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‘Mother Theresa’ (1986 Túrelio)

COGwriter

As expected, Pope Francis canonized the one born as Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, and now commonly called ‘Mother Teresa,’ as a Catholic saint today:

September 4, 2016

Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint at a morning Mass, making her the model of his Jubilee Year of Mercy and in some ways his entire papacy. For Francis, Mother Teresa put into action his ideal for the church …

While Francis was clearly keen to hold St. Teresa up as a model for her joyful dedication to the poor, he also recognized holiness in a nun who lived most of her adult life in spiritual agony sensing that God had abandoned her.

According to correspondence that came to light after she died in 1997, St. Teresa experienced what the church calls a “dark night of the soul” — a period of spiritual doubt, despair and loneliness that many of the great mystics experienced. In St. Teresa’s case, it lasted for nearly 50 years — an almost unheard of trial. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mother-teresa-canonization-pope-francis-nun-sainthood-vatican-saint-catholic/

September 4, 2016

“Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life,” the Holy Father reflected, “was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defense of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded.” https://zenit.org/articles/its-official-saint-mother-teresa/

Having read a lot about Catholic ‘mystics,’ they seem to encourage suffering and none I am aware of ever preached the true Gospel of the Kingdom of God. True generosity was not something that any seemed to possess, as often they did things for show, as reportedly did Teresa–Jesus condemned such behaviors (cf. Matthew 6:1-4).

There are various ones who have long opposed Teresa’s path towards Roman Catholic sainthood. Basically, they claim she was a publicity hound, was hypocritical, had various character flaws, and was not truly interested in helping the poor.

Notice something a biographer wrote about her:

She cultivated her celebrity.

Teresa was famous first in India, then worldwide, partly through the efforts of British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge and partly due to another gift. “The way she spoke to journalists showed her to be as deft a manipulator as any high-powered American public relations expert,” noted Irish rocker/philanthropist Bob Geldof. …

“The silence and the emptiness is so great,” she wrote, “that I look and do not see– the tongue moves (in prayer) but does not speak.”

Critics like the late Christopher Hitchens said the correspondence proved Teresa was just a “confused old lady.” But the letters were issued by her postulator, the Vatican-appointed advocate for her sainthood. http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/10/my-take-the-mother-teresa-you-dont-know/comment-page-21/

Notice also the following:

Mother Teresa’s sainthood still stirs debate, but she inspires Pope Francis

September 4, 2016

Matt Bradley commented for NBC that much of the criticism of Mother Teresa focused on how her practice of Catholic devotion collided with the real needs of the impoverished people she set out to help.

In the eyes of some, particularly in India, she put fame and piety before her mission of aid.

Among other critiques, she has been accused of offering stingy or substandard medical care; of proselytizing to her patients; of claiming virtue in suffering rather than trying to alleviate it; cozying up to dictators; and of promoting her efforts to a global media eager for heroes.

“I personally think that she did more harm than good,” said Bradley. http://www.ecumenicalnews.com/article/mother-teresas-sainthood-still-stirs-debate-but-she-inspires-pope-francis/51012.htm

Sadistic Religious Fanatic: Mother Teresa Was No Saint

September 2, 2016

Mother Teresa was a moral monster, a sadistic religious fanatic guilty of medical malpractice.  …

Mother Teresa was no saint, she was instead a moral monster, a sadistic religious fanatic who took pleasure in the suffering of others, and denied appropriate medical care to the sick and dying.

Yet the Catholic propaganda machine, eager for good publicity and the opportunity to hustle the gullible, continues to promote the soon to be saint while ignoring evidence of her moral incompetence.

Teresa was anything but a saint. The nun may have been generous with her prayers, but she was miserly with her foundation’s millions when it came to alleviating the suffering of the sick and the poor.

The celebrated nun had 517 missions in 100 countries at the time of her death. Yet despite plenty of funds, the majority of patients were not cared for properly, many being left to suffer and die without appropriate medical care or pain medication.

Indeed, conditions in the the Missionaries of Charity’s hospices were deplorable. In fact, Teresa refused to introduce the most basic methods of hygiene, even going so far as to reuse needles without sterilization.

According to one study, doctors observed a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions and a shortage of actual care, food and painkillers. They say that the problem was not a lack of funds because the Order of the Missionaries of Charity successfully raised hundreds of millions of dollars.

Perhaps worse that the medical malpractice, was Teresa’s perverse and sadistic ability to take pleasure in the suffering of others. The fact is, Teresa believed that suffering – even when caused by poverty, medical problems, or starvation – was a gift from God.

“I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.”

– Mother Teresa

Yet despite serious questions about Teresa’s character, motivation, and methods, the Vatican, enabled by a gullible and willing mainstream media, has engaged in a well orchestrated public relations campaign to manufacture a Catholic hero.

The late, great Christopher Hitchens was one of the first to raise questions about the authenticity of claims made by the Roman Catholic Church promoting Mother Teresa. …

Hitchens was correct to call out the “profane marriage between tawdry media hype and medieval superstition” that is the myth of Mother Teresa, a media superstar who was in the end a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.

Since Hitchen’s ground breaking work on the myth of Mother Teresa, other researchers have confirmed Hitchens’ findings, including Dr. Aroup Chatterjee, a London-based physician, and author of  “Mother Teresa: The Untold Story,” which gives extensive evidence that the Missionaries of Charity ran inadequate facilities and often offered little comfort to those it was trying to help.

Dr. Chatterjee said he found a “cult of suffering” in homes run by Mother Teresa’s organization, with children tied to beds and little to comfort dying patients but aspirin.

In addition, Dr. Chatterjee confirms Teresa allowed practices like the reuse of hypodermic needles and tolerating primitive facilities that required patients to defecate in front of one another. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2016/09/sadistic-religious-fanatic-mother-teresa-was-no-saint/#sthash.mCetDwS5.dpuf

So, her physical treatment of the poor has been severely questioned. Jesus and the Apostle John taught:

10 I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. (John 10:10)

2 Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. (3 John 2)

Yet, Catholic ‘saints,’ including many of their ‘mystics,’ have taught that people should inflict suffering on themselves.There is a popular Catholic book called, The Incorruptibles, which shows that even many of the “incorruptible saints” personally wore a coarse, uncomfortable “hair shirt” as proof of their piety (Cruz JC. The Incorruptibles. Nihil Obstat: HC Bezou, November 11, 1974. Imprimatur + PM Hannan, Archbishop of New Orleans, November 19, 1974. TAN Books, 1977). The belief that people should be in constant pain to please God or to be a saint is not a biblical concept. Furthermore, the Bible teaches that the time is coming that “the prophets will all be ashamed to relate their visions when they prophesy and no longer put on their hair cloaks with intent to deceive” (Zechariah 13:4. NJB). Furthermore, the same book shows  that many of these ‘incorruptible saints’ clearly violated scripture living in a manner indicating that they were not biblically pious (Cruz, pp. 43, 49, 95, 109, 127).

As far as Teresa’s actual spiritual treatment and example, consider also the following:

While she worked with the poor, Mother Teresa was adamant that any type of evangelism was unnecessary. In her book, Life in the Spirit: Reflections, Meditations and Prayers, she says:

“We never try to convert those who receive [aid from Missionaries of Charity] to Christianity but in our work we bear witness to the love of God’s presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this better men — simply better — we will be satisfied. It matters to the individual what church he belongs to. If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life — his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation.” (Pages 81-82)

With such a statement we can only be left believing that she was more than a Catholic, but was a Universalist, believing essentially that all religion leads to the same God. Time and again we see her expounding such universalist beliefs. In an interview with Christian News a nun who worked with Mother Teresa was asked the following in regards to the Hindus they worked with, “These people are waiting to die. What are you telling them to prepare them for death and eternity?” She replied candidly, “We tell them to pray to their Bhagwan, to their gods.” …

The six steps to peace taught by Mother Teresa are silence, prayer, faith, love, service, and peace. For anyone who was unsure of what they believed, she suggested starting with small acts of love towards others. She includes three pages of sample prayers and prefaces them by saying that if you are not a Christian you could replace the name “Jesus” with “God.” (Page 35). Through the entire book there is never a hint that she relies on Christ alone for her salvation. Rather we read things like, “I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic” (Page 31).

Consider also the following quote from another source, “I love all religions. … If people become better Hindus, better Muslims, better Buddhists by our acts of love, then there is something else growing there.” Or in another place, “All is God — Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, etc., all have access to the same God.”

We see, then, that Mother Teresa held beliefs that contradict many Biblical principles. Chief among these principles is that Christ is the only means of salvation. In John 14:6 Jesus states, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” By teaching that all religion could bridge the gap between man and God, Mother Teresa taught principles completely opposed to the Bible. http://www.challies.com/articles/the-myth-of-mother-teresa

So, is telling Hindus to pray to their god (Bhagwan) something a Christian saint would do?

Of course not.

Teresa was truly a promoter of an interfaith agenda that does not square with the Bible:

“If in coming face to face with God we accept Him in our lives, then we are converting. We become a better Hindu, a better Muslim, a better Catholic, a better whatever we are …. What God is in your mind you must accept” (from Mother Teresa: Her People and Her Work, by Desmond Doig, [Harper & Row, 1976, p.156]).

“I convert you to be a better Hindu or a better Muslim or a better Protestant. Once you’ve found God, it’s up to you to decide how to worship him.” (“Mother Teresa Touched Other Faiths,” AP, Sept. 7, 1997).

“I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic” (A Simple Path, p. 31).

If the individual thinks and believes that his or her way is the only way to God, then that is their way of salvation” (pp. 74-75). (Mark Michael Zima, Mother Teresa: The Case for the Cause)

“At the word of a priest, that little piece of bread becomes the body of Christ … Then you give this bread to us, so that we too might live and become holy …” (Mother Teresa’s speech made at the Worldwide Retreat for Priests, Oct. 1984)

“So let us ask the help of our Lady! She is a Mother full of grace, full of God, full of Jesus. Let us ask her to be our Mother, guiding us and protecting us …. It is true that we are already being helped by our tremendous devotion to Mary. She is our patroness and our Mother, and she is always leading us to Jesus” (Mother Teresa, Be Holy, p. 75).

A co-worker of Mother Teresa’s was asked this question: “These people are waiting to die. What are you telling them to prepare them for death and eternity?” Mother Teresa’s co-worker (a nun) stated, “We tell them to pray to their Bhagwan, to their gods.” (Interview with Christian News)

The April 7-13, 1990, issue of Radio Times tells the story of Mother Teresa taking care of a dying Hindu priest. “She nursed him with her own hands and helped him to die reconciled with his own gods. (http://www.evangelicaloutreach.org/motherteresasc.htm accessed 03/15/16)

She also did not seem to actually believe in God as some of her own writings confirm that she lost faith:

“I am told God lives in me — and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul,” she wrote at one point. “I want God with all the power of my soul — and yet between us there is terrible separation.” On another occasion she wrote: “I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.” http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/08/24/mother-teresa-did-not-feel-christ-presence-for-last-half-her-life-letters.html

“I spoke as if my heart was in love with God – tender, personal love,” she wrote to another adviser, wondering if she was involved in “verbal deception” of the millions who followed her every act as proof of God’s existence.

“If you were there, you’d have said: ‘What hypocrisy.'” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-477573/Did-Mother-Teresa-believe-God.html#ixzz42zl1O1hC

So, she promotes Hinduism, didn’t really believe in God, and felt that people who understood her would consider her as a hypocrite.

Instead, the Church of Rome declared her one of their saints and as an example. Theresa’s theology fits well with the Vatican’s interfaith plan. This also seems to fit in with a Hindu prophecy related to the Bhagwan as well (see India and the Beast of Revelation 13).

Now, let’s look at the Roman Catholic and biblical criteria for sainthood.

For a time, the Church of Rome allegedly wanted to see evidence that the bodies did not decay (so called ‘incorruptibility’) for someone to be declared a saint after death, but they do not do that now (though they still consider ‘incorruptibility’ as a potential miracle).

The current Vatican procedure for making one a saint seems to be that the person be well-known, that people pray to the individual after he/she died, and that two reported ‘miracles’ (normally claimed healings) take place after the death credited to the potential saint, which the Vatican makes some attempts to verify.

As far as the somewhat traditional Vatican criteria for declaring sainthood compared to the biblical criteria, there are a few points to mention (and I have chosen to use Catholic translations of the Bible to demonstrate that even their versions of the Bible support my points here).

First of all, one does not BECOME a saint after one dies. The Apostle Paul clearly referred to saints that were alive in his writings. Here are few examples:

21 Salute ye every saint in Christ Jesus. 22 The brethren who are with me, salute you. All the saints salute you; especially they that are of Caesar’s household. (Philippians 4:21-22, DRB)

1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, to all the saints who are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 1:1, DRB)

15 And I beseech you, brethren, you know the house of Stephanas, and of Fortunatus, and of Achaicus, that they are the firstfruits of Achaia, and have dedicated themselves to the ministry of the saints: (1 Corinthians 16:15, DRB)

The Bible does not endorse the Pope nor anyone else being able to canonize someone as a saint after death. One becomes a saint, a firstfruit, by becoming a real Christian (cf. Acts 2:38). Only God, not any man like a pontiff, can make anyone else a saint (cf. Romans 8:9).

There are literally dozens of scriptures that use the term saints for people living at the time the New Testament was written.

Another point to make is that there is one mediator, and that is Jesus, and no one else:

5 For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus: (1 Timothy 2:5, DRB)

People are not to pray to dead people. There is no verse in the Bible that shows that any of God’s people ever did that. There is no hint in the Bible that Christians are to pray to dead people. Yet Rome claims that if it sees signs, becoming a canonized saint essentially makes one a mediator:

August 31, 2016

Hundreds of Catholics have been declared saints in recent decades, but few with the acclaim accorded Mother Teresa …

Humanitarian work alone, however, is not sufficient for canonization in the Catholic Church. Normally, a candidate must be associated with at least two miracles. The idea is that a person worthy of sainthood must demonstrably be in heaven, actually interceding with God on behalf of those in need of healing.

In Mother Teresa’s case, a woman in India whose stomach tumor disappeared and a man in Brazil with brain abscesses who awoke from a coma both credited their dramatic recovery to prayers offered to the nun after her death in 1997. …

“A saint is someone who has lived a life of great virtue, whom we look to and admire,” says Bishop Barron, a frequent commentator on Catholicism and spirituality. “But if that’s all we emphasize, we flatten out sanctity. The saint is also someone who’s now in heaven, living in this fullness of life with God. And the miracle, to put it bluntly, is the proof of it.”

No other Christian denomination posits this notion of an individual in heaven mediating between God and humanity. http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/08/31/491937448/how-the-catholic-church-documented-mother-teresas-two-miracles

Again, even Catholic translations of scripture show that only Jesus is the mediator, not any human.

Notice also something that the Apostle Peter stated:

10…the name of our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God hath raised from the dead, even by him this man standeth here before you whole.

11 This is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner.

12 Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts 4:10-12)

Notice that Peter did not claim he could heal anybody. Furthermore, he would not allow people to bow down before him:

25. And it came to pass, When Peter was come in, Cornelius came to meet him, and falling at his feet adored. 26. But Peter lifted him up saying, Arise, myself also am a man. (Acts 10:25-26, DRB)

Christians are not supposed to pray to dead humans for intercession.

Notice what the Bible teaches that the sick are to do:

¹⁴ Any one of you who is ill should send for the elders of the church, and they must anoint the sick person with oil in the name of the Lord and pray over him.

¹⁵ The prayer of faith will save the sick person and the Lord will raise him up again; and if he has committed any sins, he will be forgiven. (James 5:14-15, NJB)

Those who pray to the dead for healing are not in obedience to these biblical instructions.

As far as ‘Mother Teresa’ herself goes, consider the following:

5 For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. (Ephesians 5:5-6)

As a lifelong idolater, Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu does not meet the biblical requirements to be in the kingdom of God, hence was not a saint when she lived nor is she a real one now that Pope Francis made his formal declaration.

Saints are to live as Christians (see Living as a Christian: How and Why?), and Teresa did not do that.

It is my view that the usual criteria for sainthood by the Vatican gets people to look away from what the Bible actually teaches and puts too great of emphasis on signs that appear to be ‘lying wonders’ which deceive many (cf. Matthew 24:11; 2 Thessalonians 2:9).

And this general emphasis towards the pointing to signs and wonders will be a factor in the rise of the Beast and Antichrist, and possibly will involve a female appearing figure (cf. Isaiah 47; Revelation 17 & 18).

But true Christians are to “walk by faith, and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). In my view, Pope Francis is walking by signs, wonders, and politics and not biblical criteria. This does not bode well for the world.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 4th, 2016 at 7:40 am and is filed under Religious News.

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