[Vision2020] She's no saint!

[Rosemary Huskey]

I've long thought Mother Teresa was a publicity hungry, scabby old freak.
(Thank you Christopher Hitchens for the book Holy Cow.) Today, I found this
on Huff Post.  It is worth reading.

Rose Huskey


"A new study by Canadian academics says Mother Teresa was a product of hype
<http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-03-02/uk/37389641_1_mother
-teresa-vatican-study>  who housed the poor and sick in shoddy conditions,
despite her access to a fortune.

The Times of India, reporting on the controversial essay, wrote that the
authors asserted Mother Teresa saw beauty in the downtrodden's suffering and
was far more willing to pray for them than provide practical medical care.
Meanwhile, researchers say, the Vatican engaged in a PR ploy as it threw
aside concerns about her suspicious financial dealings and contacts to forgo
the five-year waiting period to beatify her.

One of the researchers, Serge Larivee of the University of Montreal's
department of psychoeducation, told the school's website,
<http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news/20130301-mother-teresa-any
thing-but-a-saint.html> "Given the parsimonious management of Mother
Teresa's works, one may ask where the millions of dollars for the poorest of
the poor have gone?" 

The research paper claims that the celebrated nun had 517 missions in 100
countries at the time of her death, but that the majority of patients were
not cared for properly and many were left to die, according to the
university website. In addition, the Vatican is said to have ignored a
doctor's assertions when it concluded that a Mother Teresa miracle healed a
woman who had tuberculosis and an ovarian cyst.

Researchers Carole Senechal of the University of Ottawa and Larivee and
Genevieve Chenard from the University of Montreal came to their conclusions
by examining 96 percent of the originally researched, published works about
Teresa, according to the U of M website. Their findings are to be published
in French-language journal Studies in Religion/Sciences.

Some of their references included medical journals and British journalist
Christopher Hitchens, who called Mother Teresa a
<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/10/momm
ie_dearest.html> "fraud."

Other researchers have criticized Mother Teresa's efforts in the past.
Mother Teresa: A Biography, written by Meg Greene and published in 2004,
recounts an article by the Lancet medical journal that outlined the neglect
<http://books.google.ca/books?id=nI819bQ4M60C&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=lancet+r
obin+fox+mother+teresa&source=bl&ots=nJdhQcQaX9&sig=4iOH3DrNXQLg_Ay0wmLQdvq0
gnU&hl=en&ei=NWF-SqCKFoe6ML20wfoC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=o
nepage&q=lancet%20robin%20fox%20mother%20teresa&f=false>  and lack of
expertise in a Calcutta facility established by Mother Teresa.
<http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2894%2991759
-0/fulltext> 

The website of the Nobel Peace Prize, which Mother Teresa won in 1979, takes
a far more positive view of her deeds
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1979/teresa-bio.html
> . It celebrates her early work in Calcutta's slums and credits her order
and its outgrowths with providing "effective help to the poorest of the poor
in a number of countries." Indeed, the U of M paper even concedes that one
of her legacies is the generation of humanitarians she inspired.

Mother Teresa died at age 87 in 1997. "
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/04/mother-teresa-myth_n_2805697.html?u
tm_hp_ref=mostpopular

To read more about Mother Teresa check out Christopher Hitchen's work The
Missionary Position.
<http://www.amazon.com/The-Missionary-Position-Mother-Practice/dp/1455523003
/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362622422&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=missionary+posit
ionschristopher+hitchens>   It is excellent.  I never could abide thinking
about how happy she was to hang around with Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.
What a pair of pigs.

 

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