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That makes two of us, Maradnu.
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Well then don't go around spouting off about topics you are unwilling to educate yourself about.
Hitchens was a hero. You're only cheating yourself.Comment
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Hitchens was a hero??
Hitchens was a coward. He did a hatchet job on a woman he knew would turn the other cheek. She never would have retaliated. That's no hero.Comment
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He wrote that book while she was still alive.
Calling Hitchens a coward is ridiculous. He had the guts to tell the truth when nobody else did. Can you name anything Hitchens said that was false? What do you have against people telling the truth. If you think he lied about anything, say what he lied about. She never denied anything in it. No one has disproved anything in it. Mother Teresa was a fraud and there's never anything wrong with exposing a fraud.Comment
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5 Responses to the Ridiculous Rancor of Some Toward Mother Teresa
The obsession some atheists have with Mother Teresa borders on the monomaniacal.
Even when I was an atheist I thought it quite absurd whenever comfortable first-world atheists would viciously attack a woman who gave up everything to serve the poor and who lived in abject poverty herself.
The idea that this selfless woman was actually a masochistic, self-obsessed lunatic, who loved to watch the poor suffer originated with Christopher Hitchens, largely considered the founder of the New Atheism movement. In fact, virtually every irrational and over-the-top criticism of Mother Teresa that I have read can be traced back to his obsessive hatred of the Albanian nun.
Hitchens has since passed away (please say a prayer for his soul), but unfortunately his pet theories have not; they pop up on Internet forums all the time.
As Mother Teresa’s canonization date approaches, it is likely that this nonsense will spread. Our era is addicted to shock and outrage, so headlines excoriating Mother Teresa will be irresistable, no matter how false.
With that in mind, here are some common charges atheists make to justify hating Mother Teresa, and some handy responses:
1. Mother Teresa’s Canonization Is a “Fraud”: Christopher Hitchens criticized Mother Teresa’s recognition by the Church because the Church sped up her beatification process. He also mocked the idea that a miracle could have come about through Mother Teresa’s intercession.
So? Hitchens was an atheist; would he be satisfied with any process that canonized Mother Teresa or any other saint? Did he believe in any of the miracles that have been attributed to the intercession of the saints, even those with abundant eyewitnesses, verifications by doctors, etc? The answer is no. So why would it matter to Hitchens (or any other atheist) how quickly Mother Teresa was canonized? Even if it were theoretically true that Mother Teresa was a terrible person, why would an atheist care who the Catholic Church canonizes?
2. Mother Teresa “Mismanaged Money”: Mother Teresa’s critics accuse her of mismanaging donations, and as evidence they point to the humble state of the congregation’s homes versus the large donations that are assumed to have been poured into their coffers. Yet no theory is advanced as to exactly how the foundress spent the organization’s money in an unethical way. She certainly did not spend it on herself.
Vatican officials confirm that Mother Teresa donated her congregation’s surplus money to be dispersed through the many avenues through which the Church helps the poor. In other words, she did not hoard the donations she received just for her order; she shared the wealth, which is in keeping with the mission of her organization. Mother Teresa and her sisters are called to minister in a simple way to the poorest of the poor, and if they have extra money it goes to other poor people. I am not sure why this is so offensive unless one is trying to find offense.
3. Mother Teresa’s Homes Are “Abusive”: Critics point to what they call deplorable conditions in the homes the sisters run — a charge that betrays how completely they misunderstand the Missionaries of Charity. The sisters join the poverty of the people they serve. Their mission is not to build state-of-the-art hospitals, or work for political or social change, which many Catholics do. They provide care for children and adults in the most desperate of situations, people who would otherwise be living and dying on the streets. The sisters themselves live in complete and utter poverty, sleeping on the floor and washing their one habit in buckets and drying them overnight.
This criticism often comes drenched in a mind-set of first-world privilege that has no idea what kind of conditions people experience in third-world countries. It also often comes from critics who don’t bother to spend any amount of prolonged time in these situations — more willing to “investigate” her homes than actually show up and work alongside the nuns.
4. Mother Teresa Was a “Fanatic” Who Enjoyed Suffering: When people point to Mother Teresa’s “fanaticism,” they are usually actually pointing to her living out Christian values. Sure, she did this in an extreme, heroic fashion, but that is why she is a saint. Most of us could benefit from emulating, even slightly, her “fanaticism.” Critics who choose to see her remarks on the “gift” of suffering as a newfangled, masochistic theology only reveal a lack of familiarity with a basic Christian idea: that — as demonstrated by the God-man being unjustly tortured and crucified — God brings good from evil, and he is present in a special way among the weakest and the poorest of the poor.
Don’t like this message? It’s not Mother Teresa you have a problem with, it’s Christianity.
5. Mother Teresa Was “Imperfect”: Critics may disagree with Mother Teresa’s philosophies and actions, but none ever seem to point to concrete evidence of malicious intent on her part, and so the ad hominem arguments end with, “she wasn’t perfect!”
Well, of course Mother Teresa was imperfect. This we can all agree on, and I am sure the saint would concur. It is said that she went at least every week to confession. She was a woman who knew she was flawed and made mistakes.
Canonized saints are not supposed to be cookie-cutter perfect. The lives of countless saints prove that canonization is not a stamp of perfection but a recognition of heroic holiness. And the Church believes Mother Teresa was a holy woman, despite her imperfections.
So why exactly is so much ink spilled in order to criticize Mother Teresa when there are far more unsavory characters in the world? The quest for pageviews and the gratification of blind ideology.
This kind of spiteful hatred comes from hearts that have been darkened to reason and evident goodness by a lack of belief in God.
When one sees a person doing good things because he or she believes in God it is reasonable to attribute that person’s good works to those beliefs (even if one happens to disagree with that belief).
What is unreasonable is to assume that a person doing good works has a dark heart full of violence and self-interest simply because one’s own angry heart cannot begin to understand the Gospel, even theoretically.Comment
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a voice of reason
thank you, maradnu.Comment
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If you all did not no,( Not you aerie
) I am Bengali( [resident of Bengal] state of India), and believe me I know who Mother Teresa is.
now,I have read( I read, believe me, that's all I do, my vocabulary is quite close to my very educated parent.) about all who call Mother Teresa a fraud. that may be true, but I like that she stood for helping the poor. i do believe she did some good things.
my issue is conversion, she might have coaxed people to become catholic. i am not catholic, rather a devout Hindu, but I have a respect for catholics, especially there stance on death penalty.
whatever it is the catholic nuns do good, much good, but none is prefect. at least they do some good, a lot of Hindus will look away at lepers.
just a thought,Comment
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Mother Teresa was a fraud who took money from dictators and did nothing for the poor, got off on watching people suffer, refused to give medical care or pain relief, but flew first class and stayed in 4 star hotels herself. She was also an atheist, by the way, She said in her letters that she lost her faith years before she died.
What does Hitchens' atheism have to do with anything, by the way? Nothing in his book has ever been disproven or even denied.Is there supposed to be something wrong with being an atheist?
This pure fantasy and has nothing to do with reality and kind of laughable since Mother Teresa neither did good things nor believed in God. At least she was smart enough to eventually figure out that God doesn't exist. Her abandonment of such childish superstition was the only commendable thing about her. She was certainly nowhere near Christopher Hitchens' moral league.This kind of spiteful hatred comes from hearts that have been darkened to reason and evident goodness by a lack of belief in God.
When one sees a person doing good things because he or she believes in God it is reasonable to attribute that person’s good works to those beliefs (even if one happens to disagree with that belief).Comment
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Time to call a truce.
"killdozer may be one of the few people in this world offended by a woman who reached out in love to the most helpless of all."
It appears my original remark was correct. Killdozer has been vociferous, which is his right. No one has stepped up to agree with him. On the contrary, several have taken offense at him.
So, killdozer, let's just agree to disagree. You have an extreme view that is unlikely to convince others. It's right for you to have your own opinions. But maybe you should keep them to yourself.
Let's solve cryptograms!Comment
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Another atheist's point of view
Speaking as an atheist, I am appalled by Killdozer's comments and have not been able to find any support for his claims of fraud against Mother Teresa. I certainly disagree with a lot of her views, but they are in line with those of the Catholic church and thus to be expected. It has always seemed to me that anyone who actually tries to live in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ gets thoroughly vilified by Christians and non-Christians alike. As far as the first-class air travel goes, my understanding is that she always got economy class tickets but was routinely bumped up to first class when the airline personnel discovered that she was traveling with them. I certainly would not find it surprising if she did not have great money management skills, but I agree with Maradnu that there was nothing unethical in her handling of donations. I find her to be a truly admirable and inspiring person, and I hope I am making it clear that not all atheists share Killdozer's views. On the contrary, most atheists admire well-intentioned, humane people of all faiths and beliefs.Comment
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MT did none of those things, Oddcouple. And you have not identified a single thing I said that was factually inaccurate, I don't care if people are offended. That doesn't make me wrong or make them right. It just means I am more informed. There;'s nothing "extreme" about plain facts.Originally posted by oddcouple View PostComment
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You should read Christopher Hitchens' book. Find a single thing he said that was false. She did not give money to her hospices, she just handed it over to the church while the people in her hospices died in squalor and without medical care. She wasn't even at her hospices most of the time, but jet-setting around, living in luxury, being a celebrity and visiting dictators.Originally posted by marnita View Post
Hitchens being an atheist has nothing to do with anything. I don't see why people keep bring up Hitchens' atheism as though that automatically makes him a liar. Mother Tersa was an atheist too. Be proud of being an atheist. Its a good thing.
Sorry the truth hurts, but that doesn't stop it from being true.Comment
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Article from a defender of Teresa
Born as Agnes Bojaxhiu in Macedonia in 1910, Blessed Teresa came to public attention relatively late in life, but when she did, her impact was profound. In 1969, Malcolm Muggeridge hosted a BBC documentary on her, Something Beautiful for God, following it with his now-classic book of the same name. In it, he recounted the series of events that led a young Balkan girl to become a nun, found a new religious order, and become a heroic servant of the poor and dying—first in the streets of Calcutta, then all over the world. The documentary deeply moved people, and inspired a new generation of Christian activists; more than a few became Missionaries of Charity themselves.
As with all models of beauty in life, however, there are cynics who have tried to tar Mother Teresa. In the 1990s—after Muggeridge had died, but with Teresa still active—the late Christopher Hitchens launched an aggressive attack on Mother with a documentary and book aimed to inflame: Hell’s Angel and The Missionary Position. These polemics didn’t reflect the truth, but did manage to fool a number of people.
The remarkable thing about Hell’s Angel is that it purports to defend the poor against Mother Teresa’s supposed exploitation of them, while never actually interviewing any on screen. Not a single person cared for by the Missionaries speaks on camera. Was this because they had a far higher opinion of Blessed Teresa than Hitchens would permit in his film?
Avoiding the people at the heart of Teresa’s ministry, Hitchens posed for the camera and let roll a series of ad hominem attacks and unsubstantiated accusations, as uninformed as they were cruel. He called Muggeridge—one of the most acclaimed journalists of the twentieth century—an “old fraud and mountebank,” mocked his belief in the supernatural, and even referred to Mother Teresa as a “presumable virgin.”
She was denounced for meeting with unsavory politicians and businessmen, in order to assist the poor, but ironically, it is Hitchens who used the film to promote Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a notorious ex-priest whose record as Haiti’s President was symbolized by corruption and abuse. Of Teresa’s travels abroad, Hitchens declared: “She may or may not comfort the afflicted, but she has certainly never been known to afflict the comfortable”—but the documentary shows her doing exactly that, decrying abortion in front of affluent pro-choice audiences.
Hitchens expressed shock that Teresa encouraged victims to forgive those who harmed them, causing many to wonder whether he was aware of the basic tenets of Christianity.
The height of absurdity came when Hitchens assailed Mother Teresa for allegedly giving her heart to greater Albania, “a cause that was once smiled upon by Pope Pius IX and his friend Benito Mussolini.” It would have been hard for Pius IX to have been friends with Benito Mussolini, given that Pius died in 1878, and Mussolini was not born until 1883, but why should Hitchens be concerned about historical facts, when he was having such fun making them up?
Despite this effort to diminish Mother Teresa’s reputation, it stands as high as ever, fifteen years after her passing. Her order and affiliates continue to expand. By 2010, notes biographer Kathryn Spink, there were over five thousand Missionary of Charity sisters, serving in 766 houses in 137 countries, and another 377 active brothers serving in sixty-eight houses in twenty-one countries. The Lay Missionaries of Charity, now twenty-five years old, are also growing, operating in fifty countries.
The expansion of her order speaks volumes about its integrity and effectiveness, but the support and admiration it has received has proven too much for some. On March 1, three Canadian academics—Serge Larivee, Genevieve Chenard, and Carole Senechal—released a report on Mother Teresa, renewing the criticism. A press release, darkly entitled “Mother Teresa: Anything but a Saint,” read:
In their article, Serge Larivee and his colleagues . . . cite a number of problems not taken into account by the Vatican in Mother Teresa’s beatification process, such as her “rather dubious way of caring for the sick, her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding, in particular, abortion, contraception and divorce.”
That was not all. The researchers accused Mother Teresa of running facilities with inadequate medical care while receiving quality medical care herself, said she was more in love with poverty than helping the poor, and implied she was psychologically unstable because she suffered through bouts of doubt. For good measure, they attacked the miracle that the Church has attributed to her intervention.
After studying their report—twenty-seven pages in French—I sought out people who had known Mother Teresa, or been involved with her cause to inquire about its charges. Every single one of them told me that the Mother Teresa presented by the Canadian researchers was unrecognizable from the one they encountered, and to prove it, provided point by point rebuttals to their accusations.
Fr. Peter Gumpel, an official at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, told me that far from overlooking criticism of Mother Teresa, the allegations were taken quite seriously, and answered:
There are mistakes made in even the most modern medical facilities, but whenever a correction was needed, Mother and the Missionaries showed themselves alert and open to constructive change and improvement. What many do not understand is the desperate conditions Mother Teresa constantly faced, and that her special charism was not to found or run hospitals—the Church has many who do that—but to rescue those who were given no chance of surviving, and otherwise would have died on the street.
But it is “absolutely false,” he stressed, to claim that she rejected or neglected available medical care for those still treatable, or good palliative care for the terminally ill. “Beware of anecdotal stories circulating from disgruntled people or those with an anti-Catholic agenda,” he warned.
Charges of financial impropriety are equally unfounded; in fact, Blessed Teresa helped raise, and spent, “enormous sums of money” on the poor, and she donated funds to the Holy See, which in turn distributed them to Catholic hospitals and other good works. Utterly bizarre was the researchers’ charge that the Vatican officials did not adequately consider her firm stands against abortion, contraception, and divorce: of course they did—and her orthodoxy was “one of the many assets in her favor.”
Commenting about the doubts Mother Teresa experienced, Gumpel asked, “Do not these researchers understand that periods of doubt, and even severe trials of faith, have affected some of the Church’s greatest saints—St. John of the Cross, Therese of Lisieux—and that persevering and overcoming them is considered one of the signs of sanctity?”
As for the miracle attributed to Blessed Teresa, “There are always skeptics who question every Vatican-approved miracle, and accuse the Church of manipulating the evidence, but the Congregation’s medical board has very vigorous examination procedures, and stands by its decisions.” Against the skeptics, no fewer than five doctors declared there was “no medical explanation ” of the healing attributed to Mother Teresa.
Fr. Leo Maasburg, an Austrian priest who was Mother Teresa’s close personal friend and spiritual advisor and the author of a moving portrait of her, told me that the idea that Blessed Teresa loved poverty rather than poor people was “a diabolical twisting” of her actual beliefs, which were “to help the poor and suffering to the utmost.” Despite her travels (undertaken purely to spread her charitable activities), Blessed Teresa lived an extremely modest life in Calcutta, and Fr. Maasburg was emphatic that she never asked for special favors or medical care—a fact since confirmed by others close to her, including the physicians who treated her during her final illness.
Fr. Maasburg also stressed that Blessed Teresa was the first to acknowledge her imperfections, and would constantly teach those around her: “If someone criticizes you, first ask yourself, is it right? If he is right, apologize and change, and the issue is resolved. If he is not right, clarify and correct, but if that does not work, take up the unjust accusations with both hands and offer it to Jesus in union with his suffering, because he was slandered by all sides.”
The most powerful witness I spoke to was Susan Conroy, who worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta—traveling there as a twenty-one-year-old volunteer in 1986. She knew Mother for the last decade of her life, and wrote Mother Teresa’s Lessons of Love and Secrets of Sanctity. She speaks about Blessed Teresa often. She read the report by the Canadian academics in its original French, and reacted with sadness, offering this first-hand testimonial in response:
When I read the criticisms of how the patients were cared for in the Home for the Dying, I kept thinking back to my personal experiences there . . . . I know how tenderly and carefully we tended to each of the destitute patients there—how we bathed them, and washed their beds, and fed them and gave them medicine. I know how the entire shelter was thoroughly and regularly cleaned from top to bottom, and each patient was bathed as often as necessary, even if it was multiple times a day . . . .Comment
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Rest of article
They were considered “untouchables” of society, and yet there we were touching and caring for them as if they were royalty. We truly felt honored to serve them as best we could. Mother Teresa had taught us to care for each one with all the humility, respect, tenderness and love with which we would touch and serve Jesus Christ Himself—reminding us that “whatsoever we do to the least of our brothers,” we do unto Him.
After hearing from these supporters, I requested interviews with the researchers, and finally obtained one with Dr. Chenard. Her answers to my series of questions were both astonishing and revealing: She confirmed for me that her academic team did not speak to a single patient, medical analyst, associate, or worker of Mother Teresa’s before writing their paper against her; nor did they examine how all her finances were spent; nor did they speak with anyone at the Vatican involved with her sainthood cause, or consult the Vatican’s medical board which certified the miracle attributed to Blessed Teresa. The researchers had not even traveled to Calcutta, whereas even Hitchens, misguided as he was, at least did that.
As it turned out, this “research paper” was nothing but a “review of literature,” a repacking of what others had already written, with the academics putting their own negative spin on it. In other words, an indictment based upon no original research, and the author most frequently cited? Christopher Hitchens. Yet these “findings” made international headlines, and were repeated by many without objection.
Sanctity cannot be fabricated, and true holiness often invites worldly ridicule, as Our Lord foretold. But Blessed Mother Teresa’s radiant witness will survive as long as truth and tenderness survive in the human heart—which, God willing, will be until the end of time.Comment
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Teresa
True believers will never be convinced, regardless of evidence.
I don't know why killdozer has such animosity against Mother Teresa, apart from the obvious worship of Hitchens and anything Hitchens says.
You wanted someone to "refute" Hitchens criticisms, and I have posted refutations by two different authors.The only reply to those refutations was to double down on Hitchens thoughts.
I am not Catholic, or even Christian. I have no doubt that Teresa was far from perfect. Then again, Abraham Lincoln made it clear that he was willing to see slavery continue if it would save the nation, and he did not have any real respect for black people. Each of us, even the greatest has our weaknesses and flaws.
I have nothing against atheists or atheism, though I don't care for those, like Hitchens and Dawkins who belittle and demean all religion and all religious belief.Comment
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