Mother Teresa's miraculous path to sainthood

When I read the news that Mother Teresa is on her way to becoming a catholic saint, I couldn't decide whether to feel happy or sad. I am a great admirer of her humanitarian work which she did in India, and her work speaks for itself about her greatness, so I wonder why she needed these random incidents under the name of miracles to get the title of "saint." Wasn't her social work enough to call her a saint? But it seems a minimum of two miracles are required to be declared as a catholic saint, I don't know on what basis they came up with the number 2, but that seems to be the criteria. So, even after all that great work that she did most of her life, it was not good enough to qualify her to become a saint, and now finally she got that dearly required second miracle recently which cleared her path to become a catholic saint. Seriously? Mr. Pope, do you need such trivial miracles which are just random incidents that happen every day somewhere in the world to declare someone like her a saint? I am really stunned to know that church authorities need some sort of nonreproducible random incidents (so-called miracles) to declare someone like Mother Teresa a saint. Can they please explain why her exemplary work is not enough for that? I feel astonished by all this because I come from the part of India which has produced many sants (equivalent of saint in Marathi) like, Dyaneshwar, Tukaram, Eknath, Namdev and many others. Actually, to be fair to Vatican people there are some miracles attributed to some of these people which according to me are clearly works of fiction. Miracles are attributed just to emphasize their greatness to some people who may not be able to understand the real importance of their work. That is why according to me all of them are not saints because they did some miracles, but for their scholarly work in the field of devotional literature, for carrying out social reforms, or for their humanitarian work. Miracles don't exist and no one can perform them. Maybe many centuries back people needed some fictional stories about different miracles to understand the greatness of someone, but in today's world why do we need such things which we know are some random incidents. Today how believable is the news that someone with multiple brain tumors prayed for her and got cured? Now for a moment let's assume that this is really true, then is it recommended for all those who are undergoing medical treatments for similar diseases to stop those treatments and start praying to her or someone else to get cured. If not, why not? Actually, people do pray whenever they are in deep trouble or when they see no other option, but they do this for their mental satisfaction there is not much logic behind this as there is no data to prove that prayers are as effective as medicines. But people do have the habit of praying and many also feel that their prayers produce desired results, but there is no proof for these things. Such a psychological boost can work in some cases, in medical science, there is a phenomenon called the "placebo effect" which is a similar scenario, but it is not a miracle, there is a rationale and logical explanation behind it.

I wrote one blog post about her many months back, even though I am an admirer of her work, her intentions and motives behind her work are questioned by some people. These questions or objections might sound unreasonable to her admirers like me, but they are there and one needs to acknowledge their existence. But my main objection to this miracle thing is what is the real purpose behind attributing such lame miracles to anyone? Don't they know that such things spread superstition among people? Especially those who are very vulnerable to believe in such things, for such people anything coming from their religious authority is absolute truth and this is dangerous. Superstition is already a huge problem in many societies and if powerful religious institutions like the catholic church are instrumental in spreading these things so blatantly, then I wonder how a society can dream of getting rid of these social evils? I absolutely have no problem with declaring Mother Teresa a saint or God or angel or whatever they want, but I have a strong objection to the so-called miracles attributed to her. This is a very clear case of superstition, just because something happened randomly doesn't mean it is a miracle. Many years back things like lunar eclipses or even rainbows were considered as miracles done by some God, but not anymore. I think it is the responsibility of any responsible and powerful institution not to propagate the culture of falsehood and superstition. This drama of miracle is really not necessary for giving sainthood to a great lady like Mother Teresa, people like her or Baba Amte are great human beings. We can call them saints, gods, or angels just because of their amazing work, they don't need any crutches of miracles to prove their greatness. I hope people understand this and give well-deserved respect to these individuals which they totally deserve because of their superb work, and not based on some stupid miracles.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Links:

1. Mother Teresa to become a saint after Pope Francis recognizes 2nd miracle