Agnes
is part of a larger problem, though a prominent fang in the snake.
We
were all treated this week, among the detritus of political campaign
and megaphonic hairpieces, to the news that Pope Francis had
officially recognized a second intercessory miracle attributed to the
ghoulish figure of Mother Theresa. It startled me, as I had forced my
knowledge of this dreary procession into the fog only to have it
snapped back forefront by the fawning and wholly supportive litany of
our news outlets.
Mother
Theresa, whom I shall now be properly referring to as Agnes, is known
to us as a benign and beatific figure. She has “Mother” in her
self-granted title, affecting an elevated and benevolent position,
and her relentless PR machine has done nothing for the last fifty
years but embellish that persona while trying to keep her cruelty and
hypocrisy a secret from us.
She
has also been on the fast track to sainthood essentially since the
moment of her death. The organization which bears her name, the
Missionaries of Charity, continues to take in obscene amounts of cash
from around the world while operating little more than death hotels.
Claiming over four thousand nuns and nineteen of these horror show
hospices in Calcutta alone, the last benevolent thing the sisters
have done was to shut down adoption centers in India due to
overwhelming religious intolerance. The intolerance, of course,
originating with the sisters and directed at India's adoption laws,
which do not exclude un- or formerly-married individuals.
Between
then and now, the doddering form of Pope John Paul II claimed as
authentic the story related by a woman healed of her cancer by
intercession from Agnes's picture. The woman's doctors and husband
told a very different story, but what need have we of doctors when
glowing snapshots are among us? It comes as no surprise to read that
the benevolent Missionaries of Charity are accused of illegally
retaining the woman's medical records which document her year-long
course of professional treatment, as well as pressuring the hospital
staff to endorse this nonsense about miracles. The miracle that has
just been recognized by the current Pope dates to 2008, and involved
the same kind of nonsense around a Brazilian man's brain tumors. I
unfortunately haven't been able to find any substantive article
regarding actual details, but the Vatican Insider described it as
“scientifically impossible.” The same Vatican, I remind you, that
has never accepted or understood anything scientific until it was
force fed to them. These things are on record, you can read as much
about them as you can stomach. I describe them only to sketch out for
you exactly what it is this dead woman is being credited with, and
that these insulting and obviously delusional lies are what puts
Agnes at the right hand of the creator she didn't believe in.
Agnes's
personal documents reflected that she had no faith in the existence
of God. The man responsible for examining those documents as part of
the first step in canonization, Rev.
Brian Kolodiejchuk, argues she was
only having a half-decade “dark night of the soul” and that the
cynical analysis of people like myself fails to properly understand
her intent. But what other explanation could come from a
representative of the nation-state responsible for both promoting and
profiting from the never-ending victory lap Agnes seemed to be on?
Incidentally, it's remarkable to me that the Vatican would not only
allow her non-belief to become public, but that the clear
contradiction between being a non-believer and a candidate for
canonization seems to mean nothing.
Before
the fourth century, the only saints were martyrs. If you wanted a
seat in the VIP box, you had to die for your faith, preferably in a
very public and painful way. Regional religious heroes, now including
holy men who were conspicuously dead of natural causes, began to
become venerated with approval of local bishops. This went on until
1170, when Pope Alexander the Stylish claimed any and all rights to
canonization, because why the hell not. Three years later, it became
actively illegal to venerate outside the Church's authority, with
real-world laws to punish people for liking a dead guy just a little
too much. Nothing particularly interesting to this conversation
happens for quite a long time, until 1983 when JP II starts hacking
bits off Alexander's game plan to streamline the process. One of the
best bits to go was the dedicated position of opposition, someone
responsible for the argument that the candidate for sainthood didn't
deserve it. Arguments against can still be suggested, but to the best
of my knowledge the Vatican no longer finds it necessary to challenge
itself from within in almost any fashion.
The
process begins with the potential saint's death, and before the first
bureaucratic papers are shuffled a period of five years is supposed
to elapse. This is to allow for fervor to die down, ostensibly to
ensure that mob rule combined with the observable uptick in popular
people's esteem after they die does not overwhelm what passes for
reason at the Vatican. Agnes was not held to this tradition, as the
examination of her writings – the first official step toward
sainthood – began well before and was concluded by the time of her
death. Following the examination and approval of the candidate's
personal papers, their corpse is to be exhumed and examined. This is
to ensure that no wacko cults have been messing around with the
remains or using the tomb as a site for bizarre rituals, as well as
the ritual lopping off of choice bits of the corpse to save as
relics. You can almost swim in the irony, as well as feel a little
sadness we never got to see the Pope chasing Agnes through the
Vatican waving a pair of golden garden shears.
Once
the Vatican ensures the candidate's corpse will stay where it is told
and the choice cuts are securely pickled, the Pope publicly declares
you a hero. It's really only an honorary thing at this point, as the
candidate still doesn't get any feasts or churches named after them.
It's worth noting that, at this point, the church will not
acknowledge that the candidate is, in fact, in heaven at all. It
seems counterintuitive, I know, to think that a person could be in
line for sainthood without being in heaven, but nothing is so
ironclad as a rule open to interpretation. There's some good news,
though. The candidate can have their image graven across all kind of
prayer-themed merchandise – probably nothing wrong with worshipping
a graven image, after all – and use that merchandise to build a
fanbase, thereby increasing the probability that some delusional
person will credit their hallucinatory fantasy to the candidate's
intercession. One could be forgiven at this point for thinking that
this is less a somber and spiritual separation of the wheat from the
chaff, more a brutally arrogant and solipsistic swimsuit contest
judged on hysterical fervency and theocratic cheerleading.
We
now reach the point Agnes had attained by the time of her death,
attribution of miracles. Agnes shouldn't have even been considered
for another half-decade, I remind you, but instead the Pope could not
have thrown the miracle flag faster. It is at this third step in the
canonization process that the church will finally publicly claim that
the candidate's eternal being is ensconced firmly in the heavenly
hereafter. Everything they preached from childhood indoctrination or
adult conversion about how to get to heaven and avoid death was only
the first part of the story. They withheld that not everyone would
actually be getting MVP status, class warfare evidently being a
problem in the afterlife as well, and that the path would involve
years in whatever waiting room the Vatican prefers now – having
renounced the horrific idea of limbo years ago – while guys in
bathrobes read diaries and fiddle with corpses. Sounds fun to me, I
don't know why they would bury the lead like that, but there you have
it.
Beatification
is attributed one of two ways, both on equally shaky rhetorical
ground, I would say. Firstly, the candidate can be a martyr, meaning
they died for their faith or as an act of heroic charity, presumably
the bearing of another's mortal wound. Alternatively, they can be a
confessor, the default position for saints these days. To be a
confessor, it must be proven – for whatever that word is worth
coming from the lips of a Pope – that the creator of the universe
interceded directly to benefit a person who offered a prayer through
the saint-elect, kind of like clicking through to Amazon from a
website you like. These fraudulent miracle cures are well know to
you, and they only proliferate due to the Catholic construct's
unwillingness to repair the damage they have done in destitute
countries without proper health care.
The
final step before being fitted for a heavenly letterman's jacket is
an encore miracle, which is why the ghoulish Agnes is currently in
our public consciousness again. As part of JP II's streamlining
process I mentioned earlier, part of the 800-year-old process left on
the cutting room floor was the requirement of three intercessions.
Currently only one additional conspiracy is required – the
unfortunate man from Brazil – and the news is filled with fawning
and completely complicit endorsement of the current Pope's thumbs up.
No news outlet appears willing to state what is painfully obvious to
honest thought: none of this is true, and it matters even less.
Despite
the chorus to the contrary, the current Pope has done little to
nothing regarding advancing the church into the 21st
century or guiding it to better mesh with modern society. Before
Francis, Pope Benedict the Nazi-Faced threw open the pearly back door
by validating locally venerated cult leaders at an unheard of pace;
fanatics long dead, supported by the church, and with a large booster
club who weren't waiting on the Vatican's approval or a cleared-up
runny nose. Making a saint out of a monstrous woman who should be
properly known for inflicting horrific dying conditions and
absolutely no medical care whatsoever, in addition to being a
well-known seller of indulgences to the most foul people you can
imagine, will hopefully prove to be an unremovable nail in the
Vatican's long-overdue coffin.
