Mommie Dearest (Slate trashes Mother Teresa!)

Slate- MSN ^ | 10/20/03 | Christopher Hitchens

[Barney Gumble]

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 and contraception, but they are not required to affirm that abortion and contraception are the greatest threat to world 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.

[RobbyS]

Defensive? Sorry, I meant to sound offensive.

[carton253]

If that's what you believe will help your cause. Offend away!

[RobbyS]

Why do you think she regarded suffering as divine? She knew what it was.It is so pervasive in the real world--which is to say the world outside the bubble in which we in the top ten per cent. live --that she literally had to be called to leave behind and the poor but comfortable life in the convent--to follow St. Francis into the streets and to live a begger's life. Did you know that she said she had a vision of Christ? When the visions stopped she went into the streets to look for Him. As to her own treatment, that was at the insistence of her sisters who could not bear to give her up just yet.

[RobbyS]

The best offense is to try to tell the truth.

[carton253]

The best offense is to try to tell the truth.

What truth? You've snarled around it... but you have yet to tell me how much the Vatican has in its coffers. Instead of doing worthless comparisons, maybe you can give me a hard dollar figure.

[RobbyS]

Vatican Finances Show A Small Surplus

Vatican (CWN) -- For the fourth consecutive year, the consolidated

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financial reports of the Holy See show a positive balance for 1996, although the "profit" is quite small. Although receipts lagged during the year, the Holy See actually cut expenses for the first time in seven years.

The annual report on Vatican finances, made public today by Cardinal Edmund Szoka, also emphasized that the Holy See is making preparations for the consolidation of European economies and the introduction of the new common currency, the Euro.

Cardinal Szoka, who was called from Detroit seven years ago to help straighten out the then-troubled finances of the Vatican, has made his financial reports a highly anticipated event among journalists in Rome. And the results of his efforts have been impressive, as persistent deficits disappeared and positive balances became the rule.

This year's positive balance is somewhat disappointing in comparison with those of previous years: a total of $260,000, as against $1.5 million last year. That small setback reflected a decline in overall revenues.

Cardinal Szoka pointed out that the dioceses of the universal Church have, in the course of the past five years, tripled their voluntary contributions to the Holy See. That flow of funds has been the single largest factor in the elimination of the old deficits. In 1996 diocesan contributions amounted to $22 million, or more than 11 percent of the overall budget. Various other "organizations and foundations" added $46 million, with the Knights of Columbus making the single largest contribution.

The Vatican finances are always complicated by the annual debts run up by Vatican Radio and the official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano. While the exact budgets of these agencies is not made public, Cardinal Szoka argued, "The importance of these efforts justifies the loss."

Cardinal Szoka said that in the future it would be necessary to "control our expenses very carefully, and continue to increase our receipts." He cautioned that it would be a mistake to think that Catholics might withhold contributions to the Holy See in light of the current surplus. "On the contrary," he revealed, "we are seeing that these favorable accounts encourage gifts."

[carton253]

You know... that news release doesn't answer how much the Vatican has in its coffers.

But, you don't have to waste any more time on it.

[RobbyS]

The point is that its wealth is more nearly that of a large corporation than a nation.

[carton253]

And should a church (any church) have such wealth?

[RobbyS]

Why not?

[carton253]

Why for?

[RobbyS]

For much the same things as the First Baptist Church uses it for.

[carton253]

Okay... I will answer...

When I look at the current church situation (all denominations) I am sad because I believe we are very far removed from the 1st century reality. What "church" has evolved into has done grave damage to the Church.

[carton253]

No... there is a big difference between the First Baptist Church and the Vatican.

[miss marmelstein]

Hitchens actually testified at her beatification "trial"! He thinks she sucked up to dictators and took their large cash contributions (siphoned off from the oppressed population)without a by your leave. She also flew around the world receiving top medical treatment but the poor in her charitable institutions were given less than professional care.

I started out a real M.T. lover but Hitchens sure changed my mind. (I even had him autograph my copy of his book on her).

[Gophack]

I read this article with interest. What struck me was the comment about Mother Teresa opposing the empowerment of women and something about compulsory reproduction.

To me "compulsory reproduction" means that a woman is forced to have sex and give birth to children and has no choice in the matter. But, I think what the author meant was that Mother Teresa supports Church teaching on contraception and abortion.

The Left always equate Church teaching with the oppression of women BECAUSE we do not believe that contraception is okay and that abortion is an acceptable method of birth control. As if women are ONLY empowered when they have the legal right to kill their unborn babies.

Empowerment is through using our God-given talent to better ourselves, our families, and the world. Empowerment is not the right to use our strength against the weak. How in the world could it be empowering to a woman to be able to use her strength of "choice" to kill a growing human being who has no voice, simply because that human being is too small and too weak to defend itself?

This lies the crux of the opposition to Mother Teresa. That someone "so good" by helping the poor and hungry (a standard liberal/Left issue) could be "so bad" on so-called "women's rights". Therefore, they can't see her good works because they are blinded by their own self-hate and hypocrasy.

Mother Teresa, pray for us.

[RobbyS]

Not the First Baptist Church of Dallas, which has a membership of more than 10,000 and a net worth greater than the Catholic diocese of Dallas. But so far as this first century stuff, you have to have to wear rose-covered glasses to think it so womnderful. Read between the lines and you don't see a bunch of guys singing kumbayah.

[gridlock]

I don't know enough about the Life of Mother Theresa to evaluate Hitchens' claims about the worthiness of her ministry, but he does have one valid, and very important, point. The process of Canonization should not be short-shrifted. If, indeed, Mother Theresa was as wonderful and saintly as people seem to think she was, is it not enough for her to be made a Saint in the normal fashion, say 300 years from now? What is the value in rushing ahead?

OTOH, there is great value in letting time pass. This allows the passions to cool, and the person to be evaluated more objectively. It allows the truth to come out, if any is hidden. It naturally sorts out the second-tier, the almost-qualifying, the not-quite-saintly, because these people will be forgotten in time. But the truly exceptional, holy, and altogether wonderful will be remembered for generations, and will be treated kindly by time.

It is unfortunate that Hitchens decided to trash Mother Theresa instead of just making this point directly. But in doing so he illustrated an important point. Apparently there is, amongst some people, substantial disagreement of the worthiness of Mother Theresa's candidacy. Why not allow sufficient time to pass to let these matters resolve themselves naturally?

[TheCrusader]

"but take money from them and praise thier brutal regimes as Mother Theresa did?"

Got a quote to prove this that's not from Duvalier's own writing? There was not an evil bone in Mother Teresa's body, she helped more people by sunrise on any given day than you will help in your entire life. Frankly, people like you make my skin crawl.

[TheCrusader]

Many of Mother Teresa's hospices in India were makeshift rooms, tents, and huts that she used to house the terminally ill that their own governments left to die in the gutters. Finding a nurse with a bandaid was hard enough to obtain, let alone proper medications. I'm sick of ignorant people writing dastardly things about this saintly woman who don't even know the first thing about her work and her sacrifics.