(28)    Sat 9 Aug 97 13:02
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Evil Mother Teresa !
St:
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@EID:3497 23096840
@MSGID: 1:278/15 000340cb
 Mother Teresa on a roll.
 (alleged miracles associated with the nun)
 03/17/97
 The Nation

  When we read accounts of miracles--the sorcerer Jesus of Nazareth casting
out devils, for instance, and causing them to enter the bodies of pigs--we do
so through the numinous prism of a remote and mythical past. Rabbi Low of
Prague made his golem without the scrutiny of prime time. It's much more
difficult to picture the actual scene as it was: a bunch of stupefied
Galilean peasants watching the convulsions of an epileptic and then seeing
some pigs behave oddly on a neighboring slope, and being induced to draw the
connection by an exorcist on the make. Bear in mind always the injunction of
David Hume when confronted by a miracle and ask yourself: Which is more
likely--that the laws of nature have been suspended? Or that I am under a
misapprehension?

  Of course, in our age of progress and improvement, astrologers can get on
the Internet and "miracles" can actually occur in prime time.

 Take the case of Our Lady of Nashville.

 On October 15 last, in the Bongo Java coffeehouse of that most rhythmic of
cities, an employee named Ryan Finney got himself a cinnamon bun and raised
it to his open jaws. Some divine impulse made him glance down as his
mandibles were about to close, and he saw the image of "Mother" Teresa of
Calcutta on, so to speak, the roll. Witnesses to the apparition were so
impressed that they stored the delicacy in a freezer. Then a group of Bongo
Java employees teamed up, found a director and made a nine-minute documentary
titled A Music City Miracle. It could not be long--and was not--before a
franchise outlet was formed, selling T-shirts, prayer cards and coffee mugs
"to go with." Just around Christmastime, in a typically seasonal move, The
Tennessean ran a cover story on the NunBun. Other networks and news agencies
then carried the story of the holy roll, which is now copyrighted and enjoys
its own Web site. On this same site, morons the world over have registered
their awe. ("This should be another example to the people of this planet that
God is indeed watching us and Judgment Day is approaching faster than people
realize.") A few skeptics have also kicked in, with profane observations such
as "Who is without cin'amon' us?"

  Laugh all you like; there is nothing in this downscale phenomenon that is
any more absurd than the existing cult of the ghoul of Calcutta. The first
line of Hillary Clinton's first syndicated column was, "The first time I met
Mother Teresa." Congress has just voted unanimously to make "Mother" an
honorary U. S. citizen--a distinction conferred until now only upon William
Penn, Winston Churchill and Raoul Wallenberg and his wife, Hannah. In 1994
she was invited to address the "National Prayer Breakfast" with the President
himself. The Bongo Java breakfast was more authentic.

  Here is a woman who has already achieved canonization. This state of living
sainthood might be defined as the miraculous condition of having all your
actions judged by your reputation, instead of your reputation by your actions.
 And this is just as well, considering that her actions include:

 >  flying to Haiti during the Duvalier regime to receive a high
 > decoration, and announcing that the Duvaliers were friends of
 > the poor

 > accepting the Nobel Prize for Peace and declaring that the
 > greatest threat to world peace was abortion

 > stating that contraception and abortion are morally equivalent

 >  accepting a large donation of stolen savings-and-loan money
 > from Charles Keating, giving him a crucifix in return and
 > describing this pious fleecer of the small saver as a friend of
 > the poor also.

  "Mother" Teresa has always preached indulgence to the rich and sacrifice
and acceptance to the poor. Only recently, she campaigned in Ireland against
the referendum that lifted the constitutional ban on divorce and remarriage.
Yet when her new friend "Princess" Diana got a divorce, she stated publicly
that it was all for the best because the marriage had obviously been a
wretched one. Never happier than when providing photo-ops for the powerful
and the great, she runs a multinational missionary operation that is
impossible to audit but that has, by her own admission, opened many more
convents than clinics. As the national security adviser to a highly
reactionary and authoritarian Pope, she clearly hopes to be recognized as
founder of an order. John Paul II has already created five times as many
saints as all of his twentieth-century predecessors combined, and the
Vatican's "Congregation for Sainthood Causes"--already at work on the
canonization of the gruesome Queen Isabella of Spain--has all but announced
that M.T. is on the fast track for the same dubious honor.

  This entire spurious cult actually originated with another bogus miracle.
"Mother" Teresa's break into the big time came in 1969, when Malcolm
Muggeridge made a documentary about her for the BBC with the sickly title
Something Beautiful for God. In the course of filming, claimed Muggeridge,
there occurred "the first authentic photographic miracle." Film shot in a
darkened room had turned out, when developed, to show a glow of light.
Muggeridge, now the posthumous darling of the New Right, went so far as to
claim that this was the "kindly light" specified in Cardinal Newman's
burdensome hymn of the same name. The highly professional cameraman in the
case, Ken Macmillan (who shot Lord Clark's Civilization) testified that he
had been using a specially made new Kodak film, designed for crepuscular
scenes. But his evidence never caught up with the credulity of those who love
to be fooled. With a woman like this, the buns are the least of it.

  Help is at hand. My short book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in
Theory and Practice is now available in paperback. Published by Verso this
month, it contains a full account of the hollowness of "Mother's" world view,
and a detailed list of her crimes against humanity. Get some copies now, and
help equip your friends to withstand the tsunami of bullshit that will break
over them when "Mother" gives up the ghost.




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