[Nemesis6]

The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.

By Christopher Hitchens

I think it was Macaulay who said that the Roman Catholic Church deserved great credit for, and owed its longevity to, its ability to handle and contain fanaticism. This rather oblique compliment belongs to a more serious age. What is so striking about the "beatification" of the woman who styled herself "Mother" Teresa is the abject surrender, on the part of the church, to the forces of showbiz, superstition, and populism.

It's the sheer tawdriness that strikes the eye first of all. It used to be that a person could not even be nominated for "beatification," the first step to "sainthood," until five years after his or her death. This was to guard against local or popular enthusiasm in the promotion of dubious characters. The pope nominated MT a year after her death in 1997. It also used to be that an apparatus of inquiry was set in train, including the scrutiny of an advocatus diaboli or "devil's advocate," to test any extraordinary claims. The pope has abolished this office and has created more instant saints than all his predecessors combined as far back as the 16th century.

As for the "miracle" that had to be attested, what can one say? Surely any respectable Catholic cringes with shame at the obviousness of the fakery. A Bengali woman named Monica Besra claims that a beam of light emerged from a picture of MT, which she happened to have in her home, and relieved her of a cancerous tumor. Her physician, Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, says that she didn't have a cancerous tumor in the first place and that the tubercular cyst she did have was cured by a course of prescription medicine. Was he interviewed by the Vatican's investigators? No. (As it happens, I myself was interviewed by them but only in the most perfunctory way. The procedure still does demand a show of consultation with doubters, and a show of consultation was what, in this case, it got.)

According to an uncontradicted report in the Italian paper L'Eco di Bergamo, the Vatican's secretary of state sent a letter to senior cardinals in June, asking on behalf of the pope whether they favored making MT a saint right away. The pope's clear intention has been to speed the process up in order to perform the ceremony in his own lifetime. The response was in the negative, according to Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest who has acted as postulator or advocate for the "canonization." But the damage, to such integrity as the process possesses, has already been done.

During the deliberations over the Second Vatican Council, under the stewardship of Pope John XXIII, MT was to the fore in opposing all suggestions of reform. What was needed, she maintained, was more work and more faith, not doctrinal revision. Her position was ultra-reactionary and fundamentalist even in orthodox Catholic terms. Believers are indeed enjoined to abhor and eschew abortion, but they are not required to affirm that abortion is "the greatest destroyer of peace," as MT fantastically asserted to a dumbfounded audience when receiving the Nobel Peace Prize*. Believers are likewise enjoined to abhor and eschew divorce, but they are not required to insist that a ban on divorce and remarriage be a part of the state constitution, as MT demanded in a referendum in Ireland (which her side narrowly lost) in 1996. Later in that same year, she told Ladies Home Journal that she was pleased by the divorce of her friend Princess Diana, because the marriage had so obviously been an unhappy one …

This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?

The rich world has a poor conscience, and many people liked to alleviate their own unease by sending money to a woman who seemed like an activist for "the poorest of the poor." People do not like to admit that they have been gulled or conned, so a vested interest in the myth was permitted to arise, and a lazy media never bothered to ask any follow-up questions. Many volunteers who went to Calcutta came back abruptly disillusioned by the stern ideology and poverty-loving practice of the "Missionaries of Charity," but they had no audience for their story. George Orwell's admonition in his essay on Gandhi—that saints should always be presumed guilty until proved innocent—was drowned in a Niagara of soft-hearted, soft-headed, and uninquiring propaganda.

One of the curses of India, as of other poor countries, is the quack medicine man, who fleeces the sufferer by promises of miraculous healing. Sunday was a great day for these parasites, who saw their crummy methods endorsed by his holiness and given a more or less free ride in the international press. Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. More than that, we witnessed the elevation and consecration of extreme dogmatism, blinkered faith, and the cult of a mediocre human personality. Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions.

http://www.slate.com/id/2090083

So step 1: Draw in the poor and the needy. Step 2 - ???. Step 3 - PROFIT!

[Blue Lion]

Perpetually outraged

[Nemesis6]

Perpetually outraged

Dubiously flabbergasted

[Nuclear1]

Flagrantly confused

[Scotty]

Somewhat irritated (at thread title.)

[iamzack]

Exceptionally bored.

[watsisname]

Cheif Billow

Big Cloud

[BloodEagle]

Noxiously nauseated.

[Mongoose]

Futile wishing (for a moratorium on stir-****-up drive-by quote threads)

[Nuclear1]

It's supposed to be an adverb ending in -ly followed by a past tense verb.

Dammit Mongoose you ruined Christmas

[Blue Lion]

Breathtakingly combo-broken

[Mongoose]

I live to please.

[Dark RevenantX]

FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

[Liberator]

Not a Catholic, so my vote means bupkis, but where I grew up, one does not run down the reputation of the dead.  If she was indeed the evil, corrupt person the individual above made her out to be, then history will record her as such.  The vast majority of the population prefer the myth to the reality, "Mother" Teresa was a little old woman who liked to help people.

Sometimes the myth is better for people than the reality.

The modern "reality" that so many intellectuals want everyone to accept is that there is no God, no such thing as Absolute Good or Absolute evil.  That there is no existence after this life, this is it, one shot then you are less than dust in the wind.

[Nuclear1]

For the most part, I just completely and 100% agreed with Liberator.

Say whatever about Mother Teresa you want; the fact that she made even one person's life on this godforsaken ****hole of a planet better makes her a saint.

[Polpolion]

Lots of people are frauds. I'd really rather not give much attention to the ones where the only thing presently at stake is the social status of a dead person.

[Aardwolf]

For the most part, I just completely and 100% agreed with Liberator.

Say whatever about Mother Teresa you want; the fact that she made even one person's life on this godforsaken ****hole of a planet better makes her a saint.

So, by that logic, just about EVERYONE ought to be declared a saint? Regardless of whether or not it's good for morale to not dig up dirt on the recently deceased and shove it in the faces of their biggest fans, it's not good for credibility, keeping sainthood meaningful, to ignore the facts or keep quiet the evidence against her (though not quite silent, obviously, or we wouldn't be here discussing it).

That said, sainthood doesn't mean anything to me anyway. The only thing I'd ever accept as a miracle is when the fanatics, fundamentalists, and evangelists of all the world's religions finally just shut the **** up and stop forcing their beliefs on each other.

[Polpolion]

So, by that logic, just about EVERYONE ought to be declared a saint? Regardless of whether or not it's good for morale to not dig up dirt on the recently deceased and shove it in the faces of their biggest fans, it's not good for credibility, keeping sainthood meaningful, to ignore the facts or keep quiet the evidence against her (though not quite silent, obviously, or we wouldn't be here discussing it).

Sure, everyone ought to be a saint. Unless you enjoy simplifying everyone's life to the net result of their existence.

That said, sainthood doesn't mean anything to me anyway. The only thing I'd ever accept as a miracle is when the fanatics, fundamentalists, and evangelists of all the world's religions finally just shut the **** up and stop forcing their beliefs on each other.

You mean even if you're wrong, it doesn't matter because you don't care and everyone is stupid?

[Nuclear1]

For the most part, I just completely and 100% agreed with Liberator.

Say whatever about Mother Teresa you want; the fact that she made even one person's life on this godforsaken ****hole of a planet better makes her a saint.

So, by that logic, just about EVERYONE ought to be declared a saint? Regardless of whether or not it's good for morale to not dig up dirt on the recently deceased and shove it in the faces of their biggest fans, it's not good for credibility, keeping sainthood meaningful, to ignore the facts or keep quiet the evidence against her (though not quite silent, obviously, or we wouldn't be here discussing it).

That said, sainthood doesn't mean anything to me anyway. The only thing I'd ever accept as a miracle is when the fanatics, fundamentalists, and evangelists of all the world's religions finally just shut the **** up and stop forcing their beliefs on each other.

I don't really give a crap about the Catholic version of sainthood.  I mean if you spent your entire life with the intention of bettering the lives of others, and you only somehow managed to make one person's life better, then you deserve all the respect in the world.

Whether or not Mother Teresa is a giant piece of propaganda for the Catholic Church, she's been a symbol and an inspiration around the world for people to do good things and help their neighbors.  That's not exactly terrible.

Sure, dig up dirt all you want, but fact is Mother Teresa made lives better and her legacy of making lives better is living on through the thousands she inspired to make lives better.

[iamzack]

Say whatever about Mother Teresa you want; the fact that she made even one person's life on this godforsaken ****hole of a planet better makes her a saint.

Guess I should have read the article. I assumed it was about the allegations that she believed suffering to be a good thing, and her little hospital places ended up being horrid, nasty places.