Miracles

The more you read about some people the more you become convinced that there's more to the story than the "official PR" suggests; this is particularly true of "Mother Teresa". When it comes to religions and politics I often find that a useful rule of thumb is to read the official party line and simply assume that the exact polar opposite is true. In the case of Teresa many people have researched her and come up with a very different perspective than the generally accepted public one (i.e. that she was a "saint") Christopher Hitchens (peace be upon him) wrote a whole book about her and also did a series of talks around the time that it was revealed in her letters that she didn't actually believe in much of Christian theology (i.e. God) for the last 40 years of her life. Here is Hitchens spelling out the inconsistencies and dodgy parts of her story, a viewpoint that is, if true, hard to object to and suggests a morally repugnant woman peddling a vile and pernicious version of Catholicism.

I read now that the Catholic establishment has cleared the way (whatever that means) for her to become an official saint. Apparently all you need are a couple of miracles to be attributed to you and hey presto, vendors of plastic action-figures in Lourdes and countless senile old ladies will be lighting candles in your honour for ever more. The first of these "miracles" was reported by a Woman in India who claimed that she was cured of a tumour because she wore a picture of Theresa with the face turned toward her body; of course, as is the way of faith, this is nice and unfalsifiable. Any doctor will tell you that tumours go into remission all the time and often we don't know why in detail other than there are lot's of different processes and systems involved that are unique to the sufferer. 

The cherry on the cake now though is that the woman involved in reporting this "miracle" is now complaining in the media that the nuns who encouraged her to tell her "story" have now abandoned her to her poverty having promised to give her financial help. I guess once those Catholics have what they want from you then you're back to being a worthless sinner again. I find it quite incredible that this kind of shamanism still goes on in the 21st century, in my mind the true miracle here is that there are people around who apparently still believe this stuff; although on reflection maybe they're all just like Theresa herself was and are just pretending.