Mother Teresa a saint?

I met someone who had actually worked with MT. They were not impressed with her at all. They said that MT thought pain was good for the soul and would not give those suffering medication to ease their pain!

Anya, I have always thought it wrong for children to live in fear of mortal sin, when they are just being children, sorry if it offends some people but that is my view. I would not have allowed my child to be scared I'm afraid.

Depends how you view a Saint. Like a lot of people she had her faults, but did a lot of good things and mattered to a lot of people, she made a difference.

Not at all sure that Mother Teresa qualifies; in the old days, it took many years, if not centuries, for beatification and subsequent canonisation; now a pope says "I think so and so should be a saint" and it's rushed through without any need for the requirements of miracles etc. I feel that there were about 3 people in the 20th century who as human beings were worthy of canonisation: Therese of Lisieux, Pope John XXIII and John Paul I. There may well have been others, but I'm not aware of them!

It's a way of keeping the population under control - fear, poverty and promises of better to come (after death).
The wealth and beauty in some RC churches! - much of it paid for by poor people.

So much fear , makes me cross and also sad.

Indeed

That kind of 'belief system', one that not only doesn't want to relieve suffering but actually thinks it's a good thing, is what many of us find repugnant.

I think the thing about Mother T is that she believed not just that souls were far more important than bodies, but that bodies were pretty much an encumbrance to souls. This would be more or less in tune with the Catholic viewpoint when she grew up in the Catholic faith. Consequently, she sort potential converts and concentrated on the souls of the sick and dying rather than concerning herself with feeding the hungry, nursing the sick and treating mere bodies humanely.

Actually all this did me a favour. It certainly toughened me up and taught me to question rather than just accept.

TerriBull yes - that's brought it all back. All those saints, especially the young ones like Agnes, held up as shining examples of martyrdom. I was so impressed at age 8 I chose the said Agnes for my confirmation name

Can you imagine?

I used to have nightmares at night (obviously!) about my parents going to hell because they didn't go to Mass on a Sunday and, in those days that was a Mortal Sin. If you died in a state of Mortal Sin you went straight to hell

Disillusionment set in about age 11 after I failed to make the grade as a Child of Mary, or was it a Daughter of Mary? Those chosen were entitled to wear a rather fetching medal on a pretty blue ribbon, that I quite coveted.

God preserve children from catholic schools and all their inherent hypocrisy and judgmental attitudes. Definitely need a finger-down-throat icon! We can only hope that modern catholic schools have tempered their approach.

My jaw dropped too Terribull

I remember learning about the distinction between "Blessed" and Saint when I was at school, "Blessed" meaning that person was almost there. Both my schools liked their pupils to dwell on martyrs who were put to death in a painful way for their faith. I think they thought it was good to keep us in a permanent state of terror. We were taught about some woman in the Tudor era, "Blessed Margaret Clitheroe" of York who was pressed to death by heavy weights because she wouldn't renounce her faith. I remember thinking "For heaven's sake, just become CofE, how bad can it be?" I also recall my mother saying something along the lines of "awful things like that don't happen any more". If only that were true, now we have the fascist Islamic regimes who have dragged so many back to those hellish times. Is there anything worse than forcible conversions, or executing people for apostasy.

Anya, we often brought up the incestuous Borgias with our nuns, we couldn't get enough of them, the Borgias, not the nuns. This family never failed to embarrass and always managed to produce the same apoplectic reaction Our nuns were terminally in denial about "Catholics gone bad"particularly when one was a Pope These were matters that were not really up for discussion. Then we found out his successor had also fathered children, had mistresses and wasn't very papal either and so we added that for good measure. We were then told that if we continued in this vein we could expect a letter home to our parents, for, "being bold" whatever that was supposed to mean . Our history lessons were utterly slanted and biased to present Catholics in a positive light and the nuns who taught us lacked any sort of objectivity and were about as far removed from Simon Schama as possible. When covering the reign of Queen Mary (never Bloody Mary at my school) the nun taking the lesson actually said about Mary "she did have a few Protestants burnt at the stake, but it's no more than they deserved". Even then most of us were slacked jawed at her comments although Sister whateverhername was quickly said turn to page number in your text books before any challenge to that got going.

A minor canon is really a curate Rosequartz. Yes being made a canon is an honour , my priest - I have one of my own he came here as a minor canon in 1974, just before I was widowed , he became a much loved friend,still is, he was then ordained and moved onto his own parish , he was elected canon by the Bish quite a few years ago.

they have given and done much for the diocese and are honoured as canons which means they get a say in the cathedral yet have their own parish
Yes, our friend is a vicar of longstanding and it was a great honour when we were invited to the service when he was made a canon.
I didn't realise there were minor ones who assist at services.

I worked in a convent boarding school - the Ursuline Order, I do know money made in that school meant free schools for children in poverty stricken countries, one poor nun was sent to teach in Kenya and she had a allergy to strong sunlight . The school is now closed but the sisters are still here and much loved in the town, they do do much for us

Rosequartz, in the Anglican Church we have minor canons who are priests usually in their first or second post who assist at mass in Cathedrals and we have canons , they have given and done much for the diocese and are honoured as canons which means they get a say in the cathedral yet have their own parish . We have a different Canon in residence every month

annie I don't know if the RC church has canons.
The one I mentioned is an Anglican canon.

I think Mother Superior also discovered my nick name for Sister Francis of the Passion (Passionate F***y)

elena no, you have that wrong. Being called 'Blesséd' is actually one step away from being 'sainted' in the canonisation process. If you google the steps to canonisation you will get all the details.

My convert was Notre Dame and our 'Saint' was the Blesséd Julie (though I think she may have been promoted by now). Some of our nuns were quite human and, as a teaching order, well educated and even encouraged discussion. Some, not all. I was actually expelled asked to leave at age 13, for bringing up the question of the paternity of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia in a history lesson.

I do understand TerriBull, what we don't allow for is the fact they were of their time, parents put their pregnant daughters into those homes. The nuns themselves had parents yes? What is a pity is no nun from that time can write a book. The babies in those homes had grandparents , quite possibly g grandparents , did they treat the unmarried mother and baby any more kindly ? We can go back and say how cruel witch hunts were. We can't seem able to accept people within their time .

Was their church wrong? Yes, but many condemned were victims too

Wow, terribull, your own schooling does sound pretty awful. I don't remember our order being that bad. They were mainly French with a couple of Irish nuns. The latter were the least likeable. Yes I do remember our being asked to pray for the poor non Catholic girls, but that was just the thinking of the time. Sunday Mass, too, always ended with a prayer for the conversion of England ! The RC church has given up on that one nowadays! Again, just a reflection of times when, too, females were second class citizens and social mores very different.

Whilst I take your point AB, that nuns were teachers and any person who attended a non secular school half a century or more ago would levy the same charge of uncharitable behaviour against lay teachers. However, in my opinion the behaviour of some nuns and priests went further than just a sharp tongue. We now know what has been uncovered in Ireland, the story of Philomena, The Magdalene sisters and the enforced labour of unmarried mothers in laundries and the like, not to mention the enforced adoption of babies born to unmarried mothers and then more recently the uncovering of mass graves of babies in rural Ireland, can't remember the name of the place. The misery some immigrant Catholic children suffered in places such as Australia and Canada where they were sent, it's all well documented.

My personal experience of nuns is that they were fairly unpleasant, frustrated and uncharitable people who didn't particularly care for the children they were supposed to be teaching. I can only speak for myself. I went to a Sacred Heart convent, but believe me there didn't appear to be anything sacred about the nuns and they had very little heart. They took in a quota of us from my state Catholic junior school, I believe they had an arrangement with the parish priest whereby they waived the fees for us in exchange for some financial propping up from the parish funds. All the other pupils were fee payers, the majority were non Catholics, and believe me, whilst the nuns liked their money, they sure as hell slagged them off behind their backs whenever the opportunity presented itself such as the times the Catholic contingent were being herded off to hear mass on saints days "the prods" were no sooner down the corridor when we were being urged to pray for their protestant souls to save them from eternal damnation and were also told never, never enter one of their churches because God almighty won't be there, non Catholic churches allegedly were godless places The nuns duplicitous nature however didn't preclude them from simultaneously sucking up to the "proddy godless fee payers" by telling them they had excellent breeding, and we the lowly state school kids didn't have any breeding apparently. Clearly we were the spawn of Frankenstein, but at least we were Catholic trash! There was a third highly elevated species at our convent. Catholics who paid fees, thus deeming them non trash, not only did they have excellent breeding but their souls were not sullied by entering "godless churches" on Sundays. It just couldn't get any better than that. Loads of grovelling and sucking up to their parents, until the unexpected happened and one set of parents from that category got divorced which demoted their offspring into sort of unspecified limbo land and she was viewed by the lovely nuns as a deviant once her circumstances became common knowledge. All in all this was typical of the drivel they delivered on a daily basis.

I'd like to think that sort of person isn't teaching children anymore, I have no idea, I'll take your word for it things have improved.

Are there canons in the RC Church?