Why we hate Mother Teresa

Exclusive to the Independent, the Guardian, the Carpet-chewers' Gazette and all other liberal papers.

So the Catholic Church has chosen to ignore the description given by the great Christopher Hitchens - "a lying, thieving Albanian dwarf" - and canonize one of the most evil women of the 20th Century. Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was her real name, but she chose to hide under the alias of "Mother Teresa", even though she had no children and was not called Teresa at all.

How I hate that woman. She opposed a woman's right to choose to dismember her unborn child (when Hitchens asked her if she had any "baby parts" for sale, she looked at him in total disbelief). She never spoke up for same-sex marriage, incest, polygamy and orgies in tanks of olive oil, which are now accepted by all mainstream orthodox secularists. As for transgender awareness, she still lived in the dark ages when they had sexist labels such as "male" and "female" - and "Mother" of course! Teresa even attended Catholic Church services, as if she actually believed all that nonsense about God. Sheeesh!

Mother Teresa. What a horrible smug woman.

When the Catholic Church decides whom to canonize, it doesn't ask journalists like me to advise them. That's why you don't see such heroes as Marie Stopes, Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela and Hugo Chávez getting an expensive ceremony with lots of pilgrims singing their praises. No, they pick on some wretched nun who was not only undersized but also Albanian (well spotted, Christopher!) and give her the works! She was never invited to our Islington dinner parties, and serve her right!

Apparently, "Saint" Teresa ran some sort of hospital in Calcutta, but if you turned up asking for a sex-change, an abortion, or even "something for the weekend", she would ignore you in favour of some nasty smelly person with leprosy, tuberculosis or other socially unacceptable disease. No compassion for those of us who suffer modern illnesses such as acne, hair loss, or halitosis! Monster!

Mother Teresa and one of her smelly old lepers.

She was a self-publicist, nagging people for money to waste on a bunch of dying no-hopers. She'd fly across the world to see rich people, just to embarrass them into coughing up some cash. For crying out loud, she could have walked, couldn't she? Also, she was too proud to use the traditional "get rich" methods employed by the majority of our readers, such as embezzlement, insider trading, and mugging people late at night.

Well, what do you expect of the Catholic Church? Pope Francis has been a great disappointment to us: he may have correctly identified climate change as the biggest issue facing us in this era, or indeed any era, but he puts God and Jesus a close second, which is a real turn-off. Mother Teresa was the same, so HOW DARE the Catholic Church honour her in this way?

Er, will that do? All I needed to say was that she was a Catholic, and so should never have been canonized, but I needed to pad it out a little.

The Book of St Richard, Chapter 23

Continued from Chapter 22

1. And lo! Christmas was approaching once more, the season of peace on Earth to people of good will (and maybe some others, too).

2. But Richard was still in those days an unsaved person, and he spake forth, saying "Bah! Humbug!" Or sometimes (for a change) "Bah! Jellybaby!" in homage to Tom Baker, he who had been married to Romana.

Richard displayeth a biological specimen in his living-room.

3. And behold, he went on the attack with a brilliantly-crafted tweet, saying "There are people who believe Jesus turned water into wine. How do they hold down a job in the 21st century?"

4. For he reasoned that the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, and the professor of biology could not do their jobs adequately if they believed in an omnipotent creator.

5. For would they not inevitably produce bad sausages, or bad bread, or bad candles, or bad lectures, if they were men of faith?

6. Therefore, Richard, being of a scientific mind, decided to test the miracles of Our Lord, by showing that they were impossible.

7. Thus he gave a great dinner party, and served unto his guests water, poured from old wine bottles, saying "Marvel ye, this is the finest wine!"

8. And his guests tapped their heads and said to themselves, "Let us humour the old coot, lest he biteth someone." Thus they spake out, praising the water as if it were vintage claret.

William of Gates praiseth the Chateau D'Ocquins wine.

9. Then Richard began to show the impossibility of many other miracles.

10. He invited five thousand members of Oxford University to dinner and fed them on five loaves and two small fishes. They became exceeding wrathful, and telephoned for five thousand pizzas.

11. Then one of his keener disciples was moved to cut off the ear of a policeman, that his master might restore it. The case cometh up next week.

12. After this, Richard walked on the Sea of Galilee, and was rescued by the fishermen.

The miracle of Dawkins almost walking on water.

13. And there were many other miracles that Richard failed to do. Thus he was convinced that nobody could do them. "Well, it would be a miracle if they could!" he said.

14. Now, at about this time men spake of Mother Teresa, she who had spent a lifetime in good works, and was evidently a saved person.

15. And the Pope, he who was called Francis the Merciful, told the world that Teresa's acts of healing had continued, and that she was to be recognised as a saint.

16. And Richard was exceeding wrathful, describing Teresa as "over-rated" and her followers as "gullible".

An ignorant woman who knew little of selfish genes.

17. For had not he devoted his own life to good deeds, namely screaming at people of faith? And had not he performed miracles, in persuading people to buy his trashy books? But, as yet, few spake of Richard as a saint.

18. "Woe!" he cried. "It is not fair!" And again he cried, saying "Boo hoo!"

19. For Richard was angry that a Church to which he did not belong should dare to honour one of its own members without consulting him first.

Continued in Chapter 24.

The Divine Comedy: Inferno

So the poet Virgil came to Eccles, who is a saved person, and said "Perhaps you'd like to take a look at Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, to see how they've been getting on since I gave Dante a conducted tour? You could write about them on your lovely blog."

Abandon Hope, all ye who enter here

So they travelled to the gates of Hell itself, and began their descent into the abyss from which no man returns.

"This could be interesting," said Eccles. "Will we see Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden, and people like that?"

"We do have them down here of course," said Virgil, "but frankly you don't want to see the dreadful torments they suffer. When you see someone who is forced to read the Guardian all day long, you even start to feel a nagging sympathy for them."

Ted Heath

They came to a darkened room in which a big fat man was groaning pitifully as he declaimed in a booming voice: "Ohhh... notwithstanding directive LU/267/JRQ/1637, paragraph 208, on the regulations for the design of teaspoons permitted in coffee shops not exceeding 250 square metres in area, it will be necessary for the managers of such shops to buy carbon credits to the value of EUR 50 for each customer who wishes to blow on his coffee to cool it, on pain of having their toenails pulled out by a registered inspector..."

"This is one of his lucky days," said Virgil. "He's just got to read out pointless EU directives. On a bad day they get him to read out all his old speeches."

"I see you try to make the punishment fit the crime," remarked Eccles. "Do you have any interesting atheists?"

Christopher Hitchens

They came to a room in which a rather stout man was writing a book. Eccles looked at the chapter heading, which said How Mother Teresa murdered a nanny and framed Lord Lucan for it, on the instructions of Pope Paul VI. In the corner of the room was a fire, and Virgil explained that Hitchens's punishment (apart from being eternally deprived of alcohol and cigarettes) was to write books which, when completed, were thrown directly into the flames. "This happened when he was alive too, usually, but now we can cut out all the trouble of getting a customer to buy them first," explained Virgil.

"I was right, I was right, there is no God, and he hates me!" screamed Hitchens, and resumed his writing.

"How about Catholics?" asked Eccles. "Do you have any down here?"

"Lots," said Virgil. "Since the 1960s, there's been no shortage of Catholics wanting to sign up to a liberal agenda. Abortion, euthanasia, divorce, homosexual practices... so much simpler than traditional morality, it seems."

Will nobody come for a drive with me?

A fat dissolute man came past, driving a taxi. "Taxi, guv?" he asked. "A little drive to the island?"

"Heard the legend of the Flying Dutchman?" asked Virgil. "Condemned for ever to sail the seas? It's been updated - Ted here is condemned for ever to drive his taxi, unable to pick up passengers."

"He was a Catholic, wasn't he?" asked Eccles.

"When there were votes in it," replied Virgil. "But mostly he was just a fat drunken slob."

"So, where next?" asked Eccles.

"Well, you've seen some dead souls currently in torment. Next, I shall show you a vision of the future. We'll see some of the living people whom we're expecting down here in the next few years..."

Let's go and do something really evil.