Mother Teresa, "Hell's Angel"

[scottxyz]

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

Controversies concerning Agnes Bojaxhiu's {Mother Teresa's} activities

Until the 1990s, Mother Teresa's activities were treated in the mass media with relatively little criticism. This tendency in reporting is generally believed to be the result of a trend started by BBC reporter Malcolm Muggeridge, who portrayed Bojaxhiu as a modern day saint in his TV documentary Something Beautiful for God and best-selling book of the same title. The strongest attack against her came in 1994, when Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ali wrote the scathing Channel 4 documentary Hell's Angel. The next year, Hitchens published The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, a 100-page pamphlet which repeats many of the accusations in the documentary.

Hitchens views Teresa's organization as a cult which promotes suffering and does not help those in need. He states that the impression the general public has about Mother Teresa's work is the opposite of reality, and that this is more the fault of the mass media than of Teresa herself. In his view, the idea that someone, somewhere is helping the poor of the world appealed to western viewers and quieted their conscience.

Hitchens cites Teresa's own words on poverty as evidence that her intention was never to help people. {...}

"Mother Teresa, what do you hope to accomplish here?"
"The joy of loving and being loved."
"That takes a lot of money, doesn't it?"
"It takes a lot of sacrifice."
"Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?"
"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."

Hitchens states that Teresa was always perfectly honest that her goal was not to heal people, but to help them in their endurance of suffering....

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

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Clete]

2. What is the purpose of your post?

Did Mother Theresa refuse you soup? Did Mother Theresa offend you in any way? Her philosophy is very much in keeping with the the philosophy of the yogis who preceded her.

[frank frankly]

3. Clete, check out Mother Theresa's business interests...

she did not represent her religion well at all

a very shady lady, trust me!

[Clete]

5. Well enlighten me with somewhere to go,

like references and links. I was raised a Catholic and I know where all the warts are but I don't consider all of them evil. If Mother Theresa was anything like the Mother Superiors I grew up with and was a little bit intimidated by, I have no doubt she was shrewd about business. They do aspire to heaven, but they also know they still live in this world.

[frank frankly]

8. here's one from a Catholic website that has a post from Hitchens

http://www.saintmychal.com/hitchens.htm

And I don't like Hitchens...and I was raised Catholic, too!

[scottxyz]

10. I don't like Hitchens anymore either, he does quote other sources

Here is a quote from a volunteer named Mary Louden, who had spent a short time as a volunteer worker in one of the mission's homes and supposedly wrote this in the UK Guardian. (I have been unable to find this article on Google.)

When I was in Calcutta, I went to work at the most famous of Mother Teresa's monuments to human dignity: the home for the dying at Kalighat. Because I had already been working in the city for some time, I naively imagined myself to be immune to shock. How wrong I was. The home at Kalighat consists of two rooms, each with around 40 patients in stretcher beds, sandwiched between pieces of green plastic and small, scratchy blankets. On admission, the patients' heads are shaved, their clothes removed, and any possessions confiscated. Patients wear a knee-length western-style overall that ties at the neck and gapes open at the back. No underwear is provided.

There is nothing for the patients to do, and nowhere for them to go...The fact that the food is nutritionally inadequate and always the same, the water disease ridden, and the volunteers largely unable to speak Bengali is of little importance...

I don't know if she {a dying woman with TB} had any family. If she did, they would almost certainly not have been allowed to see her, because families are strongly discouraged from visiting their relatives at the home. What I do know, or at least I was told, by an American doctor working at Kalighat, was that she might have lived if she had received some hospital treatment. Yet Mother Teresa's policy is not one of intervention...God decides who lives and who dies. People are better off in heaven than in the operating theatre. Thus, instead of using her influence and income to finance a properly equipped hospital, Mother Teresa and her Sisters continue to give aspirin to patients with cancer, linctus to those with TB, and glucose drips with old needles rinsed in cold water to those in comas. And everyone, regardless of creed, gets a good Catholic funeral.

[FlaGranny]

43. I don't know how true any of this is

but I can tell you that, more or less, it sounds just like going into Hospice, except for that part about not letting family visit. My mother went into Hospice for 3 days before she died. They took all her personal possessions, they took her clothes, put on a hospital gown open down the back. They gave her drugs. They let her die. She got no food or water (because she couldn't swallow). It sounds pretty bad when you say it like that.

In a country with so many poor, like India, putting many people in one room does not sound unreasonable. After all, they most likely didn't have the money to build multimillion dollar hospital/hospice facilities with private and semiprivate rooms.

When you have a terminal illness with no hope of surviving, the best any of us can hope for is as much comfort as can be provided. As someone who has cared for a dying person, I can tell you - that is no easy task.

Now, don't accuse me of defending Mother Theresa. I never knew the woman and never saw her facilities. The person who wrote that article may be telling the truth. Maybe Mother Theresa collected enough funds to build modern hospitals and fully staff them. Or it may be that the author was just shocked at the whole situation of poor, dying people. It can be an extremely shocking experience.

[scottxyz]

9. The Wikipedia (cited in the original post) is full of references and links

Being shrewd about business is one thing and that may be fine, as any organization needs to have money to survive.

What I was appalled by were the statements made by many visitors (including Catholic nuns trained as nurses) that basic medical care was not given to patients and the wrong drugs were given, sometimes killing the patient - all with the justification that God would take care of things. It seems that Mother Teresa may have been going overboard with her religious beliefs, feeling that it was ok to kill people because they would be taken care of in the afterlife. This is the most extreme example of an anti-here-and-now philosophy I have ever seen, and I do not hesitate to say that I find it utterly reprehensible. What this article seems to be saying is that she may have been aiding and abetting the murder of poor people.

There is a lot of information critical of Mother Teresa at the link cited in the original post:

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

At the end of the article there are some references cited. Most of them are books, but one of them (Susan Shields: Mother Teresa's House of Illusions) is on-line:

* Aroup Chatterjee: Mother Teresa. The Final Verdict. Meteor Books, January 2003. ISBN 8188248002. Full text (without pictures). Critical examination of Agnes Bojaxhiu's life and work.

* Christopher Hitchens: The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. ISBN 185984054X, Verso 1995.

* Susan Shields: Mother Teresa's House of Illusions. Free Inquiry Magazine, Volume 18, Number 1. Online copy at:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/shields_18_1.html

* Kathryn Spink: Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography. ISBN 0062508253.

* Mother Teresa et al: Mother Teresa: In My Own Words. ISBN 0517201690.

* Walter Wüllenweber: Nehmen ist seliger denn geben. Mutter Teresa - wo sind ihre Millionen?* Stern (illustrated German weekly), September 10, 1998. English translation.

*"It is more blessed to receive than to give. Mother Teresa - Where are her millions?"

[scottxyz]

20. Excerpts from the article in Germany's "Stern" magazine (translated)

http://members.lycos.co.uk/bajuu/
http://are.berkeley.edu/~atanu/Writing/teresa.html

MOTHER TERESA: WHERE ARE HER MILLIONS?
by
Walter Wuellenweber

...

{Mother Teresa} founded the most successful order in the history of the Catholic church, received the Nobel Peace Prize and became the most famous Catholic of our time.

Are doubts permitted, regarding this "monument"?

In Calcutta, one meets many doubters.

For example, Samity, a man of around 30 with no teeth, who lives in the slums. ... Samity does not get his grub from Mother Teresa's institution, but instead from the Assembly of God, an American charity, that serves 18000 meals here daily. "Mother Teresa?" says Samity, "We have not received anything from her here. Ask in the slums -- who has received anything from the sisters here -- you will find hardly anybody."

Pannalal Manik also has doubts. "I don't understand why you educated people in the West have made this woman into such a goddess!" Manik was born some 56 years ago in the Rambagan slum, which at about 300 years of age, is Calcutta's oldest. What Manik has achieved, can well be called a "miracle". He has built 16 apartment buildings in the midst of the slum -- living space for 4000 people. Money for the building materials -- equivalent to DM 10000 per apartment building -- was begged for by Manik from the Ramakrishna Mission {a Indian/Hindu charity}, the largest assistance-organisation in India. The slum-dwellers built the buildings themselves. It has become a model for the whole of India. But what about Mother Teresa? "I went to her place 3 times," said Manik. "She did not even listen to what I had to say. Everyone on earth knows that the sisters have a lot of money. But no one knows what they do with it!"

...

All over the world admirers and supporters of the Nobel Prize winner believe that it must be there that her organisation is particularly active in the fight against poverty. "All lies," says Aroup Chatterjee. The doctor who lives in London was born and brought up in Calcutta. Chatterjee who has been working for years on a book on the myth of Mother Teresa, speaks to the poor in the slums of Calcutta, or combs through the speeches of the Nobel Prize winner. "No matter where I search, I only find lies. For example the lies about schools. Mother T has often stated that she runs a school in Calcutta for more than 5000 children. 5000 children! -- that would have to be a huge school, one of the biggest in all of India. But where is this school? I have never found it, nor do I know anybody who has seen it!" says Chatterjee.

...

In 1994, Robin Fox, editor of the prestigious medical journal Lancet, in a commentary on the catastrophic conditions prevailing in Mother Teresa's homes, shocked the professional world by saying that any systematic operation was foreign to the running of the homes in India: TB patients were not isolated, and syringes were washed in lukewarm water before being used again. Even patients in unbearable pain were refused strong painkillers, not because the order did not have them, but on principle. "The most beautiful gift for a person is that he can participate in the suffering of Christ," said Mother Teresa. Once she had tried to comfort a screaming sufferer, "You are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you." The sufferer screamed back, furious, "Then tell your Jesus to stop kissing me."

...

The English doctor Jack Preger once worked in the home for the dying. He says, "If one wants to give love, understanding and care, one uses sterile needles. This is probably the richest order in the world. Many of the dying there do not have to be dying in a strictly medical sense." The British newspaper Guardian described the hospice as an "organised form of neglectful assistance".

...

Mother Teresa's business was : Money for a good conscience. The donors benefitted the most from this. The poor hardly.

...

She wrote a few words and hung them outside Mother House:

"Tell them we are not here for work, we are here for Jesus. We are religious above all else. We are not social workers, not teachers, not doctors. We are nuns."

One question then remains: For what, in that case, do nuns need so much money?

http://members.lycos.co.uk/bajuu/
http://are.berkeley.edu/~atanu/Writing/teresa.html

[Muddleoftheroad]

7. LOL

All you have to do to get some people to attack you is do good work.

[scottxyz]

14. This was stated more succintly and ironically once by Oscar Wilde:

"No good deed goes unpunished."

However, this aphorism might not be applicable in this case. Mother Teresa may actually have been doing some very bad things, which indeed should have been punished or at least stopped. If she was responsible for killing people by giving them the wrong drugs, then that certainly would not qualify as "good work". Could it be that the media image of the Mother Teresa we know and love was simply some sort of "urban legend" which powerful institutions encouraged us to believe in?

You have to admit, for example, that a policy of not alleviating suffering or intentionally helping people to die would not be so out of line with many other controversial "anti-life" positions taken by the hierarchy of certain world religions, such as the unwillingness of people such as New York's Cardinal O'Connor to encourage the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, the recent misleading claims by the Vatican (in line with Bush administration claims) that condoms are ineffective against AIDS, and the hierarchy's preoccupation with protecting its criminal priests rather than the innocent young people sexually victimized by them - or the for that matter such the "70 virgins" awaiting in heaven allegedly promised to suicide bombers, or the many historical wars, witch-hunts, Inquisitions and Crusades which were instigated by organized religions resulting in the deaths of untold numbers of innocent people.

In view of all this, it is quite possible that Mother Teresa was up to no good.

[scottxyz]

6. I was shocked to hear Mother Teresa may not really want to help people

Clete - I have enjoyed many of your postings on DU and perhaps you have seen some of mine as well. I am honestly surprised you don't see the purpose of my posting this bizarre, negative, but apparently well-documented story about Mother Teresa, but I will try to give some reasons below:

Up until now I had only heard wonderful things about Mother Teresa's dedication to helping poor or sick people and reducing the amount suffering in the world. I was shocked to hear a different point of view stating that she may actually have been more interested in maintaining the amount of suffering in the world.

I was appalled to read these reports that patients at her hospices with easily curable diseases were sometimes simply left to suffer and die (or given the wrong drugs to hasten their demise) rather than being provided with routine medical care which could have easily cured them.

I was for example shocked to hear this quote from Mother Teresa:

"I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."

...which sounds very much like the kind of callous "let-them-eat-cake" attitude towards the poor and the downtrodden which you might expect from a mean, rich, conservative person, not from the Mother Teresa we have heard portrayed so positively in most media coverage.

I had not been very aware of the details of Mother Teresa's activities before, and I was simply under the vague impression she was just some sort of very dedicated humble person who was doing everything she could to help people who are less fortunate. No I am not so sure about her deeds.

The article I posted, which apparently was well-researched (although it had reporting by former liberal Christopher Hitchens, who I lost respect for when he started to support the war on Iraq), seemed to imply that she may have had an altogether different agenda or motivation. I got the impression from this article that Mother Teresa may have been some kind of superstitious "fatalist" who didn't even believe in using basic medical technology to help people, and was happy to see them die or even kill them off before their time.

For example, take a look at this quote from Australian Catholic nurse Tracey Leonard who visited one of her facilities:

"I have seen them give the steroid Prednisolone instead of paracetamol, because both start with the letter 'p'. Whenever I yell at them and accuse them of murdering the patients they simply smile and tell me that it is all in God's hands."

This is not helping people - this is hurting them. Are people aware that Mother Teresa may simply have been murdering poor people in the name of her religion?

[Clete]

13. My answer is too long for a little post. So I will only make one

or two remarks. I think I understand the thinking about things being in God's hands. I have never been to India, so whatever I have read and have been told would not give me first hand information. So this is a lot of hearsay. Maybe the nurses only understood "P" and Mother Theresa hoped God would lead them to the right "P". From what I understand the people in her hospices were human garbage left to die in the streets anyway with no one to care, so she tried to give them a little solace at the ends of their lives.

She has been widely criticized I know for her very unwestern way, at times, that she used the money she was given. Maybe these things should be investigated, but until they are investigated must this woman be dragged through the mire?

My opinion is that Hitchens needs a few sensational things to get him back on top again so why not pick on a dead woman, declared a saint, who cannot defend herself? I wish I could answer more, but if anyone is going to trash a person who isn't around to defend themselves, at least he should have some better proof, which brings me back to the point of not judging someone by our "standards".

[scottxyz]

16. I agree that Hitchens desperatedly needs to rehabilite himself now

However, he published these horrible accusations against Mother Teresa back in 1994.

I believe that in a healthy culture what we often call 'superstition' can actually be grounded in good, practical common sense. And I realize that people who are culture-bound may misunderstand others who do not conform to their "standards".

But when I state this willingness on my part to respect and not "judge" other people's cultural beliefs (and technologies), I must emphasize the "healthy society" part. For example, I could not judge a 'shaman' who practiced some sort of traditional medicine rather than the kind of medicine from my culture - because they are merely practicing what has been handed down to them in their culture. However, in the case cited here about Mother Teresa, where the wrong {foriegn} medication was prescribed (because it started with the letter "P") and the patient was killed by a representative of a {foreign} religion (a Catholic nurse in India), we don't have a situation where we must refrain from judging someone from another cultuer by our "standards" - we have a kind of screwed-up mixture of colonialism and syncretism which has nothing to do with respecting other people's cultures and technologies.

And I am truly shocked that you would say something like this Clete:

"From what I understand the people in her hospices were human garbage left to die in the streets anyway with no one to care, so she tried to give them a little solace at the ends of their lives."

"Human garbage?" Tell me your just in a cranky mood tonight Clete! This sounds like the kind of thing you'd hear from one of those heartless right-wingers who believe that poor sick people don't have the same right to decent health care as everyone else!

Take that one back, please, Clete!

[Clete]

19. I can't take that one back because

this is what every person who has to lie on the street without a home, who dies without adequate medical care even though it is around the corner, is to those who could make a difference and don't give a damn. I read that Mother Theresa took home women dying in the street because they had become no more than garbage to those around them.

[Cheswick2.0]

4. Hitchens, the bitter drunken conservative convert?

You've gotta be kidding. This post is bullshit.

[julka]

12. not quite so fast........I read the Hitchens book awhile ago

and like his book on Kissinger, it provides ample corroboration, including documentation (copies of letters, court documents, etc.)

you can start with this amazon review

Amazon.com
What's next--The Girl Scouts: The Untold Story? How could anybody write a debunking book about Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity order? Well, in this little cruise missile of a book, Hitchens quickly establishes that the idea is not without point. After all, what is Mother Teresa doing hanging out with a dictator's wife in Haiti and accepting over a million dollars from Charles Keating? The most riveting material in the book is contained in two letters: one from Mother Teresa to Judge Lance Ito--then weighing what sentence to dole out to the convicted Keating--which cited all the work Keating has done "to help the poor," and another from a Los Angeles deputy D.A., Paul Turley, back to Mother Teresa that eloquently stated that rather than working to reduce Keating's sentence, she should return the money he gave her to its rightful owners, the defrauded bond-holders. (Significantly, Mother Teresa never replied.) And why do former missionary workers and visiting doctors consistently observe that the order's medical practices seem so inadequate, especially given all the money that comes in? (Hitchens acidly observes that on the other hand, Mother Teresa herself always manages to receive world-class medical care.) Hitchens's answer is that Mother Teresa is first and foremost interested not in providing medical treatment, but in furthering Catholic doctrine and--quite literally--becoming a saint. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

you remember Charles Keating, don't you?

he's MUCH worse than has come out....my brother's college roommate worked for him (was his highest-ranked employee NOT to go to prison), was paid hundreds of K/year as a government consultant to unravel the labyrinthine excesses of his financial empire from Lincoln to the Phoenician, and the story is not pretty, and he got off WAY too easily.

thank Carl Lindner for a lot of that

I don't like Hitchens any more than you.....maybe less, as he's sunk so far from his years of excellent reporting/analysis

[scottxyz]

17. Yes we all know that Hitchens is a bitter conservative drunk now

However, Hitchens apparently is not the only one who has been saying these awful things about Mother Teresa. And he said these things about her back in 1994 - back when we all still liked him. And apparently Catholic nuns trained as nurses and other volunteers were appalled at some of treatment dished out to patients at Mother Teresa's hospices.

Could it be possible that the legend of Mother Teresa concern for the poor and downtrodden is nothing more than that - a legend?

[Blue_Chill]

55. Could it be that some want to cause harm to the Catholic Church?

Yes.

And you seem to be all too willing to aid them.

[MrPrax]

11. Forget Hitchens...Aroup Chatterjee!!!

Hitchens doesn't have the credibility that this fellow does...
Indian educated and born in Calcutta--now a British doctor

From his web page...
The myth created in 1969 by Malcolm Muggeridge has been fiercely protected and amplified by the world’s wealthiest and mightiest—but with not inconsiderable help from Mother Teresa herself. If you want to know about the real Mother Teresa, you may read some sample chapters of my book

The Mother of All Myths

It is relevant that I am Calcuttan born, bred and educated. Please note that my work is factual and wholly evidence-based. I am neither a leftist nor a Hindu, hence my brief is neither ideological nor religious. But THE CELEBRATION OF UNTRUTH SHOULD NOW STOP

You will find some rabble-rousing in my
other web page if you have the stomach for more
<snip>

He has three chapter from his book online...devastating stuff and well well documented

http://website.lineone.net/~bajuu/

Anyone interested in what a native Indian thinks of the good Mother without all the ideological or anti-catholic stuff should do themselves a favour...

His submission to the Vatican is also worth a read...
SUBMISSION BEFORE THE COMMITTEE FOR BEATIFICATION/CANONISATION OF MOTHER TERESA
http://website.lineone.net/~bajuu/submission.htm

excerpt
"Over the years I have been dismayed at the discrepancy between Mother Teresa's words and her deeds, and here I present some of them. Mother Teresa had said many thousands of times in her life that she "pick up" people from the streets of Calcutta. She expounded on it at length in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Her order did (and does) not "pick up" destitutes from Calcutta's streets. They do not provide an ambulance service for the city's poorest of the poor. If one rings the Kalighat home for the dying destitute, one is told curtly to ring 102 (the Calcutta Corporation ambulance line) so that a Corporation vehicle would bring the destitute to Kalighat."

from his book
Mother Teresa : The Final Verdict/Aroup Chatterjee. Kolkata, Meteor Books, 2003, viii, 427 p., $15(pbk). ISBN 81-88248-002.
http://www.vedamsbooks.com/no30322.htm

[Clete]

15. Now something concrete, which of course I can't read overnight,

but I will study in the days to come. Thank you. Incidentally, I am not a defender of Catholicism, but I do know of many who have served selflessly the less fortunate in the missionary life.

[scottxyz]

18. I understand you are not a defender of Catholicism, Clete

I remember your name (and your signature photo) and although I cannot remember specific posts you have made, I do remember liking lots of stuff you have written here.

I understand that there are many people who have worked as missionaries who really can and want to help.

I hope you have time to read up on some of this info on Mother Teresa to see if she was indeed one of those people.

[REP]

21. I'm Surprised By How Many are Taken By Her Myth

Anyone who could avail herself of the finest medical care in the world while giving those dying in agony nothing stronger than aspirin is no saint. If her god so loves suffering, why did she not embrace hers instead of going to Swiss clinics?

The only good thing about that woman was her PR.

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[REP]

23. You're Kidding, I Hope

Bashing is not the same as telling the truth. The truth is being told in this thread.

[ShaneGR]

24. No it's not.... and it has no purpose on this board

I would consider this to be evil propoganda meant to harm the reputation of a loving, and very dead woman who worked her entire life to better the lives of those less fortunate. I'm also capable of recognizing that this article is written by a very conservative columnist looking to discredit anyone who would dare to help the poor.

[REP]

25. Then Don't Read It

Hitchens (who wrote his book in 1994) is not the only one who has dared speak about her staggering cruelty and hypocrisy. Hitchens did not discredit someone who would 'dare to help the poor;' he pointed out the facts vs the hagiography of a scheming woman.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

27. Not all the sacred cows in India run on four hooves.

Mother Theresa - saint or sinner?
I have no idea, but whats the harm in discussing it?
We can't hurt her feelings... isn't she dead?

[scottxyz]

26. I was shocked by this news about Mother Teresa as well

However, what if it's true? I've never met Mother Teresa personally, and I've never been to Calcutta or seen any of the other places where Mother Teresa did her works.

Please try to keep an open mind. We do know that there are many "myths" these days which have been propagated by powerful institutions in order to mislead people.

A volunteer, a very reputable Calcutta doctor, a Catholic nun trained as a nurse, and several poor or sick people (who live in or worked in Calcutta) have stated in these articles that Mother Teresa did some terrible things, including allowing patients to be given the wrong medicine (which sometimes resulted in them dying when they could easily have been cured by the right medicine), withholding painkillers, or misappropriating funds.

There are many religious volunteers and missionaries who are truly dedicated to helping the sick and the needy. However, we also know that there are some "bad apples" in many religions who are NOT interested in helping, and who are more interested in amassing wealth and power for the religious organization they belong to. What if Mother Teresa actually DID some of these horrible things, and the "saintly" image we have of her was just a convenient fiction promulgated by certain people or institutions for their own selfish reasons?

I understand this can be quite shocking to some people. But please take some time to read some of the articles linked in the posts so that you can learn about what some people who knew Mother Teresa have said about her based on their first-hand experience in Calcutta.

[FDRrocks]

28. 666 posts...how odd!

:)

[Democat]

29. Your post count is 666.

:)

[rman]

31. i was shocked by the "news" that the earth may be flat.

i mean, there -are- people who say it is so.

[scottxyz]

34. Yes but they don't present evidence and eyewitness accounts, rman

Nice try at a rebuttal. How about a substantive response now instead?

[Forkboy]

39. Spoken like a good religious person

:eyes:

[bicentennial_baby]

41. Bwahahaha

Where's your Xtian forgiveness? I hope you rot? How progressive of you... :puke:

[Adjoran]

30. Hmmm.

This woman worked with the poor in Calcutta from 1929 until she retired just before her death in 1997.

How many of the most wretched suffering has Hitchens comforted?

Mother Theresa received many awards for her work, from the Indian government, the US government, and the Nobel Peace Prize. She was put on the fast track for sainthood by Pope John Paul II. All of these coveted awards are researched carefully. Yet, we are expected to believe that a gonzo journalist could discover with ease what two national governments and the Nobel Committee could not? It could be so, but where is the evidence?

[Dookus]

32. The evidence

is laid out in Hitchens' book.

Where is the evidence that he's wrong?

[scottxyz]

33. There are many others besides Hitchens who have criticized Mother Teresa

Many people here are (perhaps understandably) engaging in a bit of 'ad hominem' argumentation by focusing on ONE of the people who reported these disturbing stories about Mother Teresa: Christopher Hitchens.

Years ago Hitchens seemed like a solid liberal, for example leading a campaign to get Henry Kissinger locked up for being a war criminal.

Recently however, Hitchens apparently became a turncoat (or showed his true colors, depending on your interpretation) by supporting the war against Iraq. So I understand that people might not take him seriously.

However, there are many other people quoted in the articles criticizing Mother Teresa, including doctors, nurses, volunteers and fellow Catholic who worked with her.

So I think people are being a bit "selective" in only focusing on Hitchens in their rebuttals. This thread is about Mother Teresa, not Hitchens. And, by the way, Hitchens wrote his story criticizing Mother Teresa way back in 1994 when he was still supposedly a liberal.

[scottxyz]

35. Mother Teresa ... 20th Century's biggest fairy tale ?

There is an entire book available free on-line by a writer from Calcutta detailing how Mother Teresa caused patients to be MURDERED by withholding basic medicines and diagnostic procedures and how she caused patients to be TORTURED by withholding basic painkillers and using old needles - all out of a misguided belief that Jesus likes to see people suffer.

"The 425 page book "The Final Verdict" is probably the most comprehensive critical analysis of Mother Teresa's life and work to date."

http://www.meteorbooks.com/index.html
Mother Teresa The Final Verdict
By Aroup Chatterjee
Was Mother Teresa for real, or was she 20th Century's biggest fairy tale?
Prepare to be disillusioned...

Some excerpts:

{The Australian Catholic nurse and Teresa acolyte} Tracey Leonard writes: "I have seen them give the steroid Prednisolone instead of paracetamol, because both start with the letter 'p'. Whenever I yell at them and accuse them of murdering the patients they simply smile and tell me that it is all in God's hands." {emphasis added}

http://www.meteorbooks.com/chap7.html

The biography of Dr Jack Preger (OBE), the Catholic who heads the charity Calcutta Rescue, and who had worked with Mother Teresa before he went on his own, is scathing about Mother's needle-sharing policy:

"Yet if it is medication that they {Nirmal Hriday residents} want, their request is less likely to be favourably received. An inspection of the rules and aims of the order confirms that medical attention to the poor is low on the agenda. The priority is quite clear: the worship of Christ and the propagation of the faith... Certainly no painkillers are administered to patients; belief remains firmly vested in the intervention of the Almighty. And there are examples of medical malpractice at Kalighat that would horrify western observers. For example, needles for injections are simply rinsed in cold water after use and simple passed from one patient to the next. And patients with TB are not isolated, despite the highly contagious nature of the disease." {emphasis added}

http://www.meteorbooks.com/chap7.html

I think Mother Teresa was quite simply insane - and I would like to know why so many powerful institutions have helped spread the lies claiming that she was actually helping people.

[DemBones DemBones]

36. As a matter of fact, I know someone who worked with Mother

Teresa in Calcutta and had nothing but good to say of her and her work, believing her to be a saint. I know others who met her and thought the same. There are Missionaries of Charity in this country, caring mostly for AIDS patients. I admire that. I admire the Hawthorne Dominicans, an order of nuns who care for people with terminal cancer who cannot afford quality medical care. They do this at no cost to any patient and patients do not have to be Catholic. Families of patients are not even allowed to contribute to the Hawthorne Dominican homes until some time after the patient's death.

As is often the case with famous people, Mother Teresa has some detractors. She has, however, many more defenders.

I've added emphasis to some of your words:

"What this article seems to be saying is that she may have been aiding and abetting the murder of poor people."

Aren't you making a federal case out of a lot of conjecture?

(I will add another post about the nuns in Calcutta allegedly giving patients the wrong medications.)

Question: you're not Catholic, are you? I have a specific reason for asking, not just curiosity.

[radwriter0555]

45. Manchausen by proxy, was my conclusion, long before she died

and long before hitchens wrote his book.

She created her own victims.

[DemBones DemBones]

37. In response to the quote from the Australian nurse, Tracey

Leonard, let me quote myself from the other thread:

I'd say that Tracey Leonard is perhaps a racist and/ or an elitist,
unable to appreciate that the Indian women who enter Mother Teresa's order, the Missionaries of Charity, are not trained nurses and may not be educated enough to avoid errors in administering drugs. That is not a good thing, by any means, but receiving a dose of Prednisolone instead of a dose of Paracetamol is unlikely to harm most people, nor are the terminally ill who are in hospice care likely to be cured by medication, and certainly not by Paracetamol, which is plain old acetaminophen.

You made a point of adding emphasis to this quote:

"Whenever I yell at them and accuse them of murdering the patients they simply smile and tell me that it is all in God's hands."

I don't think anyone has ever been murdered by receiving Prednisolone instead of Paracetamol. I doubt that anyone has ever been harmed by such a medication error, though such medication errors should be avoided.

I will also point out that nuns are pretty much supposed to believe "that it is all in God's hands" and that it's my experience that people from non-Western cultures are more accepting of that viewpoint. So, yet again, I wonder if Tracey Leonard has some problems with elitism/ racism. Certainly this quote that you chose suggests that.

[scottxyz]

38. Now I understand why the Mods added Rule 5

...against creating a new thread to continue a flame war. Now we have two threads, in violation of GD Rule 5, and the posts are getting split between the two.

The thread called "Mother Teresa, Hell's Angel" was the original thread. I posted the original thread - and then sgr2, who was very upset by it, posted a separate one (and went on to violate other DU rules by erroneously labeling me as a "conservative" and a "low poster"). I felt that by exposing reports that Mother Teresa may have been overzealous in her interpretation of Scripture - to the point where she caused needless suffering - was anything but "conservative".

Anyways, back in the OTHER thread, somewhere, I responded to DemBones's suggestion that the Australian nurse may have been somehow "racist" or "elitist". I countered that it could be seen as "racist" or "elitist" to "lower the bar" in a Calcutta clinic and not expect that caretakers - whether medically trained or not, whether bilingual or not - could at least pick the right medicine bottle off the shelf.

[FlaGranny]

46. Interesting that both medications are

antiinflammatories, which will help pain and the medication given in error (prednisone) is actually the one that can actually make the patient feel better.

[Loonman]

40. No tolerance at DU!

"big tent party"?


What a crock!

[ElsewheresDaughter]

42. scottxyz...i use to respect you but i now have to ? what is the purpose

of thisd post??? why do you add to the darkness...qouting Hitchens :puke: and catholic bashing...bigotry ...shame on you

[Bridget Burke]

44. Sowing discord & distraction.

If you look elsewhere on these boards you'll see many topics of current urgency. Things are afoot in the world demanding action--writing, talking, contributing, marching--whatever.

The more energy can be directed elsewhere, the happier some people will be. Let's go re-fight the last 2000 years of human history--let's not ask about 9/11 or the stolen vote or why our soldiers are dying every day.

[LittleApple81]

47. I agree. We need to worry about so many things in this country

and its policies.
Please let us stay focused.

[Muesli]

49. Relax

Being agnostic with an inclination towards atheism, I'm surprised that many atheists are guilty of the same thing they accuse others of: belief-based arrogance.

I think they forget atheism is a belief itself. There is neither positive nor negative proof for the existance of a superior being. Just your personal belief.

It is however a modern tradition to be critical, this is in my opinion not a bad thing.Tell me why is it a crime of atheists to question M. Teresa's goodheartedness? Saint Anselmus thought one of the ways to God was to think of as much arguments as possible to counter the proposition that God doesn't exist. Reasoning in the same way, one could say that one way to understand M. Teresa's goodness is by trying to counter Hitchens accusations.

Where is the "darkness" in that?

-edit- minor corrections

[scottxyz]

52. The purpose is to examine if our image of Mother Teresa is just a myth

ElsewheresDaughter - Believe me, I was shocked yesterday when I stumbled across that article on Wikipedia that was so highly critical of Mother Teresa.

And yes, I do know that Hitchens has become a bitter old drunk who now supports the war in Iraq. (But remember, he did many good things too, like calling for Kissinger to be investigated as a war criminal. And his book on Mother Teresa is very old - it came out in 1994, back when we all still liked him).

There are many other sources, including a Catholic priest who worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and a Catholic volunteer who worked with Mother Teresa in Haiti, who have reported similar horrifying, unbelievable things about Mother Teresa. We might say "How could these things be true?" but these reports have come from many people including nuns, priests, doctors, nurses, and patients.

In hindsight, it might have been better had I used some source other than Hitchens in my original post. But "better" only in the sense of "more convincing" - and yet who could possibly believe that Mother Teresa could have done any of these terrible things such as insisting that painkillers or life-saving medicines be withheld from people or that dirty needles should be used and re-used until they became blunt?

Take a look at this heart-wrenching article by Susan Shields, a Catholic volunteer who devoted nearly a decade of her life to helping the sick and poor:

Some years after I became a Catholic, I joined Mother Teresa's congregation, the Missionaries of Charity. I was one of her sisters for nine and a half years, living in the Bronx, Rome, and San Franciso, until I became disillusioned and left in May 1989. As I reentered the world, I slowly began to unravel the tangle of lies in which I had lived. I wondered how I could have believed them for so long.

...

Women from many nations joined Mother Teresa in the expectation that they would help the poor and come closer to God themselves. When I left, there were more than 3,000 sisters in approximately 400 houses scattered throughout the world. Many of these sisters who trusted Mother Teresa to guide them have become broken people. In the face of overwhelming evidence, some of them have finally admitted that their trust has been betrayed, that God could not possibly be giving the orders they hear. It is difficult for them to decide to leave - their self-confidence has been destroyed, and they have no education beyond what they brought with them when they joined. I was one of the lucky ones who mustered enough courage to walk away.

...

The donations rolled in and were deposited in the bank, but they had no effect on our ascetic lives and very little effect on the lives of the poor we were trying to help. We lived a simple life, bare of all superfluities. We had three sets of clothes, which we mended until the material was too rotten to patch anymore. We washed our own clothes by hand. The never-ending piles of sheets and towels from our night shelter for the homeless we washed by hand, too. Our bathing was accomplished with only one bucket of water. Dental and medical checkups were seen as an unnecessary luxury.

Mother was very concerned that we preserve our spirit of poverty. Spending money would destroy that poverty. She seemed obsessed with using only the simplest of means for our work. Was this in the best interests of the people we were trying to help, or were we in fact using them as a tool to advance our own "sanctity?" In Haiti, to keep the spirit of poverty, the sisters reused needles until they became blunt. Seeing the pain caused by the blunt needles, some of the volunteers offered to procure more needles, but the sisters refused.

http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/shields.htm

= = =

I know it sounds absolutely unbelievable - but here you have what appears to be a devout Catholic woman claiming that Mother Teresa that even though she had literally MILLIONS of dollars in the bank from donors from all over the world, she deliberately withheld routine medical care from poor people who desperately needed it - all apparently out of some kind of misguided overzealous aspiration towards poverty.

If these reports are true - and there are many of them, not just from Hitchens - then a horrendous betrayal has taken place, and we need to re-evaluate our image of Mother Teresa, and ask how this image came about.

There is also a book by a native of Calcutta named Aroup Chatterjee who claims that Mother Teresa, in the name of poverty, deliberately withheld painkilling medications and life-saving treatments out of a misguided belief that Jesus wants us to suffer.

http://www.meteorbooks.com/index.html

I have posted some excerpts from this book either in this thread or in another thread entitled 'The day bashing Mother Theresa became acceptable':

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=530339

I have never been to Calcutta, nor to Haiti, so I don't know if these horrible reports are true. But there are many more people than Hitchens making these allegations, and I think it is something we should have the courage to examine.

[Khephra]

48. I'm curious...

I'd really like to see some definitions of "Catholic Bashing" from the people in this thread.

[Gman]

50. This is the most ridiculous and hateful thread I've ever seen on DU

[Forkboy]

53. you're right

you better start another Nader/Green bash to feel better.

[PATRICK]

51. Her canonization process

is being wrapped up as we post, perhaps for the reason that her career goes hand in hand with the conservative agenda of the recent papacy.

I heard her speak decades ago. Her message and life changed probably not one iota except for the places she walked, namely into the realm of media, the powerful, and Church moral treaching venues sadly lacking in heroic speakers. A big exception. Others have gone to the front world stage without personal ruin, but with the same clinging mud on their aims. Bernard of Clairvaux and his Crusade preaching was an admitted disaster even in his own view. Francis of Assisi lost control of his own order(a worse defeat than Mother Teresa's by far). Catherine of Siena survived a cesspool of European and papal politics(multiple "false" Popes, the Avignon Papacy) because her mediation was timely and the opposition was divided and weak. Others were loyal fans compromised by naive support of various political or Church powers. Some enjoyed temporal acclaim in supporting SOME good among the great. Some criticized and were killed(the easier saints to judge favorably).

So she stuck her nose into world and Church politics, probably for the very reason for which is criticized- namely to bring the forgotten poor to the front stage knowing the jaded media and potentates she approached would not "get it" anymore than Hitchens would. Typically she is criticized for not doing it with revolutionary political correctness- by hypocrites generally. So the gentle unassuming attack on the jaded souls of the outside world was spun into more apathy. Surprise. She was used by Church and politicians for their own ends. And she used them to get support for the poor otherwise never forthcoming. Surprise again.

I guess we need more variety of approaches to redeeming mankind instead of expecting one woman to be Gandhi, Marx and a pantheon of brilliant manipulators and shakers. So what are WE doing about the crappy attitudes of moral indifference and selfish irresponsibility? Doing something other than cynbical self rationalizing carping might be a start. The singular(and frustratingly?) unchanging message of one woman and one order of nuns is supposed to change the whole enchillada for us?

But as a Devil's Advocate Hitchens I am sure has a file in the canonization process on whether Teresa was corrupted in her later years by "fame" and schmoozing into bolstering the ills of this world.
For some reason I think the judgments of her judges and the world in general are pretty petty and irrelevant and even the award of "sainthood" not worth a hair of her head. Or anyone else's for that matter.

More to the point is sad collective mess of the most advanced and numerous generation of humanity that produces so much weak garbage and so little quality in all realms of human endeavor- awaiiting only some other lazy stumbling into conflagration and catastrophe to seal our inneffectuality. Where is God? Where are the humans?

[ScreamingMeemie]

54. I am locking this thread.

It is inflammatory and has fallen outside the definition of a political topic.

Thanks,
MrsGrumpy
DU Moderator