Mother Teresa's miracle won't help the poor

News that the Pope had confirmed a miraculous cure as a result of the heavenly intercession of Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, brought me a spate of phone calls asking me to explain and defend this announcement on radio and television. Explain it I could, to the best of my ability; but defend it? I found myself becoming more and more embarrassed as a succession of incredulous news presenters tried to make sense of it all for the benefit of motorists driving home, or whoever casually listens to the radio in the late afternoon. 

I found it just not defensible. One only has to think of the millions of desperate prayers for deliverance offered up by the terrified victims of the Nazis, not just by six million murdered Jews but by as many as two million Polish Catholics and others who shared the same ghastly fate. A God who does miracles in answer to prayers just to let us know that Mother Teresa is in heaven, but who leaves all those other prayers unanswered with so much suffering unrelieved, is a very strange God indeed.    

As I understand it – having checked the Catechism - this is the theory: the saints in heaven hear the prayers of the faithful, and can pass them on to Almighty God in whose presence they are enjoying eternal bliss. So the faithful down below, as it were, are allowed to ask someone who might be a saint, to ask God in turn for a miracle in their behalf. It is a test. If the miracle subsequently occurs, then this demonstrates that the soul of the deceased is indeed in heaven. God has sent a sign. If the miracle does not occur, then you can try again, and you can have as many goes as you like. 

One might think it would be better to pray for the intercession of someone who is already a confirmed saint, rather than take a risk with someone who might not be. One might even think it would be better to cut out the middle man or woman altogether, and pray to God directly, as Jesus suggested we should. I can think of no reason why God would pay more attention to a prayer from a saint in heaven than one from someone still living, saint or not. But candidates for sainthood have supporters’ clubs, who are often members of religious societies or orders that the deceased holy person belonged to, and who mount campaigns of prayer in order to trigger the two miracles that matter to the canonisation process.

This costs money, of course, and I believe the going rate is about half a million pounds. In many cases much more is spent. To the outside world this looks a lot like purchasing a sainthood. The reason the sponsoring organisation considers the expense worthwhile is that a canonisation reflects credit on it and flatters the ego of all those involved. If the saint in question was the founder of a religious order, the implication is that God favours that order and hence approves of the things it does. That was palpably the reason why Opus Dei worked so hard for the canonisation of its founder, Escriva. 

There is something so utterly presumptuous about the canonisation process involving miracles that it must surely qualify as superstition. That does not mean the process of investigating miracles is somehow dishonest – the criteria are as far as we know precise and strictly followed. A medical cure has to be beyond scientific explanation. If it could be a natural cure, even a remarkable one, then it is not regarded as a miracle. 

The real problem is that the miraculous element in the canonisation process leads to a distorted view of God. It is a very small God who can be manipulated and used to send signals to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, about who is and who is not in heaven. He does not sound like the Creator of Heaven and Earth. He may indeed sound a bit like the God of the early books of the Old Testament, who was regularly described as sending signs as an indication of his favour or to help the Chosen People out of a tight spot. But our view of God has matured a long way since then. Nor is he the God of the Gospels. Jesus did miracles, of that I have no doubt, but they had enormous significance for the scheme of salvation about which he was teaching his followers. Such miracles were never trivial. 

In contrast, why did we need a miraculous cure to tell us Mother Teresa was holy? Has this miracle helped to persuade a single person who previously doubted it? Has it, indeed, helped in the slightest the very causes to which Mother Teresa devoted her life? If anything, it has demeaned and diminished her - and them. 

The Pope has the power to canonise saints without the necessity for two confirmed miracles. He did so in the case of Pope John XXIII. It would be a good day for the Church if he were to let it be known that henceforth heroic virtue and holiness of life would be the only conditions necessary, apart from actual martyrdom. He might at the same time suggest that instead of spending money on promoting the cause of a particular saint, such funds would be better spent on the causes that saint promoted.