Many rogues have become Catholic saints
So Anjezë Bojaxhiu aka “Mother” Teresa is going to be “canonized” tomorrow – that is, magically transformed (19 years after her death) into a “saint”…there’s so much bullshit in this story I’m going to run out of scare-quotes. The pope is going to say stuff and that will mean she’s now a saint, which is to say, a person of great holiness. What’s holiness? Ah that’s the great question, isn’t it. Is it religious fanaticism or is it kindness and compassion?
In her case, of course, it’s the first and not at all the second.
Pilgrims will venerate her relics and have the opportunity to buy 1.5m commemorative 95c postage stamps, released on Friday, that celebrate her “great strength, simplicity and extraordinary humility … [and] tireless dedication”, according to an accompanying brochure.
Yeah see that’s all no good. Those qualities are all no good if they’re put to bad uses, as they were in her case. Her dedication was worthless when it wasn’t outright harmful.
The prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, paid tribute to Mother Teresa in a radio broadcast, saying “she devoted her whole life to the poor”.
Again – not the point. Worthless if put to bad uses. She devoted her whole life to telling the poor to submit to Baby Jesus giving them pain.
Aroup Chatterjee, a doctor, grew up in Kolkata and now works in the UK. He is one of Mother Teresa’s most vocal critics. “Many rogues have become Catholic saints,” he said. “What bothers me is that the world makes such a song and dance about a superstitious, black magic ceremony.”
He added: “It’s obvious that people are duped, they have a herd mentality. But the media has a responsibility not to collude with it.”
He has described Mother Teresa as “a medieval creature of darkness” and a “bogus and fantastic figure” who went unchallenged by the world’s media.
According to his 2003 book, Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict, based on the testimonies of scores of people who worked with the Missionaries of Charity, the medical care given to sick and dying people was negligible. Syringes were reused without sterilisation, pain relief was non-existent or inadequate, and conditions were unhygienic. Meanwhile, Mother Teresa spent much of her time travelling around the world in a private plane to meet political leaders.
Well ok she devoted the part of her life not spent travelling around the world in a private plane to meet political leaders to the poor. Doesn’t sound so impressive, does it.
Among those cited by Hitchens was Susan Shields, a former worker with the Missionaries of Charity, who claimed that vast sums of money accrued in bank accounts but very little was spent on medical expertise or making the lives of the sick and dying more comfortable.
Robin Fox, the editor of the Lancet, wrote in 1994 about the “haphazard” approach to care by nuns and volunteers, and the lack of medically trained personnel in the order’s homes.
The investigative journalist Donal Macintyre spent a week working undercover in a Missionaries of Charity home for disabled children in Kolkata in 2005. In an article in the New Statesman, he described pitiful scenes. “For the most part, the care the children received was inept, unprofessional and, in some cases, rough and dangerous.”
Humility and dedication aren’t enough. Who knew?
Three years ago, a study by academics at the University of Montreal concluded that the Vatican had ignored Mother Teresa’s “rather dubious way of caring for the sick, her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding … abortion, contraception and divorce.”
But the Vatican is making her a saint anyway, because hey, relentless propaganda works.
She spent her life traveling around in private planes to visit politicians to convince them that the world needed more and more population, and that women should not have access to basic reproductive choices. She spoke against divorce, an institution which has freed many women from abusive relationships (and men, too, of course). She spoke against contraception, because it kept souls from being born for the sole purpose of being given to Jesus. She was an awful, interfering, disgraceful woman who should be forgotten as quickly as possible, except as an example of how not to be.
“Many rogues have become Catholic saints”, is an understatement. Most saints were either barking mad, scam artists or complete psychopaths. Probably if Mother Theresa had practised her brand of ‘ministry to the poor’ in a developed country she would have served time in jail for fraud.
So she certainly meets the criteria for canonization, for all the wrong reasons, ie she was a bigoted, superstitious, narcissistic, moral imbecile.
And of course when she became ill she went to decent hospitals and received the best care money could buy, and adequate pain relief.
Canonization slowed down because as the developing world modernized the cult of saints became an embarrassment. But the Catholic growth market is in parts of the world where saints are still popular, and Pope Frank gets that, so he’s cranked up the factory again. As I understand it, spontaneous remission of cancer (which happens anyway) is a great source of the necessary “miracles.”
This is another way in which the new pope is not the compassionate reformer our media would have us believe.
The Lancet link is behind a paywall. Googling doesn’t turn up any full-text. At least not on a first run attempt.
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944.71555.144310995587370/1270582462960212/?type=3&theater
It must be pointed out that Mother Teresa’s miracles are very limited by the standards of the Bible and medieval saints, like St. Genevieve and St. Francis Xavier. Want to see which ones you can recognize?
Did MT ever speak in several languages without having to learn them?
Did MT ever calm any storms?
Did MT ever miraculously fill an empty oil can with oil or recharge a dead battery?
Did MT ever miraculously desalinate seawater?
Did MT ever point out any monster-containing trees?
Did MT ever get a lost crucifix returned to her by a crab?
Did MT ever cure anyone’s blindness?
Did MT ever strike blind anyone who stole from her?
Did MT ever cause an earthquake in a town whose citizens said nasty things about her?
Did MT ever miraculously create any big piles of bread and fish?
Did MT ever raise anyone from the dead?
Did MT ever cure anyone with magical spit therapy?
Did MT ever walk on water?
Did MT ever turn water into wine?
Did MT ever zap some Missionaries of Charity employee who kept too much for herself?
Did MT ever turn some sticks into snakes?
Did MT ever sic a pack of stray dogs on some kids who teased her about being a wrinkled old hag?
Did MT ever have a competition with some Hindu priests about whose god was better at making a rain of fire from on high?
I will concede that she had worked some miracles:
“Curing” the stomach cancer of Monica Besra, someone who was being medically treated for it.
Creating an image of herself as a great humanitarian.
An inverse bread-and-fish miracle: the disappearance of large amounts of money from the bank accounts of the Missionaries of Charity, her order of nuns.