Competition for Sainthood and the Millennial Church

The Roman Catholic Church has been turning out new saints for two millennia. The argument advanced here is that the saint–making process is arranged as an open contest for sainthood: by combining competitive initiative and pressure from below with exclusive adjudication from above, it provides effective incentives for participants to direct their efforts toward the best interests of the church. This is a key factor that counters bureaucratic ossification and keeps the church thriving. The argument implies that the secular pattern of canonizations should mirror the changing pattern of church demand rather than any exogenous supply of saintly persons, and should translate into a pattern of rise and decline of religious orders which specialize in particular virtues meeting particular demands. Statistical data on canonizations in the second millennium strongly support this empirical implication. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at a panel on Public Choice and the Millennium in the annual meeting of the European Public Choice Society, Siena, 26–29 April, 2000, whose participants provided interesting discussion. The author is particularly indebted to George Akerlof, Vani Borooah, Alberto Cassone, Joan Delaney Grossman, Gregory Grossman, Ronald Wintrobe, Robert Young, and a referee of this Journal for useful comments and suggestions. The revised version was completed while the author was visiting professor at the Department of Economics of the University of California at Berkeley, whose support is gratefully acknowledged.