Never forget

[demi-conservative]

the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.

And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems.

[Cow Poke]

This was always a problem for liberal "biggies" when trying to honor her work, knowing she detested their approval of the slaughter of the innocents.

[Starlight]

This was always a problem for liberal "biggies" when trying to honor her work, knowing she detested their approval of the slaughter of the innocents.

Yeah, I understand that her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech had people face-palming super hard at her idiocy as she claimed abortion was the world's biggest problem.

I've not read/seen all that much about her to be honest, but I understand some liberals absolutely loathe her and view her as a con-artist who didn't care about the poor at all. Christopher Hitchens, for example, made this documentary, which I haven't watched, about what an awful person she was.

[Cow Poke]

Yeah, I understand that her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech had people face-palming super hard at her idiocy as she claimed abortion was the world's biggest problem.

I've not read/seen all that much about her to be honest, but I understand some liberals absolutely loathe her and view her as a con-artist who didn't care about the poor at all. Christopher Hitchens, for example, made this documentary, which I haven't watched, about what an awful person she was.

Wow. So, she devoted her entire life to living with and serving the poor... to gain what?



ETA: Hmmmmmm....

[KingsGambit]

The one charge against her that I think even makes sense is that she supposedly got pleasure from watching people suffer. I don't know enough about her to know whether this is true or whether it's taken way out of context... can anybody who's read more about her shed some light? Spartacus?

[Teallaura]

Voyeurs who enjoy watching suffering generally don't try to alleviate that suffering.

[KingsGambit]

Voyeurs who enjoy watching suffering generally don't try to alleviate that suffering.

The specific claim tends to ride with her refusal to give patients analgesics to relieve pain. What I am not sure about is specifically why she did this.

[Cow Poke]

The one charge against her that I think even makes sense is that she supposedly got pleasure from watching people suffer. I don't know enough about her to know whether this is true or whether it's taken way out of context... can anybody who's read more about her shed some light? Spartacus?

I'm seeing some pretty strange stuff concerning her associations with ... um.. . undesirables, and... waiting for somebody who knows more about this to weigh in.

[Starlight]

The main NZ media's currently got an article up about the major critiques of her. It cites three different people who view her as a fraud, and cites a long list of different claims they make about her, but it doesn't really dig into whether there is good evidence for their views or not.

[rogue06]

Yeah, I understand that her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech had people face-palming super hard at her idiocy as she claimed abortion was the world's biggest problem.

I've not read/seen all that much about her to be honest, but I understand some liberals absolutely loathe her and view her as a con-artist who didn't care about the poor at all. Christopher Hitchens, for example, made this documentary, which I haven't watched, about what an awful person she was.

She said that abortion was greatest destroyer of peace because it is a direct murder by the mother herself and FWIU had been saying this for many, many years and never wavered from it so it really should have not come to a shock to anyone, but I can see that someone who thinks people should be able to abort babies several weeks after they're born would see such opposition as bizarre.

I read an article by Hitchens slamming Mother Teresa basically complaining that she wasn't always meek but could be tough as nails and slamming her for running a hospice rather than a hospital (using that to suggest she didn't really care about people)

[Spartacus]

I'll throw 3 links at y'all and then some of my own comments.

The first isn't actually about Mother Teresa-- it's about Damien of Molokai, a Catholic priest who served at a leper colony in Hawaii. After his death, a Protestant minister in Hawaii wrote a letter critical of Fr. Damien to a colleague, and the letter was subsequently published. Robert Louis Stevenson noticed the letter, and wrote this in response: (it's a bit longer than your average modern blog post, but also rather more edifying-- and entertaining)
http://www.fullbooks.com/Father-Damien.html

And two articles from the last few years defending Mother Teresa.
http://aleteia.org/2016/04/05/5-resp...mother-teresa/
This is probably the most direct and succinct response. If you have time for nothing else, read it.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-excl...nd-her-critics
This one goes into a bit more depth and detail, engages more with sources and the like.

Mother Teresa was neither a doctor nor a social worker nor an economist, nor did she ever claim to be: those are the wrong standards by which to judge her. We can argue that we could be more effective at remedying poverty than Mother Teresa was, but even that is missing the point, since that wasn't really her goal. She never pretended to be trying to solve the socioeconomic conditions of poverty. She was a nun who spent most of her life living among the poorest of the poor and comforting the dying.

[Tassman]

Yeah, I understand that her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech had people face-palming super hard at her idiocy as she claimed abortion was the world's biggest problem.

I've not read/seen all that much about her to be honest, but I understand some liberals absolutely loathe her and view her as a con-artist who didn't care about the poor at all. Christopher Hitchens, for example, made this documentary, which I haven't watched, about what an awful person she was.

Your video is an eye-opener, I suggest you watch it. She was a self-promoting fraud whose only contribution to the alleviation of suffering was to teach the poor and suffering to "accept their lot".

[Starlight]

And two articles from the last few years defending Mother Teresa.
http://aleteia.org/2016/04/05/5-resp...mother-teresa/
This is probably the most direct and succinct response. If you have time for nothing else, read it.

Hmm, the general tone of "the people critiquing her are atheists, who are wrong because they're atheists" is less than rationally convincing. The subheading starts off on a terrible foot with "If you don't believe in God, it's hard to believe in good" and it gets less convincing from there.

Mother Teresa was neither a doctor nor a social worker nor an economist, nor did she ever claim to be: those are the wrong standards by which to judge her. We can argue that we could be more effective at remedying poverty than Mother Teresa was, but even that is missing the point, since that wasn't really her goal. She never pretended to be trying to solve the socioeconomic conditions of poverty. She was a nun who spent most of her life living among the poorest of the poor and comforting the dying.

Well the thing is that she had a reputation in the liberal West for good deeds helping the poor. So much so that her very name to an extent became widely used to refer to a perfect ideal of the kind of person who leads an utterly unselfish life and dedicates themselves to helping others. So much so, that she was given a Nobel Peace Prize for it. I vaguely recall reading a short article about how great she was at school when I was 10. Rightly or wrongly, Mother Teresa has had a global reputation (that appears to have been significantly self-promoted) for dedicating her life to unselfishly helping the poor in a way that secular liberals could and did idealize.

But one of the biggest complaints from her critics seems to be that actually that way of looking at her life is not accurate, and very little if any of what she did could be accurately characterized as actually helping the poor. So to say essentially "her critics are wrong because actually 'remedying poverty... wasn't really her goal', and actually she just lived among the poor and shared their suffering... and isn't that a beautiful thing in a religious sort of way?" seems essentially to be to say that her critics are largely right.

A couple of the Catholic defenses of her life and works I've just read take what seems to me a very surprising line of argument, and try to paint her as a person who gained in great spiritual growth from the way she walked the path with those who were suffering, and thereby depict the goal of her ministry as spiritual growth on her part rather than any actual help given to any poor people in India, and thus view her as a kind of religious exemplar of spiritual growth in the same sort of way the ancient Eastern Orthodox church viewed Simeon Stylites who gained spiritual growth by living at the top of a pole for 37 years. Thus, their defenses of her make her sound to me like a person who was exploiting the suffering of others for a selfish end of perceived 'spiritual growth' on her part, while doing little or nothing to actually alleviate their suffering, which sounds a lot like a person taking pleasure in doing disaster tourism. And this seems why they're so insistent that atheists just "can't understand" the truly religious spiritual components of how what she was doing were so great... because liberals and atheists rely on normal mundane ideas like alleviating suffering or helping the poor, and those things were a little lacking in her ministry. Instead she seems a bit reminiscent of the medieval flagellants who see religious value in their self-inflicted suffering.

[Spartacus]

Your video is an eye-opener, I suggest you watch it. She was a self-promoting fraud whose only contribution to the alleviation of suffering was to teach the poor and suffering to "accept their lot".

Please do read the essay by Robert Louis Stevenson.

But in case you can't be convinced to read that remarkable piece of literature, here's the section of the First Things article directed against that Hitchens documentary:

The remarkable thing about Hell’s Angel is that it purports to defend the poor against Mother Teresa’s supposed exploitation of them, while never actually interviewing any on screen. Not a single person cared for by the Missionaries speaks on camera. Was this because they had a far higher opinion of Blessed Teresa than Hitchens would permit in his film?

Avoiding the people at the heart of Teresa’s ministry, Hitchens posed for the camera and let roll a series of ad hominem attacks and unsubstantiated accusations, as uninformed as they were cruel. He called Muggeridge—one of the most acclaimed journalists of the twentieth century—an “old fraud and mountebank,” mocked his belief in the supernatural, and even referred to Mother Teresa as a “presumable virgin.”

She was denounced for meeting with unsavory politicians and businessmen, in order to assist the poor, but ironically, it is Hitchens who used the film to promote Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a notorious ex-priest whose record as Haiti’s President was symbolized by corruption and abuse. Of Teresa’s travels abroad, Hitchens declared: “She may or may not comfort the afflicted, but she has certainly never been known to afflict the comfortable”—but the documentary shows her doing exactly that, decrying abortion in front of affluent pro-choice audiences.

Hitchens expressed shock that Teresa encouraged victims to forgive those who harmed them, causing many to wonder whether he was aware of the basic tenets of Christianity.

The height of absurdity came when Hitchens assailed Mother Teresa for allegedly giving her heart to greater Albania, “a cause that was once smiled upon by Pope Pius IX and his friend Benito Mussolini.” It would have been hard for Pius IX to have been friends with Benito Mussolini, given that Pius died in 1878, and Mussolini was not born until 1883, but why should Hitchens be concerned about historical facts, when he was having such fun making them up?

[Spartacus]

Hmm, the general tone of "the people critiquing her are atheists, who are wrong because they're atheists" is less than rationally convincing. The subheading starts off on a terrible foot with "If you don't believe in God, it's hard to believe in good" and it gets less convincing from there.

More often than not, sub-headers are concocted by editors to make a piece more clickbait-y. If clickbait deters you from reading the article, then it's a wonder you enter half the TWeb threads that you do.

Well the thing is that she had a reputation in the liberal West for good deeds helping the poor. So much so that her very name to an extent became widely used to refer to a perfect ideal of the kind of person who leads an utterly unselfish life and dedicates themselves to helping others. So much so, that she was given a Nobel Peace Prize for it. I vaguely recall reading a short article about how great she was at school when I was 10. Rightly or wrongly, Mother Teresa has had a global reputation (that appears to have been significantly self-promoted) for dedicating her life to unselfishly helping the poor in a way that secular liberals could and did idealize.

But one of the biggest complaints from her critics seems to be that actually that way of looking at her life is not accurate, and very little if any of what she did could be accurately characterized as actually helping the poor. So to say essentially "her critics are wrong because actually 'remedying poverty... wasn't really her goal', and actually she just lived among the poor and shared their suffering... and isn't that a beautiful thing in a religious sort of way?" seems essentially to be to say that her critics are largely right.

A couple of the Catholic defenses of her life and works I've just read take what seems to me a very surprising line of argument, and try to paint her as a person who gained in great spiritual growth from the way she walked the path with those who were suffering, and thereby depict the goal of her ministry as spiritual growth on her part rather than any actual help given to any poor people in India, and thus view her as a kind of religious exemplar of spiritual growth in the same sort of way the ancient Eastern Orthodox church viewed Simeon Stylites who gained spiritual growth by living at the top of a pole for 37 years. Thus, their defenses of her make her sound to me like a person who was exploiting the suffering of others for a selfish end of perceived 'spiritual growth' on her part, while doing little or nothing to actually alleviate their suffering, which sounds a lot like a person taking pleasure in doing disaster tourism. And this seems why they're so insistent that atheists just "can't understand" the truly religious spiritual components of how what she was doing were so great... because liberals and atheists rely on normal mundane ideas like alleviating suffering or helping the poor, and those things were a little lacking in her ministry. Instead she seems a bit reminiscent of the medieval flagellants who see religious value in their self-inflicted suffering.

I was born in '92; Mother Teresa died in '97. The image I had of MT for most of my life was exactly what you describe being advanced by secular liberals. And I agree with you that it isn't accurate. But it is one thing to have a realistic picture of what she was and what she tried to do, and another to advance absurd theories about supposed sadism. She spent her life comforting the dying. Is that, or is that not, a worthwhile project?