Mother Teresa.

Turtwig · 02-02-2010 6:47pm #1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa

Ok, this one has come as a bit of a shock to me, but somehow I ended up having a discussion about Mother Teresa today (something to do with some secular US group opposing her name in a stamp) and I said she did tonnes of humanitarian work. It occurred to me after to saying it, that I didn't really know what she actually did. However, even so, I was surprised with the reaction I got, my friend, (who for all intensive purposes is someone I consider to be very rational) just looked at me as if to say "You can't be serious" and said "You really ought to read up on her - Google her."

Wikipedia was the first choice and I noticed it mentioned some criticism of her. So, my next step was to get a gauge of the sentiment A&As here have towards her and take it from there on where to go next.

(Basically you guys have been really really resourceful:))

Dades · 02-02-2010 7:03pm

Her faith, or lack of, has in the past been the subject of a tug-of-war between Christians and non-believers.

Turtwig · 02-02-2010 7:04pm

Dades wrote: »

Her faith, or lack of, has in the past been the subject of a tug-of-war between Christians and non-believers.

Lack of faith? Now that is new. I thought they were making her a saint. An atheist saint??

Rev Hellfire · 02-02-2010 7:13pm

I'm surprised anyone would be surprised that a religious person would have a crisis of faith.

As for the criticisms levelled against her, well my view is even if they have some truth to them; she still managed to do more good than those who vilified her. So the balance is on her side.

Anyway she's dead, does it really matter ?

eightyfish · 02-02-2010 7:20pm

You should read this little book.

pH · 02-02-2010 8:51pm

Yes, Hitchen's point is that she's not quite the saint we've been led to believe.

She supported/associated with some quite horrible people.
Little of the money went to poor, it built more religious orders.
Her hospices were dreadful places, she gathered the poor and dying and let them suffer for the glory of God. By all accounts she felt that the more they suffered the better off they'd be in the next life.

stevejazzx · 02-02-2010 8:52pm

Hitchens is ruthless on this subject but I'd class it as one of his misfires.
He goes a bit ott on the criticism. She was for all intent and purposes a good enough woman but Hitchens slates her on everything he can get his hands on including issues like her not being a friend of the poor but rather of 'poverty'. Thats the kind of odd political attack he makes on her person that I find a bit uneasy even if they are, on a technical level, true.
He proudly attests to the fact that he played devils advocate after her nomination of beatification.

I 'm a fan of Hitchens but I think someone of his considerable energies should be attacking the more formidable enemies of reason (which he does of cours) as much as he can.

In saying all that, it was however declared recently that she couldn't find it within herself to believe in a God. Quite remarkable really when you think about it.

Wacker · 02-02-2010 9:38pm

stevejazzx wrote: »

In saying all that, it was however declared recently that she couldn't find it within herself to believe in a God. Quite remarkable really when you think about it.

Here's what Sam Harris has to say on this point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ran37Njz8Wg

Also, here is the first part of a documentary made by the Hitchster on Mother Teresa:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WQ0i3nCx60

Hell's Angel is the name of it. Very harsh title.

iUseVi · 02-02-2010 9:41pm

stevejazzx wrote: »

I 'm a fan of Hitchens but I think someone of his considerable energies should be attacking the more formidable enemies of reason (which he does of cours) as much as he can.

As the world's biggest Hitchens fan I'm interested to know why you think so? Do you think hes exaggerating a bit?

Plowman · 03-02-2010 12:42am

This post has been deleted.

aidan24326 · 03-02-2010 1:34am

stevejazzx wrote: »

In saying all that, it was however declared recently that she couldn't find it within herself to believe in a God. Quite remarkable really when you think about it.

It's not entirely surprising that someone who surrounded herself with so much poverty, hunger and misery would have some doubts about the existence of a compassionate and benevolent god.

rubensni · 03-02-2010 1:43am

The Hitch was way off on Mother Teresa. She was an incredible person.

strobe · 03-02-2010 1:55am

Plowman wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

I'd have to agree, I saw the Hitchens documentary a while ago and was quite shocked by his conclusions as I had the same opinion as Malty T, I'd heard some vague critisisms of her over the years but thought it was generally accepted by most people that she was a good egg. So I did quite a bit of reading up on her, including a couple of bio's and some criticisms of her from other sources. My conclusion is that she wasn't pefect and the praise she recieved in her life and death was probably over the top, but at the end of the day what she was was a woman who gave up a reasonably comfortable lifestyle and instead dedicated the majority of her life to trying to help some of the poorest people in the world and did indeed help many many people who otherwise would have recieved no help whatsoever from anyone.

I like a lot of Hitchens work but quite frankly I don't think he would have had anywhere near as bad a picture of her to paint of her is she hadn't been a nun who also spread her religion (something that's pretty much right there in her job description) by helping people that needed help. This kind of stupid carry on is detrimental to proactive atheism in the extreme.

pH · 03-02-2010 11:33am

Plowman wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

By this tortured logic, Concern shouldn't send a cent to help anyone until they've accumulated enough cash to become a mega-corp.

This is easy to say comfortably ensconsed in the prosperous West. If by "dreadful" you mean unhygenic and not particularly nice or comfortable, then you are probably right. But for penniless ill locals the choice is most likely between there and an over-populated even dirtier street. And many of them probably can do little more than suffer - not because Mother Teresa's order is some malevolent institution, but because the necessary funding, infrastructure, facilities, etc are lacking.

Honestly, that character assassination by Hitchens is just gratuitous and offensive.

This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?

The rich world has a poor conscience, and many people liked to alleviate their own unease by sending money to a woman who seemed like an activist for "the poorest of the poor." People do not like to admit that they have been gulled or conned, so a vested interest in the myth was permitted to arise, and a lazy media never bothered to ask any follow-up questions. Many volunteers who went to Calcutta came back abruptly disillusioned by the stern ideology and poverty-loving practice of the "Missionaries of Charity," but they had no audience for their story. George Orwell's admonition in his essay on Gandhi—that saints should always be presumed guilty until proved innocent—was drowned in a Niagara of soft-hearted, soft-headed, and uninquiring propaganda.
http://www.slate.com/id/2090083/

Gratuitous and offensive it may be, but true.

eightyfish · 03-02-2010 12:08pm

strobe wrote: »

This kind of stupid carry on is detrimental to proactive atheism in the extreme.

You have a good point. However, she amassed large ammounts of cash, and it would have been better spent on hospitals for the sick rather than homes for the dying. From the wiki:

[Hitchens] argues that Teresa's own words on poverty proved that her intention was not to help people, citing a 1981 press conference in which she was asked: "Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?" She replied: "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."

She wasn't the devil, but she wasn't a saint either. I guess somebody just had to be the one to say it, and that was Hitchens.

Antbert · 03-02-2010 1:48pm

Dawkins isn't too keen on her either. I've been meaing to read that Hitchens book since he referenced it in The God Delusion.

She was very very anti-abortion as far as my limited knowledge tells me. Unsurprising of course, but not a trait I like in people.

Naz_st · 03-02-2010 1:54pm

Sam Harris wrote about Mother Teresa briefly in an article for the Washington Post entitled "The Sacrifice of Reason" (he referenced this in the video posted earlier). This is what he had to say:

And now we learn that even Mother Teresa, the most celebrated exponent of this dogmatism in a century, had her doubts about the whole story—the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the existence of heaven, and even the existence of God:

"Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone ... Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?"

— addressed to Jesus, at the suggestion of a confessor, undated

Teresa's recently published letters reveal a mind riven by doubt (as it should have been). They also reveal a woman who was surely suffering from run-of-the-mill depression, though even secular commentators have begun to politely dress this fact in the colors of the saints and martyrs. Teresa's response to her own bewilderment and hypocrisy (her term) reveals just how like quicksand religious faith can be. Her doubts about God's existence were interpreted by her confessor as a sign that she was sharing Christ's torment upon the cross; this exaltation of her wavering faith allowed Teresa "to love the darkness" she experienced in God's apparent absence. Such is the genius of the unfalsifiable. We can see the same principle at work among her fellow Catholics: Teresa's doubts have only enhanced her stature in the eyes of the Church, having been interpreted as a further evidence of God's grace.

Ask yourself, when even the doubts of experts are thought to confirm a doctrine, what could possibly disconfirm it?

aidan24326 · 03-02-2010 5:29pm

Malty_T wrote: »

...and I said she did tonnes of humanitarian work. It occurred to me after to saying it, that I didn't really know what she actually did.

I suspect most people don't know a whole lot about what she actually did, the media always portrayed her as something akin to a walking saint and people bought into that. I would imagine she was probably well-intentioned in alot of what she was trying to do, but misguided in how she was going about it. So probably not quite the evil witch that Hitchens would have us believe, but not quite the supersaint that popular culture portrayed her as either.

jhegarty · 03-02-2010 6:31pm

pH wrote: »

Yes, Hitchen's point is that she's not quite the saint we've been led to believe.
She supported/associated with some quite horrible people.

Little of the money went to poor, it built more religious orders.

Her hospices were dreadful places, she gathered the poor and dying and let them suffer for the glory of God. By all accounts she felt that the more they suffered the better off they'd be in the next life.

[*] Any names ?

[*] Not sure what you mean by that. The Sisters of the order live in the same conditions as the people they help. How was this money spent ?

[*] They got to die in a bed indoors instead of on the street. Don't know about you , but I know which I would choose. What suffering do you suggest she inflicted ?

Byron85 · 04-02-2010 2:11am

jhegarty wrote: »

[*] Any names ?
[*] Not sure what you mean by that. The Sisters of the order live in the same conditions as the people they help. How was this money spent ?
[*] They got to die in a bed indoors instead of on the street. Don't know about you , but I know which I would choose. What suffering do you suggest she inflicted ?

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Keating

2. "Hitchens condemns Teresa for having used contributions to open convents in 150 countries rather than establishing a teaching hospital, the latter being what he implies donors expected her to do with their gifts."

3. "Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?" She replied: "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."

That's just from a 30 second search online.

ChocolateSauce · 04-02-2010 7:09pm

My opinion of her is that she was a scumbag, devoid of morals or compassion. Her so-called "humanitarian" work involved raising money in Africa and taking it to India, where she spent it on building religious buildings where people could die under the supervision of the Catholic Church; where they were not allowed to see their relatives, and were prayed over in a foreign language in a religion which was not their own.

Did she spend the African's money on medicine? No. Did she use the wealth of the Church to alleviate suffering? No. She took money from the dirt poor and used it to enrich the Church and spread the Catholic faith. She believed (or wanted to believe) that being around the suffering of others brought her closer to god.

A throughly horrible wretch who deserves her name to live on in infamy.

Muppet Man · 05-02-2010 5:18pm

I believe her heart was in the right place, but her execution was definitely misguided.

who for all intensive purposes is someone I consider to be very rational

Sorry, pet hate of mine, http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_the_saying_'all_intents_and_purposes'_or_'all_intense_purposes'

Muppet Man

Turtwig · 05-02-2010 5:20pm

Muppet Man wrote: »

Sorry, pet hate of mine, http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_the_saying_'all_intents_and_purposes'_or_'all_intense_purposes'

Muppet Man

I love it when people correct me on this sort of stuff! So no need to apologise.

dvpower · 05-02-2010 6:49pm

Malty_T wrote: »

I love it when people correct me on this sort of stuff! So there is no need to apologise.

FYP

I've gone too far

sink · 05-02-2010 6:50pm

dvpower wrote: »

FYP!

I've gone too far.

:P

branie · 11-02-2010 11:19am

I believe that mother Teresa helped the poor and suffering in India, but that 's just my opinion.

panda100 · 11-02-2010 12:45pm

The Western media makes it impossible for anyone to criticise this 'modern day saint' but Its only when you start reading direct quotes from the women herself that you see how warped her outlook on society was.

She wrote and spoke extensively against abortion. The language she uses against abortion is horrifically strong and she firmly believed it was the root of all evil in this world, that It was abortion that was the greatest destroyer of peace in the world?? I mean, FFS, in a country where 42% live in dire poverty, female infanticide and FGM is rampant, where women are seen as an economic burden because of the lack of access they have to education?? And abortion is the root of all evil?

To me this sends out huge warning signs of Mother Tereas outlook on Indian society and the world in general. That someone can be so vicious about a women right to choose and yet not even make refrence to the gross,gross inequalitys that face a county where the goldfish in the fish tanks of hotels frequented by Westerners have far more food to eat than the millions of people living in slums.

It scares me that a person so heralded as a modern day saint can attack so viciously womens rights, but remain silent on the obscene inequality around her.
While she may have provided transient housing for the milllions of Indians poor, she aided in keeping the unequal social strata's firmly in place by praising poverty,targetting womens rights and remaining silent and peversly admiring the minority that accumulate obscene wealth. She seemed more than willing to keep an oppressed majority permanetly oppressed by citing their poverty as some divine right from God.

reprazant · 11-02-2010 1:08pm

pH wrote: »

By this tortured logic, Concern shouldn't send a cent to help anyone until they've accumulated enough cash to become a mega-corp.

[

No, by that logic, Concern should open up many charity houses in many poor areas around the world, which is what she did.

T.W.H Byron wrote: »

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Keating

He donated money to her charity.

Is she a bad person for accepting money for a person who in later years turned out to be a bit of a crook? I guess that means most charities associate with terrible people.

allisbleak · 11-02-2010 1:20pm

She was the religious poster girl. Like all religion it was based on a false image and lies. I thought it was hilarious that Diana was killed the same week and stole all the publicity. Bet the church didn't see that.

Nodin · 12-02-2010 12:51pm

The first words I ever heard against MT were many years ago, by an Indian gentleman, who had never heard of her until he came to the West on buisiness. He happened to mention he was from Calcutta and it thus arose. He decided to investigate on his return and was unimpressed with what he found. He made - in somewhat less hysterical tones than Hitchens - much the same points.

From a personal perspective, what I found hard to take was the repeated reports and evidence of the condition of the hospices and the lack of pallative care, versus the conditions of the nunnerys, despite the money being channelled there. This isn't expecting them to be anywhere near the level found in the West either, or expecting the Nuns to live in squalor.

bnt · 12-02-2010 2:27pm

jhegarty wrote: »

[*] Any names ?

Here's a name: "Baby Doc" Duvalier of Haiti, who gave Teresa an award, and money stolen from the people of Haiti. But hey, their current suffering is all for a greater cause ... right?

Here's another name: Robert Maxwell - though this time the money was going in the other direction! (The full extent of Maxwell's embezzlement wasn't known until later, after his death.)

Mother Teresa.

Comments