Posted on 01/13/2003 9:34:12 PM PST by Nachum
In the good old/bad old days, the procedure for making a former human being into a saint was well understood.
There had to be an interval of at least seven years after the death before beatification - the first stage in the process - could even be proposed. (This was to insure against any gusts of popular enthusiasm for a local figure who might later prove to be a phoney.)
There had to be proof of two miracles, attributable to the intercession of the deceased.
And there had to be a hearing, at which the advocatus Diaboli, or Devil's Advocate, would be appointed by the Church to make the strongest possible case against the nominee.
I am not a Roman Catholic and the saint-making procedures of the Vatican are really none of my business. But it strikes me as odd that none of the above rules have been followed in the case of the newly-beatified woman who called herself "Mother" Teresa of Calcutta.
She was first put forward for beatification only four years after her death. Only one miracle has been required of her, and duly found to have been performed.
And, instead of appointing a Devil's Advocate, the Vatican invited me to be a witness for the Evil One, and expected me to do the job pro bono.
Their reason for asking was that I made a documentary called Hell's Angel, and wrote a short book entitled The Missionary Position, in which I reviewed Mother Teresa's career as if she had been an ordinary person.
I discovered that she had taken money from rich dictators like the Duvalier gang in Haiti, had been a friend of poverty rather than a friend of the poor, had never given any account of the huge sums of money donated to her, had railed against birth-control in the most overpopulated city on the planet and had been the spokeswoman for the most extreme dogmas of religious fundamentalism.
Actually, it's boasting to say that I "discovered" any of this. It was all there in plain sight for anyone to notice. But in the age of celebrity, nobody had troubled to ask if such a global reputation was truly earned or was simply the result of brilliant public relations.
"Wait a minute," said a TV host in Washington a few nights ago, when I debated all this with Mr John Donahue of the Catholic Defence League. "She built hospitals." No, sir, you wait a minute.
Mother Teresa was given, to our certain knowledge, many tens of millions of pounds. But she never built any hospitals. She claimed to have built almost 150 convents, for nuns joining her own order, in several countries. Was this where ordinary donors thought their money was going?
Furthermore, she received some of this money from the Duvaliers, and from Mr Charles Keating of the notorious Lincoln Savings and Loan of California, and both these sources had acquired the money by - how shall I put it? - borrowing money from the poor and failing to give it back.
How could this possibly be true? Doesn't everyone know that she spent her time kissing the sores of lepers and healing the sick? Ah, but what everyone knows isn't always true. You were more likely to run into Mother Teresa being photographed with Nancy Reagan, or posing with Princess Diana, or in the first-class cabin of Air India (where she had a permanent reservation).
You could see her in Ireland, campaigning against a law which would permit civil divorce and remarriage (though she publicly defended Princess Diana's right to be divorced).
You could encounter her on the podium in Stockholm, accepting yet another huge cheque and telling the Nobel audience that the greatest threat to world peace was... abortion. (Since she added that contraception was morally as bad as abortion, she essentially held the view that condoms and coils were a deadly threat to world peace. The Church does not insist on that degree of fundamentalism.)
And when she got sick, she would check herself into the Mayo Clinic or some other temple of American medicine. As one who has visited her primitive "hospice" for the dying in Calcutta, I should call that a wise decision. Nobody would go there except to check out, in one way or another.
"Give a man a reputation as an early riser," said Mark Twain "and that man can sleep till noon." Give a woman a reputation for holiness and compassion and apparently nothing she does can cause her to lose it.
Of Albanian descent and a keen nationalist, she visited the country when it was still a brutal dictatorship and "the world's first atheist state" to pay tribute to its grim Stalinist leader.
She fawned upon her shrewd protector Indira Gandhi at a time when the Indian government was imposing forced sterilisations. Above all, she urged the poor to think of their sufferings as a gift from God.
And she opposed the only thing that has ever been known to cure poverty - the empowerment of women in poor countries by giving them some say in their own reproduction.
Now, so they tell us, a woman in Bengal has recovered from a tumour after praying to Mother Teresa. I have received information from both the family and the physicians that says it was good medical treatment that did the job. Who knows?
I must say that I don't believe in miracles but if they do exist there are deserving cases which don't, in spite of fervent prayers, ever benefit from them.
When Mr Donahue was asked if he believed the statutory second miracle would occur, he said that he thought it would. I said that I thought so, too.
But I have already seen a collective hallucination occur as regards Mother Teresa, though it was produced by the less supernatural methods of modern, uncritical mass media.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
Mr. Hitchens can be forgiven his imprecise language, I suppose, being that he is not a Catholic - even though many of us Catholics also get lazy with it.
The procedures used are merely instruments for recognizing, with confirmation from God via the requisite miracles, that these human beings (not "former") conformed their lives to Christ in receiving freely and applying His Grace in union with His Holy Spirit, so that we can publically acknowledge them as having achieved their final destiny in union with Him in full and complete Glory with the Eternal Father - which is the destiny that Christ calls all of us to. They are then "saved" in the fullness of the sense desired by God having "fought the good fight" and "finished the race". As per God's mysterious and holy plan of Salvation set forth before the foundation of the world in Christ, their humanity is not destroyed, rather, through the Sacrifice and consequent Grace of Christ, reaches it's perfection and they are made children of God in His Son united by the Spirit so that they have a share in Christ's Divinity just as Christ shared in our humanity.
These procedures, furthermore, are adjusted through time by Christ's Church, as led by the promised Holy Spirit, in Canon Law to best make these determinations. I don't know the specifics, but on other threads some of you have commented on the fact that the Magisterium has moved to a more "academic" model since after Vatican II, as opposed to the "prosecutorial" method.
Non-Catholics should understand that while the Church recognizes certain individuals as reaching, or completing, the fullness of Holiness in their lives to merit the public title 'Saint' as meaning definitive union with God in Heaven, it does not imply that others have not reached this state. The doctrine of the Communion of Saints teaches that all individuals living under the Grace of Christ are saints - including the Church militant still here on earth, the Church suffering being the poor souls in purgatory, and the Church triumphant fully alive in Christ Jesus in Heaven awaiting the final and glorious fullfilment of redeemed creation.
It is Christ who "makes" saints through His Church! That is, through His Grace generated through the instrumentality of His sacred humanity by His sacrifice on the cross which is accepted by supernatural Faith of those He calls to be saints.
See my Post #41. Mr. Hitchens doesn't understand what the canonization process is all about, and it would be a shame for you to interpret his article as Catholic doctrine. The quotes from the Holy Scriptures that you both give are valid and accepted by the Church.
This could be a problem indeed, particularly when you consider that Christ referred to His 'Church' and not 'Churches'. Christians are those that follow Christ and accept everything He said and did. "Where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them...". True enough. But also, "He who hears you, hears me; he who rejects you rejects me and the One who sent me...", "Thou art Peter and on this rock I will establish my Church...".
In reading Holy Scripture, did you ever consider, for example, how St. Paul in his epistles writes as one who has authority in the name of Christ - and authority given him by Christ Himself? Also, that he writes to whole communities who are united together in Faith under his authority, viz. "Epistle to the Galatians", "1st Epistle to the Corinthians", etc.?
That Christ established a Church and identified Himself so completely with it at a mystical level ("Saul, Saul why do you persecute me..."), and meant for it to be the instrument through which He applies His Grace to fallen humanity, seen in both the individual and collective sense, is undeniable from the testimony of Scripture itself! That this Church is described as His 'body' of which He is the head - and therefore that it must be visible - is also undeniable. That He promised to send, with the Father, the Spirit of Truth to lead Her into all Truth, of which He Himself is, and that He would remain with Her "til the end of the ages" is also attested to in the Holy Scriptures.
The Catholic Church has always throughout history, beginning at the first Pentecost until this very moment, been said Church and only She can, from an historical perspective if nothing else, make this claim. It is in virtue of Christ leading Her through Grace and the Spirit of Truth that She has the authority to canonize, and therefore, recognize the fullness of Holiness among Her members who have "fallen asleep in the Lord" with the public title of Saint.
Jesus instructs us to take our disputes "to the church," not "churches." The organizing principle of any church is its doctrine. Divergent doctrines produces a multiplicity of churches. Therefore Christ's church must be unified doctrinally.
Moreover, if we are to be able to settle our disputes in the Church, then the Church must necessarily, logically be doctrinally united. Arguments cannot ultimately be settled within a group of churches with divergent doctrines.
Find a Church with a non-contradictory body of teaching and with an ecclesiastical structure that can be traced back to Pentecost and you have found Christ's church.
John 3:16
The believers are the church. Your response makes no sense.
Rev 2:1 1 "To the angel of the church in Ephesus (NIV)
Rev 2:8 8 "To the angel of the church in Smyrna (NIV)
Rev 2:12 12 "To the angel of the church in Pergamum (NIV)
Rev 2:18 18 "To the angel of the church in Thyatira (NIV)
Rev 3:1 1 "To the angel of the church in Sardis write: (NIV)
Rev 3:7 7 "To the angel of the church in Philadelphia (NIV)
Rev 3:14 14 "To the angel of the church in Laodicea (NIV)
Rev 3:13 13 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. (NIV)
Plural not singular. Seven different angels for seven different "churches". All with Christ as the head, not some bureaucratic body in Rome.
You romanists treat scripture like a prisoner of war. You think if you torture it long enough it will finally say what you want it to.
"Yet not for these only do I pray, but for those also who through their word are to believe in Me, that all may be One, even as thou, Father, in me and I in thee; that they may be One in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent Me. And the glory that thou hast given Me, I have given to them, that they may be One, even as we are One." John 17:20-21.
"May then the GOD of patience and of comfort grant you to be of One mind towards one another according to Jesus Christ; that One in spirit, you may with One mouth glorify the GOD and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ." Rom 15:5-6
"Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all may say the same thing; and that there be no dissensions among you, but that you be perfectly united in One mind and in One judgment." 1Cor 1:10
"For as the body is One and has many members, and all the members of the body, many as they are, form One body, so also is it with Christ. For in One Spirit we were all baptized into One body..." 1Cor 12:12-13
"But as it is, there are indeed many members, but yet One body." 1Cor 12:20
"Only let your lives be worthy of the Gospel of Christ; so that whether I come and see you, or remain absent, I may hear about you, that you are steadfast in One Spirit, with One mind striving together for the faith of the Gospel." Phil 1:27
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