What is it to you? Are you a believing, practicing Catholic? What do you care what title they give a woman who has been dead for years?
Not true.
Look, you don’t accept the Church’s view of saints and heaven. But from the Church’s viewpoint, she is in heaven. In what way, specifically, is that dishonest?
She’s “in heaven” because the church bothered to do the research and find a miracle they can attribute to her. The Church chooses who they do this research for and chooses who they “promote” by encouraging prayers to particular dead people they think are likely candidates for sainthood.
It’s all political in the end, she’s “in heaven” because she was popular and the Church thinks she’s likely to help recruit more Catholics if they fast track her sainthood. The rest of it is just a lot of ritual to make the whole process more mysterious to believers.
How about instead of MT, the church could make a saint out of one of the many victims of pedophile priests who committed suicide? They don’t even need a miracle, according to wiki on Beatification: “The requirement of a miracle is not relevant to the canonization of those who died in martyrdom, as their sanctity is evidenced by being killed in odium fidei (in hatred of the faith).” Seems suitable for me.
Yeah, we get it. You don’t like the Catholic Church. What an edgey, dangerous position for you to take at this board.
Setting above arguments aside, I’m not convinced the answer is, “Yes”. I don’t doubt that you can pull out quotes where she extols the dignity in suffering. I have read allegations by the late Christopher Hitchens that drew a causal line from that aspect of Catholic belief to the fact that her Third World clinics didn’t live up to first world standards. But I wasn’t convinced by them and frankly I don’t consider Hitchens to be an especially reliable or even sober source. Admittedly I’m not ruling out this possibility. I do doubt it however.
For hundreds of years the Catholic church has cared for the sick and abandoned. During the great majority of that time span physicians were more likely to make you sicker than healthier (apparently the tipping point was around 1850). Saying, “You are suffering just like Christ did”, is a very old form of comfort, solace, and yes treatment. Now sure, today we have effective medical treatment - but that’s not my point. My point is that plenty of Christian homilies can be seen as just forms of providing comfort. I’m not surprised that Mother Theresa would parrot at them, but nor is it a reason for concern, pending better evidence than I have heard or read.
As for the specifics, India didn’t allow clinics to dispense morphine and that doesn’t sound bad to me. I’m even a little dubious about the idea of having first worlders who blow in from New Jersey for a one month dispense codeine. Now there might be something dubious about staffing health clinics with amateurs and volunteers rather than medical professionals. But I’m guessing the former is cheaper so that you can get more (crappy) care for the buck.
The point being is that the key question for me is what Missionaries of Charity did once weaknesses in their business model as it were came to light. Did they reform? Because if they did, that doesn’t sound like a group invested in inflicting suffering on others. Furthermore, I haven’t read any critique of MT’s clinics that goes into the tradeoffs involved in helping third world street people.
TLDR: I can’t rule out allegations against Mother Theresa, but the more extreme ones sound like a crock. That her organization wasn’t especially well run however I find plausible, even likely.
Hey I’m equal opportunity religion basher, I’ll happily criticise Scientology, Mormonism, Islam and the more idiotic forms of Christianity (of which I count the RCC the biggest and worst offender).
That’s only because you don’t bother to do anything except quickly reading an article, misunderstanding most of its words, and posting here in pious indignation.
A martyr is someone who is so strongly convinced of the truths of the Catholic Church that he willingly suffers death rather than deny them.
St. John in Revelation, uses the words “faithful witness,” (martus) to describe the pagan convert Antipas, a convert from paganism, who “…was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth…” In Revelation 6:9 we read of the “souls of them that were slain for the Word of God and for the testimony (martyrian) which they held.”
In Catholic understanding, then, a martyr is not simply someone who does that was in some way connected with something to do with Catholicism. A person murdered by a priest, for example, is not automatically a martyr any more than a victim who takes his own life as a result of abuse by a priest.
Nothing there is intended to diminish the tragedy of such deaths. But they are not examples of martyrdom.
Do you ever get tired of posting a continual parade of factual error?
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for posters here to confuse passionate hatred with knowledge when, in fact, it’s more likely to facilitate ignorance.
No, because I refuse to accept the made up rules of a corrupt and abusive religion as facts. I am pointing out what “should” be the rules on creating saints, not arguing over what your made up rule book says.
You’re refusing to accept the rules of the group as the rules of the group? How intelligent of you!
Think of it more as pointing out the absurdity, hypocrisy and immorality of the rules of the RCC, both when it comes to their “stick their head in the sand” approach to dealing with pedophile priests and the political games that they play when deciding who to saint.
I’m sure Bricker is perfectly correct in this descriptions of RCC canon law and the canonization process. That doesn’t mean I can’t say that the process is hypocritical and immoral, or that horrible things are allowed to happen because of canon law.
I suspect what is really bothering most of the non-religious people about this is the way the name “Mother Teresa” has become the go-to term that almost everybody, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, uses to convey the concept of “extremely good, nice, charitable person who always puts the needs of others first,” and when they find out about the issues that Chatterjee and Hitchens raised, they are appalled. So then this canonization thing come up and it seems equally appalling, but I think Bricker and John Mace and the others make a good point.
On another note, a brief hijack: Bricker, I noticed that you used the phrase “transmission of life” a few times. Does that phrase have any doctrinal significance in Catholicism, or is it just the way you happened to write it?
You’ve already proven you don’t know what the rules of that group are for this issue.
Really monty? This is a stupid argument and you know it. I can look at the results of the process of canonization and judge it based on the results it spits out. I also don’t understand the wiring of every neuron of Trump’s brain, but I can condemn him based on the bullshit that comes out of his mouth.
And, as always, we can judge you by the bullshit you love to post.
I may speak bullshit sometimes, but I’ve never let people needlessly die when I had plenty of money to buy modern medical supplies. Guess that makes me better than a “saint”.
There has been no showing she had enough money to buy sufficient supplies for everywhere they were needed. I suppose she could have outfitted one clinic very nicely indeed, but at the cost of shorting all the others of even more basic supplies.
It’s the phrase used in Humanae vitae, the 1968 encyclical by Pope Paul VI that affirms the teachings of the Church on contraception. It begins:
This article mentions “shadowy accounting” and secret accounts. i haven’t read the study it is based on, so i have no idea how accurate the study was.
http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news/20130301-mother-teresa-anything-but-a-saint.html
People are dying right now because they don’t have modern medical supplies, and you could save them.