Canonise Non-Catholics?

Mark Shea has an excellent article on canonisation and non-Catholics.  In response to a question, he explains why C.S. Lewis, a holy man and great writer, who was not a member of the Church cannot be considered for canonisation, not that he isn't in heaven.  This paragraph is a wonderful summary of what the process of canonisation is all about:

"But I do not think he (C.S. Lewis) will (or should) be canonized by the Church.  Nor, indeed, does the Church canonize non-Catholics.  The reason is simple: that’s not what canonization is for.  Canonization is not intended to say that saints are in Heaven but nobody else is.  Rather it is intended to say, “This person shows us how to fully incarnate the life of Jesus in union with the Catholic Church, in which the fullness of the revelation subsists.”  Lewis can’t do this, precisely because (as Lewis would be the first to say), he did not believe the fullness of the faith subsisted in the Church.  To be sure, the paradox of the Faith is that everybody in Heaven is a Catholic.  That is, every person united with the Trinity and fully participating in the beatific vision now realizes (if they never figured it out on earth) that there truly is one Lord, one faith, one baptism and that the body of Christ is not ultimately divisible.  But the sad fact is, on earth it is tragically divided (a fact Lewis lamented despite his own participation in that division).  So while the Church can (and should) celebrate his personal holiness and his many gifts that were the fruit of grace, it does well, I think, not to canonize him, just as it does well not to canonize any non-Catholic.  To canonize non-Catholics is to pretend that division either do not exist or do not matter.  But they do exist and they do matter.  Jesus’ prayer is that we may be one.  But the unity and oneness of the Church has to be real."

The article is well worth reading.  He also has a great insight into Lewis and why he never became a Catholic:

"Lewis, an Ulsterman with anti-Catholic prejudice instilled into him with his mother’s milk, is, I think somebody who needs to be cut a lot of slack.  The remarkable thing about him is not that he never became Catholic, but that he came as far as he did in overcoming his prejudices.  Not only did he progress from atheist to convinced Christian, but to a form of Christianity that drank deeply from Catholic wells, even so far as to acknowledge the reality of Purgatory and to loves as a friend the “papist” Tolkien."

Marvellous stuff.  Thank God for C.S. Lewis, he has formed generations and led them to faith, and even though he never became a Catholic, he is in sensibility, and he is one of the 20th century's best apologists for Catholic faith.