St. Mugg

Noch einer dieser unwahrscheinlichen Konvertiten, der dieses Jahr seinen hundertsten Geburtstag feiert: Malcolm Muggeridge, Journalist und Publizist, Sozialist, und Außenseiter, Humorist und Humanist, Biograph Mutter Teresas und Jesu Christi. Der Spectator bringt einen schönen Artikel über diesen typischen Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts, der konsequent dagegen rebellierte.

"Some who liked his scepticism were shocked by Muggeridge’s late conversion to Roman Catholicism. Like much else it was a return to early sympathies. At Cambridge, conversion to Christianity had sent him out in 1925 as a missionary teacher to India. He was deeply influenced by the people there, and at that time read Chesterton’s biography of Francis of Assisi. It captured his imagination. ‘Wordy or 'creedy' religion,’ he wrote to his liberal Anglican friend Alec Vidler, ‘kills the living beauty of God.’

He had no interest in theology, but the attractions of India and Franciscan simplicity coincided in Mother Teresa of Calcutta. He detected a miracle while making a television documentary on her in 1968. But he was even more impressed by her embracing the poorest poor as ‘Christ in his distressing disguise’.

The lesson was reinforced by a man called Fr Paul Bidone who worked with ‘retarded’ children in London. When in 1982 Muggeridge and his wife were received into the Church, Fr Bidone brought some of the youngsters with him. Muggeridge feared their ‘fidgeting, moving about, emitting strange sounds’. In the event what ‘might otherwise have been a respectable, quiet ceremony was transformed into an unforgettable spiritual experience’. Subversion had introduced the transcendent."

Durch den Mund der Kleinen und Unmündigen ... Auch heute noch. Ja. selbst schon erlebt.