From: Lawrie D'souza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Goanet]Mother Teresa's Saintly Companions Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 04:05:43 -0800 (PST)
Mother Teresa's Saintly Companions
October 26, 2003, 12:53 pm
N.S. Rajaram Vol. LV, No.15 New Delhi October 26, 2003 Organiser
What should make Indians particularly indignant is Mother Teresa’s conduct, immediately after the Union Carbide disaster in 1984. She rushed to Bhopal, not to help the victims and their families but to appeal to them to “forgive.” Who should the victims “forgive”? Who else but the multinational Union Carbide and its chief Anderson. Her concern was not the fate of the victims but damage control in the face of the inevitable public anger against the perpetrators of the horrific disaster. The reason is obvious: the victims were poor, but Union Carbide and Anderson are rich. This should help put Mother
Teresa in her true place.
“…the shame of mankind, a sin of vice, a sewer where is gathered all the filth in the world. There the God is held in contempt, money alone is worshipped and the laws of God and men are trampled under foot. Everything there breathes
a lie…”
—The great humanist Petrarch (1304-74)
A delegation of Indian Christian leaders recently called on Prime Minister Vajpayee asking him that the Government of India should send an official delegation to Vatican during the ceremony when Pope John Paul II is expected to anoint Mother Teresa a saint of the Catholic Church. India as a secular state, does not or at least should not send official delegations to religious events. In fact, India does not recognize even foreign secular awards like the British knighthood and rightly so. So these Christian leaders have no business telling the Government to send an official delegation to Vatican. At the same time, it is worth taking a look at the institution and some of the candidates, it is honouring as saints. This will give an idea of the sort of organisation and the people it “honors”.
Churches and Christian organisations these days are in the news only when there is a major scandal—not just any scandal but a major one, like mass child molestation, homosexual priests and even murder. Here is what a recent report in The New York Times titled “Abusive Ex-Priest Is Killed in Prison” (August 24, 2003) had to says: “John J. Geoghan, the former priest, whose abuse of children over decades opened the door for a scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church, was strangled by another inmate in a Massachusetts state prison, officials said yesterday…” According to the report, “Other criminal charges were pending, as well as civil cases involving more than 130 people, who said he had abused them… His case was among hundreds involving clergy members, but the extent of his crimes and the mountain of church documents released in lawsuits against him, turned him into a symbol of the church’s sexual abuse scandal.”
The report also noted that the Church knew that this had been going on for years and had hushed it up: “His case also showed the degree to which the Roman Catholic hierarchy knew about problem priests and shuttled them among parishes, showing what victims said was more concern for the church’s reputation than for the safety of children.” And how high did this knowledge go in the Church’s hierarchy? All the way to the Popes, going back decades. Here is what the Observer (August 17, 2003) had to say in the report titled: “Vatican told bishops to cover up sex abuse: Expulsion threat in secret documents.”
“The Vatican instructed Catholic bishops around the world to cover up cases of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church, [according to] a 40-year-old confidential document from the secret Vatican archive, which lawyers are calling a ‘blueprint for deception and concealment’. One British lawyer acting for Church child abuse victims has described it as ‘explosive’. The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of ‘strictest’ secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication.”
And the document, which has been confirmed as genuine by the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, “focuses on sexual abuse initiated as part of the confessional relationship between a priest and a member of his congregation. But the instructions also cover what it calls the ‘worst crime’, described as an obscene act perpetrated by a cleric with ‘youths of either sex or with brute animals (bestiality)’. Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases ‘in the most secretive way... restrained by a perpetual silence... and everyone... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office... under the penalty of excommunication’.”
This Pope (John XXIII), who initiated this disgrace, is held up as a paragon of virtue and liberalism for having called the Second Vatican, where he declared that the Jews were not to be blamed for the persecution and death of Jesus. This is patently absurd for it is the Vatican that was responsible for the death and persecution of thousands-nay millions of Jews from the Inquisition to the Nazi Holocaust. And the latter was facilitated by Pope John’s predecessor, Pope Pius XII’s collaboration with the Nazis for which he has been honored with the title “Hitler’s Pope.” He is now to be made a saint!
Holy works or unholy money?
None of this is new. The great humanist Petrarch (1304 - 74) described the Vatican of his time as: “…the shame of mankind, a sin of vice, a sewer where is gathered all the filth in the world. There the God is held in contempt, money alone is worshipped and the laws of God and men are trampled under foot. Everything there breathes a lie…”
How close are Mother Teresa and her ‘Charity’ to this description—of placing money above everything else? Let us look at a few facts. To begin with, what happened to all the millions she collected in the name of Kolkata’s poor? A visit to Calcutta shows that the poor are still there, with little to show for Teresa’s ‘works’. Contrast this with the hospitals, schools and colleges and public works like water supply schemes built by Sri Satya Sai Baba, without any fanfare. It is a sad reflection on the servility of the Indian media that they think it is fashionable and ‘objective’ to attack the Sai Baba, while remaining slavishly silent about Mother Teresa’s nebulous, nonexistent charitable acts.
What should make Indians particularly indignant is Mother Teresa’s conduct, immediately after the Union Carbide disaster in 1984. She rushed to Bhopal, not to help the victims and their families but to appeal to them to “forgive.” Who should the victims “forgive”? Who else but the multinational Union Carbide and its chief Anderson. Her concern was not the fate of the victims but damage control in the face of the inevitable public anger against the perpetrators of the horrific disaster. The reason is obvious: the victims were poor, but Union Carbide and Anderson are rich. This should help put Mother Teresa in her true place.
Mother Teresa and “Hitler’s Pope”
Throughout her eventful life, Mother Teresa preferred the company of the rich, even when they were crooks and murderers (like Charles Keating and the Haiti dictator Duvalier) to that of the poor. According to her belief system, it was not Jesus that forgave their sins, but wealth- and the donations they gave her. It is entirely proper that she will be joining the galaxy of Catholic saints in the company of two of the greatest criminals and mass murderers in history- the Hitler’s Pope (Pius XII) and Jose-Maria Escriva, the founder of the Mafia known as the Opus Dei. These two will be elevated to sainthood along with Mother Teresa. This is the company that “Saint” Teresa will be keeping. While the so-called Indian Christian leaders and their camp followers may want to hold on to their colonial status, it is unnecessary for the secular Government of India to degrade itself by participating in this unholy celebration, much less be party to it.
=================== IANS [TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2003 11:58:52 AM]
BHUBANESWAR : An Orissa-based rationalist group has lodged a police complaint against Sister Nirmala of the Missionaries of Charity (MoC) and the Pope for "falsely propagating" that Mother Teresa had cured a woman of stomach cancer.
Prafulla Kumar Naik from the organisation Pragati filed a written complaint against the two at the Kendrapada police station, officials said on Tuesday.
"Mother Teresa did not cure Monika Besra (of West Bengal). The doctors cured her," he asserted.
In his complaint, he also said the MoC, Sister Nirmala and Pope John Paul II were doing harm to society by falsely propagating unscientific things about Mother Teresa.
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