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Iamsemisweet -> RE: What would Mother Teresa say? (4/20/2012 10:06:14 AM)
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Teresa didn't so much love the poor as she loved poverty.
The late, great Christopher Hitchens was asked to be the devil's advocate by the Church when Teresa was being considered for beatification. Here is an article about it:
FORT WORTH - Christopher Hitchens is a rare bird these days. Not just because he's a British-born journalist who writes about
American politics - as well as a contentious, left-wing contrarian
who supports the war in Iraq.
Mr. Hitchens has also played "devil's advocate" - against Mother
Teresa. This would seem an outsized case of windmill-tilting and
nose-thumbing. While she was alive, the Nobel Prize-winning nun
often topped international polls as the most admired person on the
planet. Last month, she was beatified by the Catholic Church - the
second major step toward sainthood, after being found "venerable."
Yet Mr. Hitchens testified against her - at the request of the
church.
A devil's advocate is not the Keanu Reeves character in an Al
Pacino movie. When an individual is being considered by the church
for sainthood, a "postulator" is appointed to make the case for
that candidate. The devil's advocate, on the other hand, is the
person who presents the evidence against sainthood. He's called
that because, obviously, in trying to keep candidates out of the
ranks of the saintly, he's like a corporate recruiter for the
sinful side.
But still, no demons, no pitchforks, no special effects. The
advocatus diaboli, as he's called in Latin, is merely the opposing
counsel, a prosecuting attorney with a flashy title. Officially,
he's even known as the "Promoter of the Faith." It was an honorable
position: Before he became Pope Benedict XIV (1740-58), Prospero
Lamartini served in the post for 20 years.
It was an honorable position: The church did away with it 20 years
ago. Nonetheless, Mr. Hitchens was requested by the Vatican to
bring evidence against Mother Teresa. That's as close as ordinary
mortals get these days to donning the devil's robes in an
ecclesiastical court.
Mr. Hitchens was an obvious choice to raise hell. His 1995 book,
The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice,
aggressively attacked the famous nun's reputation as a selfless
servant of the poor. He questioned her relationships with some
unsavory global characters and the efficacy and purpose of her
missionary work in Calcutta, India. (The iconoclastic Vanity Fair
columnist was in Fort Worth last week working on a documentary
about Texas that he's doing for Britain's Channel 4. The same TV
company produced Hell's Angel, a documentary about Mother Teresa
that he co-wrote.)
In his book and documentary, Mr. Hitchens pointed out that Mother
Teresa associated with (and applauded) the Duvalier clan, the
dictators of Haiti. She accepted a donation of more than $1 million
from Charles Keating Jr., the convicted savings-and-loan fraud.
Paul Turley, the Los Angeles deputy district attorney in that case,
sent her a letter stating that the money she received was not Mr.
Keating's to give, that it was stolen from hundreds of small
investors. Mother Teresa never returned it.
On a broader level, Mr. Hitchens argued that Catholics and
non-Catholics all over the world gave money to help Mother Teresa
with her efforts among the poor and sick of Calcutta. But, he
maintained, she and her order, the Missionaries of Charity, have
not so much provided physical or medical aid as they have worked to
convert the poor. The Lancet, the prestigious British medical
journal, called the care dispensed at her Calcutta clinic
"haphazard."
"Her clinic is just as threadbare as when she began," Mr. Hitchens
said in Fort Worth. "Yet she said with pride that she's built more
than 500 convents in 125 countries."
Mother Teresa was always candid that her goal was ministering to
what she saw as the poor's spiritual needs and not their medical or
economic ones. "We are not social workers," she once said. What was
needed, she said, was more prayer, more faith. As for her
association with what Mr. Hitchens termed "the corrupt and wordly
rich," the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator in her case, has
pointed out that Jesus himself sat down with Roman tax collectors. Many in the Catholic press have called Mr. Hitchens' charges
"slurs" and even "bizarre." Bishop Salvadore Lobo of Baruipur,
India, labeled Hell's Angel a "very distorted" depiction of the
beloved nun and her work.
The objections have often focused on Mr. Hitchens' vitriolic
atheism. He's hardly impartial to religion: "I'm hostile to it," he
told Free Inquiry magazine in 1996. "I think it is a positively bad
idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion,
but religious belief itself."
But, Mr. Hitchens noted, no one has disproved his assertions about
the Duvaliers, the Keating money or Mother Teresa's consistently
ultra-conservative views. (She opposed the reforms of Vatican II,
for example, and supported a proposed ban on divorce in Ireland
while supporting Princess Diana's own divorce.)
Still, he said, when it came to handling her beatification, Father
Kolodiejchuk was "a fair-minded guy." Attempts to reach Father
Kolodiejchuk, who was said to be traveling in Calcutta, were
unsuccessful.
Mr. Hitchens was one of several non-Catholics who testified - among
hundreds of witnesses whose testimony filled some 34,200 pages of
what is called the Acts of the Diocesan Inquiry.
When he received his letter a few years ago from the Vatican asking
for input, "I thought, terrific, because I thought I would go to
Rome," Mr. Hitchens recalled. "Possibly even to the Sacred
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is in the old
Inquisition office." Maybe he'd find a few leftover thumbscrews
lying around. Mr. Hitchens said he'd even pay for the trip himself. But it turned out that his appearance was overseen by the Catholic
archdiocese in his adoptive home, Washington, D.C.
No plane trip, no thumbscrews.
"It was just a taxi ride to Catholic University," Mr. Hitchens
grumped. He can see the spire of the campus from his apartment. Under Pope John Paul II, the canonization protocol has been greatly
streamlined. The process was once painstakingly slow, requiring two
verified miracles for beatification and two more for canonization.
When St. Therese of Lisieux was canonized in 1925 - 28 years after
her death - it set a modern speed record. In comparison, Queen
Isabella - the one who bankrolled Christopher Columbus - is still
waiting, 499 years after her death.
The snail's pace was intended to dampen any faddish enthusiasms.
The church would not be buffaloed. Mr. Hitchens likes to quote the
19th-century British historian, Thomas Babington Macaulay, who
observed that one of the great achievements of the church was its
"containment" of fanaticism.
But in a 1983 "apostolic constitution," John Paul II fast-tracked
the canonization process. The four-miracle requirement was cut to
two. The devil's advocate position - created in 1587 - was
abolished.
Since then, John Paul has become the most prolific saint-maker in
history, having canonized 476 people and beatified more than 1,300.
Together, all of his 20th-century predecessors canonized 98. Well before her death in 1997, Mother Teresa was hailed as a
"living saint" and "the saint of the gutters." And now the
Macedonian nun has been beatified faster than anyone in modern
history: It took only five years, three months.
That's partly because Archbishop Henry D'Souza of Calcutta
petitioned for a waiver of the five-year "cooling off" period that
the church had imposed before a person could be considered for
beatification. The pope agreed. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the
Vatican's doctrinal overseer, said after Mother Teresa's death, "I
am not privy to the innermost thoughts of the Holy Father, but I
think he wants it [her canonization] speeded up." The resulting inquiry wasn't the most august process, Mr. Hitchens
said. He likened it to "a seminar hearing in a rundown college." He
met with a three-member tribunal in a paneled room at Catholic
University - one of 14 such tribunals worldwide in Mother Teresa's
case. The journalist began by thanking the committee for the chance to
present his objections. "'As you know,'" he recalled saying, "'I am not a believer, not a
member of the faith, and so whom you make a saint is none of my
concern. It's very decent of you to ask me into your internal
affairs. But to the extent that the word sainthood or beatification
has a secular meaning regarding an exemplary life, an exemplary
person, I would like to enter a dissent.'" They accepted a copy of his Mother Teresa book as evidence, and
then proceeded through 263 questions - "a standard questionnaire
from Rome that everyone has to fill in," Mr. Hitchens said. "There
is no deviation. I had to simply check 'yes' or 'no' or 'no
comment.'" The famously combative journalist was disappointed once again.
There was no debate, no probing questions, "no dialectical
opposition," he said. Instead, when the questionnaire was done, he
was politely told the record of his testimony would be processed
quickly. Father Kolodiejchuk submitted all of the testimony to the
Congregation for the Causes of the Saints (the Vatican office that
handles canonization). The cardinals and bishops voted. The pope
concurred. Mother Teresa can now officially be called "Blessed." Before she can be called "Saint," another verified miracle is
needed. Not surprisingly, Mr. Hitchens dismisses the validity of
the first, the disappearance of an abdominal cyst from a Hindu
mother. But given the enormous popularity of Mother Teresa and given the
reverence in which she's held both in the church and out, the only
question would seem to be whether John Paul II will live to see her
canonized. As for the dissenting Mr. Hitchens, he believes "I was restrained
by the rules from making my best case." But he consoles himself with this thought: "I did represent the
devil pro bono."
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