Not so saintly after all, Mother Teresa

Recently I was beastly to the sports writer Matthew Syed, criticising him for his unsound (which is to say fashionably Leftie) views on racial stereotypes.

Yet the title of his article today, Hero Or Hypocrite? History Shows That Muhammad Ali Was Both, caught my eye. A quick scan showed that deep down Matthew is my spiritual brother: “There is a tendency,” he writes, “to place our heroes on a moral pedestal.”

As examples of such unmerited elevation, he cites Muhammed Ali, whose “[objectionable] conduct and political opinions were always there, lurking beneath the airbrushed façade”, and Princess Diana, “the passionate but flawed woman who walked the earth [but] has given way to a Messianic caricature.”

All true. All good. Our secular hagiography, even if we should have it at all, which we shouldn’t, is too full of undeserving characters.

Suddenly I felt ashamed about having been beastly to Matthew. He got those racial stereotypes wrong, but who of us never errs? Perhaps I was unfair to say he should stick to sports, steering clear of subjects requiring some thought.

But then Matthew got back into my bad books with the speed of Ali’s left jab: “Mother Teresa spent most of her life in this position of uncritical reverence. She was the saviour of the poor, the saintly woman who ministered to their needs. The truth is that, for all her many admirable qualities, she was also a religious conservative who opposed contraception, an ideology which condemned millions of women to poverty.”

In general, I don’t object to people having views different from mine – provided they make sense. This proviso is hard to satisfy, for views that differ radically from mine are usually but glints tossed off by the revolving ball of unsound philosophy. (The death penalty stands apart: I’m for it, but I’ve heard valid arguments from those who aren’t.)

And an unsound philosophical premise can make even clever people look dumb. I don’t know if Matthew is clever but, even supposing for the sake of argument that he is, he fails on that score.

Let’s decorticate that paragraph. Matthew has nothing against contraception. I suspect he sees nothing wrong with abortion either.

If so, he’s in agreement with the British Medical Association, whose members recently voted to remove all that silly red tape from abortion on demand practically until birth. I struggle to see any difference between a baby a month before delivery and a month after, but then no one has ever accused the Left of intellectual rigour.

And if opposition to abortion is regarded in those quarters as strictly marginal, opposition to contraception is seen as being so insane as to be outside the margins. Who but “a religious conservative” would hold such views, and we know where that lot belong. In the garbage heap of history, to borrow a phrase from Trotsky who shared Matthew’s side of this argument.

Hence he seems to think that Mother Teresa’s opposition to contraception disqualifies her from sainthood. Not one of the secular variety, but the real kind, bestowed on such people as Paul of Tarsus, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas of Aquino.

Such people live in an intellectual, spiritual and moral universe that’s different from the one inhabited by the likes of Matthew and the BMA. That universe signposts its own territory, and trespassers are severely punished by being made to look like idiots.

Within that territory, not only a Christian saint but any orthodox Christian opposes contraception. How does Matthew think Paul, Augustine and Thomas felt about it? I suspect their views would ill-qualify them for today’s secular sainthood.

In his landmark encyclical letter Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI reemphasised the Church’s teaching that it’s wrong to use contraception to prevent a new human being from coming into existence.

These days that rigid stance is associated with the Catholic Church only, but this hasn’t always been so. Until 1930, all Protestant denominations, including our own dear C of E, also condemned contraception as sinful. In other words, until 87 years ago all Western Christians were – or at least were supposed to be – against contraception. And 1.2 billion Catholics still are.

We may argue about the merits of such intransigence till the bishops come home, but the fact of the matter is simple. While opposition to contraception isn’t fashionable among atheists, it’s still an article of faith for orthodox Christians.

So in effect Matthew thinks that Mother Teresa doesn’t deserve to be a Christian saint because she was a true Christian, someone who lived in a universe of which Matthew is ignorant but to which he’s instinctively hostile.

Never mind the saintliness of ministering to the needs of the poor. That true Christian wasn’t fit to be a saint because she was a true Christian. That’s like saying that Muhammed Ali wasn’t fit to be a boxer because he knocked people out.

Matthew might as well have rebuked Mother Teresa for wearing nun’s habits, which would have prevented her from making any Ten Best Dressed list. The logic would have been equally inane.

The wind returneth again according to his circuits. Matthew has climbed back into my bad books, having left them momentarily. But somewhere in my soul there’s a spot warmed up by gratitude.

I’m grateful to Matthew Syed for confirming yet again my life-long conviction that all Lefties are either fools or knaves. And I’ve heard no rumours of Matthew’s knavishness.