Monday 5 September 2016

Missionaries of Charity

Clue's in the name.

They have never claimed to be anything else.

Nor did their foundress, who has now been raised to the altars for everything that she did claim to be.

Christopher Hitchens did not approve? Well, he wouldn't have done, would he?

If anything, that proves the prudence of Mother Teresa's canonisation.

Ora pro nobis.

14 comments:

  1. Hitch and the Hitchies have no idea what being a saint is.

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    1. Quite. Canonisation is not for being nice. It is for being an exemplary Catholic.

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  2. Why do non-Catholics care who the Pope canonises?

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    1. So that they can bang on about how they do not care whom the Pope canonises.

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  3. Hitchens describes her ties to financier Charles Keating, who gave her $1.25 million before being convicted for his role in the savings and loan scandal (1986–1995).

    He includes a facsimile of a letter she wrote testifying to Keating's good character, followed by a letter from the prosecutor's office to Mother Teresa detailing Keating's crimes, the thousands of people he "fleeced without flinching" of $252 million.

    The prosecutor asked her to do "what Jesus would do if he were in possession of money that had been stolen … if he were being exploited by a thief to ease his conscience".

    Teresa refused.

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    1. It had already been spent on good works. What was she supposed to do, close the clinic or what have you?

      Christopher Hitchens suffered from the fact that his cultists took him entirely seriously, and still do. He was a professional wind-up merchant.

      Mercifully, on Saint Teresa of Calcutta, the Church and the world have both known better than to treat him as anything else.

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  4. If I were a fan of Mother Teresa, I really wouldn't be talking about "cultists", Mr Lindsay.

    She is the embodiment of a cult, created entirely by an absurdly fawning journalist.

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    1. Who? I mean, who of whom almost anyone on earth might ever ahve heard? In, for example, Calcutta?

      You lost. Get over it. Barely anyone remembers Hitchens for anything apart from the fact that he lost this one. And lost it in the most spectacular fashion.

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  5. Who?

    Malcolm Muggeridge invented the Cult of Tetesa, as everyone knows.

    Nobody had ever heard of her before his BBC interview.

    Including the Catholic Church.

    Lost? What are you talking about you silly child?

    If the Catholic Church wishes to bring disgrace on itself by canonising friends and beneficiaries of criminals and dictators,frauds and takers of dirty money that's up to them.

    The facts about her remain the facts. They are easily found by anyone who wishes to find them.

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    1. I don't know where to begin with this level of delusion. Christopher Hitchens may have believed that no one had ever heard of anyone until that person had been interviewed by a posh English journalist, but that says it all about him. And about you.

      No one remembers him for anything apart from this. If he had not been Peter Hitchens's brother, then no one would remember him at all. He would have been just another crank, out there on the Internet somewhere.

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  6. Teresa is the classic postmodern icon.

    Her canonisation is a textbook Baudrillard case study in how the media can turn myth into reality.

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    1. Baudrillard, you say?

      http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/cheap-novelettes.html

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  7. If you think Chris Hitchens isn't well remembered you've never been to America...

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    1. Really? Which of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is a fan?

      He couldn't hack it a country where people greeted him with anything other than, "Oh I just love your accent," and did not assume that all Englishmen were clever, or at least knew what they were talking about.

      How far he ever really hacked it even elsewhere, though, is highly debatable.

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