Mother Theresa's secret pain

[Shine]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html

Her diaries and private letters are about to be released and they show a radically different picture of the "modern saint" we have all come to know and respect. She experienced deep spiritual pain over the last 50 yrs of her life, feeling disconnected from God and aware of the discrepancy between her public persona and her inner state.

It's fascinating to consider the implications of this. Here is this woman who is revered to be the persona of selfless giving and compassion...and yet she lived so much of her inner life tormented and in spiritual darkness. Regardless of what one thinks about the existence of God, or not, I find this new information to be rather sad, for some reason. :(

<snip>
Come Be My Light is that rare thing, a posthumous autobiography that could cause a wholesale reconsideration of a major public figure — one way or another. It raises questions about God and faith, the engine behind great achievement, and the persistence of love, divine and human. That it does so not in any organized, intentional form but as a hodgepodge of desperate notes not intended for daylight should leave readers only more convinced that it is authentic — and that they are, somewhat shockingly, touching the true inner life of a modern saint.

[soothsayer]

1. no wonder she was so mean to her sisters

[shain from kane]

2. Sexually frustrated. n/t

[RB TexLa]

3. Sounds like a must buy. A real story of someone so engulfed in the suffering of humanity

trying to keep a relationship with God.

JPII wanted people to know there were Saints living today, sounds like this book by one of them will show that people of saintly action and lives go through the same despairs all faithful go through.

I think it can be more important than St. Augustine's works as they focus more on theology after his conversion, where this sounds much more focused to the individual heart of personal faith.

[stopbush]

4. MT was an absolute monster. A money-grubbing merchant of pain & suffering.

Read "The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice" by Christopher Hitchens. Here's an Amazon review of the book from a person who worked closely with MT:

My review is based on personal experience..., September 16, 2000
By Timothy P. Scanlon (Hyattsville, MDUSA) - See all my reviews

I first read a portion of this book in the Washington Post a number of years ago. As I'd worked closely with Mother Teresa in Calcutta for a bit over two years, I was amused by it and bought several copies which I then gave to those I knew who painted halos on her. Now I admit to some mixed feelings (more on that later) but the book's strength is still formidable.
While working in an office that provided Mother with much of her food, a Scottish pharmacologist who'd been volunteering in the Home for Dying Destitutes visited. She proclaimed that the people she was taking care of there "don't need to die!" She asserted that most of the sisters caring for the destitute weren't very bright, and that there are means of keeping the destitute alive of which the Missionaries of Charity would not partake. After that, and after picking up a small child who died in my arms at the mother house not far from my residence, my eyes were more opened to that saint of Calcutta.

Incidentally, the child who died was the product of one of the "natural family planning" sessions the MC sisters held for Muslim women in Calcutta. That degree of naivete, as if the sisters who lived among them understood so pathetically little about Islam as to teach Muslim women of that means of birth control--in one of the most crowded square miles on planet earth--was enough to make one question Mother Teresa even if other things, many of which Hitchens points out, were not.

As for the intellectual level of the sisters, it's important to note that what I describe is typical in much of the Third World. As an Indian friend said, most of the sisters, if they had not become nuns, would have been stuck in their Indian village, in a prearranged marriage. Their entry into the sisterhood freed them and, in some cases, allows them to "see the world." I'm not saying that in a derisive way; were I in their shoes, I may do the same.

And there was one sister whose intelligence and sensitivity did impress me. She shared with me one day that she was concerned about children being adopted into families in, say, Denmark, which had negative population growth at the time. She wondered what would happen when the fad wore off of the obvious adoptions--brown children among the more pale Danes--and what social problems might come about as a consequence. As I'm not familiar with any Scandanavians, I don't know what may be happening there today.

The situation, though, also has its ironies. I know many a feminist who is impressed to no end with Mother Teresa, an allegedly strong woman. As I knew Mother, I guarantee to the feminists that such a label turns Mother over in her grave. Indeed, while some reviewers have commented on the MC sisters in the U.S., their commitment to AIDS patients, etc., I see most of the sisters as sheep, little girls despite their ages, following their leader, whoever she may be, with a girl's unquestioning attitude. That's not feminist, despite illusions to the contrary.

Mind you, I'm not in any way opposed to taking care of the poor. I'm as far from a Reaganite as one can imagine. But I had--and still have--close friends who are nuns in other orders in India who do far more for "human development" than the MCs do. Are they proclaimed saints? Not in this world they're not. But I don't blame Mother for that. Rather, I blame the media who are anxious to sell papers by finding one individual, a sort of Horatio Alger in reverse, who stands out. Thusly Saint Mother Teresa was born through the likes of Malcolm Muggeridge whom Hitchens covers mercilessly in his text.

As I have reflected for a number of years on my experience in Calcutta and the rest of India (MC sisters telling lepers in colonies to be fruitful and multiply per Catholic teachings, thereby ensuring another generation of lepers) I've concluded that my biggest objection to the MC regime is that Mother Teresa unwittingly prevented change. Politicians, including Reagan, loved her as she said, "write a check and help the poor, the dying, and help these kids to be adopted." It never occurred to her that there must be something wrong with a system which enabled countless people to die miserably. And that extended to us in the "developed" world. How many people do you know who feel secure in having their Mother Teresa holy cards, maybe writing a check, but they'll still act and vote to perpetuate systems in which so, so many people die destitute.

Oh, the reason I have some mixed feelings toward the MC sisters now is that I'm still acquainted with some American nuns. Many of them are close friends, and women for whom I have a great deal of respect and love. But many too are living more comfortably than I am, e.g., having their community pay for their homes for which they then pay substantially less rent than I would pay. At least Mother Teresa and her sisters DID live and work among the poor.

Anyway, I still recommend the book. It puts much of the media hype, especially the tourists who'd visited Calcutta for two days, visited Mother Teresa, then returned to write news stories about how wonderful she is, into perspective with some of the things Mother REALLY did.

[Matariki]

10. This review is so poorly written it's hard to know what the guy is saying at all.

[stopbush]

11. Then read Hitchens' book.

BTW - there are other reviews at Amazon that are clearer. Check 'em out.

[KittyWampus]

13. Hitchens is biased and with an axe to grind.

[stopbush]

14. Care to explain your ad hominem attack?

Have you read the book?

[EFerrari]

35. The guy wrote a book "God is not good". Please.

[Hamlette]

38. yes, he wrote "God is not good" and Mother Theresa was part of why he wrote it no doubt.

Everyone, it seems, is biased when discussing religion...for or against.

I love that she admitted she may have been faking her faith. Seems lots of people do that.

[EFerrari]

39. I wouldn't trust Hitchens with my trash. But, I would like to know

what she thought.

[Shine]

40. I would argue we ALL "fake" things once in a while

who among us hasn't struggled with self-doubt, lacking trust and faith and yet tried to act otherwise? :shrug:

She was only human....just like the rest of us.

[pitohui]

43. 50 freking years is a long once in awhile

if she had taken a stand pro birth control or pro something positive other than let's breed all the catholics we can lest we be outbred by the muslims and mormons...hokay

this wasn't even about god, if she'd believed in him more she might have had more courage to color outside the lines


and yeah hitchens is a shit too but that's another rant for another day

[Shine]

46. She took a stand for people dying with Dignity

I think that's something "pro". :D

[pitohui]

47. ok that's a valid point EOM

,

[Hamlette]

81. if religious people were more readily able to admit self doubt

this would be easier. A portion of them are positively sure abortion is murder and gay marriage is wrong and flying planes into buildings will get them 27 or 72 virgins.

How do we infuse "self-doubt" into fundamentalists?

(As you your question, I have never for one second doubted by "faith". Well, for one second. But never longer than about 10 seconds. After 10 seconds I say "what difference does it make if there is a god?")

[Shine]

82. Not just religious people, but if ALL people could admit self-doubt

it would be easier to see the many and complex sides of an issue.

Not that that would, in itself, be easy, mind you. :D

[FearofFutility]

58. Actually

It's "God is not Great". Just saying....

[Matariki]

34. Why did you post the less clear review then

I have no interest in the book and this review certainly doesn't change that...

Have you read the book? Perhaps you could say something interesting about it in your own words?

[The Vinyl Ripper]

30. I thought it was quite clear.. n/t

[Matariki]

32. Really? Then translate the first paragraph for me.

"While working in an office that provided Mother with much of her food, a Scottish pharmacologist who'd been volunteering in the Home for Dying Destitutes visited. She proclaimed that the people she was taking care of there "don't need to die!" She asserted that most of the sisters caring for the destitute weren't very bright, and that there are means of keeping the destitute alive of which the Missionaries of Charity would not partake. After that, and after picking up a small child who died in my arms at the mother house not far from my residence, my eyes were more opened to that saint of Calcutta."

[Kurovski]

5. As a saint, she made a kick-ass CEO.

Her campaign against birth control kept the wheels of poverty just a' grindin', and a' grindin'.

[knitter4democracy]

6. She sounds like the nuns I know.

I taught at a Catholic girls school for two years and a co-ed school through the same order the year after that. I got to know nuns, working with them day in, day out. They're not saints, just people mucking through like the rest of us. They wonder about their calling, they struggle in prayer, they get mad and say stuff they shouldn't, and they love their friends and family. They just do it in a different way, but that's about it.

I know there are many who think that sisters just need to get laid or that they're perpetuating the patriarchy, but the nuns I worked with felt like whole people without needing sex or a man to make them complete, and they were always working for the rights of women and minorities and the poor from within the system and doing what they could. One of their own was murdered for that in El Salvador in the 80s, Sr. Dorothy Kazel, and they did a lot of work in her memory.

Was Mother Teresa perfect? Far from it. She did do good, though, and did her best, and that's the best anyone can do. May her memory be eternal, and may she rest in the arms of God.

[Mrs. Overall]

8. I have worked with various groups of Sisters and what you said is exactly right--

I couldn't have said it more perfectly.

[Shine]

18. Nice post. Thanks for your input.

I agree this new info helps to humanize her in a way that is important for us all to be reminded of:

Perfection does NOT exist and we're all hopefully doing the best we can.

:thumbsup:

[Mrs. Overall]

7. I hate to Mother Teresa bash, but when she set up a branch of her community in San Francisco,

a group of US Sisters (BVMs) worked on getting the convent ready for Mother Teresa's nuns to live in--the BVM's replaced some old carpet and bought some new mattresses for the beds. When Mother Teresa walked in, she started screaming about the carpet, the couches, and the beds. She wanted her nuns not to have "luxuries" so she immediately began to physically rip up the carpet from the floor, and had her nuns throw the mattresses and couches out onto the sidewalk.

What was chilling to me was the vehemence and anger with which she basically tore the place apart after the BVM's had donated their time and materials to make the covent simple yet comfortable.

[stopbush]

9. Bash away. MT provided NOTHING to the sick who came to her gulags to die.

In fact, MT wanted them to suffer and die. She felt that she became closer to god by observing other people's suffering. How sick is that?

[KittyWampus]

12. since your observations on M.Theresa come from Chistopher Hitchens, I'd suggest they're biased

HEAVILY biased.

[stopbush]

15. Why do I get the feeling you're talking through your hat?

Again, ad hominem attacks don't cut it. Refute Hitchens' research and we can have a discussion. "Because" and "I said so" aren't arguments.

[hfojvt]

22. that's one of the things though

How am I supposed to do that? Can I get a grant to write a book and go over to India or California and interview people? Should I plow through a bunch of magazine and newspaper articles that are probably biased and full of errors as well? Absent a whole bunch of work which is time consuming and in some ways impossible, maybe it is enough to know that the source is unreliable, a drunk who embraced the Bush administration and the Iraq war.

[Shine]

20. I'm not as convinced she personally "wanted them to suffer and die"

that assessment seems a bit harsh to me.

Her good work made a difference in the world. Surely you can't deny that.

Maybe you can....

[stopbush]

25. I deny it. You would do well to read up on her activities, rather than

buying into the media- and church-created myth. Her gulags weren't called "Houses of the dying" for nothing.

Even her sainthood is BS. One needs two confirmed "miracles" to gain sainthood, and the first of those "miracles" was debunked by the very person supposedly involved in the miracle. The second "miracle" is an absolute BS claim from a couple of MT apologists. Of course, it's religion, so it's all BS anyway.

Did you know that doctors and even relatives were not allowed to visit the sick in MT's houses? Many of these people were curable, if doctors and medicine had been allowed. At the same time, MT availed herself of the very best in medical care. Hypocrisy unbridled.

The truth about MT is unflattering. If you choose to believe the myth with no investigation whatsoever, then shame on you.

[Shine]

28. I have no desire to talk you out of your obviously very strong opinion about MT

perhaps because I do hospice work it's easier for me to see the value in what she offered...in terms of providing practical and compassionate support to the dying. To me, that's pretty simple, yet deep stuff.

Hey, I'm not saying she's perfect. Obviously she wasn't, but then, who is??

I would argue ALL of us can get in touch with those parts of ourselves which are unflattering, contradictory, indeed even hypocritical at times. And, yet, we're all hopefully just doing the best we can.

What I found so interesting about the release of her diaries and the exposure of her inner angst is that, ultimately, she's just as human as the rest of us. No better, no worse.

It's weird b/c although I feel sad for her personally, that she suffered so much internally, I also feel comforted by the fact that she's just as fallible as the rest of us.

[smirkymonkey]

42. Apparently, she had ample means to cure those who were

curable and to offer palliative care to those who were terminal so they could die in comfort and peace. She offered neither, but she died a very rich woman. I find it repulsive to have the means to help the suffering and then refuse to use it toward that end.

[Shine]

49. Despite her own internal spiritual turmoil and crisis of faith, she did help

she was able to provide simple practical support to enable the dying to let go with Dignity and Grace.

As a hospice worker, I commend her.

[smirkymonkey]

55. I truly admire those who help guide individuals through the

dying process and help them to go with dignity and in peace. That is, if they are truly terminal and everything has been done to help them (short of heroic measures). Also, you can help people to die with dignity and alleviate some of their suffering at the same time.

She did neither. I have read a bit about her and she often refused life saving measures when they were available (not letting the patient know that they didn't have to die, but making the decision for them.) and prevented any medication which would ease their suffering (and some were truly in agony) because SHE believed it was the right thing to do. I don't call that honorable, I call it sadistic. However her patients were dirt poor, so I suppose nobody in India was going to come down on her for it.

It was all about her ego and what she thought was best for other people. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I'm not saying she didn't do anything good for the world ever, but she was far from the saint that people think she was. And I won't even get into her shady financial dealings.

[Shine]

57. I have mixed feelings about "saints" myself

I just don't buy into that idea of perfection b/c I don't think it's realistic....I mean, jeez, her diaries prove she wasn't perfect and had a deep spiritual crisis of faith, despite the work she was doing in the world. There's a certain comfort in knowing even the "best" of us are flawed. She's as human as the rest of us, no better, no worse. I would furthermore argue that ALL of us are driven by ego...whether we're conscious of it or not. I have compassion for MT, b/c I know that in her heart she was doing the best she could.

As we ALL are, hopefully.

[smirkymonkey]

69. Here is an interview w/ Hitchens that underscores your point and

might give a little background to those who still think she was a saint, or even just a flawed human being who basically meant well. I have to say, if she was a middle-aged, male from the Bible Belt, everyone at DU would be ripping her/him to shreds. But there is still this "saintly" aura about her, that she can do no wrong.

http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featpostel_56.htm

Excerpt...

"Hitchens: So partly for the honor of Calcutta, and partly out of my feeling that her actions are being judged by her reputation rather than her reputation by her actions (a common postmodern problem in the image business of course, but amazing in this case), I sort of opened a file on her, kept a brief. And then I noticed her turning up supporting the Duvalier family in Haiti, for example, and saying how wonderful they were and how great they were for the poor and how the poor loved them.

Interviewer: What a coincidence. . .

Hitchens: Yes. And then I noticed her taking money from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan and saying what a great friend of the poor this great fraud and thief was. Then I noticed her get the Nobel Prize for Peace though she had never done anything for peace. And say in her acceptance speech in Stockholm that the greatest threat to world peace is abortion.

Then I noticed another thing. That no matter what she said or did at this time nobody would point it out because she had some kind of hammer lock on my profession. It had been agreed she was a saint and there was to be no argument about it. So I thought, okay, that does it, and I wrote a column for The Nation. That was all I did at first. And then I got approached from some comrades in Britain to make a documentary based on the column, and we found that an amazing number of her crimes against humanity were actually on film.

There is film of her going to Albania and laying a wreath at the tomb of the dictator Enver Hoxha, vile bastard who oppressed Albania for years. She was Albanian by nationality, incidentally. Born in Macedonia. There was film of her groveling to the Duvaliers and flattering and fawning on Michele Duvalier in particular. There was film of her jetting around on Charles Keating’s plane which he used to lend her as well as giving her a lot of money that belonged to other people.

Interviewer: How how did she explain things like this?

Hitchens: She was never asked to." (more)

[knitter4democracy]

17. Were those things against the rules of her order?

I'm just sayin', I could understand her getting upset if those things were against the rules.

Benedictines used to live in very ascetic, very strict communities. Many monastics used to feel that anything nice, anything cushy got between them and God. Maybe she felt the same way.

[mudesi]

16. Her beliefs are utterly irrelevant. It is her ACTIONS that count. (nm)

[Shine]

19. Good distinction

yes, her actions counted for a lot, it's true.

Her beliefs also fueled her actions, to some degree, but it's sad to know she still suffered because of them.

[Elspeth]

73. I'd get to know a little bit more about her real actions and those of her nuns

"The image of extreme austerity and 'humility' of the nuns that have been portrayed by Mother and her biographers is not quite true. It has been said that the nuns do not know what the inside of a shop looks like, so unworldly are they. Mother's nuns are not infrequently seen shopping in Calcutta's New Market - a 19th century conglomeration of shops covering 2 sq. km in the city centre. I have got photographs of nuns buying basic cosmetics in New Market. On 27 December 1997, I photographed some nuns buying expensive Cashmere shawls in a shop (no. G56) called Kashmiri Corner. In the last few years nuns have been seen in the popular shopping areas of Gariahat in south Calcutta, an area of the city they had never ventured into in the past."

http://www.meteorbooks.com/chap2.html

There is so much documented information at the website above.

[cgrindley]

21. She was a horrible horrible person, I'm glad she filled with torment

cf Hitchens

[EFerrari]

36. I can't believe posters to this thread are citing HITCHENS.

LOL

[Gormy Cuss]

62. Why not? Hitchens is always a clear-headed, even-handed writer.

Isn't it?
:rofl:

[EFerrari]

71. LOL!

:rofl:

[Elspeth]

66. There is a better documented book than Hitchens' screed

"Mother Teresa was a woman of passion where abortion is concerned. This frail woman would often travel all over the world to prevent individual cases of abortion - I do not know if faith can move mountains, but it obviously did move this living saint. As far as disasters in India are concerned however, the saint had proved surprisingly hard to move - when I look at local and national disasters in Calcutta and India, I can find very few indeed where Mother Teresa had gone in to help.

In December 1984, three and a half thousand people died in Bhopal from inhaling toxic gas, leaked by the multinational giant Union Carbide, in the worst industrial accident the world has ever seen. The number of people actually affected cannot be logged as the effects are long-standing and future generations would probably continue to suffer.

Mother Teresa, whose post-Nobel reputation within India was then very high indeed, rushed in to Bhopal like an international dignitary. Her contribution in Bhopal has become a legend: she looked at the carnage, nodded gravely three times and said, 'I say, forgive.' There was a stunned silence in the audience. She took in the incredulity, nodded again, and repeated, 'I say, forgive.' Then she quickly wafted away, like visiting royalty. Her comments would have been somewhat justified if she had sent in her Missionaries of Charity to help in any way. But to come in unannounced, and make an insensitive comment like that so early on, was nothing short of an insult to the dead and suffering. In the wider world however, her image became even more enhanced, as she was seen even more like Jesus Christ, who would turn the other cheek, although in this instance the cheek was not hers. People in Bhopal were not amused; it is said that the only reason Mother escaped being seriously heckled was by dint of being an elderly woman.

Mother Teresa's propaganda machinery handled her Bhopal trip in the following way:

As she was present to the agony of Calcutta, and that of India's other great cities, so Mother Teresa was present to the anguish of Bhopal, a city four hundred miles to the south of Delhi, when a cloud of smoke enveloped a crowded slum on the night of December 3, 1984. The Missionaries of Charity, who had long been working in Bhopal, escaped being among the victims because the death-bringing gas was blown by the wind in a different direction... Even while the dead were being cremated or buried, Mother Teresa rushed to Bhopal with teams of Missionaries of Charity to work with the Sisters already on the scene. 'We have come to love and care for those who most need it in this terrible tragedy,' said Mother Teresa, as she went from centre to centre, from hospital to hospital visiting afflicted people. 7

This is an extremely clever play of words, as 'Mother Teresa was present to the anguish of Bhopal' means literally that; 'teams of Missionaries of Charity' means the couple of nuns who accompanied Mother to Bhopal; but the verb 'work' is employed in a very broad sense. 'The Missionaries of Charity (who) had long been working in Bhopal' is however entirely true, as they have had a small but neat home for destitutes (called Nirmal Hriday, like the one in Calcutta) for many years.

Another of Mother's biographies has a photograph in it with the following caption:'Helping A Survivor of the Chemical Leak at Bhopal, December 1984'8.

The photograph concerned shows Mother daintily offering a marigold flower to a woman moribundly lying in a hospital bed. 'Helping' no doubt, but not in the sole sense that the world would expect of Mother Teresa.
"


http://www.meteorbooks.com/chap1.html

[EFerrari]

72. Idealizing anyone is a mistake.

In the real world, real people are flawed.

Is that a surprise?

[Elspeth]

80. It wouldn't be such a surprise if the press and world leaders did not play along

so completely, and so without cynicism.

"She said in Carmelite Church in Dublin in 1979, she said, 'The Sisters go out at night to work, to pick up people from the streets...'38 They do not. Such statements are so untrue one is at a loss to address them. Sisters retire early - about 8 p.m., and a major earthquake will not bring them to the doors, at least not in Calcutta. I have numerous recorded telephone conversations where I was trying to have somebody admitted to the home for the dying in Calcutta in the middle of the night, and the Sisters kept insisting that I brought the person at 9 a.m. the following morning. (I am not saying if I turned up at the door with the man, he would have been turned away.) Indeed, until a few years back, the home for the dying did not even have a nun staying there overnight - the building was left to the mercy of sweepers and local anti socials. Mother agreed to provide two nuns for the night after intense agitation by some volunteers."

http://www.meteorbooks.com/chap2.html

[smirkymonkey]

88. Here's another Non-Hitchen's article on her from a liberal

European publication by Irish journalist Donal MacIntyre:

The squalid truth behind the legacy of Mother Teresa

Donal MacIntyre

Published 22 August 2005

http://www.newstatesman.com/200508220019
(excerpt)
"...I worked undercover for a week in Mother Teresa's flagship home for disabled boys and girls to record Mother Teresa's Legacy, a special report for Five News broadcast earlier this month. I winced at the rough handling by some of the full-time staff and Missionary sisters. I saw children with their mouths gagged open to be given medicine, their hands flaying in distress, visible testimony to the pain they were in. Tiny babies were bound with cloths at feeding time. Rough hands wrenched heads into position for feeding. Some of the children retched and coughed as rushed staff crammed food into their mouths. Boys and girls were abandoned on open toilets for up to 20 minutes at a time. Slumped, untended, some dribbling, some sleeping, they were a pathetic sight. Their treatment was an affront to their dignity, and dangerously unhygienic.

Volunteers (from Italy, Sweden, the United States and the UK) did their best to cradle and wash the children who had soiled themselves. But there were no nappies, and only cold water. Soap and disinfectant were in short supply. Workers washed down beds with dirty water and dirty cloths. Food was prepared on the floor in the corridor. A senior member of staff mixed medicine with her hands. Some did their best to give love and affection - at least some of the time. But, for the most part, the care the children received was inept, unprofessional and, in some cases, rough and dangerous. "They seem to be warehousing people rather than caring for them," commented the former operations director of Mencap Martin Gallagher, after viewing our undercover footage..."

"I was shocked. I could only work there for three days. It was simply too distressing. . . We had seen the same things in Romania but couldn't believe it was happening in a Mother Teresa home," one told me. In January, she and her colleague had written to Sister Nirmala, the new Mother Superior, to voice their concerns. They wrote, they told me, out of "compassion and not complaint", but received no response. Like me, they had been brought up in Catholic schools to believe that Mother Teresa was the holiest of all women, second only to the Virgin Mary. Our faith was unwavering, as was that of the international media for about 50 years. Even when the sister in charge of the Missionaries of Charity's Mahatma Gandhi Welfare Centre in Kolkata was prosecuted and found guilty of burning a young girl of seven with a hot knife in 2000, criticism remained muted.

Susan Shields, formerly a senior nun with the order, recalled that one year there was roughly $50m in the bank account held by the New York office alone. Much of the money, she complained, sat in banks while workers in the homes were obliged to reuse blunt needles. The order has stopped reusing needles, but the poor care remains pervasive. One nurse told me of a case earlier this year where staff knew a patient had typhoid but made no effort to protect volunteers or other patients. "The sense was that God will provide and if the worst happens - it is God's will...(more)"

[Sapere aude]

23. I think if she was an intelligent woman she would rethink what she was taught about God.

I grew up Catholic and it is hard to turn you back on that education when you have it ingrained in you that to lose your faith is to lose your soul.

I made the decision to throw out all I was taught and to start over. I came to that idea by talking to a Japanese man in Tokyo while on R&R. He was taught by his elders not to like Christians and I was taught not to like non-Christians. Both of us were taught the "truth" only 180 degrees out of phase.

So I think and intelligent thinking person would question a belief system like I did.

[Shine]

24. I guess not everyone is as intelligent as you are.

:D

oh well.

[Sapere aude]

27. I'm saying I'm not surprised by her having trouble about it.

[knitter4democracy]

51. Every Christian I've known has had crises of faith.

Some of us come back to the faith, and some leave to go elsewhere on their spirituality path. Just because you chose differently doesn't mean you were smarter or better--just different. Your experience of faith was different than hers, and so you can't generalize and say that she's wrong for choosing differently.

Did you ever feel a call to the clergy while growing up Catholic? She felt called to be a nun--very different level of faith commitment than just sitting in the pews on Sundays and feast days. Did you ever feel a connection with the saints or have visions or whatever? Some of us stay in the faith because of what we've seen or what we've been through. If you haven't had those experiences, then how can you know that someone who stays Christian does it because she's not "intelligent" enough?

[Sapere aude]

53. I never said that someone who stayed christian is not intelligent enough.

This morning while driving to work I turned on a Catholic radio station. It is a call in show where people ask questions and some church authority gives the answer.

One of the callers called in to ask if original sin was the reason there is sickness and death in the world. The authority said yes it was but only for humans not for other living creatures.

Then the caller asked that if that were true then Mary and Jesus must have never been sick. The authority said that may not be true.

I could not help but think that no intelligent adult thinking person could really believe in that kind of thing.

I'm sorry if that insults some people but that's how I feel.

[knitter4democracy]

56. Ah. Yeah, I don't muck around in the minutia.

It just gets too weird for me. I stick to the big stuff, personally.

As to intelligence, your OP stated that if she were intelligent enough, she would've changed faiths. You were the one who made the intelligence connection, and I was responding to that.

[Madspirit]

26. I Didn't Like Her Nor Did I Respect Her

She went to one of the poorest, most over-populated cities on the entire planet, Calcutta and preached against birth control. The world is a better place now that she is...HISTORY.

I wonder if her angst even compares to the angst of watching your 10th child starve to death.

Lee

[Shine]

29. Well, she was a Catholic nun, afterall. No great surprise there.

although I don't buy into her religious reasonings for what she did, I do respect the work she did with the dying.

Thank Goddess for differences, eh? :D

[Madspirit]

31. I Actually Have Nun friends

...and they are pro-birth control and they would NEVER go to THE poorest, most over-populated city on the entire planet and preach against birth control. I even have a couple of Jesuit priest friends. Not all nuns and priests are the Poop's butt monkeys. In my opinion, she has blood on her hands.

Lee

[Shine]

37. "Not all nuns and priests are the Poop's butt monkeys." Classic.

:rofl: I agree with you, about not all nuns being the same, that is. Again, thank goddess for differences. :D

[JVS]

33. St. John of the Cross didn't write "The Happy Night of the Soul"

[smirkymonkey]

44. Yeah, but 50 years??

That's not a "Dark Night of the Soul" that's a complete spiritual blackout. She lost her way long before she became a household name and the fact that she allowed suffering to continue when she could have alleviated it tells me that she may have chosen the wrong profession.

[JVS]

45. Yes, 50 years! From the article in the OP I quote..

"The church anticipates spiritually fallow periods. Indeed, the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross in the 16th century coined the term the "dark night" of the soul to describe a characteristic stage in the growth of some spiritual masters. Teresa's may be the most extensive such case on record. (The "dark night" of the 18th century mystic St. Paul of the Cross lasted 45 years; he ultimately recovered.)

[smirkymonkey]

70. Wow, No wonder he's a Saint. I would have given up long

before 45 years. In fact, I have. ;)

[ContraBass Black]

41. I need to set some kind of self-destruct device on all of my documents

That will activate automatically when I die.

[Shine]

48. Heh. yeah, really.

me too.

I'm sure she never intended these letters and private diaries to be seen. Nevertheless, they humanize her, I suppose.

[ContraBass Black]

61. We can't take it with us,

So maybe we'd better shred it now.

[UTUSN]

50. & the Church can sanctify somebody who disbelieves in gawd HOW?!1 n/t

[knitter4democracy]

52. It's part of the faith.

That's how. Many saints and leaders of the Church (I mean the entire Christian church, all denominations) have crises of faith. In fact, I would argue that all Christians do. Just because she was honest about it doesn't mean they'll toss out everything.

[Elspeth]

78. I wouldn't care if she believed in a head of lettuce as long as she was really caring for the poor

and dying, which she was not.

http://www.meteorbooks.com/chap2.html

[mdmc]

54. thanks for the OP

:hi:

[mitchum]

59. Pathological harpy

[Elspeth]

79. Actually, I'm more inclined to believe she is a public relations stunt on the part of the Church

http://www.meteorbooks.com/chap2.html

[mitchum]

83. I think you are correct

[Elspeth]

60. A better review on the Hitchens book about MT

http://www.amazon.com/Missionary-Position-Mother-Teresa-Practice/dp/185984054X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7593352-1747907?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187985592&sr=8-1

72 of 89 people found the following review helpful:
Triple Entendre, December 2, 2001

By Rivkah Maccaby "Rivkah Maccaby" (Bloomington, IN United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (Hardcover)


In swift and sly prose, Hitchens relates his personal observations of Mother Teresa's clinics in Calcutta. He tells one story of a nursery full of starving, sick babies crying in insufficient cribs, which M. Teresa describes as the way "we fight abortion." He writes of men dying of AIDS, denied pain medicine, because according to M. Teresa, their suffering will assure them of ultimate salvation. Paitients too weak to object are baptized in their final hours.

I have now doubt that all of this is true, and at first glance it is surprising, but it shouldn't be. M. Teresa is a Roman Catholic nun and Mother Superior; in fact, founder of an order. She is not merely Christian in a vague way, but a zealot for Catholicism. I knew this-- in fact I even knew that at one point, all she allowed her nuns was an impoverished diet of rice, and insufficient calories of that, because she thought they should the same thing as the people they served. This was not necessary, as her order had plenty of money. She began feeding her nuns a living diet only after the Pope ordered her to do so.

I suppose as a Catholic nun and zealot, she's did a fine job, but I don't think most Americans, especially non-Catholic Americans, knew this. Every year, millions of dollars are donated to her order, most of which sits in banks, while patients in her hospitals suffer from insufficient care. Some of this money comes from non-Catholic Americans who know next to nothing about M. Teresa and her actual mission. All people know is some vague idea that there's a lot of hunger and inadequate medical care in Calcutta, and M. Teresa order is doing something out there to help.

Christopher Hitchens lets people know exactly what she did; anyone who reads this book will never blindly donate money on the assumption that since there's poverty in Calcutta, any money sent to charity workers there must be doing some good.

More than exposing her clinics, Hitchens shows the disingenuous way M. Teresa has presented herself to the world. There is here in the book reprinted a very quaintly written letter on behalf of Charles Keating(!) reprinted here, yet plenty examples of her savvy that belie the innocent charm of her letter.

Hitchens does not hide his distaste for his subject, and while it is easy to accuse him of less than objectivity, he does stick to the facts; he just reports them with biting, venomous words. If you are a fan of M. Teresa, this book will offend you. If you seek the truth about her, you must read this book. If you have always harbored doubts about her, but never had any real evidence, this book will be a great relief, as your gut feeling is confirmed.

[Elspeth]

63. And a better source than Hitchens:

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

[Odin2005]

64. MT was a monster disguised as a saint.

She'd rather have the people she cared for suffer because she thought, in typical BS Augustinian fashion, that suffering made one "closer to god."

[Elspeth]

65. There is a much better book than the Hitchens one on her:

http://www.meteorbooks.com/chap1.html

"On 13 July 1995, Shahida, a 16 year old mother of a one year old child, got badly burnt. Shahida used to live in the Dnarapara slum, which surrounds Mother Teresa's Prem Daan centre in Calcutta. She had great difficulty trying to get herself admitted into a state hospital; there were no beds as usual. In the end she managed to get into the NRS Hospital, a state hospital. She was thrown out in less than three weeks, before her wounds had started to heal. She did not have the financial means to get private medical care - in India, even the middle classes cannot quite afford private medicine. So she picketed Calcutta Corporation in protest. She set herself up in a tent in front of the Victorian red brick building of Calcutta Corporation. She lay there a few weeks, while infection was slowing seeping into her burns. While her husband was at football matches and her father was busy selling fruit, her mother sat with her, crying silently, cuddling the baby.

Shahida failed to move the hearts of the Calcutta Corporation officials. Finally, a Corporation worker, Sonnasi Das, took pity, and contacted Dr Amitabha Das, from the charity HEAL. Dr Das had this to say, 'though the immunity of pavement dwellers is high, bacteraemia and other infections could set in any time and she will die. She needs skin grafting, otherwise she will develop contracture, that is, her calves will get stuck to her lower thighs.' The painkillers Dr Das prescribed Shahida, still on the pavement, did not quite help: 'The pain is so great and even when I try to sit up, blood trickles down my legs.'

During her various representations for assistance, she appealed to Mother Teresa for financial help, so she could buy private care. (Contrary to international mythology, Mother Teresa does not have a hospital in Calcutta). Shahida appealed to the Missionaries of Charity not because they are a natural port of call for helpless Calcuttans, but because they were one of the many she approached, and also because, being from the slum beside Prem Daan, she was a neighbour of theirs. The appeal went up to Mother directly who very considerately asked her nuns 'to look into the matter.'

Shahida was swiftly turned down by the Missionaries of Charity, because she was 'not destitute enough', i.e., she was 'a family case', a clause regularly applied during the vetting of indigents by the Missionaries of Charity in India; the organisation is ever watchful that 'family cases' do not slip in. Finally Shahida's fortunes turned. On 30 August, she was accepted by the Islamia Hospital, for free. The Rotary Club of Calcutta also made a modest financial contribution toward her treatment. She was given adequate care and treatment, and was nursed in a private room. She improved, and within days she was throwing tantrums like any other 16 year old. By this time she had begun to make headlines, and the entire city breathed a sigh of relief.

On 21 October 1995, Shahida died, leaving behind a baby. Her death made headline news in Calcutta, where pavement dwellers and slum dwellers are dispensable. Everybody blamed the government and the corporation, for their heartlessness and lack of facilities. Nobody pointed a recriminatory finger at Mother Teresa, as she is not seen in Calcutta as a saviour. The world however sees her as such, and Mother Teresa has done a great deal over the last few decades to make the world think that way."

[smirkymonkey]

74. Mother Theresa's own words from a 1981 Press Conference"

Question: "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."

Me: Really?? Explain How. And who are you to sacrifice OTHER PEOPLE to help the world? Sacrifice yourself, but to make the poor suffer to advance your own f**ed up religious/political agenda is sociopathic. (I think she and W would have gotten along famously.)

[Elspeth]

76. You' ve got to read the book at the link, though. There are even better lines there.

Although thanks for posting this.

[smirkymonkey]

87. I will check it out, this thread has kind of renewed my interest in

it again. Again, it's the hypocrisy and the misery that she brought to others for the sake of her own narrow minded agenda that I find so outrageous. I don't see that she helped out of goodness, but out of a desire to leverage her "mission" for money. (BTW, she died very wealthy and in comfort.)

Thanks :hi:

[jonnyblitz]

67. "Mother Theresa's House of Illusions" by Susan Shields

<snip>
"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 Francisco, 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.

Three of Mother Teresa's teachings that are fundamental to her religious congregation are all the more dangerous because they are believed so sincerely by her sisters. Most basic is the belief that as long as a sister obeys she is doing God's will. Another is the belief that the sisters have leverage over God by choosing to suffer. Their suffering makes God very happy. He then dispenses more graces to humanity. The third is the belief that any attachment to human beings, even the poor being served, supposedly interferes with love of God and must be vigilantly avoided or immediately uprooted. The efforts to prevent any attachments cause continual chaos and confusion, movement and change in the congregation. Mother Teresa did not invent these beliefs - they were prevalent in religious congregations before Vatican II - but she did everything in her power (which was great) to enforce them.

Once a sister has accepted these fallacies she will do almost anything. She can allow her health to be destroyed, neglect those she vowed to serve, and switch off her feelings and independent thought. She can turn a blind eye to suffering, inform on her fellow sisters, tell lies with ease, and ignore public laws and regulations.

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."
<snip>

more:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/shields_18_1.html

[Elspeth]

68. Wow. That's an amazing excerpt

Thanks.

[smirkymonkey]

75. Especially her last line....

" I shelved my objections and hoped that one day I would understand why Mother wanted to gather so much money (millions), when she herself had taught us that even storing tomato sauce showed lack of trust in Divine Providence."

[Elspeth]

77. "Do as I say, not as I do..."

Same old story. Thanks for posting this.

[entanglement]

84. The cult of Teresa lives on and shows the power of the media to make a saint out of a corrupt bigot

who was responsible the deaths of hundreds of people and fraud on a massive scale. A shocking account of her misdeeds is given in a rare work, written by a physician who worked in one of her "hospitals". It's called "Mother Teresa:The Final Verdict" and it is considerably more damning than anything written by Hitchens.

[Elspeth]

86. The first three chapters of "Mother Teresa: the Final Verdict" are free here at

http://www.meteorbooks.com/

Excellent book, and extremely well-documented.

[goodgd_yall]

85. I don't find it sad at all

I feel more respect for her. Who wouldn't doubt the existence of a christian God when seeing such misery day after day. At least it seems that a person SHOULD question the existence of a supposedly loving, all-powerful being when confronted with unending suffering, at least at some point in one's life. Some believers are so smugly confident in their belief. That is what bothers me.

[REP]

89. Oh, so sad

"That's Jesus kissing you." I hope she never stops feeling that pain.