<> "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?<>