Atheist group at Dartmouth plans anti Mother Teresa event

[stopbush]

37. What did she do for the poor outside of the occasional bowl of soup? Not much.

And for the dying, not even that.

You do realize, don't you, that she didn't run hospitals or medical centers. She ran dying centers where the sick came to die, not to receive medical treatment. The reason she took in the dying was because her religious order believed that watching the sick die would bring them closer to god. That was the motivation behind her opening her dying centers around the world. Nothing was dome to alleviate the suffering of these poor souls. According to Wikipedia:

She has also been criticized for her view on suffering. She felt that suffering would bring people closer to Jesus.[87] Sanal Edamaruku, President of Rationalist International, criticised the failure to give painkillers, writing that in her Homes for the Dying, one could "hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered from their open wounds without pain relief. On principle, strong painkillers were not administered even in severe cases. According to Mother Teresa's philosophy, it is 'the most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ'."

The quality of care offered to terminally ill patients in the Homes for the Dying has been criticised in the medical press. The Lancet and the British Medical Journal reported the reuse of hypodermic needles, poor living conditions, including the use of cold baths for all patients, and an approach to illness and suffering that precluded the use of many elements of modern medical care, such as systematic diagnosis.[77] Dr. Robin Fox, editor of The Lancet, described the medical care as "haphazard", as volunteers without medical knowledge had to make decisions about patient care, because of the lack of doctors. He observed that her order did not distinguish between curable and incurable patients, so that people who could otherwise survive would be at risk of dying from infections and lack of treatment. Dr. Fox makes it a point to contrast the term "hospice", on the one hand, with what he calls "Mother Teresa's Care for the Dying" on the other hand; noting that, while hospice emphasizes minimizing suffering with professional medical care and attention to expressed needs and wishes of the patient, her approach does not.

As far as other people calling Christopher Hitchens "scum," at least he didn't support Baby-Doc and his father, François (Papa Doc) Duvalier, who had the full support of the Vatican and were favorites of Mother Teresa. For her loyal support of the Duvalier family, Baby Doc Duvalier presented her with a Legion d'Honneur in 1981, which she graciously accepted, along with monetary donations. The Duvalier family is estimated to have murdered over 300,000 people.

In 1989, MT traveled back to her native Albania to pay her respects to communist dictator Enver Hoxha and lay a wreath on his grave. Hoxha was one of the most repressive rulers of the 20th century. Under his reign of terror Albania was a virtual prison camp and almost every citizen had either been interrogated, tortured or imprisoned by the dreaded Sigurimi secret police. The country was impoverished by the lunatic policies of Hoxha and his rampant military spending.

She was supported by Charles Keating, who stole in excess of $252 million as part of an organized fraud in the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980s. He gave $1.25 million of his loot to Mother Teresa. When Keating was facing prosecution she interceded on his behalf and wrote a letter to the court urging leniency. When the district attorney informed her that the money she had received was stolen money and needed to be returned, she refused to return the money and evaded the courts attempts to recover the money.

Teresa also stated that the greatest evil in the world was abortion.

IMHO, next to Ronald Reagan, MT has enjoyed more undeserved favorable press than anyone else in recent history.