mother teresa to be canonized by the Catholic Church; But the people of Calcutta not crazy about mother teresa
Here are some things people need to know about mother teresa (as you can see I have little regard for this woman). The catholic church wants to turn this woman into a saint. I believe this woman has been used to further the objectives of the white establishment to try an convince the world that they are gods and the propeganda surrounding mother teresa was nothing more than white supremacist propeganda! And I'm not alone in my thoughts of this too. The Indian people who lived in Calcutta, India the people she was supposedly ministering too were upset at how she portrayed their city and their people and tired of her posturing as some holier than thou fanatic! If we're wrong about her (and I don't think we are) then God forgive us, but otherwise here's the story.
10 Misconceptions about Mother Teresa; She was no Saint
Top 10 Reasons Mother Teresa Was No Saint: 10 Misconceptions about Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa known and celebrated worldwide as the Albanian Nun who
received a calling to work with the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Even
now, many years after her death, her name is synonymous with charity,
with love and care of the poor. She was honored with the Nobel Prize
for Peace and, shortly after her death the Vatican started an
accelerated process for her canonization.
Significant controversy surrounds her life and her missionary work.
Here we list the top 10 reasons why Mother Teresa was not a saint and
why claims about her life and work should be treated with caution. 10 Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying provides abysmal medical care.
Mother Teresa was no saint because her home for the dying provided terrible medical care
Mother Teresa received a vision from God telling her to help the poor
while living among them. Following some very basic medical training
Mother Teresa started to look after the ‘poorest among the poor’., those
who were dying, destitute on the streets in the slums of Calcutta. In
1952 her Missionaries of Charity organization started her Kalighat Home for the Dying –
a place where people could come to die in dignity and comfort. She
wanted to make it possible for ‘people who lived like animals to die like angels – loved and wanted’.
When qualified doctors visited the home,
however they found that the medical care provided was very poor. Most
of the volunteers had no medical knowledge and yet had to make medical
decisions because there were no doctors available. There was no
distinction made between those who were suffering from curable and
incurable illnesses so people who might have survived had they been
given access to treatment were left to die. Needles were re-used so
many times that they became blunt and they were not sterilized between
uses. In 1981 when the state of care in her facilities was challenged
she said ‘There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering’. This shows a very cynical use of the poor to further the ends of others.
There was no proper pain management, meaning people suffered in
needless pain while they died. Mother Teresa promoted this suffering as
she felt that it was of benefit to suffer in this world for a better
life in heaven. She is reputed to have once told someone dying in pain
‘you are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you’. It is not known
whether the sufferer was even Christian but probably not, he screamed
back, in pain and distressed ‘tell your Jesus to stop kissing me’.
With regard to her own medical treatment Mother Teresa received only the best.
Although she made public shows of declining free high quality medical
treatment she nevertheless had no compunctions about secretly accepting
medical care from some of the best institutions in the world including
having cataract surgery and having a pace maker installed. When the
time came for her to be ‘kissed by Jesus’ she did not die in one of her
own homes for the dying and was not treated with blunt needles. She
passed to meet her maker in the very best of medical facilities. 9 Mother Teresa’s goal was missionary work not helping the poor.
Mother Teresa would rather be a missionary rather than help poor people
Despite the extensive donations to Mother Teresa’s homes only a few
hundred people are helped at any one time. At the time she accepted her
Nobel Prize for Peace Mother Teresa claimed to have helped about 36,000
people in Calcutta, the reality is that the Missionaries of Charity
have helped about 5-700people.
A survey of charitable organizations operating in Calcutta in 1998 did
not even rank her homes in the top 200. Some of the Missionaries of
Charity homes are used, not to treat people but to try to persuade them
to convert to Catholicism.
There have been well documented cases of people trying to access the
services of Mother Teresa’s house for the dying but being turned away.
In one instance in 1979, shortly before the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, a
well-known Calcuttan intellectual, Jyotirmoy Datta, tried to obtain the
assistance of the House of the Dying for a destitute he found on the
street. He spoke to Mother Teresa herself who refused to help.
Mother Teresa’s organization received and receives extensive
donations which would enable them to transform the homes for the dying
into modern, clean hospices that provide a decent level of palliative
care. Mother Teresa was not, however, interested in mitigating
suffering so much as celebrating it.
As such she concentrated on opening new Missionaries of Charity
convents and homes in many different locations around the world as
opposed to channeling its extensive funds into their existing homes for
the benefit of the people they claimed to be trying to help. 8 Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity baptized the dying without their permission.
Mother Teresa’s minions baptized people without their permission
The Missionaries of Charity operate in Calcutta where the majority of
people are Hindu or Muslim. Mother Teresa claimed that the
Missionaries of Charity gave the dying the rituals of their faith.
However, in 1992, on a visit to the Vatican she claimed that she and her sisters gave the dying a special ‘Ticket to St Peter’ by
baptizing them. In essence all who were dying (and probably in pain,
incoherent and incapable of making a rational decision) were asked if
they wanted a blessing, their sins forgiven and to see God. It is not
clear if this offer was worded so as to make it clear that the offer
came with regard to the Christian God or if the offer was made at the
same time that they were given the comforts of their own faith. Most
people agreed to this forgiveness, their head was then covered in a wet
cloth and the formula for adult baptism repeated very quietly
To impose a religion on someone, to convert them covertly is not the
actions of a saint. Surely if someone’s mortal soul is in peril it
would be better to arrange for instruction in the religion and allow
people to come to their faith naturally. 7 Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity Organization has shady finances
Mother Teresa’s finances allegedly were not above board
Under Indian Law all charities are required to publish their accounts
but the Missionaries of Charity have never complied with this
requirement. In Germany, when the Missionaries of Charity were asked
how much money they had they responded that ‘it’s nobody’s business’.
In New York a former Sister with the Missionaries of Charity said that
in one year the organization banked $50million, she thought that the
organization’s receipts worldwide would amount to somewhere in the region of $100mannually.
There equally appears to be no record of expenditures made by the
Missionaries of Charity, indeed wherever possible they rely on donations
– of food, clothing, buildings etc to cover their start up and
operating costs. It appears that a significant portion of the monies
were deposited at the Vatican Bank in
Rome and not used to improve the houses of the dying, the orphanages or
other charitable operations of the order. Saving not spending money
appears to have been a goal in itself even when the money was plentiful
and could have been used to ameliorate suffering and improve conditions
for those living in the very worst of conditions. New missions are
given start up assistance from the order but are then expected to be
completely self –sufficient.
Many philanthropic organizations exist in order to use money to improve the life of others. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is
a typical example. It uses its funds to help improve the lives that
people lead, regardless of where they are or how they worship – the
foundation is predicated on the belief that every life has equal value.
Its finances are properly regulated, transparent and applied
effectively. Unlike the Missionaries of Charity who hide away their
money and promote suffering as noble, admirable philanthropic
organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation help people to
make the most of the life they have. 6 Mother Teresa took money from known fraudsters and
refused to refund it – even when this refusal caused real harm to
innocent people.
Mother Teresa took money from fraudsters
Mother Teresa was happy to accept donations from any source – even
when the source in question was a reprehensible con-man. She received
significant donations from Charles Keating, a leading American catholic
and anti-pornography protestor who was convicted and imprisoned for
fraud when his Savings and Loan Association collapsed leaving 23,000
investors with worthless bonds and from Robert Maxwell who stole £450m
from the pension fund of his employees. Although it appears that she
was not aware of their activities prior to the scandals association with
the men she showed little concern for the suffering their actions
caused; she believed that the donation of funds could salve the conscienceof those who donated them.
Mother Teresa wrote to the judge requesting leniency for Keating
because he had made donations to the Missionaries of Charity. The
Deputy District Attorney wrote to her explaining exactly what Keating
had done in defrauding small investors of their life savings. Mother
Teresa refused to reply to
that letter. Sadly because of the shady finances of her organization
it is impossible to tell whether the money was put to good use which
would at least provide some small comfort to the people whose lives were
ruined. From the poor conditions in her House of the Dying and the
lack of support given to missions worldwide it would seem these people
lost their money for no good reason. 5 As well as consorting with fraudsters Mother
Teresa was friends with the leaders of some of the most reprehensible
political regimes in the world.
Mother Teresa associated with really shady characters. Duvalier regime in Haiti.Georgios Kollidas / Shutterstock.com
Mother Teresa was an admirer of the Duvalier regime in Haiti. The rule of ‘Papa’ and ‘Baby’ Doc was known, worldwide, to bebrutally oppressive and
incredibly cruel to the people of the impoverished country. Both were
known to live a lavish lifestyle at the expense of the people of Haiti,
to allow the torture and murder of their detractors and to be involved
in the underground trade in both drugs and body parts.
Nevertheless Mother Teresa had no compunctions about accepting an award
from Baby Doc and to say of the Duvaliers that they ‘love their poor
and their love was reciprocated.’
Mother Teresa did not confine her controversial actions to Haiti.
When she returned to her homeland of Albania in 1989 she visited the
widow of the former communist Dictator Enver Hoxha andlaid flowers on his grave.
She spent time with many communist party officials and at no time used
her visit to condemn the human rights abuses of the communist regime or
their brutal suppression of religion. Even if the reality was that she
could not make any negative comments during her visit she could have
used her position to make comments and condemnations from abroad. 4 Mother Teresa had a hard line stance on abortion, contraception and divorce, except where her Friends were concerned.
Mother Teresa was a hard-line pro-lifer
Mother Teresa did not believe in supporting those deciding whether or
not they had to terminate their pregnancies – she wanted only to
condemn them whatever their circumstances. When she accepted her Nobel
Prize for Peace she said ‘Abortion is the worst evil and the greatest
enemy of peace…If a mother can kill her own child, what will prevent us
from killing ourselves or one another? Nothing.’
Her stance was completely hardline with no exceptions even in the most mitigating of circumstances.
In 1971 the Indo-Pakistan War led to many atrocities including the rape
of over 450,000 Hindu women by Pakistani soldiers. Rather than
supporting them in coming to terms with the abuse they had suffered or
condemning the atrocities perpetrated against them she chose to speak
only on the question of abortion. For Mother Teresa felt that there
should be no choice of whether or not to keep the babies of such a crime
she called, very publicly for the victims to keep the babies. She
held fast to this belief her entire life; in 1993 she condemned a 14
year old rape victim in Ireland for seeking an abortion. Indeed she had
no problems travellingaround
the world specifically to prevent individual cases of abortion and to
help anti-abortion campaigns to influence the government policy on
abortion in many countries around the world.
While no one could question her personal feelings on the sanctity of
life she was not the person suffering in these circumstances, she was
not the person facing the choice and, in the case of the Hindu women was
speaking from a religious view point that was not applicable to them.
Her views were not, however, immutable. When her close friend Indira
Ghandi imposed a state of emergency in India, suspending the
constitution and instituting a reign of terror against her detractors
Mother Teresa publicly supported her. This support did not waiver even
when Indira Ghandi’s regime started a campaign for the forced sterilization of the poor.
Mother Teresa was as passionately anti divorce as she was
anti-abortion. She believed that marriages were sanctified by God. At
the time the country was considering legalizing divorce Mother Teresa wrote to the people of Ireland telling
them that ‘If a father and mother are not willing to give until it
hurts to be faithful to each other, and to their children they are not
showing their children what it means to love…These children will grow up
to be spiritually poor’. However, when her good friend Princess Diana obtained
her divorce from Prince Charles Mother Teresa praised the divorce as a
good thing because the love had left the marriage, there was no thought
given to the spiritual poverty in which her children would grow up. No
condemnation as there would have been for an ordinary Irish couple
looking for a divorce. 3 Mother Teresa was rarely in Calcutta preferring to fly around the world to promote her opinions.
Mother Teresa the real Flying Nun. She’d rather be up in the air than on the ground in Calcutta helping the poor
Whether it was anti-abortion campaigning in the US or Japan or
convincing the people of Ireland to vote against the legalization of
divorce Mother Teresa spent a lot of time travelingaround the world to promote her beliefs and the work of her Missionaries of Charity.
She was not well known in Calcutta, she used the poverty of the city
as a background to her work and media image but she spent very little
time interacting with other social or cultural institutions. Even her
spiritual advisor Edward Le Jolly confirmed in his book on Mother Teresa
that she was in Calcutta only infrequently.
While away she would often say she was unhappy to be absent from
Calcutta but she typically would spent time in Rome following a trip
abroad instead of returning directly to India. 2 Mother Teresa liked to be seen to help but provided very little actual help.
Mother Teresa like to promote a certain imagecatwalker / Shutterstock.com
As mentioned above Mother Teresa helped only a fraction of the people
she claimed to have taken from the streets of Calcutta. She liked to be
seen to be present at huge disasters. When the Union Carbide plant in
Bhopal became the site of the largest ever industrial accident in the
world Mother Teresa lost no time in flying down there to be
photographed. On seeing the carnage she exhorted the victims to forgiveness before
starting a tour of the hospitals to ‘help’. She visited some of the
survivors but the Missionaries of Charity failed to direct any of their
extensive funds to the local mission which would have enabled them to
engage in and provide concrete assistance to the afflicted.
When the 1993 earthquake of Latur killed 8,000 people and left 5m
people homeless Mother Teresa failed to direct any of her Missionaries
of Charity nun or volunteers to help nor did she make any funds
available for re-building although many other charities in India, of
many religious denominations and non, did participate in the relief
effort. Nevertheless Mother Teresa had no difficulty in posing for photographs showing
her presenting the deeds of new houses to some of the people of Latur.
That same year India was struck with an outbreak of Bubonic Plague.
Despite having no involvement in treating the victims Mother Teresa was
photographed entering ‘quarantine’ on arrival in Rome, the photographs
were then sent worldwide to promote the belief that she had been
struggling to help deal with the outbreak. 1 There have been no miracles attributed to Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa did not perform any miracles.
There is a very strict process that he Catholic Church has to follow
in order to declare someone a saint. Typically investigations cannot
start until five years after a person’s death in order for any hysteria
surrounding a much loved person to die down. The Catholic Church
fast-tracked the process of canonization, starting the process within
less than two years of Mother Teresa’s death and she was beatifiedin 2003.
Beatification, the first step to full sainthood requires the
performance of a miracle. In 2002 the Catholic Church recognized that
Mother Teresa had curedan
Indian woman of an abdominal tumor a year after her death after
Missionaries of Charity prayed for Mother Teresa’s help and applied a
locket with her picture in it to the site of the tumor.
While the woman believed that Mother Teresa cured her it appears that
her doctors say that she was not suffering from a tumor but from a cyst
which was cured by the medicines prescribed
by the local hospital. The woman’s medical notes are in the possession
of the Missionaries of Charity who refuse to release them. Doctors at
the local hospital have claimed to have been subjected to pressure from the Catholic Church to declare the cure a ‘miracle’.
So was Mother Teresa a Saint or was she a hard-nosed public relations
specialist who used her status as a charitable icon to travel the
world, rubbing shoulders with a dubious elite and pushing her own
beliefs on abortion, contraception and divorce (extreme even for the
Catholic Church). Was she an angel of mercy providing tender care to
the poorest of the poor in their last moments of suffering or did she
glorify that suffering and see it as a benefit in and of itself. Did
she help tens of thousands of poor around the world or provide
assistance to a few hundred as a front to her missionary organization?
Has she performed miracles or are ordinary events being manipulated to
make us think she has? What is indisputable is that, in stark contrast
to properly managed and transparent philanthropic institutions, despite
the extensive donations to the Missionaries of Charity, the assistance
they provide is as limited in terms of care and medical aid as it was
when Mother Teresa started her organization. Whatever the truth,
questions should be asked and answers given.
No comments:
Post a Comment