Sabine Grant

Just to remind you.. I have made it clear that I have no particular admiration or loathing of MT. It appears that you struggle with the fact that I still will not " jump on the bashing ban wagon".( my quote from previous posts).

It seems a reality that the majority is uncomfortable with a minority which declines to join the common current.

Yellum Notnef

Not to change the subject,but your comment reminds me of our country during the days and weeks following the Newdow/pledge ruling.

But maybe "uncomfortable" isn't a strong enough word to describe the feelings of the majority during the pledge fiasco.

njhartsh

Hi, Sabine. I'm interested to know what you think about my response concerning your attempts to differentiate Mother Teresa from people whose "bashing band wagon" I presume all of us are on--Hitler, Stalin, McVeigh, etc. I don't understand what basic difference you have shown between our reaction to Teresa and your reaction to Hitler et al.

And I have no particular admiration or loathing of this point of yours. But you have expressed a very definite opinion of criticism of Mother Teresa:

You are, I suspect, correct that no one who has posted to this thread ever met or had a relationship with Teresa. But several of us nonetheless seriously disagree with you that a negative "evaluat[ion]" of her under such conditions should "amaz[e]" anyone. As we've noted, we critics believe that the kind of things Hitchens and Chatterjee have documented Teresa doing deserve to be denounced, not countenanced. Based on the stated facts, I hope that that conclusion isn't actually all that "amazing" to you.

Leave your personal feelings out of it if you'd like--in the abstract, if the factual situation is exactly what we have stated it is, doesn't Teresa merit moral scorn?

Do you think this is news to people who criticize Mother Teresa?

- Nathan

hinduwoman

sorry, not heresy but hearsay.
If you had looked carefully at the images then you would have seen that it is not the poorest of the poor who came to her, but the politicans and journalists, and the respectable middle class. Many interviewed admitted they have come merely because she is famous. The rest were nuns, foreign dignitaries and members of other religious orders. In fact the vernacular opapers complained that Calcutta failed to mourn her. The American magazine worker's world asked, "arenot poor people grateful?"

Rhea

I am most amazed by the utter refusal to even CONSIDER the wrongs she has done. Tangents off into one person's swear, etc. Many excellent FACTS have been presented, yet the worshipful will not engage.

She is BEYOND REPROACH. She is a person who can get away with anything and she will not be questioned. Facts upon facts upon facts. Completely refusing to engage in the TOPIC.

Most amazing.

What is an atheist to think of people who WILL NOT judge ACTS because of the person who committed them.

I shouldn't be amazed, this is not the first time that Christians in general and Catholics in particular have refused to indict people for CRIMES because the people who committed them were BEYOND REPROACH.

Yet still, I am amazed, again.

PsycheDelia

*sigh* i made a vow that i would not come to the II discussion forums till my exams were over, but now i am mad at myself for not getting into this a little earlier.

my view on mother teresa:

she was an old school catholic, and her thinking did not always reflect the changes in the post-vatican 2 catholic church (similar in many ways to the present pope, who is actually reversing a lot of the changes in the modern church) - to expect her to be open to the idea to contraception or abortion is a little naive.

she was ambitious, and perhaps a little power-hungry. anyone who could break away from her order to found one of her own had to be. therefore it follows that she would court the rich and powerful, and be publicity hungry to some extent at least.

i never met her in person, though i have met people who have met her - they spoke about her apparent humility etc. but it did seem a little strange that a woman with such a cult of personality around her could be so very humble.

as for what she and her nuns did, there i do have some opinions - actually some pretty strong ones. if anyone has been to india (or any similar 'developing' nation) they would understand the sheer mind-numbing poverty and misery that a person encounters every single day. and very few people do anything about that. indians have a strange way of attributing unfavorable circumstances to fate, and this fatalism leads them to ignore the sufferings of others as well. the general attitude is that the person must have done something in this life or in past lives to deserve these circumstances. mother teresa's missionairies of charity are among the few who do something.

i grew up in bombay, one of the largest cities in india. i clearly remember an episode from my teenage years - a man was lying by the side of a street, suffering, on the point of death, as people walked by with nothing more than a curious glance in his direction. i was there when a van pulled up with two nuns from the missionaries of charity. they got out, examined him for wounds and found he had a gory maggot infested wound on his leg. they cleaned him up there, even as i was gagging, picked him up and put him in the van. someone asked them where they were taking him and one of them answered with the stock phrase 'to die with dignity'. if he spent what were clearly his last few hours on this earth in a place even slightly better than the side of a street, then i think it was a good thing. sure they could have made sure that he got the care he desperately needed, and i do sometimes wonder about the money that people donated to the order, but there are a lot of poor and sick and dying and destitute on those streets, and the missionaries of charity are frequently seen among them. i know for a fact that if those nuns are called to the site at which someone is sick or dying, they show up, and do something - better than the nothing that other people do.

a close member of my family adopted a child from one of the orphanages run by the missionaries of charity. i did not see the inside of that orphanage, but the adoptive parents did, and they did not mention that the children were abandoned and uncared for. the baby, whom i did see on the day they brought her home was clean and relatively healthy (the only problem was an infection in her ear), and most certainly did not seem to be suffering from physical neglect.

i was raised catholic, and after a lot of experience with nuns, believe me - i do not like them. i view all of them with suspicion, and for the most part a lot of them lead lives of comfort. not the missionaries of charity. they are probably the only religious order that i have some respect for, because they back up their prayers and their posturing with action.

was she a hypocrite to accept treatment in the good hospitals while the poor she supposedly cared for died in sub-standard conditions? yeah... probably. but once again, do not underestimate the cult of personality that grew around her. every time she got ill you had doctors offering to treat her for free, people concered about what would happen when she was gone... she was after all, a celebrity, and was treated as one.

so what she did and did not do is a moot point in my opinion. what she left behind is tangible, and that legacy is not altogether a bad one.

one last point - a lot of the criticism directed at her is being amplified by the hindu fundamentalist wave that is currently sweeping india. what i mean here is that we should always consider the source and evaluate it for propaganda. i am opposed to fundamentalism in any religion - i think it is a horrific example of the way in which religion can be used to manipulate people, and it's probably one of the main reasons for me being non-religious. and on that note, perhaps we should also be a little wary of atheist fundamentalism of sorts, a trend i seem to find in some so called 'free thinkers' who espouse the 'my way is the only way' of thinking that we denounce in religious people.

that's all for now... back to my books

hinduwoman

Psychedelia, I am glad that the Sisters in Bombay are doing something; but the book points out that overall they do not do much and is mainly concentrated on glorifying Teresa. Teresa herself contributes to the image.
Certainly Hindu fundamentalism has helped in amplifying criticism, but was not the problem before that no one dared to criticize her before because of her reputation as living saint, and a member of minority to boot?

Chatterjee might be an atheist fundmentalist, but he presents facts in his books --- the facts must be refuted and contrary facts presented (for example you posted one incident you saw in Bombay), instead of suspecting the source.

Gemma Therese

Psyche --

Just curious -- in what ways has John Paul II reveresed the changes of Vatican II?

Gemma Therese

Sabine Grant

I appreciate your approach and your personal experience.

Sabine Grant

Salut again... I have lengthly explained the reasons why I do not consider Winstonjen's evaluation that MT is a women's hater as valid. I have also explained why I do not join this " bashing band wagon". Rather than repeat myself, I will point you to Psychedelia's post wich demonstrates that " gray area" I happen to value over the extremes.
Draw whichever conclusion you wish to draw....at this point, I am satisfied with the presence of Psychedelia whose PERSONAL experience gives us all an opportunity to consider another perception. Whether you decide to consider it is your choice.