Mother Teresa stamp protest

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by crocoduck_hunter

Well, Christopher Hitchens can't really be called an objective source, but here's what he said after her death.

Hitchens was so famous for how much he disliked Mother Theresa that the Catholic Church asked him to serve as the pseuo-"Devil's Advocate" at the procedure to determine her beautification.

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

I have no love at all for Mother Teresa or the cult of personality that has sprung up around her and it has little to nothing to do with her stance on abortion.

When discussing Agnesë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu what passes for charity is her basically setting up flop houses where the poor could die in misery via the rules of the Catholic church instead of in misery in the street right outside. The woman basically had some sort of suffering fetish, making it clear that she saw great value in the horrible conditions the people were in and intentionally did little to help them in any real, objective sense.

I've had two friends serve in her homes for extended periods of time, one of whom who served directly with Mother Theresa herself and one who served at one of her homes several years after she died. Neither one was Catholic when they went (one was agnostic, the other protestant). Neither had the slightest bit of love for "the rules of the Catholic Church". And both were deeply affected by the work there and came back with enormous praise. Yes, people died there. And sometimes the process was miserable, just as it is everywhere else. But there was an enormous degree of love and care shown to people that seemed, at least to the people who went, to really make a difference in reducing their suffering.

I don't know an enormous amount about her - I saw a film sometime and have read a Hitchens articles and a couple other articles. But the experience of the people I know who actually worked there showed a lot more than how you are trying to portray it.

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by RivkahChaya

From what I understand, she kept abandoned babies in sub-minimal care, didn't feed them much, especially if they appeared ill, didn't get them care from doctors, even though she had plenty of doctors offering, because she claimed she was tending their souls, not their bodies. She made sure each one was baptised, and believed that suffering made them closer to Jesus, and assured them a place in Heaven.

She would show visitors a nursery that would have been immediately condemned in the US, and all the children taken away by CPS, and told people that this was how she fought abortion.

Her theology was to get them born and baptised, suffer through short lives, and then they would live forever after in splendor and glory in the presence of Jesus.

Is all this stuff just urban legend material that you heard rumors about or stuff that you got from people who had direct knowledge of what actually went on?

[crescent]

She would show visitors a nursery that would have been immediately condemned in the US, and all the children taken away by CPS, and told people that this was how she fought abortion.

From what I have seen of India, there is nothing remotely like CPS. They die on the streets, after having lived under a shelter made from garbage bags (said shelter being inches from the pavement of a major highway, or even in the median between lanes). When I was last in India (ten years ago), the poverty shocked me - and I had already been living in Nepal (one of the five poorest countries in the world) for two years. India had a huge disparity in wealth, with some of the wealthiest people in the world living there, and a good sized middle class, but the poorest of the poor suffered beyond anything I saw in countries with much lower per capita incomes.

The conditions in Mother Theresa's hospitals, orphanages and hospices were no doubt far substandard to anything in the industrialized world - but there was no alternative, at least not for many years. She fed them substandard food, but the alternative was starvation. The orphanages sucked, but the alternative was to die of starvation or dysentry, or to even be murdered by your own parents if you happened to be female. At the time she started founding hospices, a common alternative (for women) was suicide/murder after the death of your husband, and the practice of burning women alive on the pyre of the dead husband (sati) probably still occurred in rural areas.

America and western Europe are technological dreamlands. We've no idea how most of the world (the real world) lives.

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by RivkahChaya

Her theology was to get them born and baptised, suffer through short lives, and then they would live forever after in splendor and glory in the presence of Jesus.

Originally Posted by snopes

I think the essence of that article can be summed up in a single statement from it: "Worse than AIDS is the contamination of sin."

The whole article is about "restoring the Image of God in the person," not about feeding or providing medical care to the starving and sick.

Exactly. Mother Teresa cared about a very specific version of caring for people while they died so they would be right with her version of God. She was actively opposed to alleviating suffering, solving problems, or helping people do anything but keep their souls clean.

She said it as much her self that she wanted people to be in pain and misery in order to be closer to God.

Originally Posted by RivkahChaya

Norman Borlaug rocks. People who think it's horrible to have genetically modified food are always people from countries that have never experienced a famine. They should have to go live in Mexico or Pakistan, in an alternate universe with no Norman Borlaug in it.

That's a nicer way of putting it then Penn Jillette did in their show on food advancings. I think every person who fights advancing in food technology should have this phrase carved into their forehead.

"Unless you and yours are starving you need to... shut... the... f*ck... up.*

[AnglRdr]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

She said it as much her self that she wanted people to be in pain and misery in order to be closer to God.

She did not. She said suffering was part of being closer to God. I think it is a Catholicism thing.

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by AnglRdr

She did not. She said suffering was part of being closer to God. I think it is a Catholicism thing.

And you don't see how that's inherently oppositional to actually stopping suffering?

[Moku]

She can't have been that opposed to treatment and relief of suffering. This appears to be the hospital *she* went to when she was poorly.
http://www.adityabirlahospital.com/a...s/about_us.htm

[RCIAG]

As I was reading this thread I scrolled down to the "Similar Threads" section below & this thread title was there:

""Tramp stamp" = anal sex"

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by Moku

She can't have been that opposed to treatment and relief of suffering. This appears to be the hospital *she* went to when she was poorly.
http://www.adityabirlahospital.com/a...s/about_us.htm

Can you provide a cite for that, or is that an urban legend too? The hospital you linked appears to have started operating in 2006. Mother Teresa died in 1997.

[AnglRdr]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

And you don't see how that's inherently oppositional to actually stopping suffering?

I don't think I've defended her theology, have I?

She has, though, alleviated some suffering. Did she alleviate enough suffering? Did she do more than me? Did she do more than you? Who knows.

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by BringTheNoise

I thought they euthanised everyone at 30?

I ran.

Originally Posted by AnglRdr

She has, though, alleviated some suffering. Did she alleviate enough suffering? Did she do more than me? Did she do more than you? Who knows.

No one's trying to make a stamp honoring my humanitarian accomplishments. No one's tried to give me the Nobel prize, either.

[AnglRdr]

Originally Posted by Lainie

No one's trying to make a stamp honoring my humanitarian accomplishments. No one's tried to give me the Nobel prize, either.

As far as you know. Nobel nominations are typically confidential.

I'm just saying. Or not. Nobody may ever know.

[snopes]

Originally Posted by crocoduck_hunter

Well, Christopher Hitchens can't really be called an objective source

Why not?      

[snopes]

Originally Posted by AnglRdr

And the reason for that was her messed up view of religion, that suffering was good for the soul. However, she was providing care that no one else was providing for people no one else would help, and doing so in a manner keeping with her faith.

Another way of phrasing that might be to say that what she was really about was ministering to her own spiritual needs.

[AnglRdr]

I think there is probably a great deal of truth to that.

[Artemis]

Originally Posted by AnglRdr

She has, though, alleviated some suffering. Did she alleviate enough suffering? Did she do more than me? Did she do more than you? Who knows.

So why honor her at all?

[AnglRdr]

I don't know. Ask those who are honoring her.

[Chloe]

Originally Posted by Eddylizard

A few years ago our Christmas stamps featured a series of quite frankly appalling rubbish paintings by four year olds. They were horrible to look at, truly they were. All I cared about was that if I stuck one on an envelope my letter would get there.

Sometimes I like to read your posts in the voice of David Brent.

[RivkahChaya]

Originally Posted by AnglRdr

And the reason for that was her messed up view of religion, that suffering was good for the soul. However, she was providing care that no one else was providing for people no one else would help, and doing so in a manner keeping with her faith.

Originally Posted by crescent

The conditions in Mother Theresa's hospitals, orphanages and hospices were no doubt far substandard to anything in the industrialized world - but there was no alternative, at least not for many years. She fed them substandard food, but the alternative was starvation. The orphanages sucked, but the alternative was to die of starvation or dysentry, or to even be murdered by your own parents if you happened to be female.

The problem is, it didn't have to be that way. People in North America and Europe, and the few wealthy people in South America sent her donations that totaled in the millions every year. She had the Nobel prize money on top of that, and a few single huge donations from very wealthy people. She may have given people starving on the streets two bowls of rice a day, when they otherwise would have had nothing, but she could have done more. She had the funds to provide three balanced meals a day to the people who were getting two bowls of rice. It might not be gourmet meals; but it would have been 1600-2200 calories, and just enough C, B-complex, and A vitamins to prevent things like scurvy, beri-beri, and rickets. The food she gave them wasn't even adequate for that.

By the way, in a children's biography I read of her, which didn't have footnotes, so I suppose it could be wrong, but since it was generally very, very "future saint" and all, I figure the inclusion of a negative story suggests it's likely to be true. Here it is: she decided at one point that all the sisters in her order should eat the same diet and the poorest people in Calcutta, so she was giving them rations of a couple of bowls of rice a day, and just a few vegetables once or twice a week. When the Pope heard that she was doing this, he ordered her to stop, and sent someone knowledgable about nutrition to oversee the sisters' diet.

Originally Posted by AnglRdr

She has, though, alleviated some suffering. Did she alleviate enough suffering? Did she do more than me? Did she do more than you? Who knows.

I'm not convinced she alleviated any suffereing, except maybe that of lower caste women who became Catholics and joined her order. Their lives probably improved significantly over what they would have been.