to ooze, you can be sure of a rush of the faithful to see what just has to be a “true miracle”. No one except a chosen few seem to be present when the image starts to weep, sweat, or pour blood. Nickell writes of one Italian case where DNA testing of the blood bursting out of a small madonna showed that it was that of the statue’s owner. Her lawyer explained: “The Virgin Mary had to get that blood from somewhere.” (See my wife’s blog for some comment on the idea of God or God’s agents needing to teleport necessary tissues from human donors.) No case stands up to true scientific scrutiny. Nonetheless, devotees of the saints continue to use such instances as part of the cases they make for the saints.

In Russia, there is considerable pressure being brought to bear on the Orthodox hierarchy to canonize Nicholas II by reactionary voices made free by Glasnost. Russia’s patriarch, however, opposes the idea: Nicholas simply did not live a saintly life. He surrounded himself with luxury and refused to use his absolute power to help alleviate the conditions of the masses. Instead he whined incessantly about how unappreciative his people were. One can almost imagine him taunting his jailers. Perhaps it was a snyde remark that led them to take him and his family for a walk in the woods. This doesn’t justify the murder, but neither does it make Nicholas II a martyr. Martyrs have to die for good causes and the replacement restoration of one tyranny for another does not count.

One wonders what will happen next. We’ve recently seen the head of the ultra-right religious organization “Opus Dei” canonized by John Paul II, who seems to be making a last mad dash to include a few conservative cronies before the dice roll of the convocation of cardinals after they tap his forehead with the sacred mallet and declare him dead. John Paul’s past canonizations of Edith Stein and Maxmillian Kolbe have twisted Catholic/Jewish relationships. In the meantime, John Paul drags his feet on the canonization of other martyrs of the Nazis and of Archbishop Oscar Romero, clearly shot for his faith because he spoke out for the rights of El Salvadoran peasants. He was, however, a liberal and everyone knows that John Paul doesn’t like people who show a little understanding for the sinning poor.

Those who promote the causes of Nicholas II must, it seems, resort to spiritual fraud to override the strong objections against him. If we look at the historical record, Nicholas has no chance of receiving earthly recognition for his good deeds because his evils were so much greater. Nicholas sat in his palaces while his people starved. When they complained, he scorned them as unappreciative. The only “good” thing he seems to have done was to defend the bloated perfunctories of the national church against the godless communists. These priests probably did more to promote atheism by their blind support of a state which exalted the wealthy and the powerful over the peasants that Jesus loved. If more had joined in the cause for democracy and human rights in the latter part of the 19th century and effected democratic change, eschewing the required connection between the Czar and deity, the Orthodox church might have prospered and flowered in the 20th.

To make Nicholas II into a saint requires nothing less than massive historical revisionism and a few frauds. So far his supporters have not been above lies and invention. He does not inspire them to tell the truth, which is one of the highest forms of Good. This should be reason enough to reject for all time any claims on his sainthood.

As they labor to bury the truth with the past in Russia, the shock troops of Opus Dei now labor to make Queen Isabella, the chief instigator of the Spanish Inquisition and the enslavement of the Americas, a saint because she labored so hard to bring the faith to so many people who had never heard of Jesus. If these two causes go through (the Vatican should tell Opus Dei flat out that Isabella does not qualify because her deeds were downright evil, enslaving, militaristic, and genocidal), what will the Right push for next? St. Rasputin? He did claim to have visions. Perhaps even now an apologist is working on a new biography that will pave the way for yet another scurrilous cause.