Mamma Mia!
Rick Shumaker rshumake@idt.net
Sat, 6 Sep 1997 11:15:52 -0700 (00873591352, 01bcbaf0$e91adb20$539793cd@rick)
Yoel wrote about Mother Teresa:
>A couple of people have written to criticize me for saying what I have
>said. Fine, that's your right. I'm actually surprised I have not heard from
>more critics.
SHUMAKER:
Most of Mother Teresa's defenders have blindly swallowed the propaganda.
They owe themselves a look at the Christopher Hitchens book that Yoel
mentioned, _Missionary Position_. The remainder of this posting is part of a
review on it from www.amazon.com:
How could anybody write a debunking book about Mother Teresa and her
Missionaries of Charity order? Well, in this little cruise missile of a
book, Hitchens quickly establishes that the idea is not without point. After
all, what is Mother Teresa doing hanging out with a dictator's wife in Haiti
and accepting over a million dollars from Charles Keating? The most riveting
material in the book is contained in two letters: one from Mother Teresa to
Judge Lance Ito--then weighing what sentence to dole out to the convicted
Keating--which cited all the work Keating has done "to help the poor," and
another from a Los Angeles deputy D.A., Paul Turley, back to Mother Teresa
that eloquently stated that rather than working to reduce Keating's
sentence, she should return the money he gave her to its rightful owners,
the defrauded bond-holders. (Significantly, Mother Teresa never replied.)
And why do former missionary workers and visiting doctors consistently
observe that the order's medical practices seem so inadequate, especially
given all the money that comes in? (Hitchens acidly observes that on the
other hand, Mother Teresa herself always manages to receive world-class
medical care.) Hitchens's answer is that Mother Teresa is first and foremost
interested not in providing medical treatment, but in furthering Catholic
doctrine and--quite literally--becoming a saint.