How Did Saints Challenge Cultural Norms Within the Church?

Brief Overview

• The history of the Catholic Church contains many examples of holy men and women who questioned accepted practices and worked for reform from within.
• Saint Francis of Assisi challenged the Church’s acceptance of wealth by founding a movement based on radical poverty and simple living that questioned whether clergy should own property.
• Saint Catherine of Siena broke gender expectations by traveling across Europe as a woman to influence popes and cardinals on matters of faith and governance during the fourteenth century.
• Saints like Blessed Peter Kibe and Blessed Isidore Bakanja resisted racism and discrimination within the Church despite facing rejection and violence from those who held racist views.
• Many saints opposed teachings or practices they believed contradicted the Gospel, showing that faithful Catholics could disagree with Church leaders while remaining loyal to Christ and the Church.
• These saints demonstrate that the Holy Spirit has worked through courageous voices throughout history to help the Church grow and become more faithful to Christ’s message.

Early Church Reformers and Disputes Over Practice

The practice of challenging Church norms and teachings began in the earliest centuries of Christianity. Saint Polycarp and other bishops disagreed with Rome about the proper way to observe Easter, showing that even in the time of the apostles, different groups within the Church held different views about how to practice the faith correctly. These debates were not seen as rebellion but as honest disagreements among believers trying to understand God’s will. Saint Cyprian and Saint Firmilian likewise disagreed with Rome about proper baptism practices, and their disagreements show that the Church has always contained discussions and different perspectives on how to carry out its mission. These early saints respected the Church while also maintaining their convictions about what was right. They did not leave the Church or start separate groups but worked within the structure to make their cases known. Their examples show that being Catholic has never required blind agreement with every practice or teaching. Rather, the Church itself contains the resources for growth and change through honest dialogue among believers who share fundamental commitments to Christ and His Gospel. The willingness to respectfully question was itself a sign of faith and love for the Church because these saints cared enough about the faith to work for what they thought was right. Throughout the centuries that followed, this tradition of faithful questioning would continue and develop in new ways.

Saint Francis of Assisi and the Challenge to Wealth

One of the most powerful challenges to Church culture came from Saint Francis of Assisi, who lived in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Francis was born into a wealthy merchant family in Italy and grew up enjoying luxury and comfort like the other wealthy young people of his time. His early life gave no sign of the radical transformation that would come later. However, after being captured in war and experiencing illness and spiritual encounters, Francis began to see the world differently and to question what truly mattered in life. He came to believe that Christ and the apostles had owned nothing and that following Jesus meant giving up all possessions. This belief was not unique to Francis, but he lived it with an intensity that shocked people around him. When his father discovered that Francis was using family money for charitable purposes, he became furious and eventually disowned his son. Francis responded by renouncing his inheritance completely, even stripping off his fine clothes in front of the Bishop of Assisi to symbolize his rejection of his former life.

Francis’s commitment to poverty went far beyond simply having little for himself. He taught his followers, the Friars Minor, that they should never store up money or goods for the future and should instead trust in God’s providence to provide what they needed. He even considered money to be like dung and refused to touch it or allow his friars to handle it. When he encountered someone poorer than himself, he would remove his own clothes and give them to that person, believing it would be theft to keep what another person needed more. This radical approach directly challenged the reality that by Francis’s time, the Church had become very wealthy and powerful, owning land, collecting taxes, and living in a way quite different from the poverty that Christ had taught. Bishops and popes lived in fine houses and wore expensive clothes, while Francis believed they should live like the poorest people. His movement created tremendous controversy that lasted for centuries after his death. The Church had to address whether Christ and the apostles had really owned nothing and whether it was truly possible for priests and religious communities to own nothing while still serving the Church’s mission.

Francis’s challenge to the Church’s relationship with wealth was not a rejection of the Church itself but rather a call to return to something he saw as essential to Christian faith. He wanted the clergy to embrace poverty and simplicity so that they could serve the poor and the marginalized without distraction from worldly concerns. He also wanted to show that a life of radical simplicity could be a source of joy and freedom rather than misery. His followers came to respect and love him tremendously, and the movement he started grew rapidly despite the controversy it caused. The Franciscan order became one of the most influential movements in the Church, and it played a major role in inspiring others to work for reform and renewal. Though some of his most extreme ideas about property were eventually condemned as heretical by Pope John XXII, the spirit of his witness to poverty and service to the poor has never left the Church and continues to inspire Catholics today to live more simply and to care for those in need.

Saint Catherine of Siena and Women’s Public Role

Saint Catherine of Siena challenged one of the most deeply held cultural norms of her time by being a woman who exercised significant authority and influence in Church affairs. She was born in Siena, Italy, in the year 1347 to a lower middle-class family, the youngest of twenty-five children born to her parents. From her earliest years, Catherine showed signs of unusual spiritual maturity and commitment to God. At age seven, she vowed to remain a virgin and to dedicate herself to Christ alone rather than pursue marriage as her parents desired. When she was sixteen years old and her parents tried to arrange a marriage with her widowed brother-in-law, Catherine responded by cutting her hair short and fasting to make herself less attractive, eventually convincing her parents to let her follow her religious vocation instead. At the age of sixteen, Catherine joined the Third Order of the Dominicans, which allowed her to live a religious life while remaining outside a convent and continuing to engage with the world around her.

Catherine’s spiritual life was marked by powerful mystical experiences and encounters with Christ that shaped her understanding of her mission in the world. She began by caring for plague victims and the poor in her community, but her calling soon expanded into something much larger. She started writing letters to the most powerful people in Europe, including popes, cardinals, kings, and queens, urging them to reform themselves and the Church. Over four hundred of her letters survive today, making her one of the most prolific letter writers of her era. Her letters were bold and direct, calling Church leaders to holiness and warning them about the consequences of failing to live according to the Gospel. She also traveled widely throughout Italy and even to Avignon in France to meet personally with the Pope, serving as a political negotiator and working to restore peace between warring cities and between the papacy and various rulers. The remarkable thing about this was that Catherine did all of this as a woman in the fourteenth century, when women were expected to remain silent in public affairs and to limit their roles to the home or the convent.

Her active public role caused tremendous controversy and criticism, particularly from men in the Church who believed that women should not speak out on matters of faith or politics. Her own confessor and biographer had to defend her actions, explaining that Christ Himself had called her to this public mission and therefore she had to obey God rather than cultural expectations about women’s roles. Catherine’s most famous work is called the Dialogue, which consists of conversations between her soul and God in which she explored deep theological questions and especially the need for reform within the Church. In this work, she was fearless in criticizing the failures of priests and bishops, particularly their corruption and failure to live according to their vows. She criticized clergy for their wealth, their sexual misconduct, and their lack of concern for the poor and sick. She believed that the reform of the Church would come through the conversion of its leaders and through the deepening of faith among all baptized Catholics. Though her public efforts to bring about immediate reform were not successful during her lifetime, her legacy as a teacher and a model of faithful courage has been enormous. The Church recognized her significance by declaring her a saint, and in the year 1970, Pope Paul VI declared her a Doctor of the Church, one of only a few women given this honor. This recognition means that her writings and teachings have special authority in the Church and are worthy of study by all Catholics.

Saint Hildegard of Bingen and Intellectual Authority

Saint Hildegard of Bingen lived during the twelfth century in what is now Germany and challenged the norms of her time by being a woman of extraordinary learning and intellectual authority in an age when women were largely excluded from formal education and positions of influence. Hildegard was born around the year 1098 and spent most of her life in a convent, but this did not limit her impact or her achievements. She received an excellent education and became fluent in Latin, which was rare for women of her era. She was a theologian, a musician, a poet, a healer, and a naturalist whose works covered an enormous range of topics and showed deep learning and original thinking. She wrote about theology, about natural philosophy and the sciences, about medicine and healing, and about spirituality and mysticism. She also composed music, which was an unusual accomplishment for women, and she wrote liturgical hymns and chants that are still performed today. Her writings demonstrate that she had studied Scripture deeply and could interpret biblical texts with the skill of formal theologians, though she had no formal theological training in the way that male clergy received.

Hildegard understood her learning and authority as coming directly from God through mystical visions, which she described in great detail in her writings. She claimed to have received direct revelation from God about theological matters and about the state of the Church and the world. This claim to mystical authority allowed her to speak with a voice that could not easily be dismissed by the male clergy who might have been threatened by her learning otherwise. She was widely respected during her lifetime and corresponded with popes, bishops, and other powerful leaders of the Church and the secular world, offering her counsel and spiritual guidance to these important figures. She was also bold in criticizing the failures of Church leaders and in calling for reform and renewal within the Church. Despite her gender and the restrictions that supposedly applied to women, she managed to have her voice heard at the highest levels of the Church. The Pope approved of her work and supported her mission, and bishops consulted her about matters of faith and practice. She founded a convent where women could receive excellent education and contribute to the life of the Church through their learning and spiritual practice. In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI declared Hildegard a Doctor of the Church, recognizing that her contributions to theology and spirituality were worthy of study by all Catholics. Her life and work show that faithful women have always found ways to exercise their God-given gifts and to contribute to the Church’s mission, even in times when the culture and formal structures of the Church did not easily allow for women’s participation and leadership.

Saint Teresa of Ávila and Religious Reform

Saint Teresa of Ávila lived in Spain during the sixteenth century and challenged the norms of her time both as a woman and as a bold reformer within her own religious order. She was born into a family of Spanish nobility, which gave her certain advantages but also exposed her to the expectations and restrictions placed on women of her class. She entered a convent of the Carmelite order as a young woman and spent much of her life there living a contemplative spiritual life. However, she became convinced that her order had become too lax in its observance of the strict Rule that the Carmelites had originally followed. She believed that religious communities should practice greater discipline, more rigorous prayer, and stricter poverty in imitation of Christ and the early saints. Rather than simply accepting the state of her order, Teresa decided to work for reform. She founded new convents of the Carmelite order that followed a stricter interpretation of the Rule, and she also worked with other reformers, particularly Saint John of the Cross, to reform the male branch of the Carmelite order as well.

Teresa’s efforts to reform the Carmelites created significant conflict and opposition. Many in her order resisted her changes and questioned her authority as a woman to institute such major reforms. She faced accusations and suspicion from Church authorities and spent time under investigation by the Inquisition, though she was eventually cleared. Despite these obstacles, she persisted in her mission because she believed it was what God wanted. She also wrote extensively about her spiritual experiences and her understanding of prayer and the spiritual life. Her most famous work, called the Interior Castle, describes the spiritual journey of the soul toward union with God in beautiful and poetic language. This work remains one of the most important spiritual classics in the Catholic tradition. Like Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Ávila was declared a Doctor of the Church, recognizing that her contributions to understanding the spiritual life were of lasting importance to the entire Church. Her life shows that women saints have not only followed the established paths of their times but have themselves been agents of change and reform within the Church. They have trusted in their experiences of God and their understanding of what God wanted and have worked to bring about change even when doing so required them to challenge the expectations and structures of their society.

Saints Who Resisted Racism and Worked for Inclusion

In more recent centuries, some saints have challenged the racism and exclusion that existed within the Church and the broader society, resisting unjust systems even at great personal cost. Blessed Peter Kibe was a Japanese Christian who lived in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and felt called to become a Jesuit priest. However, when he applied to the Jesuit order in Japan, he was rejected simply because he was Japanese. Rather than accept this rejection, Kibe traveled thousands of miles on foot to Rome to appeal directly to the Church leadership there. His journey showed his determination to pursue his calling despite the racism he faced. The fact that the Jesuit order and the Church as a whole had adopted racist policies that excluded people based on their ethnicity rather than on their fitness for religious life was a profound failure of the Church to live up to its own teaching that all people are made in the image of God and that the Gospel is meant for all people. Kibe’s resistance to this injustice and his willingness to travel so far to challenge it showed his faith and his commitment to the Church’s true mission.

Blessed Isidore Bakanja was a Congolese Catholic who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and suffered violence because of his faith and his insistence on the dignity of all people in God’s sight. Isidore worked as a servant on a rubber plantation and was known for his openness about his Catholic faith and his desire to help others come to know Christ. His Belgian employers hated the Catholic faith because Catholic missionaries had taught the African workers that they were not inferior to white people and that Christ’s message of salvation was meant for all people. Because Isidore refused to stop wearing his Catholic scapular, which marked him as a believer, his employer brutally beat him and left him to die. His death made him a martyr for the faith, but it also showed how the systems of racism that existed within European society had infected parts of the Church and how some Catholics used their power to suppress the faith among African people. The courage that Isidore showed in continuing to wear his scapular despite the threats and eventually the violence he faced showed his commitment to Christ and to the truth that all people are worthy of respect and salvation. His witness to the faith in the face of racist violence continues to challenge Catholics today to work against racism and to build a Church that truly welcomes and values all people.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton and American Catholicism

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton lived in the early nineteenth century and challenged cultural norms by becoming a Catholic and working to build Catholic institutions in the new United States. She was born into a wealthy family with prestigious connections, the daughter of a prominent New York physician. She married and had five children, living a comfortable life in New York society. However, after her husband died, Elizabeth traveled to Italy and encountered the Catholic faith there. She was moved by what she experienced and decided to convert to Catholicism in 1809. This conversion was shocking to her family and her society, which saw the Catholic Church with suspicion and prejudice. Anti-Catholic sentiment was strong in New York at that time, and Elizabeth’s conversion meant that she was ostracized by her former friends and society. Rather than retreat from her faith, she moved to Baltimore, where the Catholic Church had a stronger presence, and used her education and her wealth to serve the Church. She founded the Sisters of Charity and opened schools to serve poor children. She believed that Catholic education should be available to all children, not just the wealthy, and she worked to build a system of Catholic schools that would serve the broader American population. Her efforts were instrumental in laying the foundation for Catholic education in the United States. She was declared a saint in 1975 and is honored as the first American-born saint in the Catholic Church. Her life shows how even after the era of the great medieval and Renaissance saints, the Church continued to produce holy men and women who challenged the cultures around them and worked to build communities of faith and service.

Saint Francis Overcoming Personal Prejudice

Another significant aspect of Saint Francis of Assisi’s challenge to cultural norms involved his personal overcoming of deeply ingrained prejudices that were common in his society. In his youth, Francis felt profound disgust and fear toward people with leprosy, which was a common disease of his time that left people severely disfigured and forced them to live in isolation from the rest of society. Lepers were treated as untouchable outcasts and were forbidden from entering cities or having contact with other people. Francis’s aversion to lepers was powerful and natural given the culture and medical understanding of his time. However, at a key moment in his spiritual journey, Francis encountered a leper on the road as he was riding his horse. His first instinct was to flee in horror and revulsion from the sight of the man. Instead of following that impulse, Francis stopped, dismounted from his horse, embraced the leper, and kissed his face in a gesture of love and acceptance. He also gave the man money for his survival. From that moment on, Francis’s visceral disgust transformed into tenderness and spiritual insight. He began to see Christ in the faces of lepers and to serve them with joy and compassion. His willingness to overcome his natural prejudice and to respond to lepers with love rather than fear became a defining characteristic of his spiritual life. He spent much of his time caring for lepers and helping them, and this work of mercy became a central part of the Franciscan mission of service to the marginalized and the suffering. Francis’s ability to transform his own prejudices shows that conversion and change are possible for all people who are willing to open their hearts to grace.

Women Saints Breaking Gender Barriers

Throughout the history of the Church, women saints have continually pushed against the limitations and restrictions placed on women by both Church structures and wider society. Medieval abbesses managed convents as centers of learning and spiritual authority with power that sometimes rivaled that of bishops. Women like Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, and Teresa of Ávila wielded spiritual authority and influenced Church teaching and policy through their writings, their spiritual counsel, and their work of reform. They did this at times when formal Church structures did not grant women authority or decision-making power. They found ways to make their voices heard and to use their God-given gifts in service of the Church’s mission. Their success required courage, faith, and often the support of male allies who recognized the value of their contributions. Despite the patriarchal structures that existed over many centuries, these women saints never gave up on the Church or their calling. Instead, they worked within the existing structures while also pushing those structures to change and to become more open to women’s participation. Their witness shows that the Holy Spirit has always worked through women to guide and renew the Church, even when formal structures did not recognize or validate their authority. Today, as the Church continues to reflect on the role of women in its mission and leadership, the examples of these saints provide important witness to what women can accomplish when they are given space and resources to contribute their gifts.

The Catechism on Conscience and Dissent

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches about the importance of conscience in moral decision-making and the responsibility that each person has to form their conscience in accordance with God’s law and the teaching of the Church. The Catechism also teaches that in some circumstances, a person may find themselves in disagreement with Church teaching or practice. The document recognizes that while Catholics are called to respect the teaching authority of the Church and to approach Church teaching with a presumption that it is true, this does not mean that Catholics must never question or respectfully disagree with aspects of Church teaching or practice (CCC 2039-2051). The examples of saints who challenged Church norms show this principle worked out in the lives of holy people. These saints respected the Church and remained loyal to it even while they questioned particular practices or teachings. They sought to reform the Church from within rather than leaving it or setting up competing organizations. Their respectful questioning and their willingness to work for change show that being a faithful Catholic can include thoughtful disagreement about particular matters while maintaining love and loyalty toward the Church as a whole. The witness of these saints suggests that the Church is strengthened when faithful people are willing to raise difficult questions and to work for genuine reform based on a deeper understanding of the Gospel and the mission of Christ.

The Role of Mystical Experience and Spiritual Authority

Many of the saints who challenged Church norms drew their authority and confidence from their personal mystical experiences and their sense that God had called them to speak and act for the sake of reform and renewal. Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Hildegard of Bingen, and Saint Teresa of Ávila all claimed to have received direct mystical experiences of God that shaped their understanding of their mission and their sense of urgency about the need for reform. These women claimed to be in direct communication with God through prayer and contemplative experiences, and they believed that God had instructed them to speak and act for the sake of the Church’s renewal. The male Church authorities of their times had to decide whether to accept that these women had genuine mystical experiences and genuine callings from God or to dismiss them as deluded or presumptuous. In most cases, the Church ultimately recognized that these women’s experiences were authentic and that their callings were genuine. This recognition gave them the authority to speak and to work for change in ways that might otherwise have been impossible for women in their historical contexts. The role of mystical experience in giving voice and authority to saints who challenged norms shows the importance of the spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit gives to all baptized people. The Church is enriched when it creates space for people to share their spiritual experiences and their sense of calling, even when doing so challenges existing structures or expectations.

The Spiritual Cost of Challenging Norms

Many of the saints who worked for reform and who challenged Church norms paid significant personal costs for their witness. Saint Catherine of Siena exhausted herself through her travels, her fasting, and her intense spiritual and political work, and she died at the age of only thirty-three. Saint Francis of Assisi lived in extreme poverty and hardship, often going without adequate food and shelter, and his body was marked by physical signs of his suffering. Saint Teresa of Ávila faced investigation by the Inquisition and spent much of her life under suspicion and opposition from those who resisted her reforms. Blessed Peter Kibe spent his life in a foreign land far from his homeland, unable to fulfill his calling as a priest because of racism within the Church. Blessed Isidore Bakanja was beaten and left to die because of his faith. These saints accepted suffering and hardship as part of the cost of their faithfulness to God and their commitment to the Church’s renewal and mission. Their willingness to accept such costs shows the depth of their faith and their commitment to what they believed God was calling them to do. It also shows that working for reform and justice within the Church is not easy or painless but requires sacrifice and sometimes suffering. The willingness of these saints to accept such costs for the sake of the Gospel and the Church’s mission shows what it means to take one’s faith seriously and to be willing to serve something larger than one’s own comfort and success.

How Change Happens Through Fidelity

The examples of saints who challenged Church norms show that real change and reform come not through rejecting the Church but through faithful engagement with it from within. These saints loved the Church deeply and worked for its renewal because they believed in its mission and its identity as the Body of Christ. Saint Francis did not leave the Church to start his own movement but worked to convince Church leadership to approve his vision of radical poverty. Saint Catherine of Siena did not reject the papacy but worked intensely to restore the Pope to Rome and to help him carry out his mission more effectively. Saint Hildegard of Bingen did not create an alternative church but worked within the existing convent structure to establish communities of women dedicated to learning and holiness. Saint Teresa of Ávila did not abandon the Carmelite order but worked to reform it from within. These saints understood that the Church was God’s instrument in the world and that it was worth fighting for and working to improve. They believed that God had given them gifts and callings to use within the Church for its sake and for the sake of the world. Their example challenges us to think about what it means to be faithful to an institution while also being willing to work for change and improvement. The saints who challenged norms show that loyalty and critique do not have to be opposed but can work together in the service of genuine reform and spiritual renewal.”