FreeRepublic , LLC
PO BOX 9771
FRESNO, CA 93794
STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD
Abortion and sterilization are the only thing ever known to cure poverty? There is any proof that these have ever cured poverty? Does anyone want to argue that these are the reason the U.S. is prosperous?
Just Hitchen's needlessly wordy way of saying "She knew abortion was murder and said so, hence I hate her for it".
You must be slipping Christopher. One look at the title and I knew exactly where you were going with this.
'Nuff said, Chris.
Apparently, Mr. Hitchens knows which people are worthy of living and which ones aren't. According to Hitchens standards, Adolf Hitler would be a better candidate for saint, sinc he was all for things like abortion and sterilaization, and he wasn't shy about deciding who was worthy of living and following through on that decision. Sorry Mr. Hitchens, most people have more sense than you when it comes to this.
Utter hogwash. You know the reliably brilliant but nonetheless passionately atheistic Hitchens is thrashing around looking for some handy club to hit Mother Theresa over the head with when he makes a remark as ludicrous as this one.
He should be shot for the title alone.
And I am not even catholic.
Zzzzzzzz...
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.
One miracle is necessary for becoming a "blessed." Two for sainthood. Hey Christopher, ever heard of "Google"?
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.
Or are you the Evil One himself?
I discovered that she had taken money from rich dictators like the Duvalier gang in Haiti,
No moral problem unless there was a quid pro quo.
had been a friend of poverty rather than a friend of the poor,
Let's see you pick maggots out of a leper's leg, St. Christopher.
had never given any account of the huge sums of money donated to her,
Failing to provide you with accounting records that meet your requirements is not a sin.
had railed against birth-control in the most overpopulated city on the planet
A courageous champion of truth. And the liberal dogma of "overpopulation" is a myth.
and had been the spokeswoman for the most extreme dogmas of religious fundamentalism.
Like the "extreme dogma" that artificial birth control is immoral and that life is to be protected from the moment of conception until natural death. Guilty as charged.
<> "I give to you the Keys.....what you bind on earth...what you loose on Earth shall be ...bound...loosed in Heaven." Sorry, Christobel, the Church has authority<>
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.)
<> Had you real knowledge, you'd realise that wasn't always the case. But, what are facts to an atheistic ideologue?
BTW, Chrissy, you made a fool of yourself with your leaden atheism in "Crisis" magazine<>
There had to be proof of two miracles, attributable to the intercession of the deceased.
I suspect many more'n two will be, rightly, attributed to her<>
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.
<> Don't let that stop ya...It doesn't stop all the others on these threads:)<>
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.
<> Ut oh, sounds like Chrissy's Mom might have been a meanie. He doesn't seem to like "mother"<>
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.
<> That says it all...He accuses M.T. of taking money from evil sources but he complains about not being paid by the Church that speaks with the authority of a non-existant God. Listen clown,you KNEW your weren't being paid yet you STILL took up the task of attacking a dead woman's reputation. Admit it, Christobel, you are intimidated by strong women and you are delighted to attack her, for free<>
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.
<> Enjoy exchanging quips with Satan if'n ya don't quit your atheism. You know, you WILL get what you desire<>
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.
<> Yawn<>
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. LOL, yes, Barbara Streisand is universally praised as a holy woman becuase of her public realations machine...same for Hilary....all it takes is "public relations"....what a maroon<>
"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.
<> Clown...his name is NOT "John" but that mistake IS typical of "facts" Christobel generates<>
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?
<> Yes. BTW, who decided YOU were to speak for Faithful Catholic donors?<>
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.
<> I guess only money received from the impeccable is defensible..clown<>
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).
<> Yeah, like Hitchens spends a lot of time in Calcutta<>
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.
<> non sequitur cheap shot. Christobel presumably would have liked to have seen her die earlier than she did<>
"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.
<> You mean, "nothing I can do..." Boo hoo, bitch<>
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.
<> LMAO That is so dumb only an atheist could believe that<>
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?
<> The Catholic Church does, Ace<>
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.
<> The clown doesn't believe in God yet he is gonna decide who is deserving or not? Does ANYBODY edit his b.s. opinions? They should; they could save him embarassment<>
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.
<> I can almost see the wiseass grin on this atheistic porker. Wise-cracking about a nun who devoted her entire life to trying to serve the poor while he, as well fed and as spiritually astute as the Butcher's dog, develops a cottage industry attacking a dead woman. They guy is an ass<>
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.
<> Finally, a topic, "hallucination", with which he is equipped to deal<>
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
<> R. Emmett Tyrell ("The American Spectator") used to call him "Christobel." I always liked that. Is there any reason why the English pecksniffs and fairies like Hitchens and Andy Sullivan can't STAY in England?<>
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.
But Hitchens' objections are rather shallow in the whole. He screeches like a savage that his god is not satisfied. But that which he sees in error is not of God.