Catherine of Siena, justly doctor of the church?

She urges those who deal directly with the pope to "stand at the ear of Christ on earth and voice this truth to him continually, so that in this truth Christ's bride may be reformed."26 "With fire and passion proclaim the truth and sow the seed of God's word in every person, but right now especially in our dear Christ on earth!"27 "We are all ready to obey your holiness," she writes to Urban VI himself, "I and those God has given me to love with a special love, and to suffer even to the point of death. We are ready to help you with the arms of holy prayer and by sowing and proclaiming the truth wherever it may please God's gentle will-even to your holiness."28 Every Christian is responsible to whatever truth he or she has perceived, and so every Christian shares responsibility for the church's search into truth.

Conclusion

During Catherine's lifetime, one of her devoted disciples and defenders, the Augustinian William Flete, had accused another, the Vallombrosan Giovanni dalle Celle, of associating Catherine with "heretical reformers." Giovanni responded:

I would consider it a glory to be called a heretic with her . . . . Oh sweetest heresy of the heavenly Catherine! You turn sinners into just people. Friend of publicans and sinners, you make the angels laugh and heaven rejoice. You honor God; you enlighten the church of Christ; you raise the dead to spiritual life . . . . You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and known that you are anointed by the Holy Spirit and are the daughter of the living God!29

So why would I name this Catherine doctor of the church? Through the very quest of her misguided youthful plunge into an all-but-absolute solitude in which she sought an intimacy with God that had no room for other people or for the affairs of the world, Catherine was brought to the graced insight that changed her life: In the incarnation, God has so identified the divine with humankind that God and neighbor are henceforth inseparable. The honesty of her response to this insight, born out of the honesty of her prayer, led her from religion as relation with God "alone with the Alone" to religion as relation with God in all and all in God. If she were to love her God in this way, she must serve others, and so she began to wait on the material and physical needs of those around her. From this simple material service, the faith that for her permeated all (along with the gradual recognition of her gifts) led her to a more and more explicitly pastoral service.

Catherine had been driven by her steady, open, ever deepening encounter with truth, with the mystery that is God, into a pastoral way of life that was grounded in her own keenly perceptive and uncompromisingly honest searchings. People's needs drew her to the writing of letters and eventually a book that her followers would call The Dialogue, all works of what we today call pastoral theology. She had a genius for applying with a stunning common sense, to real individuals and their real life situations, the theological concepts she absorbed with such prodigious retention and integration. She spoke and wrote out of who she was constantly becoming-as woman, friend, caregiver, thinker, mama and teacher to her expanding famiglia, Dominican, and concerned member of a tormented church.