abe smith

uh.... Guess my position to this qy is, I consider it none of my business (= "not interested") to HAVE an opinion about the woman in qy; and/or (probably) about anyone else a public person either. Except, it's obvious! about my EMPLOYEES = the president of the USA and similar "public servants" who are paid out of my pocket to perform certain specific jobs for me/my benefit.

njhartsh

I fear I'm guilty of creating this tangent, but (for reasons that are amusingly self-referential--see (C) below) I'm afraid that I can't justify not responding:

This is true only in very special circumstances. The vast majority of the time you're simply incorrect: failing to save a drowning person is not a crime.

Omission is treated as action in cases like these only under three basic kinds of special circumstances:
(A) Defendant is responsible for creating the condition Victim is in (i.e., it's D who threw V into the lake in the first place)
(B) Defendant has some "special relationship" to Victim (i.e., D is V's parent--or D is a lifeguard with a statutory or contractual duty to rescue V)
(C) Defendant takes an affirmative action to rescue Victim, then abandons the rescue or conducts it in a reckless or negligent way (i.e., D tells the crowd, "Don't worry! I'll save V!", then gets in a motorboat and negligently runs over V with it, killing V).

It's important to note that the hypothetical heart surgeon I mentioned in my earlier post is definitely not implicated by any of these exceptions. I'm not sure that I'd want to live under a legal system where that surgeon is guilty of murder, winstonjen. How many deaths could you prevent by giving more money (or food, etc.) than you currently do to charity? Does that make you a murderer?

Back on-topic: To the (pretty minor) extent that it's this legal standard that matters in our moral evaluation of Mother Teresa, it seems to me that MT is definitely implicated by case (C). By grabbing sick people off the street and holding them in filthy hostels until they die with "dignity," it appears to me that the Missionaries of Charity are very much on the hook morally for those deaths. By packing them into vans, the Missionaries reduce the sick people's chances of getting actual help from slim to zero, and they fail to take even the simplest (given their resources) reasonable steps to provide real medical care for their charges. This I find unconscionable.

I also very much suspect that, given the outrageous sanitary conditions within Teresa's hostels, there are people who die in said hostels who would not die left on the street. How many people have perished from infections picked up from one of the hostels' ubiquitous dirty needles? If the answer is nonzero, the nuns are guilty of manslaughter or ("depraved indifference to human life") murder.

Four things:

1. hezekiah jones is correct: the variety of defamation you're talking about is libel, not slander.
2. You can't defame a dead person.
3. Name-calling ("bitch," "cunt") is not defamation.
4. It isn't defamation if the statements at issue are true (and Teresa would have the burden of proving that they weren't).

- Nathan, apparent Thread Counsel

Rhea

However, failing to attempt to stop a child abduction or rape or report one you saw IS a crime. If you do not try to help a child victim of a crime, you CAN be held liable in that crime as far as I know. I could be wrong, if so please let me know what evidence you consider to label me wrong, but I am pretty sure there have been court cases about people who failed to stop or report a crime and were subsequently charged for it.

njhartsh

Every time I think I'm on-topic, they keep pulling me back off!

I'm not as familiar with the black-letter law on this issue than on defamation or rescue. My perhaps mistaken impression is that some (American) jurisdictions have statutes on the books providing what you describe, while others do not. I believe that different states have different statutory approaches to people who fail to report (or intervene to stop) crimes. (A then-new Massachusetts law in this area was the subject of the final episode of Seinfeld, if anyone remembers.)

- Nathan

christ-on-a-stick

But of course! That "Good Samaritan Law" landed the whole lot of them in jail. Heh.

(May seem off-topic to start but bear with me...) I have always been of two minds on the whole "Good Samaritan Law" issue... on one hand, I can see how it could be considered criminal to fail to *report* something, but some of them seem to have gone to the extreme (IMHO) of criminalizing one's failure to directly INTERVENE in a situation. This, I feel, puts an unreasonable burden on the observer - unreasonable in that it is basically impeding their right to choose whether or not intervention is safe, or wise, or whatever. To me it takes away something of their freedom.

HOWEVER.... as this all relates to the MT debate... it's a whole different scenario. This woman was demonstrably presenting herself as someone that was helping and collecting millions from contributors for the purpose of helping that was not used for that purpose.

I realize it may seem that I am beating a dead horse here, but since not one MT's supporters here has addressed this issue, I think it is worth repeating until either someone has the integrity to address it or their continued silence speaks for itself.

hinduwoman

The rules for the Order were laid down by Mother Teresa herself, and it is she who insisted on the beauty of suffering, : and so their behaviour reflects directly on herself.
Chatterjee and others have detailed how badly neglected the patients are. Some of the houses might be decently functioning due to the head Sister, but most are not. The reports by people who have gone to work in such places all tell the same thing: the patients are filthy and neglected, and denied any dignity.
She would not accept anyone with family and children would be taken in only if the mother signed away her rights --- is that how compassion for the poor are shown?
Tim Stillwell who came to serve at Kalighat said what stuck him most was the "total lack of dignity" with which the residents were treated. And that Sabine Grant is also PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.

Mother Teresa had human resources in abundance. Even if the number of nuns and priests are not adequate, there are volunteers every year from all over Europe and America eagerly coming to serve at the homes. Above all there was enough money lying around to hire people.

What really angers people here is the gap between her public image and her actual performance. Of course she is a celebrity , but she herself aided in this process. Chatterjee gives a balanced view of what the Order has done: it does some good, but nowhere near what it is portrayed as doing. On the contrary it treats the people under their care badly. As Chatterjee points out, it is telling that the house at Nirmal Hriday is now used as a dosshouse by healthy beggars; beds go empty there now, because there is no rush among the starving or the sick poor to come there.

I repeat, to deny painkillers to those who need them but taking them for herself is hypocrisy. If she truly believed suffering meant Jesus is kissing you, why did she not accept Jesus' kiss for herself?
She did not allow her homes to maintain even elementary standards of hygiene or medication. Maintaining them is not a matter of money, and how can such dirty surroundings demonstrate love and dignity when you can give them cleanliness? Again, she withheld medicine from the sick and handicapped when she had them : is that not a crime?

Chatterjee points out that the picture given by the sisters of living in absolute poverty like Jesus is not true. They eat well, ride in taxis, check in at expensive medical centres, do shopping at upsclae markets. These are the very things that had been denied to their charges.

Mother Teresa exaggerated her claims. For example saying she fed 7000, or 9000 people at her homes. She said she supplied fertility charts and temperatures to the pavement dwellers --- a lie. She wrote that in Calcutta she had established 102 centres to teach natural family planning method --- there is not one. She said in Calcutta she had 59 centres in 1977 --- then she had only four. She had kept on saying "we don't accept Govt. donations", and so Chatterjee had listed the donations and buildings she had taken from govts all over the world. Chatterjee describes her as being economical with the truth --- is that the saintly behaviour we are supposed to emulate?

Chatterjee gives one example of what he considers is wrong with her methods:
In 1990 the Charity built 48 houses for the poor in a suburb. They however refused to pay the govt. for the land. After wrangling, the govt. relented. But the civic body was cash strapped and it would have been nice if she had paid for it when she could afford nunneries in Scandinavia. But afterwards it was found that 43 of the 48 families that moved in were Catholics --- "a remarkable coincidence in a city where the catholic population is less than 1.5%".
In Chapter 11, Chatterjee provides a breakdown of various charities working all over India, particularly in Calcutta and compares them with what the Sisters do. For example Ramkrishna Mission which earns $16 million annually had set up village adoption schemes with emphasis on vocational skills, family planning, soil testing etc. Chatterjee says that the Sisters probably have more charity, but the RM does more useful work. Bharat Sevasharam Sangha has scholarships for poor students, mobile dispensary units in villages, etc. but the Sisters never go to the villages anywhere in India. CINI is the biggest children's organization in Calcutta without --- but Teresa's should be the one surely? And the list goes on. Each of these charities have done much more than the Sisters, yet sheer hype has turned Teresa into a saint.

The question that comes up again and again is what did she do with all that was donated? She had so much money --- and she did so little, while giving the impression she has done so much! That is really what angers her critics. We gave her money to improve the living standards of the poor, not to run nunneries or swell the bankaccounts of Vatican. Dr. Richard Dean, who says his experiences with Mother Teresa is partly responsible for leaving Catholicism, makes the point that "I found some Hindu organizations who were doing excellent work with far less resources". And that is the rub: if these Hindu organizations can do more work with less resources, why has not Mother Teresa with her enormous resources done as much even? Apparently to her the abundance she received was proof Jesus loved her, not that they were to be used.
Defenders say that at least she provided love and compassion, and give the dying dignity. This would have worked if she had been a poor peasant woman. But her wealth and influence made her one of the most powerful people on earth --- and that is all the help she could offer? She has done some good which others don't do --- but she wasted her resources when she could have done so much more, and above all she did not care about the poor as human beings.

hinduwoman

She did not hate women precisely.
It was just that she bought into the whole Chistian theology thing of women being babymachines first and that women are inferior to men.


BTW, I see two votes for "Author is evil" option. Is it trolling or are the voters serious?

Jacey

hinduwoman-

Great work. I, however, doubt that Sabine and the others will really address your points, if they choose to respond at all.

The Naked Mage

Overdue! :notworthy

christ-on-a-stick

Sadly, Jacey, I think you are correct.

So far we've got two people on this thread who have stated their explicit admiration for MT.

Neither of them has addressed the issues of MT's blatant hypocrisy and apparent fraudulent practices .

I guess sometimes silence *does* speak louder than words, eh?