![\"Teresa\"](\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Teresa-300x225.jpg\")
Mother Teresa has been canonized today.<\/p>\nMother Teresa has been canonized today.<\/p>\n
The new saint\u2019s record is more complicated than either her critics or her fans like to acknowledge, but this balanced piece<\/a> by Mari Marcel Thekaekara in the Guardian<\/em> is worth a look.<\/p>\n Towards the end, Thekaekara, a formerly fierce critic of Mother Teresa, concedes this \u2013 and understandably so:<\/p>\n I cannot in conscience criticise a woman who picked people off filthy pavements to allow them to die in dignity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But it does appear that Mother Teresa was one of those Christians who subscribe to the morbid idea that suffering is some sort of blessing (I\u2019ve posted about this phenomenon here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here <\/a>and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n Thekaekara:<\/p>\n Mother Teresa didn\u2019t deserve Christopher Hitchen\u2019s unadulterated, poisonous vitriol. But her vintage, \u201cThere\u2019s something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ\u2019s Passion,\u201d left me fuming too. How dare she trivialise poverty? But she could. She did. And the world lapped it up. She once comforted a sufferer, with the line: \u201cYou are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you.\u201d The infuriated man screamed, \u201cThen tell your Jesus to stop kissing me.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mother Teresa has been canonized today. The new saint\u2019s record is more complicated than either her critics or her fans like to acknowledge, but this balanced piece by Mari Marcel Thekaekara in the Guardian is worth a look. Towards the … Continue reading