A controversy as to who saved Monica Besra, the Santhal woman of West Bengal from her fatal ovarian tumour has been pervasive through the whole of India and abroad as well for some time. Is it a medical cure or a 'miracle ' cure?
Besides the superstitious neighbours and relatives of Monica, the orthodox Roman Catholic Church has endorsed the concocted dubious story narrated by Besra. To claim and insist that a mere touch of a light from the portrait of Mother Therasa simply cured such a serious disease as TUBERCULAR MENINGITIS ovemight is, to say the least, a vain attempt to fool the world of science-oriented millennium.
The docors, who treated Monica and the officers of the hospital have totally repudiated and rejected the mother's so called miracle and they disclosed the details of treatments which the patient had been made to undergo and drugs she had taken.
Notwithstanding the facts enumerated by the masters of medical science, the religious masters have been with no amount of hesitation-propagandizing that it was only the Mother's miracle that cured the dangerous tumour.
Why are they so enthusiastic-about this event pleading on Monica's behalf? Their motive is apparent. The Vatican is determined to canonize Mother Theresa, the Noble awardee and naturally the clergy in India try to make use of the Santhal lady's fantastic anecdote pregnant with delilberate lies to their advantage and favour. But the bare realilty is, alas! our people are not at all prepared to believe the patent impossibility, which is evident from the comments and observations made in the press. Of course, this episode is going to assist the Vatican a great deal in the process of resolving the probelms of beautification.
This event brings to mind an earlier incident. In the middle of the first half of last century, there arose a great debate about who had cured King George-the medical fratemity on God.
Accounts of the serious illness of King, who was struggling day after day with death were published and at last the King was saved. Soon after his recovery, King George issued to the citizens of his empire a message of thanks which attributed the cure to the dutiful nursing and clinical attention he received.
" I have been brought back from the danger and weariness of past months by the wonderful skill and devotion of my doctors, surgeons and nurses."
Still there was the clergy-world to be given credit. No one offered to thank them, and what if they made up their mind to thank themselves. The Bishop of Oxford ventured to lead off with the remarks: " We thank God that, in answer to the prayers of all sorts and conditions of men throughout the world, he has been restored to health!"
At this stupidity the rationalists and the scientists laughed. The FREE THINKER of London satirically noted: '' The King, the reader will observe, gave his first thanks to his doctors and nurses. The Bishop of Oxford does not thank the doctors at all. So far as he is concerned, they never existed. God did it in answer to the prayers of all sorts and conditions of men. It was not because god knew the King was ill and would have cured him anyway, it was because he was asked or bothered by the prayers of all sorts of people all over the world that he cured the King. A very artful person is the Bishop of Oxford !".
Dealing with the controversy in depth, the ' Freethinker' further exposed:
" The curious thing is that during the King's illness, there was the outcry for more prayers from more parsons. Day after day, one eminent doctor after another was called for consultation, a fresh specialist visited the King, but never was the information given that another parson had been asked to visit the palace or that the prayers of the Episcopalian parson not having produced any result, it was decided to see what a Baptist or Salvation Army praying expert could do. And the worse, the King got the more the talk of doctors and the less the talk about parsons and God."
The religious heads were not in a position to counter the rationalists' expositions. This occured in 1929, 72 years ago and we have now come across the recurrence of the same situation in the same Christendom. The only outstanding difference is that King George attributed his recovery to the concerted afforts put into the treatment by the medical personnel, whereas Monica Besra chooses to point to the picture of the Mother Theresa. The unparallelled services of laudable Mother Teresa are recorded and have become history. Her fame is ever lasting.
Nevertheless no one with an iota of sense of reasoning and spirit of inquiry would pay heed to such a must-be-ignored fraudulent account of miraculous light. May be Christendom is bent on conferring Sainthood on Mother Teresa. But it is unfair on the part of the missionaries to resort to stage-managed 'supernatural' events in order to prepare the masses to recognise their beautification.
is this the way of serving the humanity?
Shame on them !
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