objects. No signs of public worship may be used besides those which are sanctioned, nor may the accustomed and approved signs of honour be shown to any except those who have been canonized or at least beatified by the Holy See. Only the saints, not the beatified, are invoked in the public litanies, and ( ordinarily it is not lawful to erect churches or altars in honour of the beatified; this mark of honour is reserved for the canonized saints. The pictures of the saints are painted with aureoles, those of the beatified with rays. With the permission of the Ordinary it is not forbidden to place statues of men who have not been canonized or beatified in our churches provided there be no marks of religious worship shown them; and paintings of such men may, under the same condition, be placed on the walls or windows of a church. Such paintings, however, may not be placed over an altar.
4. The Church is very careful to guard against abuse and fraud in the worship of the saints, their images and relics, as is shown especially by the wise decree of the Council of Trent on the invocation of the saints and the veneration paid to their relics and images (sess. 25). In that decree it is specially prescribed that no new relics or miracles are to be admitted except with the Bishop's approbation after making a diligent inquiry into the truth of the matter. The question of the authenticity of relics is one of fact and proved by the ordinary rules of evidence. When there seems to be moral certainty of the genuineness of a relic, the Church permits relative honour to be paid to it on account of the spiritual excellence of the person with whom it was connected. The honour is thus referred to the person of the saint and to God who is glorified in all his saints. It is quite possible for mistakes to be made about the genuineness of a relic; the infallibility of the Church does not enter here. When a mistake is detected, of course the honour previously paid to a false relic should stop. No one need be scandalized or distressed when any such discovery is made. The merit of the worship previously paid in good faith is not lost; the saint whose relic it was supposed to be was really honoured by marks of devotion shown to it out of love for him. It is as if a devotee of Shakespeare were to keep a bust in his room, and show it marks of honour because he supposed it to represent the great poet; if he found out that it was a bust of Thomas Cromwell, he would be disappointed, but neither he nor Shakespeare would have suffered any great loss.
