The rapist Christian “Father” Robin Vadakumcherry of Kottiyoor in Kannur was correctly sentenced by a special court for sixty years of imprisonment yesterday for repeatedly raping a minor girl. If one were to be perverse, one would say that the “Father” merely got unlucky for leaving behind a trail of evidence despite dogged efforts on his part to cover up the crime—including intimidating the victim’s family and attempts to destroy evidence. Or perhaps the answer is simpler: he probably didn’t have the kind of mafia backing that that other super-rapist “Father,” Bishop Franco Mulakkal enjoyed. That’s not the worrying part; the fact that this notorious, serial sexual criminal received a hero’s welcome by sections of the Christian community upon his release from prison is.
Think about it for a moment. Think what it means for the Indian society and nation as a whole. Think about how deep the corrosion has eaten into the entrails of this ancient, gentle civilization. There’s worse news. The Vatican exhibited its patented and practiced chicanery as it always does in such crimes committed by one of its own pious hitmen of The Lord: under the guise of “monitoring” the case, it lied. The basic question nobody asks or is conveniently ignored is this: why is the Indian government allowing an alien nation to interfere with and meddle in Indian affairs? And how long and what exactly will it take to summarily ban conversions in India?
Kerala is the deadliest example of what will happen if the Church occupies a commanding position in public life: it becomes a law unto itself, a state within a state. The flood of details of the sleazy land deals, racketeering, sex rings, murder, rape, pedophilia…that has poured forth in the wake of Franco Mulakkal’s initial arrest and the fact that he continues to enjoy his reprobate empire with impunity points to this. And this is only a tiny fraction of hundreds of such undiscovered Franco Mulakkals roaming scot-free. Oh, and if it is not contained immediately, Punjab will be the next Kerala.
The Vatican has invested wisely in India.
And one of its most celebrated investments is that Ghoul of Calcutta, “Mother” Teresa. More specifically, the Vatican’s decision to canonize her in 2016 after much deliberation has yielded spectacular results.
You urge Judge Ito to look into his heart — as he sentences Charles Keating — and do what Jesus would do. I submit the same challenge to you. Ask yourself what Jesus would do if he were given the fruits of a crime; what Jesus would do if he were in possession of money that had been stolen; what Jesus would do if he were being exploited by a thief to ease his conscience?… You have been given money by Mr. Keating that he has been convicted of stealing by fraud. Do not permit him the ‘indulgence’ he desires…
This was Paul Turley, the Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles and Charles Keating’s co-prosecutor, replying to Teresa who had written a cringing letter to Judge Lance Ito who was about to hand out a damning sentence to Keating who had duped millions of America’s small investors inducing them to invest in his Ponzi schemes.
Now why would Teresa of Calcutta write to a US judge in this manner? Because Charles Keating was her friend and benefactor who had bestowed 1.25 million dollars (in the 1980s).
Needless, Teresa never replied to Turley. Charles Keating was punished with ten years’ imprisonment.
Teresa’s canonization as a saint on September 4, 2016 marked the 19th death anniversary of the 20th century’s Nobel Prize-winning Catholic nun and a frenzied, fanatical harvester of the souls of the sick and dying. All for Christ and The Lord.
Teresa represents a timeless phenomenon rooted in the human psyche: of the willing sacrifice of reason at the altar of packaged piety.
For those who are new, the criticism of Teresa hinges typically around these themes:
These revelations were first uncovered by her most vocal and famous critic, the late Christopher Hitchens in his seminal The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.
The medical doctor Aroup Chatterjee followed Hitchens’ lead by writing the comprehensive Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict, containing extensive documentation to back up his damning critique about Teresa.
The late American social commentator and Pulitzer-winning journalist Murray Kempton notes that Teresa’s “love for the poor is curiously detached from every expectation or even desire for the betterment of their mortal lot and is concentrated upon accelerating their progress toward the greatest development of the human life, to die in peace and dignity, for that’s for eternity.”
Both Hitchens and Chatterjee were committed atheists and had nothing to gain personally from these investigations about Teresa.
Malcolm Muggeridge Manufactures a Fake Saint
After she was catapulted into instant worldwide stardom thanks to the BBC’s Malcolm Muggeridge’s documentary, Something Beautiful for God, she became sacrosanct, above the scrutiny of mere mortals. And her legend only swelled until she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance speech, she called abortion the “greatest destroyer of peace.” Hitchens traces Teresa’s elevation to unscrutinised holiness in these terms:
The rich world has a poor conscience, and many people liked to alleviate their own unease by sending money to a woman who seemed like an activist for “the poorest of the poor.” People do not like to admit that they have been gulled or conned, so a vested interest in the myth was permitted to arise, and a lazy media never bothered to ask any follow-up questions.
Equally, in his analysis of the Mother Teresa phenomenon he reminds us of the “elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
However, the most definitive and damning academic evidence that there was a darker side to Teresa’s piety and caring for the sick, poor, and the dying emanates from a study done by Professors Serge Larivée and Geneviève Chénard of the University of Montreal and Carole Sénéchal of the University of Ottawa.
The paper titled Les côtésténébreux de Mère Teresa (The Dark Side of Mother Teresa) published in the March 2013 issue of the Journal, “Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses” is the result of an “analysis of 287 documents covering 96 percent of the literature on the life and work of Mother Teresa of Calcutta (born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu), the Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun, 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity (OMC).”
These documents include Teresa’s own correspondences and letters as we shall soon see.
Because the Vatican has canonized her, it stands to reason to examine its protracted relationship with Teresa.
If there’s one aspect of the Christian faith that the Vatican controls with an iron fist, it is the matter of hierarchy: unequivocal obedience at all times. Every bishop, priest, pastor, nun and mother must know his or her place at all times. The Vatican doesn’t permit unsanctioned or free-radical Christian saints.
And so, when Teresa of the Loreto Sisters sought permission from her superiors in 1946 to start her own (new) order, her request was turned down by Archbishop Ferdinand Perier. After two years of incessant pleading, the Vatican finally gave its approval. Two months later, Teresa landed in Calcutta.
In 1962, at a gathering of Indian Catholics in Bombay, she strongly opposed the reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council and called for “more work and more faith not doctrinal revision.”
Her belief in the core Christian doctrine was absolute and literal. As Hitchens notes,
“Her position was ultra-reactionary and fundamentalist even in orthodox Catholic terms. Believers are indeed enjoined to abhor and eschew abortion, but they are not required to affirm that abortion is “the greatest destroyer of peace,” as MT fantastically asserted…”
The Vatican was alarmed by her public positions on abortion, divorce and contraception but could do little after Muggeridge’s work bestowed her with the stardom of piety on the global stage. And so the Vatican silently played along in her myth making.
University of Montreal’s research also uncovers a little-known fact about Mother Teresa: she had suffered from a personal crisis of faith at various points in her life. In her own words,
For me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see,—Listen and do not hear—the tongue moves but does not speak.” “Such deep longing for God—and … repulsed—empty—no faith—no love—no zeal.—[The saving of] Souls holds no attraction—Heaven means nothing.” “What do I labor for? If there be no God—there can be no soul—if there is no Soul then Jesus—You also are not true… So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them—because of the blasphemy—If there be God—please forgive me—When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven—there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.—I am told God loves me—and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?”
Ironically, this nugget of personal information was unearthed by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the advocate appointed by Pope John Paul II to ascertain whether Mother Teresa could be canonised. Indeed, it was Father Brian, the Advocatus Dei (God’s Advocate) and not the Advocatus Diaboli (Devil’s Advocate) who declared her unfit for canonisation! The office of the Devil’s Advocate had been abolished by Pope John Paul II.
And so, by the Vatican’s own rules for canonisation, this fact of her questioning the faith should have automatically disqualified Teresa from being canonised. More damagingly, Archbishop D’Souza of Kolkata said that towards the end of her life, “her troubled and sleepless condition gave rise to such concern that she was subjected to an exorcism.”
Yet Pope Francis canonized her in 2016.
Fake it Till you Make it
Performing miracles is one of the huge bonuses that boosts one’s chances at being canonised. In Teresa’s case, this materialised in the form of Monica Besra who claimed that a beam of light emerged from Teresa’s picture and cured her of a cancerous tumour. However, it turned out that she had no cancerous tumour but a tubular cyst which was cured by prescription drugs, a fact confirmed by her physician Dr Ranjan Mustafi. Yet, the Vatican didn’t interview Dr Mustafi but upheld the “miracle” as true. And Pope Francis approved a second “miracle” in December 2015 which claims that in 2008, she cured a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumours “following the nun’s intercession.”
Which brings us back to Pope John Paul II who holds the record for canonising the maximum number of saints in the history of the Catholic Church. Total number of saints canonised from 1588 CE excluding those during John Paul II’s reign: 285. Total number of saints canonised by John Paul II: 480 in just 27 years.
John Paul II also simplified the Catholic Church’s established procedures for manufacturing saints. In Teresa’s case, he shortened the beatification—the first step before canonisation—period. Until his time, a person could be nominated for beatification only after five years after his/her death. Teresa was nominated for beatification just a year after her death, and was officially beatified in 2003.
John Paul II’s actions with respect to Mother Teresa needs to be viewed in a larger civilisational context. India is perhaps the only large nation in the world whose majority citizens follow a non-Abrahmic religion: Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism.
Deepavali. 1999.
John Paul II, known for his “fervor to expand the global influence of his church” visited India and gave a call “to replenish the dwindling ranks of practicing Catholics in the West with Asian converts” by signing the “Ecclesias in Asia,” a document that exhorted the faithful for “reaping a great harvest of faith in Asia in the third Christian millennium.”
Christianity is all but dead in Europe, where Church attendance is anywhere in the range of one or two per cent with several Churches turning into pubs and restaurants and nightclubs. The additional threat of rampant Islamism, escalating Jihadi violence and unchecked illegal immigration from Islamic countries is further pushing Christianity into oblivion.
Unlike the medieval Crusades, the Pope today doesn’t have the means or the authority, nor is the current political system in Europe structured to support the Christian religion in waging a physical war against Islam. And hence the lookout for newer places where this desert cult can find safe harbor by means of sustained conversions. With a population of over 1.25 billion of which the majority is Hindu, India is ripe for the picking.
Therefore, it wouldn’t be farfetched to claim that Teresa’s canonisation is part of the Vatican’s strategy to further deepen and widen its roots in India. For the large part, most Indians including non-Christians continue to uncritically accept—and even venerate—Teresa as a saintly lady. An official canonisation adds additional muscle.
This should actually concern India: do we want to retain our civilisational roots that make India unique from the rest of the world or do we wish it to become a Christian outpost of the West like say, Philippines? Speaking of which, the Philippines President announced last week that he wants to rename the country as “Maharlika,” a word that civilizationally resonates with Hinduism. Surely, as the original home of Hinduism, we can do much better than this.
The first step is to grow a spine.
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